All the poor and destitute in the country, orphans,
widowers, and childless men, maimed people and cripples, and all who
are diseased, go to those houses, and are provided with every kind of
help, and doctors examine their diseases. They get the food and
medicines which their cases require, and are made to feel at ease; and
when they are better, they go away of themselves.
When king Asoka destroyed the seven topes, (intending) to make eighty-
four thousand,[9] the first which he made was the great tope, more
than three le to the south of this city. In front of this there is a
footprint of Buddha, where a vihara has been built. The door of it
faces the north, and on the south of it there is a stone pillar,
fourteen or fifteen cubits in circumference, and more than thirty
cubits high, on which there is an inscription, saying, "Asoka gave the
jambudvipa to the general body of all the monks, and then redeemed it
from them with money. This he did three times."[10] North from the
tope 300 or 400 paces, king Asoka built the city of Ne-le.[11] In it
there is a stone pillar, which also is more than thirty feet high,
with a lion on the top of it. On the pillar there is an inscription
recording the things which led to the building of Ne-le, with the
number of the year, the day, and the month.
NOTES
[1] The modern Patna, lat. 25d 28s N., lon. 85d 15s E. The Sanskrit
name means "The city of flowers." It is the Indian Florence.
[2] See chap. x, note 3. Asoka transferred his court from Rajagriha to
Pataliputtra, and there, in the eighteenth year of his reign, he
convoked the third Great Synod, - according, at least, to southern
Buddhism. It must have been held a few years before B.C. 250; Eitel
says in 246.
[3] "The Vulture-hill;" so called because Mara, according to Buddhist
tradition, once assumed the form of a vulture on it to interrupt the
meditation of Ananda; or, more probably, because it was a resort of
vultures. It was near Rajagriha, the earlier capital of Asoka, so that
Fa-hien connects a legend of it with his account of Patna. It abounded
in caverns, and was famous as a resort of ascetics.
[4] A Brahman by cast, but a Buddhist in faith.
[5] So, by the help of Julien's "Methode," I transliterate the Chinese
characters {.} {.} {.} {.}. Beal gives Radhasvami, his Chinese text
having a {.} between {.} and {.}. I suppose the name was Radhasvami or
Radhasami.
[6] {.} {.}, the names of two kinds of schools, often occurring in the
Li Ki and Mencius. Why should there not have been schools in those
monasteries in India as there were in China? Fa-hien himself grew up
with other boys in a monastery, and no doubt had to "go to school."
And the next sentence shows us there might be schools for more
advanced students as well as for the Sramaneras.
