Forty le to the east of the Abhayagiri-vihâra there is a hill, with a vihâra on it, called the Chaitya,(17) where there may be 2000 monks. Among them there is a Sramana of great virtue, named Dharma-gupta,(18) honoured and looked up to by all the kingdom. He has lived for more than forty years in an apartment of stone, constantly showing such gentleness of heart, that he has brought snakes and rats to stop together in the same room, without doing one another any harm.

NOTES

(1) It is desirable to translate {.} {.}, for which “inhabitants” or “people” is elsewhere sufficient, here by “human inhabitants.” According to other accounts Singhala was originally occupied by Rakshasas or Rakshas, “demons who devour men,” and “beings to be feared,” monstrous cannibals or anthropophagi, the terror of the shipwrecked mariner. Our author’s “spirits” {.} {.} were of a gentler type. His dragons or nagas have come before us again and again.

(2) That Sâkyamuni ever visited Ceylon is to me more than doubtful. Hardy, in M. B., pp. 207-213, has brought together the legends of three visits,—in the first, fifth, and eighth years of his Buddhaship. It is plain, however, from Fâ-Hien’s narrative, that in the beginning of our fifth century, Buddhism prevailed throughout the island. Davids in the last chapter of his “Buddhism” ascribes its introduction to one of Asoka’s missions, after the Council of Patna, under his son Mahinda, when Tissa, “the delight of the gods,” was king (B.C. 250-230).

(3) This would be what is known as “Adam’s peak,” having, according to Hardy (pp. 211, 212, notes), the three names of Selesumano, Samastakuta, and Samanila. “There is an indentation on the top of it,” a superficial hollow, 5 feet 3 34 inches long, and about 2 12 feet wide. The Hindus regard it as the footprint of Siva; the Mohameddans, as that of Adam; and the Buddhists, as in the text,—as having been made by Buddha.

(4) Meaning “The Fearless Hill.” There is still the Abhayagiri tope, the highest in Ceylon, according to Davids, 250 feet in height, and built about B.C. 90, by Watta Gamini, in whose reign, about 160 years after the Council of Patna, and 330 years after the death of Sâkyamuni, the Tripitaka was first reduced to writing in Ceylon;—“Buddhism,” p. 234.

(5) We naturally suppose that the merchant-offerer was a Chinese, as indeed the Chinese texts say, and the fan such as Fâ-Hien had seen and used in his native land.

(6) This should be the pippala, or bodhidruma, generally spoken of, in connexion with Buddha, as the Bo tree, under which he attained to the Buddhaship. It is strange our author should have confounded them as he seems to do. In what we are told of the tree here, we have, no doubt, his account of the planting, growth, and preservation of the famous Bo tree, which still exists in Ceylon. It has been stated in a previous note that Asoka’s son, Mahinda, went as the apostle of Buddhism to Ceylon. By-and-by he sent for his sister Sanghamitta, who had entered the order at the same time as himself, and whose help was needed, some of the king’s female relations having signified their wish to become nuns. On leaving India, she took with her a branch of the sacred Bo tree at Buddha Gaya, under which Sâkyamuni had become Buddha. Of how the tree has grown and still lives we have an account in Davids’ “Buddhism.” He quotes the words of Sir Emerson Tennent, that it is “the oldest historical tree in the world;” but this must be denied if it be true, as Eitel says, that the tree at Buddha Gaya, from which the slip that grew to be this tree was taken more than 2000 years ago, is itself still living in its place. We must conclude that Fâ-Hien, when in Ceylon, heard neither of Mahinda nor Sanghamitta.

(7) Compare what is said in chap. xvi, about the inquiries made at monasteries as to the standing of visitors in the monkhood, and duration of their ministry.

(8) The phonetic values of the two Chinese characters here are in Sanskrit sa; and va, bo or bha. “Sabaean” is Mr. Beal’s reading of them, probably correct. I suppose the merchants were Arabs, forerunners of the so-called Moormen, who still form so important a part of the mercantile community in Ceylon.