Chinese and Arabian Literature - E. Wilson - The Search For Mecca

THE TRAVELS OF FA-HIEN 221
CHAPTER VII
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 chis-
elled 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^
nor Kan Ying- had reached the spot.
The monks asked Fa-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 Siitras and Books of Discipline. Now the image was set
up- rather more than three hundred years after the Nirvana 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 Sakya, who could have caused the ' Three Precious
* Chang K'een, a minister of the em- ^ Less is known of Kan Ying than of
peror VVoo of Han (b.c. 140-87), is Chang K'een. Being sent in a.d. 88 by
celebrated as the first Chinese who his patron Pan Chao on an embassy to
" pierced the void," and penetrated to the Roman empire, he only got as far
" the regions of the west," correspond- as the Caspian sea, and returned to
ing very much to the present Turkes- China. He extended, however, the
tan. Through him, by B.C. 115, a regu- knowledge of his countrymen with relar
intercourse was established between gard to the western regions.
China and the thirty-six kingdoms or
States of that quarter.