Asiatic Quarterly Review (Full Title: The Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review, and Oriental and Colonial Record): Volume XIII, No. 26 [‎509v] (143/238)

356 China, the Avars, and the Franks.
General then founded the Sui dynasty, which in 589 also
conquered the Southern or Nanking Empire. China was
therefore now reunited; and the second Sui Emperor, a
man of fitful and restless energy, carried his arms into
Corea, “Turkey” (North Ordos), and Kokonor, personally
visiting all those places himself, and sending Ambassadors
even by sea to Loochoo and to what is now called Siam.
He explicitly aimed at emulating the “ First Emperor
(255 b.c.), who had revolutionized and recast the Empire
800 years before him. It is stated of this Sui Emperor
that he “ was often on the point of opening relations with
Fuh-lin.” In China it has always been the rule that each
succeeding dynasty shall make up into historical form the
annals of its predecessor, and under the head of “ Persia
the Sui History says : “ From Persia you go north-west
4,500 li (1,500 miles) to Fuh-lin.” The extravagances of
the above-mentioned ambitious monarch, which were all
crowded into a period of twelve years, brought his dynasty
to an ignominious end in 618, and nothing further whatever
is said of Fuh-lin in the history of it, which was compiled
and published a few years later by the succeeding T‘ang
dynasty. The above retrospective passage about opening
relations occurs in the tenth-century history of the T ang
dynasty, which reigned at Si-an Fu from 618 to 904.
This history, which of course simply transcribes the stored-
up annals, then relates how Fuh-lin is the same country as
the ancient Ta-ts‘in, and how the “ King,” Po-to-lik
(? Patriarch) of Fuh-lin had sent an overland mission to
China in 643. The celebrated Nestorian stone of Si-an
Fu is still plain evidence before our eyes ; it explains how
the Ta-tsfin monk Olopen came to China to preach the
“Sublime” Faith. We possess, in a Chinese work pub
lished about 900, the original decree of the Chinese Emperor,
dated in 638, authorizing the “ Persian ” priest Olopen to
preach the “ Orthodox ” Faith, and establish a monastery
at Si-an Fu. It has been proved to satiety how the Chinese
of those times (and very naturally) often confused the Nes-