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F. S. DRAKE
the property and exemption from taxes of members of religious orders, including the Nestorians, called by the Mongols 'Yeh-li-k'o-wen' 2*
These and other scattered references to Nestorianism and to Nestorian Christians mentioned in Chinese records of the Yüan dynasty have been collected and published by Dr. Ch'ên Yüan in Yuan Yeh-li-k'o-wen k'ao 29
V. THE CH'ÜAN-CHOU CROSSES
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The latest discovery of Nestorian relics in China is a remarkable one and takes us back to Ch'üan-chou once more, the great international port of Ibn Batuta and Chao Ju-kua, the Zayton of Marco Polo and Odoric, with its Buddhist monasteries and Twin Stone Pagodas, its great Mohammedan mosque, and two Franciscan houses, and as we shall now see, its many Nestorian relics.
Here a local scholar, Mr. Wu Wen-liang, became interested in the many fragments of stone with foreign writing and designs that strewed the ground, 'the very pavement stones mingled with inscribed Arab tomb slabs' (Ecke and Demiéville, p.4). For some thirty years, commencing in 1928, Mr. Wu collected these inscribed stones for his private study. During the war, it appears that the city wall of Ch'üan-chou was demolished, and from it many inscribed stones came to light, which added greatly to Mr. Wu's collection. By 1957 the number had reached 160 and included those with Islamic, Nestorian, Manichee, Brahman and other inscriptions. He made rubbings and photographs of these, which he published in that year with explanatory text in Chinese: Ch'üan-chou tsung-chiao shih-k'o ("Stones from Ch'üan-chou with Religious Inscriptions").30
In this book he illustrates twenty-seven stones with Christian inscriptions or designs. Foremost among these are four slabs carved with Christian Crosses, of which two (Nos. 72 and 73) are the very ones illustrated by wood-cuts in Emmanuel Diaz's book on the newly discovered Nestorian Tablet, published in
28 Saeki, op. cit., pp. 418 and 420.
29 Chên Yüan, Shanghai, Commercial Press, 1923. See also Moule, op. cit., and T'oung Pao, Vols. XVII, XVIII, 1916-17: Cordier, 'Le Christianisme en Chine et en Asie sous les Mongous; and Vols. XII, XXI, 1914 and 1934: Pelliot, "Chrétiens d'Asie Centrale et d'Extrême Orient".
30 Peking, K'ê-hsüeh ch'u-pan shê, 1957.
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