~The Perilous Crossing of the Indus~
The travellers went on to the southwest 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, ten thousand cubits from
the base. When one approached the edge of it, his eyes became 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 were the waters of the
river called the Indus. In former times men had chiselled paths along
the rocks, and distributed ladders on the face of them, to the number
altogether of seven hundred, 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. The place and arrangements are to be
found in the Records of the Nine Interpreters, but neither Chang K'een
[1] nor Kan Ying [2] had reached the spot.
The monks 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 Sramans of India who crossed this river,
carrying with them Sútras and Books of Discipline. Now the image was set
up rather more than three hundred years after the Nirvâna of Buddha,
which may be referred to the reign of king P'ing of the Chow dynasty.
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, the great spiritual master who is to be
the successor of the Sâkya, who could have caused the 'Three Precious
Ones,' [3] 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 had its proper cause."
[Footnote 1: Chang K'een, 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.]
[Footnote 2: Less is known of Kan Ying than of Chang K'een. 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.]
[Footnote 3: "The precious Buddha," "the precious Law," and "the
precious Monkhood"; Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha; the whole being
equivalent to Buddhism.]