On the third day of the second moon (of the period Lin-te,—664), the Master of the Law had sent Hiu-hiouen-pi to inform the Emperor of the wound he had received, and of the malady it had induced.
On the seventh day of the same month the Emperor, by a decree, ordered one of the imperial physicians to take with him medicaments and attend upon the Master of the Law, but by the time he arrived, the Master was already dead. Teou-sse-lun, governor of Fang-tcheou, announced by a report this melancholy event.
At the news, the Emperor shed tears copiously, and cried aloud in his sorrow, declaring that he had just lost the treasure of the empire. For several days he suspended the usual audiences.
All the civil and military functionaries abandoned themselves to groans and tears: the Emperor himself was unable to repress his sobs or moderate his grief. On the next day but one, he spoke to his great officers as follows:
“What a misfortune for my empire is the loss of Thsang, the Master of the Law! It may well be said that the great family of Cakya has seen its sole support shattered beneath it, and that all men remain without master and without guide. Do they not resemble the mariner who sees himself sinking into the abyss, when the storm has destroyed his oars and his shallop? the traveller astray in the midst of the darkness, whose lamp dies out at the entrance to a bottomless gulf?”
When he had uttered these words, the Emperor groaned again, and sighed many times.
On the twenty-sixth day of the same month, the Emperor issued the following decree:
“In accordance with a report addressed to me by Teou-sse-lun on the death of the Master of the Law, Hiouen-thsang, of the convent Yu-hoa-sse, I order that his funeral take place at the expense of the State.”
On the sixth day of the third moon, he issued a new decree as follows:
“By the death of Thsang, the Master of the Law, the translation of the sacred books is stopped. In conformity to the ancient ordinances, the magistrates will cause the translations already completed to be copied carefully: as for the (Indian) manuscripts which have not yet been translated, they will be handed over in their entirety to the director of the convent Ts’e’-en-sse (of the Great Beneficence,) who will watch over their safety. The disciples of Hiouen-thsang and the translators’ company, who previously did not belong to the convent Yu-hoa-sse, will all return to their respective convents.”