It is made of
sandalwood and is very handsome. The temple contains a Buddha's tooth and
other relics. This must certainly be the place where Shakyamuni entered
Nirvana." - H.C.] Osorio, also, in his history of Emanuel of Portugal,
says: "Not far from it (the Peak) people go to see a small temple in which
are two sepulchres, which are the objects of an extraordinary degree of
superstitious devotion. For they believe that in these were buried the
bodies of the first man and his wife" (f. 120 v.). A German traveller
(Daniel Parthey, Nurnberg, 1698) also speaks of the tomb of Adam and his
sons on the mountain. (See Fabricius, Cod. Pseudep. Vet. Test. II. 31;
also Ouseley's Travels, I. 59.)
It is a perplexing circumstance that there is a double set of indications
about the footmark. The Ceylon traditions, quoted above from Hardy, call
its length 3 inches less than a carpenter's cubit. Modern observers
estimate it at 5 feet or 5-1/2 feet. Hardy accounts for this by supposing
that the original footmark was destroyed in the end of the sixteenth
century. But Ibn Batuta, in the 14th, states it at 11 spans, or more
than the modern report. [Ibn Khordadhbeh at 70 cubits. - H.C.] Marignolli,
on the other hand, says that he measured it and found it to be 2-1/2
palms, or about half a Prague ell, which corresponds in a general way with
Hardy's tradition.
