On Yuan Chwang's Travels in India, 629–645 A.D. v1.c7.s8.8

v1.c7.s8.8

The part of the passage within inverted commas reads in Julien's version thus—"La température étant constamment tiède, les épidémies y sont très fréquentes. A la fin de l'hiver et au commencement du printemps, il tombe des pluies continuelles. C'est pourquoi au sud de ce pays, et au nord de Lan-po, il règne beaucoup d'épidémies. De là vient que tous les religieux entrent dans les demeures fixes le seizième jour du douzième mois, et en sortent le quinzième jour du troisième. Cet usage est fondé sur l'abondance des pluies. Les instructions qu'on leur donne sont subordonnées aux saisons."¹ Now the text does not seem to assert that the temperature of this large region was constamment tiède, and that consequently epidemics were frequent. Such a statement, moreover, would be at variance with other passages in this chuan such as the descriptions of Kie-chih and Bamian. It is true, however, that Ma Tuan-lin, on the authority of others, represents the Tokhara country as having a hot climate; but that was evidently only in the summer, for the inhabitants were able to store ice for use during the hot weather. What our author apparently wanted his readers to understand was that the climate became warm or mild in early spring when the rainy season began: this change in the temperature produced much illness which was called "Heat (or Spring) sickness." In all my texts the reading here is wên-chi (溫疾), but Julien's text may have had wên(瘟)-chi, and this is rightly translated in his note "maladies épidémiques." Because the early spring was the rainy season of these countries the Buddhist Brethren in them made that their time of Retreat from the Rain.