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

THE TRAVELS OF FA-HIEN 243
CHAPTER XXII
Legends of Buddha's Birth
Less than a yojana to the east from this brought them to the
city of Kapilavastu ; but in it there was neither king nor people.
All was mound and desolation. Of inhabitants there were
only some monks and a score or two of families of the common
people. At the spot where stood the old palace of king Suddhodana
there have been made images of his eldest son and his
mother; and at the places where that son appeared mounted
on a white elephant when he entered his mother's womb, and
where he turned his carriage round on seeing the sick man
after he had gone out of the city by the eastern gate, topes
have been erected. The places were also pointed out where
the rishi A-e inspected the marks of Buddhaship on the body
of the heir-apparent when an infant ; where, when he was in
company with Nanda and others, on the elephant being struck
down and drawn on one side, he tossed it away;^ where he
shot an arrow to the southeast, and it went a distance of thirty
li, then entering the ground and making a spring to come
forth, which men subsequently fashioned into a well from
which travellers might drink ; where, after he had attained to
Wisdom, Buddha returned and saw the king, his father ; where
five hundred Sakyas quitted their families and did reverence to
Upali- while the earth shook and moved in six different ways
where Buddha preached his Law to the devas, and the four
deva kings and others kept the four doors of the hall, so that
even the king, his father, could not enter; where Buddha sat
under a nyagrodha tree, which is still standing, with his face
to the east, and his aunt Maha-prajapati presented him with a
Sanghali ; and where king Vaidurya slew the seed of Sakya,
1 The Lichchhavis of Vaisali had sent * They did this, probably, to show
to the young prince a very fine elephant; their humility, for Upali was only a
but when it was near Kapilavastu, Deva- Sudra by birth, and had been a barber;
datta, out of envy, killed it with a blow so from the first did Buddhism assert
of his fist. Nanda Cnot Ananda, but a its superiority to the conditions of rank
half-brother of Siddhartha), coming and caste. tJpali was distinguished by
that way, saw the carcass lying on the his knowledge of the rules of discipline,
road, and pulled it on one side; but the and praised on that account by Buddha.
Bodhisattva, seeing it there, took it by He was one of the three leaders of the
the tail, and tossed it over seven fences first synod, and the principal compiler
and ditches, when the force of its fall of the original Vinaya books.
made a great ditch.
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