Four Pilgrims

by William Boulting

A little later on, we are told of the softness of Ganges water; of how multitudes of bathers assemble on its sandy banks to cleanse them of sin; and how a mere rinsing of the mouth with its water wall avert every calamity and secure future blessedness. “But there is no truth in this universal belief, which is wholly the invention of heresy,” adds our traveller, critical of everything but the superstitions which had encrusted his own faith. And he is of opinion that this special form of false belief is on the wane among the Indian people!

We find him before long in Western Rohilkand, and then again in an icy Himalayan valley, where “for ages a woman has ruled; wherefore it is called the Kingdom of the Eastern Women.” It corresponds to what is now British Garwal and Kumain. As then, so is it to-day: relics of the matriarchate and polyandry are to be found among the Himalayan ranges.

He returns to the Ganges, and, passing through several small States, arrives at Kanauj. He is for ever visiting scholars, and sits for months at the feet of every famous sage. He does so at Kanauj, which he tells us is a city measuring four miles in length and one in breadth. He is now in an Empire recently established by Sîlâditya, a warrior of the Vaiśya, or trading, class, who had forced a number of petty Kinglets to become his tributaries. Sîlâditya would seem to have been a devout Buddhist, favouring the Greater Vehicle, and, really devoting himself to the prosperity of the Empire he ruled.

He now enters Ayôdhyâ—Oude—the same name that, eleven centuries later, rang so compellingly in the ears of Clive and Warren Hastings. Here Brâhmanism was getting the upper hand. And there was not merely much lawlessness but a terrible perversion of religious worship abroad in this land, which reminds one of modern Thuggee. A boat with Hiuen-Tsiang and eighty others on board was gliding peacefully down the Ganges, when a whole little navy of pirates, which had lain concealed under the dense foliage of the river-bank, shot out into mid-stream, and surrounded the pilgrim’s vessel. Some of the passengers leaped into the river; those who remained in the vessel were towed ashore and robbed. Now these water-thieves were devotees of the goddess Durgâ, the wife of Siva, and were wont to offer at her altar a yearly sacrifice of some unblemished human victim, selected from their captives. They carefully examined Hiuen-Tsiang, and pronounced him fit for this purpose. Some of his companions generously offered to take his place; but the pirates would have none of them—Hiuen-Tsiang and he alone was the goddess’ chosen prey. He, of all the company, remained calm and undismayed. “Let me enter Nirvâna tranquil and happy,” he said, his mind wholly occupied with some future incarnation wherein he might turn such cruel hearts as those of the pirates. These, amazed, and even touched, by his meek and compassionate fortitude, granted him a few more minutes of life. Just at this moment, a squall came on, so fierce that it terrified the pirates, even. Hiuen-Tsiang’s companions were loud in exclaiming that it was heaven’s warning of the awful vengeance which would ensue on the murder of a saint. The hearts of the homicides were stricken by fear. One of them took the pilgrim’s hand. He only felt the pressure; for his eyes were closed and he was wrapt in some celestial vision. He asked if the fatal moment had come; and when he learned that the mind of the robbers was changed, he began to unfold “the Law” to them with such persuasive power that they cast their instruments of sacrifice into the river, restored what they had stolen, and quietly went their way.

He visited Prayâga (Allahabad), near the confluence of the Ganges and Jumna, and then took a dangerous course, south-west, through a forest infested with wild elephants and beasts of prey, to Kosâmbi-nagar, now a mere village on the Jumna, only to find ten Buddhist monasteries ruined and deserted and fifty temples of flourishing Brâhmanism, frequented by an enormous number of “heretics.” Thence he travelled northwards, and came to Gautama’s birth place, Kapila. It was a waste. Almost everywhere Brâhmanism was quietly triumphing and Buddhism in gentle decay; although it was not until the following century that this shrivelling process became rapid, and four or five centuries had yet to pass before new dynasties sacked monasteries and burned their inmates or expelled them from India in such wise that Buddhism became extinct throughout the Great Peninsula.

At Bânâras (Benares) he saw Brâhman ascetics who shaved the head, or went about naked, or covered themselves with ashes, and “by all manner of austerity sought to escape from any more births and deaths.” He tells us of the blueness of the sacred river and its rolling waves; of the sweet taste of its waters and the fineness of its sands; of how numbers of people, in order to wash away the pollution of sin, “would abstain from eating for seven days, and then drown themselves in the sacred stream. Daily, towards sunset, ascetics would climb up a pillar set in the middle of the river, cling to it by one hand and one foot in a marvellous manner, and gaze at the sun until he went down, when they would descend. Thereby they hoped to escape from reincarnation.” “If the body of a dead man be cast into the stream, he cannot fall into an evil way. Swept on by its waters and forgotten by men, he is safe on the other side.”

It was at Bânâras that Gautama began his evangel, and the vast district between Jumna and the mountains of Nepal was the main scene of his labours. In the Kingdom of Magadha, which, like Kanduj, was under the rule of Sîlâditya, he found an area of fourteen miles covered with the ruins of a city which was flourishing when Fa-Hien visited India. The stones of stûpas, monasteries, pagodas and hospitals for men and beasts cumbered the ground.

While Hiuen-Tsiang was staying at the place where Gautama “Sâkyamûni” as he was called during the ascetic portion of his career—that is to say, “the sage of the family of the Sâkyas”—became “Buddha,” or “the Enlightener of men,” a deputation of four of the most distinguished monks of the great Sarighârâma of Nâlanda—the greatest scholastic and monastic institution in the world—came to him bearing an invitation to stay there. When he arrived he was welcomed with much state and ceremony. Two hundred monks and crowds of people greeted him, singing songs in his praise, bearing standards and umbrellas, and scattering flowers and scent. They raised him to a seat of honour, and then the sub-director sounded a gong and repeated the invitation. Twenty grave and reverend seniors of the monastery presented him to the Father Superior, who was no other than the famous scholar Sîlabhadra, a dignitary so exalted that no one dared name him except by his title of “Treasury of the Righteous Law.” Hiuen-Tsiang had to drag himself towards this sage on knees and elbows, clacking his heels together, and striking the ground with his brow. This done, seats were brought forward, compliments were interchanged, and the pilgrim was made free of the institution. The best rooms were given up to him; ten servants were allotted to him, and, daily he was furnished with an ample supply of food at the cost of the monks and the Râja. A Buddhist monk and a Brâhman, dwelling in peace together, took him abroad from time to time and shewed him the holy sights of the neighbourhood, seated in state on an elephant or carried in a palanquin; but when he was in the convent the “Treasury of the Righteous Law” devoted no small measure of his time to his instruction in the higher learning.