It May Be 250 Cubits In Height, Rich In Elegant Carving And Inlaid Work, Covered Above With Gold And Silver, And Finished Throughout With A Combination Of All The Precious Substances.

Behind the tope there has been built a Hall of Buddha,[15] of the utmost magnificence and beauty, the beams, pillars, venetianed doors, and windows being all overlaid with gold-leaf.

Besides this, the apartments for the monks are imposingly and elegantly decorated, beyond the power of words to express. Of whatever things of highest value and preciousness the kings in the six countries on the east of the (Ts'ung) range of mountains[16] are possessed, they contribute the greater portion (to this monastery), using but a small portion of them themselves.[17]

NOTES

[1] This fondness for music among the Khoteners is mentioned by Hsuan and Ch'wang and others.

[2] Mahayana. It is a later form of the Buddhist doctrine, the second phase of its development corresponding to the state of a Bodhisattva, who, being able to transport himself and all mankind to nirvana, may be compared to a huge vehicle. See Davids on the "Key-note of the 'Great Vehicle,'" Hibbert Lectures, p. 254.

[3] Fa-hien supplies sufficient information of how the common store or funds of the monasteries were provided, farther on in chapters xvi and xxxix, as well as in other passages. As the point is important, I will give here, from Davids' fifth Hibbert Lecture (p. 178), some of the words of the dying Buddha, taken from "The Book of the Great Decease," as illustrating the statement in this text:

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