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~Râjagriha, New and Old Legends Connected with It~ The travellers went on from this to the southeast for nine yojanas, and came to a small solitary rocky hill, at the head or end of which was an apartment of stone, facing the south the place where Buddha sat, when Sakra, Ruler of Devas, brought the deva-musician, Pañchasikha, to give pleasure to him by playing on his lute.
It was at Buddh Gaya that, after fleeing from the pomp and luxury of his father's royal palace, he sat and meditated under the Bo-tree on the vanity and misery of human life, but it was at Rajagriha, "the King's House," that he first began to preach.
The first Council was that held at Rajagriha, shortly after Buddha's death, under the presidency of Kasyapa; say about B.C. 410. The second was that spoken of here; say about B.C. 300. Two meetings were held to consider and discuss them.
What follows this is merely an account of his travels in India and return to China by sea, condensed from his own narrative, with the addition of some marvellous incidents that happened to him, on his visit to the Vulture Peak near Rajagriha. It is added that there is another larger work giving an account of his travels in various countries.
It was near Rajagriha, the earlier capital of Asoka, so that Fa-Hsien connects a legend of it with his account of Patna. It abounded in caverns, and was famous as a resort of ascetics. A Brahman by cast, but a Buddhist in faith. Why should there not have been schools in those monasteries in India as there were in China?
The modern Patna, lat. 25d 28s N., lon. 85d 15s E. The Sanskrit name means "The city of flowers." It is the Indian Florence. 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.
Strengthened at sundry points by great square bastions, the walls of Rajagriha measure in places over seventeen feet in width and eleven or twelve feet in height, and they are faced with undressed stones three to five feet in length, without mortar or cement, but carefully fitted and banded together with a core of smaller blocks not less carefully laid and packed.
After his death, five hundred of his followers assembled at Rajagriha and chanted together the teachings of Gautama, to fix them in memory. A hundred years later, in 377 B.C., came the great schism among the Buddhists, out of which grew the divisions known as Northern and Southern Buddhism. There was disagreement on ten points.
Over the spot where his body was burned there was built a tope, which is still in existence. Another yojana to the west brought them to New Râjagriha the new city which was built by king Ajâtasatru. There were two monasteries in it.
Across the intervening centuries I could follow King Bimbisara, who reigned in those days at Rajagriha, proceeding along the causeway of rough, undressed stones, which can be traced to-day to the foot of the mountain and up its rocky flanks, after his men had "levelled the valley and spanned the precipices, and with the stones had made a staircase about ten paces wide," so that he should himself be carried up to wait in his own royal person on the Lord Buddha.
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