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I am indebted for the use of it to the Rev. J. H. Sedgwick, University Chinese Scholar. James Legge. Oxford: June, 1886. The accompanying Sketch-Map, taken in connexion with the notes on the different places in the Narrative, will give the reader a sufficiently accurate knowledge of Fa-Hsien's route.
Watters, while reviewing others, did not himself write out and publish a version of the whole of Fa-Hsien's narrative. If he had done so, I should probably have thought that, on the whole, nothing more remained to be done for the distinguished Chinese pilgrim in the way of translation. Mr.
He is now the representative of the secular power, the valiant protector of the Buddhist body, but is looked upon as inferior to Sakyamuni, and every Buddhist saint. He appears several times in Fa-Hsien's narrative. E. H., pp. 108 and 46. At other times it means, as here, "in a former age," some pre-existent state in the time of a former birth. The incident related is "a Jataka story."
No doubt in Fa-Hsien's time, and long before and after it, it was the custom to engrave such deeds on plates of metal. The expression here is somewhat perplexing; but it occurs again in chapter xxxviii; and the meaning is clear. See Watters, Ch. Rev. viii. 282, 3. He is also called Buddha's "right-hand attendant."
Hardy, in M. B., pp. 207-213, has brought together the legends of three visits, in the first, fifth, and eighth years of his Buddhaship. It is plain, however, from Fa-Hsien's narrative, that in the beginning of our fifth century, Buddhism prevailed throughout the island. "There is an indentation on the top of it," a superficial hollow, 5 feet 3 34 inches long, and about 2 12 feet wide.
I have referred above, and also in the Introduction, to the Corean text of Fa-Hsien's narrative, which I received from Mr. Nanjio. It is on the whole so much superior to the better-known texts, that I determined to attempt to reproduce it at the end of the little volume, so far as our resources here in Oxford would permit. To do so has not been an easy task.
See Hardy's M. B., pp. 283, 284, et al. Explained by "Path of Love," and "Lord of Life." Prajapati was aunt and nurse of Sakyamuni, the first woman admitted to the monkhood, and the first superior of the first Buddhistic convent. She is yet to become a Buddha. Of his old house, only the well and walls remained at the time of Fa-Hsien's visit to Sravasti.
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. This is the only instance in Fa-Hsien's text where the Bodhisattva or Buddha is called by the surname "Gotama."
while on the whole they very slightly affect the meaning of the document. The editors of the Catalogue Raisonne intimate their doubts of the good taste and reliability of all Fa-Hsien's statements.
Remusat says in a note that "the heretics limited themselves to speak of the duties of man in his actual life without connecting it by the notion that the metempsychosis with the anterior periods of existence through which he had passed." But this is just the opposite of what Fa-Hsien's meaning was, according to our Corean text.
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