Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms | Page 9

Mohammedanism, and followed, some distance off, by Taoism. To make a table of per-centages of mankind, and assign to each system its proportion, is to seem to be wise where we are deplorably ignorant; and, moreover, if our means of information were much better than they are, our figures would merely show the outward adherence. A fractional per-centage might tell more for one system than a very large integral one for another.

THE
TRAVELS OF FA-HIEN
or
RECORD OF BUDDHISTIC KINGDOMS

CHAPTER I
FROM CH'ANG-GAN TO THE SANDY DESERT
Fa-hien had been living in Ch'ang-gan.[1] Deploring the mutilated and imperfect state of the collection of the Books of Discipline, in the second year of the period Hwang-che, being the Ke-hae year of the cycle,[2] he entered into an engagement with Kwuy-king, Tao-ching, Hwuy-ying, and Hwuy-wei,[3] that they should go to India and seek for the Disciplinary Rules.[4]
After starting from Ch'ang-gan, they passed through Lung,[5] and came to the kingdom of K'een-kwei,[6] where they stopped for the summer retreat.[7] When that was over, they went forward to the kingdom of Now-t'an,[8] crossed the mountain of Yang-low, and reached the emporium of Chang-yih.[9] There they found the country so much disturbed that travelling on the roads was impossible for them. Its king, however, was very attentive to them, kept them (in his capital), and acted the part of their danapati.[10]
Here they met with Che-yen, Hwuy-keen, Sang-shao, Pao-yun, and Sang- king;[11] and in pleasant association with them, as bound on the same journey with themselves, they passed the summer retreat (of that year)[12] together, resuming after it their travelling, and going on to T'un-hwang,[13] (the chief town) in the frontier territory of defence extending for about 80 le from east to west, and about 40 from north to south. Their company, increased as it had been, halted there for some days more than a month, after which Fa-hien and his four friends started first in the suite of an envoy,[14] having separated (for a time) from Pao-yun and his associates.
Le Hao,[15] the prefect of T'un-hwang, had supplied them with the means of crossing the desert (before them), in which there are many evil demons and hot winds. (Travellers) who encounter them perish all to a man. There is not a bird to be seen in the air above, nor an animal on the ground below. Though you look all round most earnestly to find where you can cross, you know not where to make your choice, the only mark and indication being the dry bones of the dead (left upon the sand).[16]
NOTES
[1] Ch'ang-gan is still the name of the principal district (and its city) in the department of Se-gan, Shen-se. It had been the capital of the first empire of Han (B.C. 202-A.D. 24), as it subsequently was that of Suy (A.D. 589-618). The empire of the eastern Tsin, towards the close of which Fa-hien lived, had its capital at or near Nan-king, and Ch'ang-gan was the capital of the principal of the three Ts'in kingdoms, which, with many other minor ones, maintained a semi- independence of Tsin, their rulers sometimes even assuming the title of emperor.
[2] The period Hwang-che embraced from A.D. 399 to 414, being the greater portion of the reign of Yao Hing of the After Ts'in, a powerful prince. He adopted Hwang-che for the style of his reign in 399, and the cyclical name of that year was Kang-tsze. It is not possible at this distance of time to explain, if it could be explained, how Fa-hien came to say that Ke-hae was the second year of the period. It seems most reasonable to suppose that he set out on his pilgrimage in A.D. 399, the cycle name of which was Ke-hae, as {.}, the second year, instead of {.}, the first, might easily creep into the text. In the "Memoirs of Eminent Monks" it is said that our author started in the third year of the period Lung-gan of the eastern Tsin, which was A.D. 399.
[3] These, like Fa-hien itself, are all what we might call "clerical" names, appellations given to the parties as monks or sramanas.
[4] The Buddhist tripitaka or canon consists of three collections, containing, according to Eitel (p. 150), "doctrinal aphorisms (or statements, purporting to be from Buddha himself); works on discipline; and works on metaphysics:"--called sutra, vinaya, and abhidharma; in Chinese, king {.}, leuh {.}, and lun {.}, or texts, laws or rules, and discussions. Dr. Rhys Davids objects to the designation of "metaphysics" as used of the abhidharma works, saying that "they bear much more the relation to 'dharma' which 'by-law' bears to 'law' than that which 'metaphysics' bears to 'physics'" (Hibbert Lectures, p. 49). However this be, it was about the vinaya works that Fa-hien was chiefly concerned. He wanted a good code of the rules for the government