TUN-HUANG (15 page)

In step with Hsi-hsia’s expansion, Hsing-ch’ing, too, was developing into a large city. Hsing-te noticed, however, that the clothing of the people had become shabbier and plainer. He presumed this was due to heavy taxation caused by the war with the Turfans. Three years before, Hsing-te had often heard that many temples were to be built at the foot of the Ho-lan mountains thirty miles west of the city, but by now such rumors had subsided. Funds for the temples had been appropriated by the military.

As before, Hsing-te lodged in a large Buddhist temple with a sizeable dormitory in the northwest sector of the town. This building looked more like a school than his former residence, and there were many teachers and students. The number of Chinese instructors had also increased. He also met many of the Chinese he had known before while studying Hsi-hsia writing. What surprised him most since his arrival at the temple was that the Hsi-hsia-Chinese dictionary he had compiled had been bound into a book and many copies had been made of it. An elderly person of almost sixty named So, who had lived for years at this temple and had worked on the Hsi-hsia writing, brought one of the books to Hsing-te and asked him to write the title for it. He himself was a better bureaucrat than scholar, and he now had the longest tenure and highest position in this department. He had learned of Hsing-te’s return by chance. They were to use the name of a Hsi-hsia man who worked in the department as author, but since Hsing-te had contributed the most work, So wanted at least to give him the right to title the book.

Hsing-te opened it. Several words he had selected leapt to his eye: thunder, sunlight, sweet dew, whirlwind—words for natural phenomena were written in one line. To the right of these were the Hsi-hsia terms, with Chinese pronunciation given for Hsi-hsia writing and Hsi-hsia pronunciation noted for Chinese words. The writing was very poor, as if some student had copied it, but despite everything this small book held fond memories for Hsing-te.

On another page he saw the words: cats, dogs, pigs, camels, horses, oxen, and other such animals, and on the next page: eyes, head, nose, teeth, mouth—and others for the parts of the body had been selected.

For some time, Hsing-te looked over several pages of the booklets, then he picked up a brush, dipped it in ink, and wrote “The Pearl in the Palm Hsi-hsia—Chinese Handbook” on the long, narrow white paper pasted onto the cover. Laying down his brush and pointing to the book, Hsing-te asked the elder So, “Will this do?” The old man nodded, and Hsing-te wrote the same words on several pieces of paper. These were to be pasted on other copies of the book.

As soon as Hsing-te had arrived at Hsing-ch’ing, with help from So, he had started work on the mission that had brought him from distant Kua-chou. Government permission was granted after about a month. The six Chinese Hsing-te chose were to be sent to Kua-chou as Yen-hui’s guests. Of the group, two were Buddhist priests. Both were learned in Chinese and Hsi-hsia and steeped in Buddhist culture. They were in their fifties, but the others were around forty. All had previously worked with Hsing-te. His request was granted quickly because no Buddhist sutras were being translated in Hsing-ch’ing; indeed, they had hardly any sutras to work with. Hsing-te had even heard rumors that in the near future an envoy would be sent to China to obtain all the necessary sutras.

When negotiations were concluded, Hsing-te decided to return to Kua-chou before the others. It would have been more convenient to travel together, but his companions had to make preparations for the trip and did not wish to leave Hsing-ch’ing until the beginning of autumn.

In the hottest part of July, Hsing-te finished his work in Hsing-ch’ing and joined Kuang’s party, now heading west toward Kua-chou. Kuang had several times the amount of goods he had come with. Thus another thirty camels had been added, and some of the camel men were handling ten camels each. The major portion of the load was silk, but there were also small quantities of brushes, paper, inksticks, ink-stones, scrolls, paintings, and antiques.

Since Hsing-te was well-acquainted with Kuang’s temperament, he tried to stay away from him. Kuang’s pride displayed itself in strange ways, so it was extremely difficult to avoid annoying him. Hsing-te thought it best to keep out of his way, but Kuang would find reasons to seek him out. He had decided that Hsing-te alone among the ignorant, uncouth people in the caravan and the camel men could converse on a fairly equal level with him.

The journey with Kuang was not peaceful. The first incident occurred on the second day after the caravan had left Liang-chou and had camped along the banks of a stream in the grasslands. Hsing-te was in a tent with five camel men when Kuang appeared. As always, as soon as he appeared, the atmosphere in the tent became tense, and the camel men huddled in one corner and turned their backs on the two.

Kuang ignored them, approached Hsing-te, and for some reason blurted out, “In any case, all Uighur women, highborn and low-born, are prostitutes.”

In most instances, Hsing-te disregarded anything Kuang said, but he could not ignore these words. “That’s not true,” he said rather strongly. “Some Uighur women are chaste.”

“There’s no such thing.”

“I can’t speak for the lower classes, but I know of a respectable royal girl who has given up her life to prove her chastity.”

In answer to Hsing-te, Kuang roared, “Shut up! What do you mean by ‘respectable royalty’? You can’t tell what the background of any royal Uighur family is!” He glared at Hsing-te as he spoke. Kuang seemed to imply that the term “respectable royalty” should be applied only to the Wei-ch’ih family of Khotan. Hsing-te was well aware of this, but he would not yield. Until then, Hsing-te had given in to this brash young man in all respects, but he would not concede this point.

“What do you mean, you can’t tell where they came from? By royalty, I mean a clan which has passed down nobility of spirit through several generations.”

“Be quiet!” Kuang suddenly grabbed Hsing-te’s collar and began to shake him. “Just try to repeat that nonsense!”

Kuang pulled Hsing-te up from the straw on the ground. “Now, let’s hear you say it again.”

Hsing-te wanted to speak, but his voice would not come out. The grip around his neck loosened and he was thrown to the ground, and before he could run he was picked up and thrown down again. He had had such rough treatment from Kuang several times before, but this time he would not give in. Each time as he rolled on the ground, he sputtered out broken phrases or words, “royalty is,” “noble,” “spirit.”

“All right then!” Kuang finally seemed to have given up on Hsing-te, who continued to resist him, and stopped beating him. He looked pensive. Then he said, “Follow me,” and left the tent.

Hsing-te followed. The night air was as cold as in winter. The ground, scorched by the sun during the day was now completely chilled. In the dim light, Hsing-te saw many tents neatly lined in such straight rows that they seemed to have been marked off with a ruler.

Kuang walked silently away from the tent toward the the plains. Then he stopped and said, “Now, say the only ones worthy of being called royalty are the Wei-ch’ih family of Khotan. If you do, I shall let you go back without cutting your arms and legs to pieces. Now, say it!”

“I won’t,” Hsing-te replied.

Kuang seemed to ponder for a minute. “Why can’t you say it? All right, if you can’t say that, you good-for-nothing, just say that all Uighur women are prostitutes. You can say that much, can’t you? Say it!”

“I won’t.”

“Won’t! Why won’t you?”

“Because a Uighur princess jumped off a city wall to prove her chastity, and I refuse to yield on that point.”

“All right then!” With these words, Kuang jumped on Hsing-te. At that moment, Hsing-te became a mere stick as he was whirled around.

After a bit, Hsing-te felt himself thrown into the darkness, where he landed on the damp grass. Hsing-te looked up toward the starry heavens and saw the sky tilting. The row of words “dew, thunder, and hailstones, lightning, rainbow, Milky Way” flitted through his mind as he lay stretched out on the bare earth. They were terms relating to celestial phenomena on one of the pages of the “The Pearl in the Palm Hsi-hsia—Chinese Handbook” which he had titled.

The next instant, Hsing-te felt his brutal adversary bending over him. “Now say it, you swine!”

“What do you want me to say?”

“Wei-ch’ih…” As his opponent began, Hsing-te instinctively pushed back Kuang, who was holding him down with all his strength. When Kuang realized that Hsing-te had resisted him, even though it was slight, his anger seemed to reach boiling point.

“Still want to play, do you?” Kuang stood and again grasped Hsing-te by the collar and pulled him up. Hsing-te expected to be whirled about again.

Then, in the next instant, he was abruptly released. Hsing-te staggered a few steps, then sank to the ground.

“What’s this?” Kuang threw the question at him. Kuang was holding something small and was trying to look at it in the dim light of the night. When Hsing-te realized that Kuang was holding the necklace, he thrust his hands into his robe. When he could not find it, he stood up. “Give it back!” he begged Kuang with a passion completely unlike his usual manner.

“Where did you get this?” Kuang, unusually, spoke gently.

Hsing-te remained silent. He didn’t want to tell this scoundrel he had received it from the Uighur princess.

“This is very valuable. You’d better take good care of it.” What Kuang was thinking was not clear, but he returned the necklace and walked off, as if he had forgotten all about thrashing Hsing-te.

The necklace clasp was broken and it had become a long strand, but it was still intact and not a single stone seemed to have been lost.

After this, Kuang’s attitude toward Hsing-te changed completely and he became gentler with him. Hsing-te was the only one he didn’t shout at. From time to time he would approach Hsing-te to question him about the source of the necklace.

Surprisingly, Hsing-te gained privileges which should have been his all along. The brutal young man had become as gentle as if he had been castrated. Hsing-te did as he wished. After all, what with the weapons of twenty men Wang-li had lent, and the fifty camels Yen-hui had contributed, Hsing-te had every right to receive special treatment.

Hsing-te knew a scoundrel like Kuang could easily steal the necklace. That he didn’t was probably because he wanted to learn where more of them could be obtained.

In Kan-chou they spent three days at the camel station. During that time, Hsing-te once climbed the wall at the southwestern corner of the fortress. From the top, he could see in the distance part of the marketplace outside the South Gate. The rest was a vast expanse of grassy plain. He looked down at the open space by the wall. People walking about looked as small as peas. From there he walked toward the western part of the wall, where the Uighur princess had thrown herself off.

Hsing-te thought of how powerless he had been in the presence of the princess, who had cut her own life short for him, and his sorrow increased. He continued walking along the wall for about half an hour, and it was then that he decided he would dedicate to her all the work that lay before him after his return to Kua-chou. He would translate the Chinese sutras into Hsi-hsia for Yen-hui, but as an offering for the repose of her soul.

With this thought, he suddenly became happy. The work of translating the sutras into Hsi-hsia had interested him before, but with this new incentive, it took on an altogether different meaning.

As the fierce sun beat down, Hsing-te continued his walk. Sweat poured from his arms, his legs, his neck, from his whole body.

The invocation of the Diamond Sutra poured out of Hsing-te’s mouth. And as he chanted these verses, his eyes unexpectedly filled with tears. Mingled with beads of sweat, the tears rolled down his cheeks and fell onto the red mud of the city wall.

From the summer of 1033 until the following summer, Hsing-te stayed away from his unit with the Kua-chou ruler, Yen-hui, devoting his time to translating sutras into Hsi-hsia. One wing of Yen-hui’s palace had been set aside for the project. By the end of autumn, the six Chinese had arrived from Hsing-ch’ing and they worked steadily from morning till night. Together, the seven decided each man’s task. They divided the work into sections dealing with Nirvana, Wisdom, Lotus Sutra, Agama Sutra, Sastra, and Dalai Lama, and each man took charge of one.

In Kua-chou there were ninety days of bitter cold, fifty days of extreme heat, and overall very little rain. Its notorious winds were strongest during winter and spring, and on several days the populace almost suffocated from sandstorms. At such times it was dark both day and night.

Hsing-te was in charge of the Diamond Sutra, which he had first read in Su-chou. The work progressed slowly, but while Hsing-te was absorbed, he forgot all else.

From early summer on, Wang-li’s troops began to leave the city more frequently to fight the Turfans, who were gradually infesting the area. Now and then prisoners of war were brought in, sometimes Turfans, and at others Uighurs. No matter how minor the skirmish, Wang-li personally led his troops into each battle.

Whenever Wang-li was not out fighting the Turfans, Hsing-te would visit him at his luxurious quarters every three days.

At the beginning of autumn, Hsing-te visited Wang-li upon his return from a battle which had lasted many days. At such times, Hsing-te was attracted by the suggestion of excitement in his face, his behavior, and his way of speaking. Wang-li never spoke about battles or developments in the war. Hsing-te would question him on occasion, but Wang-li would only give vague answers, and would call for “Chiao-chiao,” the young Chinese girl who served him, and have her bring tea. Wang-li seemed to love the girl, and she, in turn, seemed to be serving him with devotion.