CROSSING OF THE INDUS. WHEN BUDDHISM FIRST CROSSED THE RIVER FOR THE
EAST.
The travellers went on to the south-west for fifteen days (at the foot
of the mountains, and) following the course of their range. The
way was difficult and rugged, (running along) a bank exceedingly
precipitous, which rose up there, a hill-like wall of rock, 10,000
cubits from the base. When one approaches the edge of it, his eyes
become unsteady; and if he wished to go forward in the same direction,
there was no place on which he could place his foot; and beneath where
the waters of the river called the Indus.[1] In former times men had
chiselled paths along the rocks, and distributed ladders on the face
of them, to the number altogether of 700, at the bottom of which there
was a suspension bridge of ropes, by which the river was crossed, its
banks being there eighty paces apart.[2] The (place and arrangements)
are to be found in the Records of the Nine Interpreters,[3] but
neither Chang Kʽeen[4] nor Kan Ying[5] had reached the spot.
The monks[6] asked Fâ-hien if it could be known when the Law of Buddha
first went to the east. He replied, ‘When I asked the people of those
countries about it, they all said that it had been handed down by
their fathers from of old that, after the setting up of the image of
Maitreya Bodhisattva, there were Śramans of India who crossed this
river, carrying with them Sûtras and Books of Discipline. Now the
image was set up rather more than 300 years after the nirvâṇa[7] of
Buddha, which may be referred to the reign of king Pʽing of the Chow
dynasty.[8] According to this account we may say that the diffusion of
our great doctrines (in the east) began from (the setting up of)
this image. If it had not been through that Maitreya,[9] the great
spiritual master[10] (who is to be) the successor of the Śâkya, who
could have caused the “Three Precious Ones”[11] to be proclaimed so
far, and the people of those border lands to know our Law? We know
of a truth that the opening of (the way for such) a mysterious
propagation is not the work of man; and so the dream of the emperor
Ming of Han[12] had its proper cause.’
NOTES
[1] The Sindhu. We saw in a former note (chap. ii note 6) that the
earliest name in China for India was Shin-tuh. So, here, the river
Indus is called by a name approaching that in sound.
[2] Both Beal and Watters quote from Cunningham (Ladak, pp. 88, 89)
the following description of the course of the Indus in these parts,
in striking accordance with our author’s account:—‘From Skardo to
Rongdo, and from Rongdo to Makpou-i-shang-rong, for upwards of 100
miles, the Indus sweeps sullen and dark through a mighty gorge in
the mountains, which for wild sublimity is perhaps unequalled. Rongdo
means the country of defiles.... Between these points the Indus
raves from side to side of the gloomy chasm, foaming and chafing with
ungovernable fury. Yet even in these inaccessible places has daring
and ingenious man triumphed over opposing nature. The yawning abyss
is spanned by frail rope bridges, and the narrow ledges of rocks are
connected by ladders to form a giddy pathway overhanging the seething
cauldron below.’
[3] The Japanese edition has a different reading here from the
Chinese copies,—one which Rémusat (with true critical instinct)
conjectured should take the place of the more difficult text with
which alone he was acquainted. The ‘Nine Interpreters’ would be a
general name for the official interpreters attached to the invading
armies of Han in their attempts to penetrate and subdue the regions
of the west. The phrase occurs in the memoir of Chang Kʽeen, referred
to in the next note.
[4] Chang Kʽeen, a minister of the emperor Woo of Han (B.C. 140–87),
is celebrated as the first Chinese who ‘pierced the void,’ and
penetrated to ‘the regions of the west,’ corresponding very much to
the present Turkestan. Through him, by B.C. 115, a regular
intercourse was established between China and the thirty-six kingdoms
or states of that quarter;—see Mayers’ Chinese Reader’s Manual, p. 5.
The memoir of Chang Kʽeen, translated by Mr. Wylie from the Books of
the first Han dynasty, appears in the Journal of the Anthropological
Institute, referred to already (chap. ii note 1).
[5] Less is known of Kan Ying than of Chang Kʽeen. Being sent in A.D.
88 by his patron Pan Châo on an embassy to the Roman empire, he only
got as far as the Caspian sea, and returned to China. He extended,
however, the knowledge of his countrymen with regard to the western
regions;—see the memoir of Pan Châo in the Books of the second Han,
and Mayers’ Manual, pp. 167, 168.
[6] Where and when? Probably at his first resting-place after
crossing the Indus.
[7] This may refer to Śâkyamuni’s becoming Buddha on attaining to
nirvâṇa, or more probably to his pari-nirvâṇa and death.
[8] As king Pʽing’s reign lasted from B.C. 750 to 719, this would
place the death of Buddha in the eleventh century B.C., whereas
recent inquirers place it between B.C. 480 and 470, a year or two, or
a few years, after that of Confucius, so that the two great ‘Masters’
of the east were really contemporaries. But if Rhys Davids be
correct, as I think he is, in fixing the date of Buddha’s death
within a few years of 412 B.C. (see Manual, p. 213), not to speak of
Westergaard’s still lower date, then the Buddha was very considerably
the junior of Confucius.
[9] This confirms the words of Eitel (note 3, p. 23), that Maitreya
is already controlling the propagation of the faith.
[10] The Chinese characters for this simply mean ‘the great scholar
or officer;’ but see Eitel’s Handbook, p. 99, on the term purusha.
[11] ‘The precious Buddha,’ ‘the precious Law,’ and ‘the precious
Monkhood;’ Buddha, Dharma, and Saṅgha; the whole being equivalent to
Buddhism.
[12] Fâ-hien thus endorses the view that Buddhism was introduced into
China in this reign, A.D. 58–75. The emperor had his dream in A.D. 61.