A Record Of Buddhistic Kingdoms - Being An Account By The Chinese Monk Fa-hien Of His Travels In India And Ceylon (a.d. 399-414) By James Legge
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Characteristics Of It Are The Preponderance Of
Active Moral Asceticism, And The Absence Of Speculative Mysticism And
Quietism." E. H., Pp.
151-2, 45, and 117.
[5] The name for India is here the same as in the former chapter and
throughout the book, - T'een-chuh ({.} {.}), the chuh being pronounced,
probably, in Fa-hien's time as tuk. How the earliest name for India,
Shin-tuk or duk=Scinde, came to be changed into Thien-tuk, it would
take too much space to explain. I believe it was done by the
Buddhists, wishing to give a good auspicious name to the fatherland of
their Law, and calling it "the Heavenly Tuk," just as the Mohammedans
call Arabia "the Heavenly region" ({.} {.}), and the court of China
itself is called "the Celestial" ({.} {.}).
[6] Sraman may in English take the place of Sramana (Pali, Samana; in
Chinese, Sha-man), the name for Buddhist monks, as those who have
separated themselves from (left) their families, and quieted their
hearts from all intrusion of desire and lust. "It is employed, first,
as a general name for ascetics of all demoninations, and, secondly, as
a general designation of Buddhistic monks." E. H., pp. 130, 131.
[7] Tartar or Mongolian.
[8] Woo-e has not been identified. Watters ("China Review," viii. 115)
says: - "We cannot be far wrong if we place it in Kharaschar, or
between that and Kutscha." It must have been a country of considerable
size to have so many monks in it.
[9] This means in one sense China, but Fa-hien, in his use of the
name, was only thinking of the three Ts'in states of which I have
spoken in a previous note; perhaps only of that from the capital of
which he had himself set out.
[10] This sentence altogether is difficult to construe, and Mr.
Watters, in the "China Review," was the first to disentangle more than
one knot in it. I am obliged to adopt the reading of {.} {.} in the
Chinese editions, instead of the {.} {.} in the Corean text. It seems
clear that only one person is spoken of as assisting the travellers,
and his name, as appears a few sentences farther on, was Foo Kung-sun.
The {.} {.} which immediately follows the surname Foo {.}, must be
taken as the name of his office, corresponding, as the {.} shows, to
that of /le maitre d'hotellerie/ in a Roman Catholic abbey. I was once
indebted myself to the kind help of such an officer at a monastery in
Canton province. The Buddhistic name for him is uddesika=overseer. The
Kung-sun that follows his surname indicates that he was descended from
some feudal lord in the old times of the Chow dynasty. We know indeed
of no ruling house which had the surname of Foo, but its adoption by
the grandson of a ruler can be satisfactorily accounted for; and his
posterity continued to call themselves Kung-sun, duke or lord's
grandson, and so retain the memory of the rank of their ancestor.
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