...Nevertheless, I fancy that when the Ringer is preparing to ring for me—and the great darkness deepens all about me—when sounds sink to their whispers and questions must remain eternally unanswered—when memory is fading out into the infinite blackness, and those strange dreams that precurse the final dissolution marshal their illusions before me—I fancy that I might hear again the whisper of a black robe, and feel a hand, light as frost, held out to me with the sweet questioning—"Come! You are not afraid?"
HIOUEN-THSANG[34]
The story of him who gave the Lotus of the good Law unto four hundred millions of his people in the Middle Kingdom, and remained insensible unto honors even as the rose-leaf to the dewdrop....
Twelve hundred years ago, in a town of China, situated in the inmost recesses of the kingdom called Celestial, was born a boy, at whose advent in this world of illusions the spirits of good rejoiced, and marvelous things also happened—according to the legends of those years. For before his birth, the mother dreaming beheld the Shadow of Buddha above her, radiant as the face of the Mountain of Light; and after the Shadow had passed, she was aware of the figure of her son, that was to be, following after It over vast distances to cities of an architecture unknown, and through forests of strange growth that seemed not of this world. And a Voice gave her to know that her boy would yet travel in search of the Word through unknown lands, and be guided by Lord Buddha in his wanderings, and find in the end that which he sought....
So the boy grew up in wisdom; and his face became as the white face of the God in the Temple beyond Tientsin, where the mirage shifts its spectral beauties forever above the sands, typifying to the faithful that the world and all within it are but a phantasmagoria of illusion. And the boy was instructed by the priests of Buddha, and became wiser than they.
For the Law of Buddha had blossomed in the land unnumbered years, and the Son of Heaven had bowed down before it, and there were in the Empire many thousand convents of holy monks, and countless teachers of truth. But in the lapse of a thousand years and more the Lotus Flower of the Good Law had lost its perfume; much of the wisdom of the World-honored had been forgotten; fire and the fury of persecution had made small the number of holy books. When Hiouen-thsang sought for the deeper wisdom of the Law he found it not; nor was there in all China one who could inform him. Then a great longing came upon him to go to India, the land of the Savior of Man, and there seek the wondrous words that had been lost, and the marvelous books unread by Chinese eyes.
Before the time of Hiouen-thsang other Chinese pilgrims had visited the Indian Palestine;—Fabian had been sent thither upon a pilgrimage by a holy Empress. But these others had received aid of money and of servants—letters to governors and gifts to kings. Hiouen-thsang had neither money nor servants, nor any knowledge of the way. Therefore he could only seek aid from the Emperor, and permission. But the Son of Heaven rejected the petition written upon yellow silk, and signed with two thousand devout names. Moreover, he forbade Hiouen-thsang to leave the kingdom under penalty of death.
But the heart of Hiouen-thsang told him that he must go. And he remembered that the caravans from India used to bring their strange wares to a city on the Hoang-ho—on the Yellow River. Secretly departing in the night, he traveled for many days, succored upon his way by the brethren, until he came to the caravansary, and saw the Indian merchants with their multitude of horses and of camels, resting beside the Hoang-ho.