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CHINA
cuted in any way, they were unable to preserve their individuality. Pere Gozani, visiting Kai-fêng in 1704, found a tolerably flourishing colony with a temple and a synagogue. The former, the “Pure and True Temple," is described as a large establishment consisting of four separate courts and various buildings enclosed for residence, worship, and work. The synagogue is said to have measured sixty feet by forty, its portico having a double row of four columns before it, while in the centre stood the throne of Moses, a magnificent dais with an embroidered cushion, on which the book of the law was placed at reading time. But in 1866, when the Rev. W. A. P. Martin visited Kaifêng, he found no remains of this synagogue or temple, except a solitary stone with an inscription recording the erection of the synagogue in 1183%; while of the once numerous colony only three to four hundred remained, their sacred tongue fallen into disuse, their traditions no longer transmitted, their worship neglected, their condition so impoverished that they had been obliged to demolish and sell their holy buildings, and their complete dispersion imminent. But nothing of all this could be ascribed to intolerance on the part of the Chinese. The Jews had lived for eighteen or nineteen hundred years in the midst of the Chinese, practising their religion freely and not discriminated against in any injurious manner by either the central or the local authorities. Bishop Schereschewsky, of
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