[1] This fondness for music among the Khoteners is mentioned by Hsüan and Chʽwang and others.
[2] Mahâyâna; See [chap. ii note 4]. It is a later form of the Buddhist doctrine, the second phase of its development corresponding to the state of a Bodhisattva, who, being able to transport himself and all mankind to nirvâṇa, may be compared to a huge vehicle. See Davids on the ‘Key-note of the “Great Vehicle,”’ Hibbert Lectures, p. 254.
[3] Fâ-hien supplies sufficient information of how the common store or funds of the monasteries were provided, farther on in chapters [xvi] and [xxxix], as well as in other passages. As the point is important, I will give here, from Davids’ fifth Hibbert Lecture (p. 178), some of the words of the dying Buddha, taken from ‘The Book of the Great Decease,’ as illustrating the statement in this text:—‘So long as the brethren shall persevere in kindness of action, speech, and thought among the saints, both in public and private; so long as they shall divide without partiality, and share in common with the upright and holy, all such things as they receive in accordance with the just provisions of the order, down even to the mere contents of a begging bowl; ... so long may the brethren be expected not to decline, but to prosper.’
[4] The Chinese 塔 (tʽah; in Cantonese, tʽap), as used by Fâ-hien, is, no doubt, a phonetisation of the Sanskrit stûpa or Pâli thûpa; and it is well in translating to use for the structures described by him the name of topes,—made familiar by Cunningham and other Indian antiquarians. In the [thirteenth chapter] there is an account of one built under the superintendence of Buddha himself, ‘as a model for all topes in future.’ They were usually in the form of bell-shaped domes, and were solid, surmounted by a long tapering pinnacle formed with a series of rings, varying in number. But their form, I suppose, was often varied; just as we have in China pagodas of different shapes. There are several topes now in the Indian Institute at Oxford, brought from Buddha Gayâ, but the largest of them is much smaller than ‘the smallest’ of those of Khoten. They were intended chiefly to contain the relics of Buddha and famous masters of his Law; but what relics could there be in the Tiratna topes of [chapter xvi]?
[5] [5] The meaning here is much disputed. The author does not mean to say that the monk’s apartments were made ‘square,’ but that the monasteries were made with many guest-chambers or spare rooms.
[6] The Sanskrit term for a monastery is used here,—Saṅghârâma, ‘gardens of the assembly,’ originally denoting only ‘the surrounding park, but afterwards transferred to the whole of the premises’ (E. H., p. 118). Gomati, the name of this monastery, means ‘rich in cows.’
[7] A denomination for the monks as vimala, ‘undefiled’ or ‘pure.’ Giles makes it ‘the menials that attend on the monks,’ but I have not met with it in that application.
[8] Kʽeeh-chʽâ has not been clearly identified. Rémusat made it Cashmere; Klaproth, Iskardu; Beal makes it Kartchou; and Eitel, Khasʽa, ‘an ancient tribe on the Paropamisus, the Kasioi of Ptolemy.’ I think it was Ladak, or some well-known place in it. Hwuy-tah, unless that name be an alias, appears here for the first time.
[9] Instead of ‘four,’ the Chinese copies of the text have ‘fourteen;’ but the Corean reading is, probably, more correct.
[10] There may have been, as Giles says, ‘maids of honour;’ but the character does not say so.