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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See Davids On The "Key-Note Of The
'Great Vehicle,'" Hibbert Lectures, P. 254.
[3] Fa-hien supplies sufficient information of how the common store or
funds of the monasteries were provided, farther on in chapters xvi and
xxxix, as well as in other passages.
As the point is important, I will
give here, from Davids' fifth Hibbert Lecture (p. 178), some of the
words of the dying Buddha, taken from "The Book of the Great Decease,"
as illustrating the statement in this text: - "So long as the brethren
shall persevere in kindness of action, speech, and thought among the
saints, both in public and private; so long as they shall divide
without partiality, and share in common with the upright and holy, all
such things as they receive in accordance with the just provisions of
the order, down even to the mere contents of a begging bowl; . . . so
long may the brethren be expected not to decline, but to prosper."
[4] The Chinese {.} (t'ah; in Cantonese, t'ap), as used by Fa-hien,
is, no doubt, a phonetisation of the Sanskrit stupa or Pali thupa; and
it is well in translating to use for the structures described by him
the name of topes, - made familiar by Cunningham and other Indian
antiquarians. In the thirteenth chapter there is an account of one
built under the superintendence of Buddha himself, "as a model for all
topes in future." They were usually in the form of bell-shaped domes,
and were solid, surmounted by a long tapering pinnacle formed with a
series of rings, varying in number. But their form, I suppose, was
often varied; just as we have in China pagodas of different shapes.
There are several topes now in the Indian Institute at Oxford, brought
from Buddha Gaya, but the largest of them is much smaller than "the
smallest" of those of Khoten. They were intended chiefly to contain
the relics of Buddha and famous masters of his Law; but what relics
could there be in the Tiratna topes of chapter xvi?
[5] The meaning here is much disputed. The author does not mean to say
that the monk's apartments were made "square," but that the
monasteries were made with many guest-chambers or spare rooms.
[6] The Sanskrit term for a monastery is used here, - Sangharama,
"gardens of the assembly," originally denoting only "the surrounding
park, but afterwards transferred to the whole of the premises" (E. H.,
p. 118). Gomati, the name of this monastery, means "rich in cows."
[7] A denomination for the monks as vimala, "undefiled" or "pure."
Giles makes it "the menials that attend on the monks," but I have not
met with it in that application.
[8] K'eeh-ch'a has not been clearly identified. Remusat made it
Cashmere; Klaproth, Iskardu; Beal makes it Kartchou; and Eitel,
Khas'a, "an ancient tribe on the Paropamisus, the Kasioi of Ptolemy."
I think it was Ladak, or some well-known place in it. Hwuy-tah, unless
that name be an alias, appears here for the first time.
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