Further, although it was not until the year A.D. 75 or so that the great Chinese general Panchao started on the great military expedition which brought the Chinese arms victoriously to the shores of the Caspian Sea, and made the Celestial Empire for a few years almost the next-door neighbour of Rome, it is certain that the Central Asian troubles which caused that expedition were already brewing, and the solution of them was already occupying the

minds of Chinese statesmen. We can hardly imagine such a great expedition being planned without some previous study of the actual conditions of the countries concerned, and we can readily understand that such an inquiry might bring the fact of Christ to the cognizance of the officials. The inquiry might have led them to an explanation of the "Great One Descending Man," looked for by the Jews of Kaifongfu.

At any rate, Ming-ti, warned by his dream, sends his commissioners to the West. There were eighteen of them, their names, or at least some of them, are given, and they start for India. According to the most authentic form of the story, they never reached India, for on the road they met two monks toiling over the mountain passes, and leading a white horse laden with the impedimenta of their journey. The names of these two travellers were Kas'yapa Matanga and Dharmaraksha, or Gobharana. The white horse was laden with Scriptures and Buddhist images, and they were on their road to China to preach the gospel. Buddhism had now been in the world for five centuries at least, and had, as we have seen in a previous chapter, amply recognized its calling as a world-religion. One is tempted to ask with wonder, Why should China, so nearly related to northern and north-western India, have been left so long without a preacher?

There was something about these men--possibly the white horse--which satisfied the Chinese commissioners that they had found what they wanted. They turned back with their newly made acquaintances to the Chinese capital, where the missionaries were well received and lodged in a monastery which still exists, the oldest in China, the celebrated Pomash (Jap. Hakubaji), the oldest existing temple in China, "the Monastery of the White

[paragraph continues] Horse." It is evident that the White Horse made a great impression on China, an impression which apparently reached Japan as well.