[Footnote 2:  Tushita is the fourth Devaloka, where all Bodhisattvas are reborn before finally appearing on earth as Buddha.  Life lasts in Tushita four thousand years, but twenty-four hours there are equal to four hundred years on earth.]

[Footnote 3:  Maitreya was a Bodhisattva, the principal one, indeed, of Sakyamuni’s retinue, but is not counted among the ordinary disciples, nor is anything told of his antecedents.  It was in the Tushita heaven that Sakyamuni met him and appointed him as his successor, to appear as Buddha after the lapse of five thousand years.  Maitreya is therefore the expected Messiah of the Buddhists, residing at present in Tushita.]

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 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 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 Sutras 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 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.]