Crossword-Solution: NIEN 4 letters, 3 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 4

The account of Ananda’s death in Nien-ch’ang’s “History of Buddha and the Patriarchs” is much more extravagant.

The Nien-fei, or Twist Rebels, said to have been so called because they wore as a badge turbans twisted with grease, were mounted banditti who, here to-day and gone to-morrow, for several years committed much havoc in the northern provinces of China, until finally suppressed by Tso Tsung-t'ang.

Tso Tsung-t'ang, already distinguished by his successes against the T'ai-p'ings and the Nien-fei, began by operations, in 1869, against the Mahometans in Shensi.

How marvellously it has been preserved! Is not this the wondrous ink of which it was written: _Po-nien-jou-chi, i-tien-jou-ki,_--'After centuries I remain firm as stone, and the letters that I make like lacquer'? And how divine the charm of this composition!--the song of Kao-pien, prince of poets, and Governor of Sze-tchouen five hundred years ago!" "Kao-pien! darling Kao-pien!" murmured Sië, with a singular light in her eyes.

There are no reliable statistics; but it is understandable that at that time the population of China must have fallen considerably, especially if we bear in mind the equally ferocious suppression of the risings of the T'ai P'ing and the Nien Fei within China, and smaller risings of which we have made no mention.