Pao-yun and Sang-king here merely made their offerings to the alms-bowl, and then resolved to go back.  Hwuy-king, Hwuy-tah, and Tao-ching had gone on before the rest to Nagara, to make their offerings at the places of Buddha’s shadow, tooth, and the flat-bone of his skull.  There Hwuy-king fell ill, and Tao-ching remained to look after him, while Hwuy-tah came alone to Purushapura, and saw the others, and then he with Pao-yun and Sang-king took their way back to the land of Ts’in.  Hwuy-king came to his end in the monastery of Buddha’s alms-bowl, and on this Fa-hien went forward alone towards the place of the flat-bone of Buddha’s skull.[6]

[Footnote 1:  The modern Peshawur.]

[Footnote 2:  A first cousin of Sakyamuni, and born at the moment when he attained to Buddhaship.  Under Buddha’s teaching, Ananda became an Arhat, and is famous for his strong and accurate memory; and he played an important part at the first council for the formation of the Buddhist canon.  The friendship between Sakyamuni and Ananda was very close and tender; and it is impossible to read much of what the dying Buddha said to him and of him, as related in the Mahapari-nirvana Sutra, without being moved almost to tears.  Ananda is to reappear on earth as Buddha in another Kalpa.]

[Footnote 3:  On his attaining to nirvana, Sakyamuni became the Buddha, and had no longer to mourn his being within the circle of transmigration, and could rejoice in an absolute freedom from passion, and a perfect purity.  Still he continued to live on for forty-five years, till he attained to pari-nirvana, and had done with all the life of sense and society, and had no more exercise of thought.  He died; but whether he absolutely and entirely ceased to be, in any sense of the word being, it would be difficult to say.  Probably he himself would not and could not have spoken definitely on the point.  So far as our use of language is concerned, apart from any assured faith in and hope of immortality, his pari-nirvana was his death.]

[Footnote 4:  Jambudvipa is one of the four great continents of the universe, representing the inhabited world as fancied by the Buddhists, and so-called because it resembles in shape the leaves of the jambu tree.]

[Footnote 5:  Compare the narrative in Luke’s Gospel, xxi. 1-4.]

[Footnote 6:  This story of Hwuy-king’s death differs from the account given in chapter xiv.—­EDITOR.]

CHAPTER XIII

Festival of Buddha’s Skull-bone

Going west for sixteen yojanas, [1] he came to the city He-lo [2] in the borders of the country of Nagara, where there is the flat-bone of Buddha’s skull, deposited in a vihara [3] adorned all over with gold-leaf and the seven sacred substances.  The king of the country, revering and honoring the bone, and anxious lest it should be stolen away, has selected eight individuals, representing the great families in the