[2] The present Hidda, west of Peshâwar, and five miles south of Jellalabad.
[3] ‘The vihâra,’ says Hardy, ‘is the residence of a recluse or priest;’ and so Davids:—‘the clean little hut where the mendicant lives.’ Our author, however, does not use the Indian name here, but the Chinese characters which express its meaning—tsing shay, ‘a pure dwelling.’ He uses the term occasionally, and evidently, in this sense; more frequently it occurs in his narrative in connexion with the Buddhist relic worship; and at first I translated it by ‘shrine’ and ‘shrine-house;’ but I came to the conclusion, at last, to employ always the Indian name. The first time I saw a shrine-house was, I think, in a monastery near Foo-chow;—a small pyramidal structure, about ten feet high, glittering as if with the precious substances, but all, it seemed to me, of tinsel. It was in a large apartment of the building, having many images in it. The monks said it was the most precious thing in their possession, and that if they opened it, as I begged them to do, there would be a convulsion that would destroy the whole establishment. See E. H., p. 166. The name of the province of Behar was given to it in consequence of its many vihâras.
[4] According to the characters, ‘square, round, four inches.’ Hsüan-chwang says it was twelve inches round.
[5] In Williams’ Dictionary, under 頂, the characters, used here, are employed in the phrase for ‘to degrade an officer,’ that is, ‘to remove the token of his rank worn on the crown of his head;’ but to place a thing on the crown is a Buddhistic form of religious homage.
[6] The Vaiśyas, or bourgeois caste of Hindu society, are described here as ‘resident scholars.’
[7] See Eitel’s Handbook under the name vimoksha, which is explained as ‘the act of self-liberation,’ and ‘the dwelling or state of liberty.’ There are eight acts of liberating one’s self from all subjective and objective trammels, and as many states of liberty (vimukti) resulting therefrom. They are eight degrees of self-inanition, and apparently eight stages on the way to nirvâṇa. The tope in the text would be emblematic in some way of the general idea of the mental progress conducting to the Buddhistic consummation of existence.
[8] This incense would be in long ‘sticks,’ small and large, such as are sold to-day throughout China, as you enter the temples.
[9] ‘The illuminating Buddha,’ the twenty-fourth predecessor of Śâkyamuni, and who, so long before, gave him the assurance that he would by-and-by be Buddha. See Jâtaka Tales, p. 23.
[10] The staff was, as immediately appears, of Gośîrsha Chandana, or ‘sandal-wood from the Cow’s-head mountain,’ a species of copper-brown sandal-wood, said to be produced most abundantly on a mountain of (the fabulous continent) Ullarakuru, north of mount Meru, which resembles in shape the head of a cow (E. H., pp. 42, 43). It is called a ‘pewter staff’ from having on it a head and rings and pewter. See Watters, ‘China Review,’ viii, pp. 227, 228, and Williams’ Dictionary, under 杖.
[11] Or Saṅghaṭi, the double or composite robe, part of a monk’s attire, reaching from the shoulders to the knees, and fastened round the waist (E. H., p. 118).