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[[underlined]] Chapter VI. [[/underlined]] 114. only what he found in the group of buildings [[underlined]] outside [[/underlined]] it and which he was able to see from the road leading thither. Of any penetration of ------------------------------ (95) The original text runs:取其所藏金寳而昭陵最固 ------------------------------- T'ai-tsung's tomb-chamber, or of any looting of the treasures within it, the passage makes no mention. In this connection my colleague Mr. A. G. Wenley, who visited the Chao Ling with me, makes the following very plausible suggestion. In his opinion (in which I heartily concur), the confusion may have arisen through the occurrence, in the above account in the [[underlined]] Hsin wu tai shih [[/underlined]], of the expression, "In the center was a large hall" 中為正寢. [[superscript]](96)[[/superscript]] ---------------------- (96) The expression [[underlined]] chêng ch'in [[/underlined]] 正寢, "large (or principal) hall", as Mr. Wenley has pointed out to me, is sometimes used of a man's death-chamber in a palace; the query suggests itself therefore, whether it may not mean here the hall where the body of T'ai-tsung lay in state during the obsequies preceding its final commitment to the tomb-chamber proper, within the mountain. ------------------ Translators, Mr. Wenley suspects, have taken it for granted that what was meant here was the central division of the tomb-chamber, when in reality the reference was to the center of the complex of buildings standing outside it and, as the text specifically states, visible from the road leading to the site. We had throughout our investigation of the site found our friend the magistrate's close familiarity with it most helpful. Having at length received his assurance, and incidentally satisfied ourselves, that we had examined everything of interest there, about mid-afternoon we started back to Li-ch'üan. Dusk had already fallen when we arrived there. [[strikethrough]] Dusk had already fallen when we reached our inn. We were just sitting down to supper in the courtyard when we were surprised by the [[/strikethrough]] [[strikethrough]] °°°°°°°°°° [[/strikethrough]]
