Going on, north from this, for a yojana, F‚-hien arrived at the capital of Nag‚ra, the place where the Bodhisattva once purchased with money five stalks of flowers, as an offering to the Dip‚nkara Buddha. In the midst of the city there is also the tope of Buddha's tooth, where offerings are made in the same way as to the flat-bone of his skull.
A yojana to the northeast of the city brought him to the mouth of a valley, where there is Buddha's pewter staff; and a vih‚ra also has been built at which offerings are made. The staff is made of Gosirsha Chandana, and is quite sixteen or seventeen cubits long. It is contained in a wooden tube, and though a hundred or a thousand men were to try to lift it, they could not move it.
Entering the mouth of the valley, and going west, he found Buddha's Sangh‚li, [5] where also there is reared a vih‚ra, and offerings are made. It is a custom of the country when there is a great drought, for the people to collect in crowds, bring out the robe, pay worship to it, and make offerings, on which there is immediately a great rain from the sky.
South of the city, half a yojana, there is a rock-cavern, in a great hill fronting the southwest; and here it was that Buddha left his shadow. Looking at it from a distance of more than ten paces, you seem to see Buddha's real form, with his complexion of gold, and his characteristic marks in their nicety, clearly and brightly displayed. The nearer you approach, however, the fainter it becomes, as if it were only in your fancy. When the kings from the regions all around have sent skilful artists to take a copy, none of them have been able to do so. Among the people of the country there is a saying current that "the thousand Buddhas must all leave their shadows here."
Rather more than four hundred paces west from the shadow, when Buddha was at the spot, he shaved off his hair and clipped his nails, and proceeded, along with his disciples, to build a tope seventy or eighty cubits high, to be a model for all future topes; and it is still existing. By the side of it there is a monastery, with more than seven hundred monks in it. At this place there are as many as a thousand topes of Arhans and Pratyeka Buddhas.
[Footnote 1: Now in India, F‚-hien used the Indian measure of distance; but it is not possible to determine exactly what its length then was. The estimates of it are very different, and vary from four and a half or five miles to seven, and sometimes more.]
[Footnote 2: The present Hidda, west of Pesh‚wur, and five miles south of Jellalabad.]
[Footnote 3: "The vihara," says Hardy, "is the residence of a recluse or priest;" and so Davids—"the clean little hut where the mendicant lives.">[
[Footnote 4: The Vaisyas, or the bourgeois caste of Hindu society, are described here as "resident scholars.">[
[Footnote 5: Or Sangh‚ti, the double or composite robe, part of a monk's attire, reaching from the shoulders to the knees, and fastened round the waist.]