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[[underline]] Chapter I. [[/underline]]   13.

in a building used for lodging ambassadors from the West and standing just outside one of the western gates of the Eastern Han capital, Lo-yang Such an edifice was called a [[underline]] ssŭ [[/underline]], and this word was in consequence also used thereafter to designate a Buddhist temple or monastery. But the position of the Pai Ma Ssŭ did not agree at all with that ascribed to it in the above-mentioned account; instead of being just west of Lo-yang, it was in reality 8 miles east of that city. This discrepancy had long puzzled me.

[[underline]] Relation of the Pai Ma Ssŭ
to the East Han Capital. [[/underline]]
   Now about 200 yards east of the temple we could see the well preserved remains of a massive embankment of rammed earth or [[underline]] terre pisée [[/underline]]---even today a common building material in northern China (pl. [[strikethrough]] IX. [[/strikethrough]] ^3, fig.2). This extended in a straight line for a long distance north and south, and could only be the partly eroded remains of some wall of much more than ordinary importance. It had in fact, according to the monk at the temple, been the western wall of the later capital of the Northern Wei Dynasty, established here toward the close of the 5th century A.D. My informant added moreover that it had been laid out on the trace of the capital of the Eastern Han Dynasty, purposely fired and abandoned in 190 A.D. (although the site continued to be frequented for some centuries longer).
   I was at once struck by the presence, nearly opposite the Pai Ma Ssŭ, of a wide gap in the earthen rampart, almost certainly marking the position of a western gateway of one or both of these cities. This fact suggested that early in our Era the "White Horse Monastery" had actually stood just west of the capital, as the account states. The ambiguity about its location seemed thus to be explained.