NAGÂRA. FESTIVAL OF BUDDHA’S SKULL-BONE. OTHER RELICS, AND HIS SHADOW.
Going west for sixteen yojanas,[1] he came to the city He-lo[2] in
the borders of the country of Nagâra, where there is the flat-bone
of Buddha’s skull, deposited in a vihâra[3] adorned all over with
gold-leaf and the seven sacred substances. The king of the country,
revering and honouring the bone, and anxious lest it should be stolen
away, has selected eight individuals, representing the great families
in the kingdom, and committing to each a seal, with which he should
seal (its shrine) and guard (the relic). At early dawn these eight men
come, and after each has inspected his seal, they open the door. This
done, they wash their hands with scented water and bring out the bone,
which they place outside the vihâra, on a lofty platform, where it is
supported on a round pedestal of the seven precious substances, and
covered with a bell of lapis lazuli, both adorned with rows of
pearls. Its colour is of a yellowish white, and it forms an imperfect
circle twelve inches round,[4] curving upwards to the centre. Every
day, after it has been brought forth, the keepers of the vihâra ascend
a high gallery, where they beat great drums, blow conchs, and clash
their copper cymbals. When the king hears them, he goes to the vihâra,
and makes his offerings of flowers and incense. When he has done this,
he (and his attendants) in order, one after another, (raise the bone),
place it (for a moment) on the top of their heads,[5] and then depart,
going out by the door on the west as they entered by that on the east.
The king every morning makes his offerings and performs his worship,
and afterwards gives audience on the business of his government. The
chiefs of the Vaiśyas[6] also make their offerings before they
attend to their family affairs. Every day it is so, and there is no
remissness in the observance of the custom. When all the offerings are
over, they replace the bone in the vihâra, where there is a vimoksha
tope,[7] of the seven precious substances, and rather more than five
cubits high, sometimes open, sometimes shut, to contain it. In front
of the door of the vihâra, there are parties who every morning sell
flowers and incense,[8] and those who wish to make offerings buy
some of all kinds. The kings of various countries are also constantly
sending messengers with offerings. The vihâra stands in a square of
thirty paces, and though heaven should shake and earth be rent, this
place would not move.
Going on, north from this, for a yojana, (Fâ-hien) arrived at the
capital of Nagâra, the place where the Bodhisattva once purchased
with money five stalks of flowers, as an offering to the Dîpâṅkara
Buddha.[9] In the midst of the city there is also the tope of Buddha’s
tooth, where offerings are made in the same way as to the flat-bone of
his skull.
A yojana to the north-east of the city brought him to the mouth of a
valley, where there is Buddha’s pewter staff;[10] and a vihâra also
has been built at which offerings are made. The staff is made of
Gośîrsha Chandana, and is quite sixteen or seventeen cubits long. It
is contained in a wooden tube, and though a hundred or a thousand men
ere to (try to) lift it, they could not move it.
Entering the mouth of the valley, and going west, he found Buddha’s
Saṅghâli,[11] where also there is reared a vihâra, and offerings are
made. It is a custom of the country when there is a great drought, for
the people to collect in crowds, bring out the robe, pay worship to
it, and make offerings, on which there is immediately a great rain
from the sky.
South of the city, half a yojana, there is a rock cavern, in a great
hill fronting the south-west; and here it was that Buddha left his
shadow. Looking at it from a distance of more than ten paces, you
seem to see Buddha’s real form, with his complexion of gold, and
his characteristic marks[12] in their nicety clearly and brightly
displayed. The nearer you approach, however, the fainter it becomes,
as if it were only in your fancy. When the kings from the regions all
around have sent skilful artists to take a copy, none of them have
been able to do so. Among the people of the country there is a saying
current that ‘the thousand Buddhas[13] must all leave their shadows
here.’
Rather more than four hundred paces west from the shadow, when
Buddha was at the spot, he shaved his hair and clipt his nails, and
proceeded, along with his disciples, to build a tope seventy or eighty
cubits high, to be a model for all future topes; and it is still
existing. By the side of it there is a monastery, with more than seven
hundred monks in it. At this place there are as many as a thousand
topes[14] of Arhans and Pratyeka Buddhas.[15]
NOTES
[1] Now in India, Fâ-hien used the Indian measure of distance; but
it is not possible to determine exactly what its length then was. The
estimates of it are very different, and vary from four and a half or
five miles to seven, and sometimes more. See the subject exhaustively
treated in Davids’ ‘Ceylon Coins and Measures,’ pp. 15–17.
[2] The present Hidda, west of Peshâwar, and five miles south of
Jellalabad.
[3] ‘The vihâra,’ says Hardy, ‘is the residence of a recluse or
priest;’ and so Davids:—‘the clean little hut where the mendicant
lives.’ Our author, however, does not use the Indian name here, but
the Chinese characters which express its meaning—tsing shay, ‘a
pure dwelling.’ He uses the term occasionally, and evidently, in this
sense; more frequently it occurs in his narrative in connexion with
the Buddhist relic worship; and at first I translated it by ‘shrine’
and ‘shrine-house;’ but I came to the conclusion, at last, to employ
always the Indian name. The first time I saw a shrine-house was, I
think, in a monastery near Foo-chow;—a small pyramidal structure,
about ten feet high, glittering as if with the precious substances,
but all, it seemed to me, of tinsel. It was in a large apartment of
the building, having many images in it. The monks said it was the most
precious thing in their possession, and that if they opened it, as I
begged them to do, there would be a convulsion that would destroy the
whole establishment. See E. H., p. 166. The name of the province of
Behar was given to it in consequence of its many vihâras.
[4] According to the characters, ‘square, round, four inches.’
Hsüan-chwang says it was twelve inches round.
[5] In Williams’ Dictionary, under 頂, the characters, used here,
are employed in the phrase for ‘to degrade an officer,’ that is, ‘to
remove the token of his rank worn on the crown of his head;’ but to
place a thing on the crown is a Buddhistic form of religious homage.
[6] The Vaiśyas, or bourgeois caste of Hindu society, are described
here as ‘resident scholars.’
[7] See Eitel’s Handbook under the name vimoksha, which is explained
as ‘the act of self-liberation,’ and ‘the dwelling or state of
liberty.’ There are eight acts of liberating one’s self from all
subjective and objective trammels, and as many states of
liberty (vimukti) resulting therefrom. They are eight degrees of
self-inanition, and apparently eight stages on the way to nirvâṇa. The
tope in the text would be emblematic in some way of the general idea
of the mental progress conducting to the Buddhistic consummation of
existence.
[8] This incense would be in long ‘sticks,’ small and large, such as
are sold to-day throughout China, as you enter the temples.
[9] ‘The illuminating Buddha,’ the twenty-fourth predecessor of
Śâkyamuni, and who, so long before, gave him the assurance that he
would by-and-by be Buddha. See Jâtaka Tales, p. 23.
[10] The staff was, as immediately appears, of Gośîrsha Chandana, or
‘sandal-wood from the Cow’s-head mountain,’ a species of copper-brown
sandal-wood, said to be produced most abundantly on a mountain of (the
fabulous continent) Ullarakuru, north of mount Meru, which resembles
in shape the head of a cow (E. H., pp. 42, 43). It is called a ‘pewter
staff’ from having on it a head and rings and pewter. See Watters,
‘China Review,’ viii, pp. 227, 228, and Williams’ Dictionary, under
杖.
[11] Or Saṅghaṭi, the double or composite robe, part of a monk’s
attire, reaching from the shoulders to the knees, and fastened round
the waist (E. H., p. 118).
[12] These were the ‘marks and beauties’ on the person of a supreme
Buddha. The ṛishi Kalâ Devala saw them on the body of the infant Śâkya
prince to the number of 328, those on the teeth, which had not yet
come out, being visible to his spirit-like eyes (M. B., pp. 148, 149).
[13] Probably = ‘all Buddhas.’
[14] The number may appear too great. But see what is said on the size
of topes in chap. iii, note 4.
[15] In Singhalese, Pasê Buddhas; called also Nidâna Buddhas,
and Pratyeka Jinas, and explained by ‘individually intelligent,’
‘completely intelligent,’ ‘intelligent as regards the nidânas.’
This, says Eitel (pp. 96, 97), is ‘a degree of saintship unknown to
primitive Buddhism, denoting automats in ascetic life who attain to
Buddhaship “individually,” that is, without a teacher, and without
being able to save others. As the ideal hermit, the Pratyeka Buddha
is compared with the rhinoceros khadga that lives lonely in the
wilderness. He is also called Nidâna Buddha, as having mastered the
twelve nidânas (the twelve links in the everlasting chain of cause
and effect in the whole range of existence, the understanding of
which solves the riddle of life, revealing the inanity of all forms of
existence, and preparing the mind for nirvâṇa). He is also compared
to a horse, which, crossing a river, almost buries its body under the
water, without, however, touching the bottom of the river. Thus in
crossing saṃsâra he “suppresses the errors of life and thought,
and the effects of habit and passion, without attaining to absolute
perfection.”’ Whether these Buddhas were unknown, as Eitel says, to
primitive Buddhism, may be doubted. See Davids’ Hibbert Lectures, p.
146.