There is also a monastery, which may
contain more than a hundred monks.
NOTES
[1] Fa-hien is here mentioned singly, as in the account of his visit
to the cave on Gridhra-kuta. I think that Tao-ching may have remained
at Patna after their first visit to it.
[2] See chap. xxvii, note 1.
[3] "The city surrounded by rivers;" the modern Benares, lat. 25d 23s
N., lon. 83d 5s E.
[4] "The rishi," says Eitel, "is a man whose bodily frame has
undergone a certain transformation by dint of meditation and ascetism,
so that he is, for an indefinite period, exempt from decrepitude, age,
and death. As this period is believed to extend far beyond the usual
duration of human life, such persons are called, and popularly
believed to be, immortals." Rishis are divided into various classes;
and rishi-ism is spoken of as a seventh part of transrotation, and
rishis are referred to as the seventh class of sentient beings.
Taoism, as well as Buddhism, has its Seen jin.
[5] See chap. xiii, note 15.
[6] See chap. xxii, note 2.
[7] For another legend about this park, and the identification of "a
fine wood" still existing, see note in Beal's first version, p. 135.
[8] A prince of Magadha and a maternal uncle of Sakyamuni, who gave
him the name of Ajnata, meaning automat; and hence he often appears as
Ajnata Kaundinya. He and his four friends had followed Sakyamuni into
the Uruvilva desert, sympathising with him in the austerities he
endured, and hoping that they would issue in his Buddhaship. They were
not aware that that issue had come; which may show us that all the
accounts in the thirty-first chapter are merely descriptions, by means
of external imagery, of what had taken place internally. The kingdom
of nirvana had come without observation. These friends knew it not;
and they were offended by what they considered Sakyamuni's failure,
and the course he was now pursuing. See the account of their
conversion in M. B., p. 186.
[9] This is the only instance in Fa-hien's text where the Bodhisattva
or Buddha is called by the surname "Gotama." For the most part our
traveller uses Buddha as a proper name, though it properly means "The
Enlightened." He uses also the combinations "Sakya Buddha,"="The
Buddha of the Sakya tribe," and "Sakyamuni,"="The Sakya sage." This
last is the most common designation of the Buddha in China, and to my
mind best combines the characteristics of a descriptive and a proper
name. Among other Buddhistic peoples "Gotama" and "Gotama Buddha" are
the more frequent designations. It is not easy to account for the rise
of the surname Gotama in the Sakya family, as Oldenberg acknowledges.
He says that "the Sakyas, in accordance with the custom of Indian
noble families, had borrowed it from one of the ancient Vedic bard
families." Dr. Davids ("Buddhism," p. 27) says: