Notes

(1) Fâ-Hien is here mentioned singly, as in the account of his visit to the cave on Gridhra-kuta. I think that Tao-ching may have remained at Patna after their first visit to it.

(2) See chap. xxvii, note 1.

(3) “The city surrounded by rivers;” the modern Benares, lat. 25° 23′ N., lon. 83° 5′ E.

(4) “The rishi,” says Eitel, “is a man whose bodily frame has undergone a certain transformation by dint of meditation and ascetism, so that he is, for an indefinite period, exempt from decrepitude, age, and death. As this period is believed to extend far beyond the usual duration of human life, such persons are called, and popularly believed to be, immortals.” Rishis are divided into various classes; and rishi-ism is spoken of as a seventh part of transrotation, and rishis are referred to as the seventh class of sentient beings. Taoism, as well as Buddhism, has its Seen jin.

(5) See chap. xiii, note 15.

(6) See chap. xxii, note 2.

(7) For another legend about this park, and the identification of “a fine wood” still existing, see note in Beal’s first version, p. 135.

(8) A prince of Magadha and a maternal uncle of Sâkyamuni, who gave him the name of Ajnata, meaning automat; and hence he often appears as Ajnata Kaundinya. He and his four friends had followed Sâkyamuni into the Uruvilva desert, sympathising with him in the austerities he endured, and hoping that they would issue in his Buddhaship. They were not aware that that issue had come; which may show us that all the accounts in the thirty-first chapter are merely descriptions, by means of external imagery, of what had taken place internally. The kingdom of nirvâna had come without observation. These friends knew it not; and they were offended by what they considered Sâkyamuni’s failure, and the course he was now pursuing. See the account of their conversion in M. B., p. 186.

(9) This is the only instance in Fâ-Hien’s text where the Bodhisattva or Buddha is called by the surname “Gotama.” For the most part our traveller uses Buddha as a proper name, though it properly means “The Enlightened.” He uses also the combinations “Sakya Buddha,”=“The Buddha of the Sakya tribe,” and “Sâkyamuni,”=“The Sakya sage.” This last is the most common designation of the Buddha in China, and to my mind best combines the characteristics of a descriptive and a proper name. Among other Buddhistic peoples “Gotama” and “Gotama Buddha” are the more frequent designations. It is not easy to account for the rise of the surname Gotama in the Sakya family, as Oldenberg acknowledges. He says that “the Sakyas, in accordance with the custom of Indian noble families, had borrowed it from one of the ancient Vedic bard families.” Dr. Davids (“Buddhism,” p. 27) says: “The family name was certainly Gautama,” adding in a note, “It is a curious fact that Gautama is still the family name of the Rajput chiefs of Nagara, the village which has been identified with Kapilavastu.” Dr. Eitel says that “Gautama was the sacerdotal name of the Sakya family, which counted the ancient rishi Gautama among its ancestors.” When we proceed, however, to endeavour to trace the connexion of that Brahmanical rishi with the Sakya house, by means of 1323, 1468, 1469, and other historical works in Nanjio’s Catalogue, we soon find that Indian histories have no surer foundation than the shifting sand;—see E. H., on the name Sakya, pp. 108, 109. We must be content for the present simply to accept Gotama as one of the surnames of the Buddha with whom we have to do.

(10) See chap. vi, note 5. It is there said that the prediction of Maitreya’s succession to the Buddhaship was made to him in the Tushita heaven. Was there a repetition of it here in the Deer-park, or was a prediction now given concerning something else?

(11) Nothing seems to be known of this naga but what we read here.

(12) Identified by some with Kusia, near Kurrah (lat. 25° 41′ N., lon. 81° 27′ E.); by others with Kosam on the Jumna, thirty miles above Allahabad. See E. H., p. 55.

(13) Ghochira was the name of a Vaisya elder, or head, who presented a garden and vihâra to Buddha. Hardy (M. B., p. 356) quotes a statement from a Singhalese authority that Sâkyamuni resided here during the ninth year of his Buddhaship.

(14) Dr. Davids thinks this may refer to the striking and beautiful story of the conversion of the Yakkha Alavaka, as related in the Uragavagga, Alavakasutta, pp. 29–31 (Sacred Books of the East, vol. x, part ii).