ON TO SHEN-SHEN AND THENCE TO KHOTEN After travelling for seventeen days, a distance we may calculate of about 1500 le, (the pilgrims) reached the kingdom of Shen-shen,( 1) a country rugged and hilly, with a thin and barren soil.

The clothes of the common people are coarse, and like those worn in our land of Han,( 2) some wearing felt and others coarse serge or cloth of hair;--this was the only difference seen among them.

The king professed (our) Law, and there might be in the country more than four thousand monks,( 3) who were all students of the hinayana.( 4) The common people of this and other kingdoms (in that region), as well as the sramans,( 5) all practise the rules of India,( 6) only that the latter do so more exactly, and the former more loosely.

So (the travellers) found it in all the kingdoms through which they went on their way from this to the west, only that each had its own peculiar barbarous speech.( 7) (The monks), however, who had (given up the worldly life) and quitted their families, were all students of Indian books and the Indian language.

Here they stayed for about a month, and then proceeded on their journey, fifteen days walking to the north-west bringing them to the country of Woo-e.( 8) In this also there were more than four thousand monks, all students of the hinayana.