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Updated: July 8, 2025
When he himself got to it, he made his offerings with the flowers and incense, and lighted the lamps when the darkness began to come on. I, Fa-Hsien, was born when I could not meet with Buddha; and now I only see the footprints which he has left, and the place where he lived, and nothing more."
Fa-Hsien found him here worshipped by followers of the mahayana school; but Hsuan-chwang connects his worship with the yogachara or tantra-magic school. The mahayana school regard him as the apotheosis of perfect wisdom. His most common titles are Mahamati, "Great wisdom," and Kumara-raja, "King of teaching, with a thousand arms and a hundred alms-bowls."
They make us think that there was such a tree overshadowing the cave; but Fa-Hsien would hardly have neglected to mention such a circumstance. A very great place in the annals of Buddhism. The Council in the Srataparna cave did not come together fortuitously, but appears to have been convoked by the older members to settle the rules and doctrines of the order.
It is from Hardy that we are able to complete here the name of the musician, which appears in Fa-Hsien as only Pancha, or "Five." His harp or lute, we are told, was "twelve miles long." Whether it was Sakra who wrote his questions, or Buddha who wrote the answers, depends on the punctuation. It seems better to make Sakra the writer. Or Nalanda; identified with the present Baragong.
Several times during my long residence in Hong Kong I endeavoured to read through the "Narrative of Fa-Hsien;" but though interested with the graphic details of much of the work, its columns bristled so constantly now with his phonetic representations of Sanskrit words, and now with his substitution for them of their meanings in Chinese characters, and I was, moreover, so much occupied with my own special labours on the Confucian Classics, that my success was far from satisfactory.
At the former the orthodox party barely succeeded in carrying their condemnation of the laxer monks; and a second and larger meeting, of which Fa-Hsien speaks, was held in consequence, and a more emphatic condemnation passed. At the same time all the books and subjects of discipline seem to have undergone a careful revision.
This is equivalent to the "binding" and "loosing," "opening" and "shutting," which found their way into the New Testament, and the Christian Church, from the schools of the Jewish Rabbins. It was afterwards translated by Fa-Hsien into Chinese. See Nanjio's Catalogue of the Chinese Tripitaka, columns 400 and 401, and Nos. 1119 and 1150, columns 247 and 253.
Several years had now elapsed since Fa-Hsien left the land of Han; the men with whom he had been in intercourse had all been of regions strange to him; his eyes had not rested on an old and familiar hill or river, plant or tree; his fellow-travellers, moreover, had been separated from him, some by death, and others flowing off in different directions; no face or shadow was now with him but his own, and a constant sadness was in his heart.
The hill referred to is the sacred hill of Mihintale, about eight miles due east of the Bo tree; Davids' Buddhism, pp. 230, 231. But Fa-Hsien gives no intimation of Dharma-gupta's founding a school. South of the city seven le there is a vihara, called the Maha-vihara, where 3000 monks reside.
In the beginning of last year I made Fa-Hsien again the subject of lecture, wrote out a second translation, independent of the former, and pushed on till I had completed the whole. The want of a good and clear text had been supplied by my friend, Mr.
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