Indian Antiquary Vol 35

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 16

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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[JANUARY, 1906.
Kharostha. This name is given to [559] the writing of the frontier peoples of the Northern region." This gloss has found its way, word for word, into the Yin-yi of Houei-lin, Ch. LXVII., and afterwards into the Fan-yi-ming-yi-tsi, Ch. XIV., where M. Franke has already pointed it out. It is not without interest to ascertain that this information occurs for the first time not in a compilation of the XIIth century (1151), but in a glossary composed at the time of Hionen-tsang himself, in 649, when Sanskrit learning was flourishing in China. Hiouen-ying's gloss on the Kharoştri comes very near Buddhabhadra's translation of the word Kharoştra. Just as Kharoştra is the country of the border-barbarians, Kharoştri is the writing of the border-barbarians. The country nearest to the Kharoştri on the north is, and can only be, India, for the information of the author of the Sanskrit-Chinese commentary is evidently derived from Hindu sources, whether collected by him personally or borrowed from explanatory notes given by his predecessors. The second alternative is the more probable, for the names Kharoştri and Kharoştra seemed to have disappeared from actual usage in the VIIth century, doubtless even earlier. They have been supplanted by another term marking a new change in the destinies of Central Asia. After the impetuous advance of the Yue-tchi, which had momentarily connected Central Asia with India, China resumed her policy of expansion towards the West, reconquered lost territory and imposed her hegemony on distant vassals. When brought into regular contact in her turn with the chaos of tribes and hordes wandering round about the Pamir between the Yellow River, the Aral Sea, Siberia and India, China included them in the vague and convenient designation Hou. Whatever the original value of this vocable may have been, it was made to apply, without distinction of race, to all the inhabitants of that vast territory. India herself was confounded from afar with her barbarian neighbours and incorporated with the undefined mass of the Hou. The sanctity of the associations belonging to the country of the Buddha has safeguarded the name Fan (Brahma), reserved, in principle, for things Indian, but in the practice even of the Buddhists themselves there is a confusion between the terms. It would be as easy as it would be useless to multiply examples. I will only quote the scholar Seng-yeou, who wrote between 500 and 520, at a period when correct and clear notions on India were already widely diffused among the Chinese clergy. In his catalogue of the Tripitaka, of which I have already made use, Seng-yeou (XXXVIII. 1, 1) frequently has occasion to compare the originals of texts with the Chinese versions, either with respect to the meaning, the spirit or the sound; but in mentioning the originals he uses sometimes the word hou, sometimes the word fan, with such complete impartiality that the editors of the Yuan and the Ming versions have thought themselves justified in uniformly restoring the form fan instead of. hou; and the Japanese editor points out that the same observation holds good for the entire work. In the Korean text, which has not undergone these alterations, the terms hou-wenn (p. 77b) and fan-wenn (93), hou-chou (9b) and fan-chou (78b) occur without any apparent or plausible distinction. If Buddhabhadra founded his translation of [560] the Avatamsaka on a hou-pen brought from Khotan, we are tempted to admit that the terin hou here denotes either a Prakrit original, or a writing of the Kharoştri type, as against the Sanskrit (fan) or the Brahmi (fan). But Fa-hien stayed three years at Patalipntra (Pa-lien-fou) to study the hou writing (hou-chou) and the hou words (hou-yu); and in this case the Prakrit and Kharoştri must evidently be excluded. Seng-yeou's variations can, without doubt, be accounted for by the diversity of his sources; he is but a compiler, and copies his extracts faithfully, without thinking of bringing them into harmony with one another.
But, a century later, the accession of the T'ang begins a new era. The empire has grown and organisation follows; facts and order find their place in science. Hiouen-tsang's journey introduces systematic knowledge of the Hindu world. The word hou regains a precise and definite value. Hiouen-tsang, it is true, is not very precise himself as to the sense of this term; he seems to avoid it purposely, as giving rise to regrettable confusion. If by chance he uses it, it is simply as an ethnological term used by the imperial government; in this way he distinguishes the Hou from the Khotanese, the Hindus and the Huns, in a curious note in the Si-yu-ki, which Stanislas Julien has overlooked or omitted. At the end of his notice of Tcho-kiu-kia (Book XII.) he writes "after a journey of eight hundred li you reach Kiu-sa-tan-na"; he adds, "In Chinese this means the bosom