AT CEYLON. RISE OF THE KINGDOM. FEATS OF BUDDHA. TOPES AND
MONASTERIES. STATUE OF BUDDHA IN JADE. BO TREE. FESTIVAL OF BUDDHA’S
TOOTH.
The country originally had no human inhabitants,[1] but was occupied
only by spirits and nâgas, with which merchants of various countries
carried on a trade. When the trafficking was taking place, the
spirits did not show themselves. They simply set forth their precious
commodities, with labels of the price attached to them; while the
merchants made their purchases according to the price; and took the
things away.
Through the coming and going of the merchants (in this way), when they
went away, the people of (their) various countries heard how pleasant
the land was, and flocked to it in numbers till it became a great
nation. The (climate) is temperate and attractive, without any
difference of summer and winter. The vegetation is always luxuriant.
Cultivation proceeds whenever men think fit: there are no fixed
seasons for it.
When Buddha came to this country,[2] wishing to transform the wicked
nâgas, by his supernatural power he planted one foot at the north of
the royal city, and the other on the top of a mountain,[3] the two
being fifteen yojanas apart. Over the footprint at the north of the
city the king built a large tope, 400 cubits high, grandly adorned
with gold and silver, and finished with a combination of all the
precious substances. By the side of the top he further built a
monastery, called the Abhayagiri,[4] where there are (now) five
thousand monks. There is in it a hall of Buddha, adorned with carved
and inlaid works of gold and silver, and rich in the seven precious
substances, in which there is an image (of Buddha) in green jade,
more than twenty cubits in height, glittering all over with those
substances, and having an appearance of solemn dignity which words
cannot express. In the palm of the right hand there is a priceless
pearl. Several years had now elapsed since Fâ-hien left the land of
Han; the men with whom he had been in intercourse had all been of
regions strange to him; his eyes had not rested on an old and familiar
hill or river, plant or tree; his fellow-travellers, moreover, had
been separated from him, some by death, and others flowing off in
different directions; no face or shadow was now with him but his own,
and a constant sadness was in his heart. Suddenly (one day), when by
the side of this image of jade, he saw a merchant presenting as his
offering a fan of white silk;[5] and the tears of sorrow involuntarily
filled his eyes and fell down.
A former king of the country had sent to Central India and got a slip
of the patra tree,[6] which he planted by the side of the hall of
Buddha, where a tree grew up to the height of about 200 cubits. As it
bent on one side towards the south-east, the king, fearing it would
fall, propped it with a post eight or nine spans round. The tree began
to grow at the very heart of the prop, where it met (the trunk); (a
shoot) pierced through the post, and went down to the ground, where
it entered and formed roots, that rose (to the surface) and were about
four spans round. Although the post was split in the middle, the outer
portions kept hold (of the shoot), and people did not remove them.
Beneath the tree there has been built a vihâra, in which there is an
image (of Buddha) seated, which the monks and commonalty reverence and
look up to without ever becoming wearied. In the city there has been
reared also the vihâra of Buddha’s tooth, on which, as well as on the
other, the seven precious substances have been employed.
The king practises the Brahmânical purifications, and the sincerity
of the faith and reverence of the population inside the city are also
great. Since the establishment of government in the kingdom there
has been no famine or scarcity, no revolution or disorder. In the
treasuries of the monkish communities there are many precious stones,
and the priceless maṇis. One of the kings (once) entered one of those
treasuries, and when he looked all round and saw the priceless pearls,
his covetous greed was excited, and he wished to take them to himself
by force. In three days, however, he came to himself, and immediately
went and bowed his head to the ground in the midst of the monks,
to show his repentance of the evil thought. As a sequel to this, he
informed the monks (of what had been in his mind), and desired them
to make a regulation that from that day forth the king should not be
allowed to enter the treasury and see (what it contained), and that no
bhikshu should enter it till after he had been in orders for a period
of full forty years.[7]
In the city there are many Vaiśya elders and Sabæan[8] merchants,
whose houses are stately and beautiful. The lanes and passages are
kept in good order. At the heads of the four principal streets there
have been built preaching halls, where, on the eighth, fourteenth,
and fifteenth days of the month, they spread carpets, and set forth a
pulpit, while the monks and commonalty from all quarters come together
to hear the Law. The people say that in the kingdom there may be
altogether sixty thousand monks, who get their food from their common
stores. The king, besides, prepares elsewhere in the city a common
supply of food for five or six thousand more. When any want, they take
their great bowls, and go (to the place of distribution), and take as
much as the vessels will hold, all returning with them full.
The tooth of Buddha is always brought forth in the middle of the
third month. Ten days beforehand the king grandly caparisons a large
elephant, on which he mounts a man who can speak distinctly, and is
dressed in royal robes, to beat a large drum, and make the following
proclamation:—‘The Bodhisattva, during three Asaṅkhyeya-kalpas,[9]
manifested his activity, and did not spare his own life. He gave up
kingdom, city, wife, and son; he plucked out his eyes and gave them to
another;[10] he cut off a piece of his own flesh to ransom the life
of a dove;[10] he cut off his head and gave it as an alms;[11] he gave
his body to feed a starving tigress;[11] he grudged not his marrow
and his brains. In many such ways as these did he undergo pain for
the sake of all living. And so it was, that, having become Buddha,
he continued in the world for forty-five years, preaching his Law,
teaching and transforming, so that those who had no rest found rest,
and the unconverted were converted. When his connexion with the living
was completed,[12] he attained to pari-nirvâṇa (and died). Since that
event, for 1497 years, the light of the world has gone out,[13] and
all living beings have had long-continued sadness. Behold! ten days
after this, Buddha’s tooth will be brought forth, and taken to the
Abhayagiri-vihâra. Let all and each, whether monks or laics, who
wish to amass merit for themselves, make the roads smooth and in good
condition, grandly adorn the lanes and byways, and provide abundant
store of flowers and incense to be used as offerings to it.’
When this proclamation is over, the king exhibits, so as to line both
sides of the road, the five hundred different bodily forms in which
the Bodhisattva has in the course of his history appeared:—here as
Sudâna,[14] there as Sâma;[15] now as the king of elephants;[16] and
then as a stag or a horse.[16] All these figures are brightly coloured
and grandly executed, looking as if they were alive. After this the
tooth of Buddha is brought forth, and is carried along in the middle
of the road. Everywhere on the way offerings are presented to it, and
thus it arrives at the hall of Buddha in the Abhayagiri-vihâra. There
monks and laics are collected in crowds. They burn incense, light
lamps, and perform all the prescribed services, day and night without
ceasing, till ninety days have been completed, when (the tooth) is
returned to the vihâra within the city. On fast-days the door of that
vihâra is opened, and the forms of ceremonial reverence are observed
according to the rules.
Forty le to the east of the Abhayagiri-vihâra there is a hill, with a
vihâra on it, called the Chaitya,[17] where there may be 2000 monks.
Among them there is a Śramaṇa of great virtue, named Dharma-gupta,[18]
honoured and looked up to by all the kingdom. He has lived for more
than forty years in an apartment of stone, constantly showing such
gentleness of heart, that he has brought snakes and rats to stop
together in the same room, without doing one another any harm.
NOTES
[1] It is desirable to translate 人民, for which ‘inhabitants’
or ‘people’ is elsewhere sufficient, here by ‘human inhabitants.’
According to other accounts Singhala was originally occupied by
Râkshasas or Rakshas, ‘demons who devour men,’ and ‘beings to be
feared,’ monstrous cannibals or anthropophagi, the terror of the
shipwrecked mariner. Our author’s ‘spirits’ (鬼神) were of a gentler
type. His dragons or nâgas have come before us again and again.
[2] That Śâkyamuni ever visited Ceylon is to me more than doubtful.
Hardy, in M. B., pp. 207–213, has brought together the legends
of three visits,—in the first, fifth, and eighth years of his
Buddhaship. It is plain, however, from Fâ-hien’s narrative, that in
the beginning of our fifth century, Buddhism prevailed throughout
the island. Davids in the last chapter of his ‘Buddhism’ ascribes its
introduction to one of Aśoka’s missions, after the Council of Patna,
under his son Mahinda, when Tissa, ‘the delight of the gods,’ was king
(B.C. 250–230).
[3] This would be what is known as ‘Adam’s peak,’ having, according
to Hardy (pp. 211, 212, notes), the three names of Selesumano,
Samastakûta, and Samanila. ‘There is an indentation on the top of it,’
a superficial hollow, 5 feet 3¾ inches long, and about 2½ feet
wide. The Hindus regard it as the footprint of Siva; the Mohameddans,
as that of Adam; and the Buddhists, as in the text,—as having been
made by Buddha.
[4] Meaning ‘The Fearless Hill.’ There is still the Abhayagiri tope,
the highest in Ceylon, according to Davids, 250 feet in height, and
built about B.C. 90, by Waṭṭa Gâmiṇi, in whose reign, about 160
years after the Council of Patna, and 330 years after the death
of Śâkyamuni, the Tripiṭaka was first reduced to writing in
Ceylon;—‘Buddhism,’ p. 234.
[5] We naturally suppose that the merchant-offerer was a Chinese, as
indeed the Chinese texts say, and the fan such as Fâ-hien had seen and
used in his native land.
[6] This should be the pippala, or bodhidruma, generally spoken of, in
connexion with Buddha, as the Bo tree, under which he attained to the
Buddhaship. It is strange our author should have confounded them as he
seems to do. In what we are told of the tree here, we have, no doubt,
his account of the planting, growth, and preservation of the famous Bo
tree, which still exists in Ceylon. It has been stated in a previous
note that Aśoka’s son, Mahinda, went as the apostle of Buddhism to
Ceylon. By-and-by he sent for his sister Sanghamittâ, who had entered
the order at the same time as himself, and whose help was needed, some
of the king’s female relations having signified their wish to become
nuns. On leaving India, she took with her a branch of the sacred Bo
tree at Buddha Gayâ, under which Śâkyamuni had become Buddha. Of
how the tree has grown and still lives we have an account in Davids’
‘Buddhism.’ He quotes the words of Sir Emerson Tennent, that it is
‘the oldest historical tree in the world;’ but this must be denied if
it be true, as Eitel says, that the tree at Buddha Gayâ, from which
the slip that grew to be this tree was taken more than 2000 years ago,
is itself still living in its place. We must conclude that Fâ-hien,
when in Ceylon, heard neither of Mahinda nor Sanghamittâ.
[7] Compare what is said in chap. xvi, about the inquiries made
at monasteries as to the standing of visitors in the monkhood, and
duration of their ministry.
[8] The phonetic values of the two Chinese characters here are in
Sanskrit sâ; and vâ, bo or bhâ. ‘Sabæan’ is Mr. Beal’s reading
of them, probably correct. I suppose the merchants were Arabs,
forerunners of the so-called Moormen, who still form so important a
part of the mercantile community in Ceylon.
[9] A Kalpa, we have seen, denotes a great period of time; a period
during which a physical universe is formed and destroyed.
Asaṅkhyeya denotes the highest sum for which a conventional term
exists;—according to Chinese calculations equal to one followed by
seventeen ciphers; according to Thibetan and Singhalese, equal to one
followed by ninety-seven ciphers. Every Mahâ-kalpa consists of four
Asaṅkhyeya-kalpas. Eitel, p. 15.
[10] See chapter ix.
[11] See chapter xi.
[12] He had been born in the Śâkya house, to do for the world what the
character of all his past births required, and he had done it.
[13] They could no more see him, the World-honoured one. Compare the
Sacred Books of the East, vol. xi, Buddhist Suttas, pp. 89, 121, and
note on p. 89.
[14] Sudâna or Sudatta was the name of the Bodhisattva in the birth
which preceded his appearance as Śâkyamuni or Gotama, when he became
the Supreme Buddha. This period is known as the Vessantara Jâtaka,
of which Hardy, M. B., pp. 116–124, gives a long account; see also
‘Buddhist Birth Stories,’ the Nidâna Kathâ, p. 158. In it, as Sudâna,
he fulfilled ‘the Perfections,’ his distinguishing attribute being
entire self-renunciation and almsgiving, so that in the Nidâna Kathâ
is made to say (‘Buddhist Birth Stories,’ p. 58):—
‘This earth, unconscious though she be, and ignorant of joy or grief,
Even she by my free-giving’s mighty power was shaken seven times.’
Then, when he passed away, he appeared in the Tushita heaven, to enter
in due time the womb of Mahâ-mâyâ, and be born as Śâkyamuni.
[15] I take the name Sâma from Beal’s revised version. He says in a
note that the Sâma Jâtaka, as well as the Vessantara, is represented
in the Sâñchi sculptures. But what the Sâma Jâtaka was I do not yet
know. But adopting this name, the two Chinese characters in the text
should be translated ‘the change into Sâma.’ Rémusat gives for them,
‘la transformation en eclair;’ Beal, in his first version, ‘his
appearance as a bright flash of light;’ Giles, ‘as a flash of
lightning.’ Julien’s Méthode does not give the phonetic value in
Sanskrit of 睒.
[16] In an analysis of the number of times and the different forms in
which Śâkyamuni had appeared in his Jâtaka births, given by Hardy (M.
B., p. 100), it is said that he had appeared six times as an elephant;
ten times as a deer; and four times as a horse.
[17] Chaitya is a general term designating all places and objects
of religious worship which have a reference to ancient Buddhas, and
including therefore stûpas and temples as well as sacred relics,
pictures, statues, &c. It is defined as ‘a fane,’ ‘a place for worship
and presenting offerings.’ Eitel, p. 141. The hill referred to is
the sacred hill of Mihintale, about eight miles due east of the Bo
tree;—Davids’ Buddhism, pp. 230, 231.
[18] Eitel says (p. 31): ‘A famous ascetic, the founder of a school,
which flourished in Ceylon, A.D. 400.’ But Fâ-hien gives no intimation
of Dharma-gupta’s founding a school.