Fig. 127. Detail from the Xi’an stele (right side), with names of Church officials, in Syriac and Chinese. After the rubbing included in H. Havret, La stèle chrétienne de Si-ngan-fou (Variétés sinologiques 7; 1895). See also P. Pelliot, J. Dauvillier, and A. Guillaumont, Recherches sur les Chrétiens d’Asie Centrale et d’Extrême-Orient, II.1. La stèle de Si-gnan-fou (Œuvres posthumes de Paul Pelliot; 1984), esp. p. 60 (text and FT) and 73–74 (commentary). On the second line (left), the last word in Syriac script is a transliteration in Syriac of a Chinese term. Pelliot argued that the underlying Chinese term is shàng-zuò, ‘upper seat’, the name used for an elder in Chinese Buddhist literature, which may be the equivalent of ‘abbot’. See H. Takahashi, ‘Transcribed proper names in Chinese Syriac Christian documents’, in Malphono w-Rabo d-Malphone, ed. Kiraz (2008), 643. See entries: Syriac Christianity in China, Inscriptions, and Xi’an.