A great change in the river's course occurred in 1851, when a breach was made in the north embankment near Kaifengfu in Honan.
The outbreak on this occasion occurred, as all the more serious outbreaks have done, in Honan, a few miles west of the city of Kaifengfu.
From childhood grave and studious, he was taken in charge by an elder brother who had adopted the monastic life, in a convent at the royal city of Loyang in Honan.
Passing by the present Tashkend, and by Samarkand, then inhabited by fire worshippers, he reached the basin of the Upper Oxus, which had recently been the seat of the powerful dominion of the Haiathelah, Ephthalites or White Huns, known in earlier days to the Greeks as Tochari, and to Honan Tsang (by the same name) as Tuholo or Tukhara.