When stranger bhikshus[2] arrive at one of them, their wants
are supplied for three days, after which they are told to find a
resting-place for themselves.
There is a tradition that when Buddha came to North India, he came at
once to this country, and that here he left a print of his foot, which
is long or short according to the ideas of the beholder (on the
subject). It exists, and the same thing is true about it, at the
present day. Here also are still to be seen the rock on which he dried
his clothes, and the place where he converted the wicked dragon.[3]
The rock is fourteen cubits high, and more than twenty broad, with one
side of it smooth.
Hwuy-king, Hwuy-tah, and Tao-ching went on ahead towards (the place
of) Buddha's shadow in the country of Nagara;[4] but Fa-hien and the
others remained in Woo-chang, and kept the summer retreat.[5] That
over, they descended south, and arrived in the country of
Soo-ho-to.[6]
NOTES
[1] Udyana, meaning "the Park;" just north of the Punjab, the country
along the Subhavastu, now called the Swat; noted for its forests,
flowers, and fruits (E. H., p. 153).
[2] Bhikshu is the name for a monk as "living by alms," a mendicant.
All bhikshus call themselves Sramans. Sometimes the two names are used
together by our author.
[3] Naga is the Sanskrit name for the Chinese lung or dragon; often
meaning a snake, especially the boa. "Chinese Buddhists," says Eitel,
p. 79, "when speaking of nagas as boa spirits, always represent them
as enemies of mankind, but when viewing them as deities of rivers,
lakes, or oceans, they describe them as piously inclined." The dragon,
however, is in China the symbol of the Sovereign and Sage, a use of it
unknown in Buddhism, according to which all nagas need to be converted
in order to obtain a higher phase of being. The use of the character
too {.}, as here, in the sense of "to convert," is entirely
Buddhistic. The six paramitas are the six virtues which carry men
across {.} the great sea of life and death, as the sphere of
transmigration to nirvana. With regard to the particular conversion
here, Eitel (p. 11) says the Naga's name was Apatala, the guardian
deity of the Subhavastu river, and that he was converted by Sakyamuni
shortly before the death of the latter.
[4] In Chinese Na-k'eeh, an ancient kingdom and city on the southern
bank of the Cabul river, about thirty miles west of Jellalabad.
[5] We would seem now to be in 403.
[6] Soo-ho-to has not been clearly identified. Beal says that later
Buddhist writers include it in Udyana.
