[19] Their speech was somewhat unconnected, but natural enough in the circumstances. Compare the whole account with the narrative in I Samuel v. about the Ark and Dagon, that ‘twice-battered god of Palestine.’
[20] ‘Entered the doctrine or path.’ Three stages in the Buddhistic life are indicated by Fâ-hien:—‘entering it,’ as here, by becoming monks (入道); ‘getting it,’ by becoming Arhats (得道); and ‘completing it,’ by becoming Buddha (成道).
[21] [21] It is not quite clear whether the author had in mind here Central India as a whole, which I think he had, or only Kośala, the part of it where he then was. In the older teaching, there were only thirty-two sects, but there may have been three subdivisions of each. See Rhys Davids’ ‘Buddhism,’ pp. 98, 99.
[22] This mention of ‘the future world’ is an important difference between the Corean and Chinese texts. The want of it in the latter has been a stumbling-block in the way of all previous translators. Rémusat 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 Fâ-hien’s meaning was, according to our Corean text. The notion of ‘the metempsychosis’ was just that in which all the ninety-six erroneous systems agreed among themselves and with Buddhism. If he had wished to say what the French sinologue thinks he does say, moreover, he would probably have written 皆知今世耳. Let me add, however, that the connexion which Buddhism holds between the past world (including the present) and the future is not that of a metempsychosis, or transmigration of souls, for it does not appear to admit any separate existence of the soul. Adhering to its own phraseology of ‘the wheel,’ I would call its doctrine that of ‘The Transrotation of Births.’ See Rhys Davids’ third Hibbert Lecture.
[23] See [note 17]; and [chap. xvii, note 19].
[24] [24] Or, more according to the phonetisation of the text, Vaidûrya. He was king of Kośala, the son and successor of Prasenajit, and the destroyer of Kapilavastu, the city of the Śâkya family. His hostility to the Śâkyas is sufficiently established, and it may be considered as certain that the name Shay-e, which, according to Julien’s ‘Méthode,’ p. 89, may be read Chiâ-e, is the same as Kiâ-e (迦夷), one of the phonetisations of Kapilavastu, as given by Eitel.
[25] This would be the interview in the ‘Life of the Buddha’ in Trübner’s Oriental Series, p. 116, when Virûdhaha on his march found Buddha under an old sakotato tree. It afforded him no shade; but he told the king that the thought of the danger of ‘his relatives and kindred made it shady.’ The king was moved to sympathy for the time, and went back to Śrâvastî; but the destruction of Kapilavastu was only postponed for a short space, and Buddha himself acknowledged it to be inevitable in the connexion of cause and effect.
CHAPTER XXI.
THE THREE PREDECESSORS OF ŚÂKYAMUNI IN THE BUDDHASHIP.
Fifty le to the west of the city bring (the traveller) to a town named Too-wei,[1] the birthplace of Kâśyapa Buddha.[1] At the place where he and his father met,[2] and at that where he attained to pari-nirvâṇa, topes were erected. Over the entire relic of the whole body of him, the Kâśyapa Tathâgata,[3] a great tope was also erected.