A Record Of Buddhistic Kingdoms - Being An Account By The Chinese Monk Fa-hien Of His Travels In India And Ceylon (a.d. 399-414) By James Legge
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A More Common Name For It Is Tukhara,
And He Observes That The People Were The Indo-Scythians Of The
Greeks,
and the Tartars of Chinese writers, who, driven on by the Huns (180
B.C.), conquered Transoxiana, destroyed the
Bactrian kingdom (126
B.C.), and finally conquered the Punjab, Cashmere, and great part of
India, their greatest king being Kanishak (E. H., p. 152).
[7] Watters, clearly understanding the thought of the author in this
sentence, renders - "his destiny did not extend to a connexion with the
bowl;" but the term "destiny" suggests a controlling or directing
power without. The king thought that his virtue in the past was not
yet sufficient to give him possession of the bowl.
[8] The text is simply "those in white clothes." This may mean "the
laity," or the "upasakas;" but it is better to take the characters in
their common Chinese acceptation, as meaning "commoners," "men who
have no rank." See in Williams' Dictionary under {.}.
[9] I do not wonder that Remusat should give for this - "et s'en
retournent apres." But Fa-hien's use of {.} in the sense of "in the
same way" is uniform throughout the narrative.
[10] Hardy's M. B., p. 183, says: - "The alms-bowl, given by
Mahabrahma, having vanished (about the time that Gotama became
Buddha), each of the four guardian deities brought him an alms-bowl of
emerald, but he did not accept them. They then brought four bowls made
of stone, of the colour of the mung fruit; and when each entreated
that his own bowl might be accepted, Buddha caused them to appear as
if formed into a single bowl, appearing at the upper rim as if placed
one within the other." See the account more correctly given in the
"Buddhist Birth Stories," p. 110.
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