[1] Fâ-hien is here mentioned singly, as in the account of his visit to the cave on Gṛidhra-kûṭa. I think that Tâo-ching may have remained at Patna after their first visit to it.
[2] See [chap. xxvii, note 1].
[3] ‘The city surrounded by rivers;’ the modern Benâres, lat. 25° 23′ N., lon. 83° 5′ E.
[4] ‘The ṛishi,’ says Eitel, ‘is a man whose bodily frame has undergone a certain transformation by dint of meditation and ascetism, so that he is, for an indefinite period, exempt from decrepitude, age, and death. As this period is believed to extend far beyond the usual duration of human life, such persons are called, and popularly believed to be, immortals.’ Ṛishis are divided into various classes; and ṛishi-ism is spoken of as a seventh part of transrotation, and ṛishis are referred to as the seventh class of sentient beings. Tâoism, as well as Buddhism, has its Seen jin.
[5] See [chap. xiii, note 15].
[6] See [chap. xxii, note 2].
[7] For another legend about this park, and the identification of ‘a fine wood’ still existing, see note in Beal’s first version, p. 135.
[8] A prince of Magadha and a maternal uncle of Śâkyamuni, who gave him the name of Ajñâta, meaning automat; and hence he often appears as Ajñâta Kauṇḍinya. He and his four friends had followed Śâkyamuni into the Uruvilvâ desert, sympathising with him in the austerities he endured, and hoping that they would issue in his Buddhaship. They were not aware that that issue had come; which may show us that all the accounts in the thirty-first chapter are merely descriptions, by means of external imagery, of what had taken place internally. The kingdom of nirvâṇa had come without observation. These friends knew it not; and they were offended by what they considered Śâkyamuni’s failure, and the course he was now pursuing. See the account of their conversion in M. B., p. 186.
[9] This is the only instance in Fâ-hien’s text where the Bodhisattva or Buddha is called by the surname ‘Gotama.’ For the most part our traveller uses Buddha as a proper name, though it properly means ‘The Enlightened.’ He uses also the combinations ‘Śâkya Buddha,’ = ‘The Buddha of the Śâkya tribe,’ and ‘Śâkyamuni,’ = ‘The Śâkya sage.’ This last is the most common designation of the Buddha in China, and to my mind best combines the characteristics of a descriptive and a proper name. Among other Buddhistic peoples ‘Gotama’ and ‘Gotama Buddha’ are the more frequent designations. It is not easy to account for the rise of the surname Gotama in the Śâkya family, as Oldenberg acknowledges. He says that ‘the Śâkyas, in accordance with the custom of Indian noble families, had borrowed it from one of the ancient Vedic bard families.’ Dr. Davids (‘Buddhism,’ p. 27) says: ‘The family name was certainly Gautama,’ adding in a note, ‘It is a curious fact that Gautama is still the family name of the Rajput chiefs of Nagâra, the village which has been identified with Kapilavastu.’ Dr. Eitel says that ‘Gautama was the sacerdotal name of the Śâkya family, which counted the ancient ṛishi Gautama among its ancestors.’ When we proceed, however, to endeavour to trace the connexion of that Brahmânical ṛishi with the Śâkya house, by means of 1323, 1468, 1469, and other historical works in Nanjio’s Catalogue, we soon find that Indian histories have no surer foundation than the shifting sand;—see E. H., on the name Śâkya, pp. 108, 109. We must be content for the present simply to accept Gotama as one of the surnames of the Buddha with whom we have to do.
[10] See [chap. vi, note 5]. It is there said that the prediction of Maitreya’s succession to the Buddhaship was made to him in the Tushita heaven. Was there a repetition of it here in the Deer-park, or was a prediction now given concerning something else?