King Hwuy of Leang (from The works of Mencius) & The Hsiao Ching

In fact it can be found in dozens of public archives throughout China. These do not include the less-than-superior editions stored in countless library stacks or other editions possessed by private and overseas collectors. This is a telling example of someone in the field of ancient Chinese studies who was unaware of the importance of bibliographic research.

Bibliographic research is but one part of the textual scholarship arsenal with which we need to arm ourselves in order to overcome any textual issues or problems that may arise with every Chinese text we encounter. As sinologists who wish to understand and explicate myriad aspects of China s rich cultural history, we are first faced with the texts. As numerous as they are ancient, Chinese texts present us with many layers of obstacles which lie between the ancient author s original intent and the message that we read and perceive today.

The simple childhood game of Telephone or Grapevine illustrates well this point. A random sentence is whispered from one participant to the next until the final person in the chain reveals aloud the message that was finally received, only to hear how far it has strayed from the originator s. This is an example of the corruption and distortion inherent in the process of transmission. If this corruption is extrapolated to a text being copied and recopied over the course of hundreds and even thousands of years, among the hands of scholars and scribes who at any point may intentionally or unintentionally alter the text itself based on their misreading, then the need for rigorous textual analysis and reconstruction is obvious.

Herein lies the reason for textual scholarship. Textual scholarship may be seen by some as a very dry aspect of sinological research, but it is essential, and even interesting. We must first take these ancient texts themselves as the object of study and meticulous research before we can safely move on to the philosophical or historical or literary ideas transmitted by them. The scope of texts which lends itself to this discipline is equally broad. This article allots one section to each subdivision of traditional Chinese textual studies: We end with a relatively new subdivision, the study of unearthed texts.

Let us begin with a brief explanation of documentology and follow up with examples to illustrate why it is not only helpful but indispensable to us. While historians, philosophers, and classicists expound on a work s deeper meaning, the documentologist s job, as the name suggests, has at its center the document itself. Anyone who engages in the research of ancient China and its texts must approach each new project first as a documentologist, second as a philosopher, historian, or literary critic.

There are two levels to documentological work. The first level attempts to ascertain the various versions of a text. This level has three main disciplines: The collective goal of these three disciplines is to find the most reliable version of the text we wish to study and use. Once one or more quality versions have been established and located, we then engage in a critical analysis of the written content of the text to obtain a correct understanding of what we are reading.

This, too, is work that must be done prior to any discussion of the philosophy which we perceive the words to carry. This second level also comprises three disciplines: Taken together, these fields constitute philology. Sometimes referred to as historical linguistics, philology observes the properties and meanings of words or for our purposes, characters especially as they develop throughout history. Adopting a historical and text-critical approach to all the works we use is the best way to ensure that we can maneuver past these linguistic obstacles, scribal errors, and sometimes misleading commentaries that have accrued layer upon layer and even become canonized, and finally arrive at a faithful rendering and accurate reading of the text.

However mysterious and impenetrable the Chinese jungle may have appeared to the early missionaries, its underbrush has been somewhat cleared by generations of devoted scholars, and pathways have been opened here and there. But these ways are nothing else than methods, and those that serve the translator best are the methods of philology. Areas of specialty include pre-qin and Han Dynasty Confucian classics and philosophy, Western sinology. Knowledge in these fields, and knowing how to answer questions and resolve problems in these fields, will allow us to understand the author s words and the intention with which they were written some hundreds and even thousands of years ago.

After we have done sufficient work on both of these levels of the text we are researching, we can then speak of its ideas, depth, beauty, and shortcomings with confidence and authority. There is no need to choose between meticulous textual research and the more humanitarian goals of historical and cultural understanding. Rather they are, or at least should be, collateral. Textual scholarship is the necessary preparatory work that needs to be done at the beginning of all sinological endeavors. This is because the successful application of the methods of either the sociologists or historians is predicated, at least on one level, on the skillful handling of texts.

The question is, of course, not a matter of superiority of one discipline over another but of timing and appropriateness to the task at hand. To avoid a mistake similar to that of our unfortunate scholar from the introductory anecdote, who mistook a common book for the rediscovery of a lost book, we must first reach for the catalogues. Put together we can see the usefulness of mulu. Bibliographies tell us what books there are for our topic of study, and how useful they might be to us.

This list of books can include what books have ever existed, and of those, which have been lost and which are still fully or partially extant. Bibliographies are often selective about the type of information they provide, and thus themselves can be divided into different categories.

For example, annotated bibliographies supply a synopsis of a work s content, sometimes along with the compiler s subjective appraisal of its literary merit nese Bamboos, in Li Tien-yi, ed. Far Eastern Publications, , p David B. Honey, Incense at the Alter: American Oriental Society, , p While one can make a distinction between catalogues and bibliographies based on the amount or detail of information they provide, we will be using the terms relatively interchangeably.

Descriptive bibliographies often also remark on an edition s provenance and filiation, that is to say, its origin and relationship to earlier versions upon which it has been reproduced. There are numerous bibliographies from China s long history, so we shall limit our discussion to a few of the most influential and, more importantly, useful ones.

We can start by searching a specialized classics catalogue. The Jing Yi Kao lists a total of more than 8, works by more than 4, authors. It also reproduces the original prefaces and postfaces to each book as they have accrued and appeared in all the historical editions, in order to provide us with an idea of the work s content and value. It is a photocopy print of a Qing Dynasty woodblock version, with small, dense characters and unpunctuated text, making it somewhat unwelcoming to many readers. There is also additional commentary to the entries based on recent research.

His work does not give us the texts themselves. The other limitation to the Jing Yi Kao is that since Zhu Yi Zun lived in the very early part of the Qing Dynasty, the books in his catalogue are restricted to pre- and early Qing. Needless to say many valuable commentaries to the classics have been written since then.

To solve this problem, and at the same time solve the first problem of knowing only the book we want without having the book itself, we can search directly some well known classic themed congshu. This is a collection of Qing Dynasty studies on the classics from mostly highly reputed Qing Dynasty scholars. This work, Huang Qing Jing Jie, is organized by author and reproduces the works in their entirety, and in their Qing Dynasty, woodblock print original form.

If we want to know of more Qing Dynasty classic studies which are not limited to pre-ruan Yuan times, there are two follow-up compilations to the original Jing Jie. Thematically speaking, some congshu are miscellaneous in content while others are limited to one subject, e. It is safe to say that a majority of all the works throughout China s history that have been successfully saved and passed down to today, owe their survival to having been collected in one congshu or another. The studies on the classics from these few collections alone would give us more than ample material to produce a comprehensive, well-informed study on our own chosen topic, and plenty of authoritative, textual evidence to buttress our claims.

When we decide to make a new critical interpretation of Lao Zi or translation of the Dao De Jing, for example, we need to be aware of the different versions already in existence, their differences a tricky question for the Dao De Jing in particular , and their relative usefulness to us. While area-specific bibliographies, such as the ones mentioned above, are usually the most helpful, there are many comprehensive catalogues as well. They can be frequently used as our fall back catalogues if we do not know of or have access to a specialized one.

First, it is by no means exhaustive. In fact, the compiler was highly selective, choosing to include only well-known books with extant, superior editions. This could also be considered a strong point of the book. Second, it is devoid of any annotation in the individual entries.

It was originally intended to be a handbook for elementary students to study and probably memorize, and thus it gives no information on the author it usually provides the author s name or content of the book. It does however provide basic information on a superior edition of each of the carefully selected entries. Fortunately for us, this catalogue has undergone the redaction and supplementary work of later scholars. These new and improved versions of Shumu Dawen are much more helpful to us.

The original compilation was edited and 5 This marks the first time in China s academic history that congshu was delineated as its own individual bibliographic category. While he provides slightly more detailed information on the extant versions of many of the books listed, the two main shortcomings of the original still remain. The two additions of this book which are most beneficial to us are its very detailed bibliographic research and its annotative descriptions. Sun s book tells us in which specific modern collections we can find each book, using updated congshu catalogues as opposed to the difficult-to-locate Qing Dynasty wood block versions given by Zhang and Fan.

Furthermore, his supplementary annotation offers information on the author, content, and value of the entry. All of this information is extremely valuable in our search for material for our own research. So armed with these two, the Siku Quanshu Zongmu and the Siku Quanshu, we can search for and locate works under certain topic headings also the four brach system, with detailed subdivisions , read the detailed description to learn about the author, the book s history, content, and editions, and then if so desired access the book itself for our study.

Dai Yuan Li was a famous doctor in the early part of the Ming Dynasty. He took a trip to Nanjing where he happened to pass by a local clinic. He noticed that it was full of patients waiting to see the local doctor inside, and he concluded that this must be quite an excellent doctor.

Dai decided to observe the traffic in and out of this clinic for a few days. One day, as a patient was leaving the clinic, the local doctor rushed outside after him, for he had apparently forgotten to give the patient the full instructions on how to prepare the herbal medicine that he had prescribed. The doctor was very clear in his instruction: Do not forget to put a piece of tin in the broth when cooking the medicine.

Upon hearing this, Dai was taken aback at such an odd formula, and proceeded to inquire to the local doctor why this was necessary. The local doctor said that this was an old and true formula. Still skeptic, Dai requested to see the book of prescriptions he was using. Upon looking at the text, Dai realized where the mistake occurred. For anyone who has taken Chinese medicine, we know that sugar is an ingredient quite necessary to offset the bitterness!

Some scribe or woodblock engraver had accidentally replaced sugar with tin. The Nanjing doctor had not taken the time to procure a reliable book of medicine, instead blindly following the one copy he had on hand, to the detriment of his patients. Thankfully, in questions of pure scholarship, textual discrepancies are not usually a matter of life and death, but they are nonetheless important to our issues at hand.

After searching through the catalogues discussed above, we have found the names of a few books that we think might be useful to our personal project. Now we need to know what different versions there are of these books and discern which are relatively accurate and which are incomplete or full of errata.

Indeed, a good descriptive catalogue will provide this information for each entry. There can be much overlap between our search for titles and our search for their respective editions. Many good catalogues, including some of those mentioned above, are both annotative and descriptive in nature. It is usually the private scholar, collector, or book seller who can give us the most helpful information when it comes to the description of editions. Note that these catalogues are comprehensive, not specialized. That is to say, these catalogues contain books in all the categories of classics, history, philosophy, and belles-lettres.

There is an expression in the field of Chinese textual scholarship: Roughly it means to enumerate the similarities and differences between things, and then determine their respective veracity and value. This can be applied to many fields and activities. In terms of searching for materials that we intend on using for our personal project, this should be our first goal, our first step. It can be achieved by using the two kinds of reference books and methods described above. We use catalogues and bibliographies, that is, lists of books, or even better, annotated bibliographies, to find out what different books there are out there related to our topic of interest.

These could be in the form of the book itself or direct commentary on it or general discussions on pertinent topics. Then we use studies of specific versions of these books, descriptive bibliographies, to find out which versions have been collated and corrected by savants, which are still full of mistakes or which have gained new errors though sloppy engraving and poor collation , which are printed fully and clearly, which are incomplete and unclear, and which editions are copies or derivatives of other editions and thus not worth seeking out.

In a word, they tell us which versions we should base our work on and which should we avoid. Hence regardless of what our ultimate goal is regarding the text we study, whether it is historical investigation, philosophical analysis, aesthetic appreciation, or translation, we must first ensure that we are working with the proper tools and best material available. This is another important example of how we can reap the benefits of the arduous work done by generations, indeed centuries, of scholars before us.

Often what determines whether a certain text contains many errors or not is precisely whether it has been emended by later scholars. Considering that so many of the texts we read and rely upon to engage in authoritative and polemic discussion are thousands of years old, we should not hold out hope that the particular one we are studying has been copied from scribe to scribe, transmitted from teacher to student over countless generations completely intact and with no textual changes, accidental or otherwise.

The Qing Dynasty, especially early to middle, was a time when the academic and social atmosphere was hostile to open philosophical discussion, leaving most academics too timid to engage in discussions of the political philosophy or morality stemming from the ancient classics and philosophical texts. As a result, the safe disciplines within textual scholarship became the stomping grounds for academics to exercise their intellects, and these fields flourished to new heights. They would make notes pointing out the mistakes in texts and use the various editions, as well as their extensive knowledge in paleography discussed below , to correct each other.

The end result would be notes on the errata and their respective corrections. This process itself is yet another example of lie yi tong, duan shi fei. They obtain different versions of one work and put them side by side for a detailed comparison. They then use their knowledge of ancient Chinese history, philosophy, and most of all characters, to decide, in any given discrepancy, which version of a text if any is correct and which are erroneous. In this golden age of textual criticism, the Qing Dynasty, some scholars were most well known for their achievements in textual collation and their works are still helpful to us today.

Both Lu and Gu meticulously collated and emended texts from all of the four branches of Chinese literature. While these scholars were known first and foremost as book collectors who excelled in textual collation because of their knowledge of paleography in the broad sense , there were other scholars who were known primarily for their outstanding paleography, and whose literary contribution includes collation. While not all of their emendations are conclusive or even necessarily correct, they provide the modern student of ancient Chinese with very insightful interpretations from erudite scholars of the past.

In its broad sense, it encompasses all aspects of the study of ancient characters, or more accurately, all aspects of the character itself: As these three fields developed and deepened, each became its own discipline. We need a basic understanding of Chinese paleography for two reasons. First, when a character or characters are written wrong, we can recognize this mistake and possibly figure out how to rectify it.

This is one of the tasks of the collators explored above. Second, when the text is written correctly, we need to be able to read and understand it, correctly. Xu was a Han Dynasty paleographer and classicist of the old text camp.

Harvard Asia Quarterly - PDF

Shuo Wen was the first Chinese dictionary to analyze characters and provide definitions based on their component parts, and the first one to arrange the characters into groups based on common radicals. Much important commentary and annotation were done to Shuo Wen in the Qing Dynasty, and this series of books is very helpful to us in trying to understand the meaning and usage of words from Han times and before. This works analyzes each character on all three levels, and is thus the most comprehensive. Let us look at an example of the importance of being familiar with the shape or structure of ancient characters.

Xu and Zhang rehearse explanations set forth by previous scholars before offering their own. One of these previous scholars, a Mr. The two characters are nearly identical, being separated by only one stroke, thus a seemingly easy transcription error to make. Xu and Zhang recognized this and proceeded to gather pictorial evidence of these characters both from Shuo Wen and from unearthed material of the appropriate time period.

Through a direct comparison of their respective shapes, the reader can easily see that these two characters lacked any visual or structural similarity, thus the purported scribal error does not seem possible, and Mr. Wu s subsequent explanation is no longer feasible. But if we can become even mildly versed in it, it will open up many more and much deeper avenues to understanding ancient Chinese. Himself an expert in xiao xue as well as history and philosophy, he once said of the task of reading ancient Chinese texts: When one reads the Nine Classics, one must start by analyzing the characters; to analyze the characters, one must first know their sounds.

In regard to the Hundred Philosophers, it is no different. In this instance of Yu Yue s phonetic exegesis, it would seem that we need a prior familiarity with ancient pronunciation so that we could recognize when two characters might share a phonetic propinquity. It would be best if we did have a certain amount of familiarity, which can certainly be acquired with any of the numerous modern publications on ancient phonetics. Short of that, we at least need to be able to recognize conventions and constructions in exegetical writing that would enable us to distinguish when commentators are noting the meaning of a word, and when they are noting its sound.

Zheng s commentary is straight forward: Lu s notation, on the other hand, is informing us of this character s specific pronunciation. When pronounced sha1, in modern Mandarin, it means to kill. But when it represents a different meaning, its pronunciation changes.

To put it another way, if we are only told that the pronunciation is different from the norm, that signifies a change in meaning. That is what Lu is pointing out to us. In modern Mandarin, it would be pronounced shai4, and means decrease, difference, or here, gradation. When we see these two types of notation from these two scholars appearing adjacent to each other as they do in this passage, it is not hard for us to put the pieces together in our mind and connect the meaning with the pronunciation.

Let us take an example from Mencius: Xu believed strongly in the importance of agriculture in daily life. Chen Xiang reiterated to Mencius something that Xu Xing had told him earlier, that the Duke of Teng was a wise ruler, but was still not enlightened in terms of The Way. Because the Duke of Teng did not do farm work alongside the commoners.

Mencius, using a very Socratic method of question and answer, proceeds to demonstrate the flaw of this argument, and explains the rationale behind society s division of labor. We cannot expect anyone to be a full-time farmer and a craftsman and administrative leader at the same time. You do one job and buy or trade for everything else you need. For Zhao Qi to add on this idea of exhaustion seems faithful if not absolutely necessary to Mencius point; this idea is so critical, in fact, that it seems strange that it would not be mentioned in the original text.

Instead, the original text seems simply to end by saying to the path. So we are left with two questions. Certainly not the morning dew! To be robust means that the muscles and flesh are thick, and one s bones can not be seen; to be skinny or emaciated. Being emaciated is necessarily being in a state of lei with bones visible , therefore lei is another name for emaciated.

The fields are barren and the homes are in disrepair. The nobles and commoners are exhausted and emaciated. We can see these commentaries slowly leading us back to our original line in Mencius. The example he gives as evidence is precisely the line from Mencius that we started with. Thus our exegetical scavenger hunt has led us full circle.

This borrowing is permissible since these two characters clearly have the same pronunciation. This is precisely what the preeminent Qing Dynasty scholar Dai Zhen meant when he said, At the heart of the classics is the Dao. What clarifies the Dao are the words. What constitutes the words are the individual characters. That is to say, common editions of Mencius, as opposed to superior editions, write out Zhao s commentary as saying leading everyone on the path to emaciation. This is the version that we encountered. Studying unearthed texts allows us to do just that.

This field encompasses a range of different media, such as stele and wall inscriptions, oracle bones, bronze vessel and weapon inscriptions, and excavated manuscripts in the form of wood and bamboo strips, silk, and paper scrolls. Using excavated material for textual issues adds another layer of credence to one s argument. Unearthed texts can be works that have long since been lost to the academic world, or they can be ancient versions of our redacted, highly modified received texts.

Scholars have long understood the importance of comparing received texts those that have been passed down through the generations with unearthed texts. Let us look at an example to see how this research can aid us in our projects. In Lao Zi Chapter 31 there is the famous but troublesome passage: There has been much dispute over what exactly this line means and how it should be corrected. As it is in this version, we can render it loosely as Those people who cherish weapons and warfare are unpropitious instruments. The problem is people should not be categorized as inanimate objects such as instruments.

Changing it thusly, this sentence would then roughly mean Weapons are instruments of ill-fortune. More specifically, it would be a person who yields and even celebrates weapons and warfare. If we take it out, 15 Though there have been a few exceptions, such as when Confucius was intentionally employing the use of metaphor to describe one of his students: People who celebrate weapons and warfare are not auspicious.

This, too, makes sense. Both Wang and Lu have relatively convincing textual reasoning to support their respective claims, but neither have direct or indirect textual evidence. One was written pre-han Dynasty, the other was written in the early Han Dynasty. They represent two separate lines of transmission of the Lao Zi. From this we can see that this line was in fact referring to weapons themselves as being inauspicious instruments, not people. Conclusion China s long, unbroken written history dating back more than three thousand years to the oracle bones of the Shang Dynasty, has bequeathed to us a corpus of texts so massive that it often feels like a gift and a curse.

These texts need to be sifted through, analyzed, collated, and redacted, and all this before we can begin to mine them for the valuable historical, cultural, and philosophical massages they carry. The sheer amount can seem insurmountable, and the layers of accrued commentary and textual corruption, impenetrable. Fortunately for us, many of these books themselves were written and compiled specifically to help us facilely maneuver through this jungle. Much more than command of classical Chinese is required to make a scholar. Among the most important tools are bibliography, both in traditional sources and in modern secondary studies, and a methodical, scientific approach.

But even the helpful field of textual research possesses its own corpus of works with which we need to familiarize ourselves. Many of the more important ones have been briefly introduced in this paper. For the most part all are in Chinese. Harvard University Press, The methods introduced in this essay are by no means new, nor are they meant to be monopolized by the lonely textual scholar who stands outside of larger, philosophical debates.

They have, however, become unpopular and fallen into a state of relative disuse. Textual research has, in a large part, lamentably become the sole domain of textual researchers. As a major or specialty in institutions of higher learning, it is usually located in departments set up specifically for just such research.

To be an optimist, we could say that the existence of such departments provides textual research with its own abode to establish itself and flourish. But I believe, however, that such institutional divisions are also placing it in opposition to its corresponding fields, namely the departments of history, literature, and philosophy. This was not always the case, in the east or the west. For most of China s history, the outstanding achievements in all of those above-mentioned fields were attained in conjunction with textual scholarship.

Feng You Lan and Hu Shi are both scholars of the first half of the twentieth century who are best known for their studies on the history of Chinese philosophy. Their grasp of the metaphysical aspect of Chinese thought allowed them penetrating insight into the essence and evolution of Chinese philosophy. Their work, however, was predicated on an equally expert grasp of documentology. We can safely say that they were only able to penetrate so deeply into Chinese thought precisely because they knew what texts to read and how to read them.

They knew how to use bibliographies, compare editions, collate texts, and analyze ancient characters, all to the benefit of their philosophical musings. Such skills are rarely taught in philosophy or history departments today. As we have mentioned above, textual research and the more abstract humanitarian studies of history, philosophy, and literature should be seen in processional terms they are all parts of one long research process.

Textual investigation is the preliminary work that must be done to lay a solid foundation for the thought oriented work to follow. When one skips over the preliminary work and dives right into a philosophical discussion, such a work, while it may attain temporary popularity, will eventually be replaced by a new, more fashionable philosophical explanation.

And so on and so forth. The philosophical and literary commentaries with more permanence and universality are the ones grounded in the sometimes dry, but ultimately rewarding and scientific methods of textual scholarship. He, too, is best known for his accomplishments in such fields, with textcritical editions of many Confucian classics as well as linguistic and philological exegeses.

This short monograph is a trenchant exposition of the key philosophical terms and concepts found in the Mencius. There were many scholars before him who attempted such a discourse, and many after, but the reason why this work still stands above the rest in the great corpus of material aimed at elucidating Mencius, is that Dai s discussion of philosophy is rooted in his background as a textual scholar. His academic background is in archeology and paleography.

As such, his research has always been a fact-based approach to China s history and culture, not a metaphysical one. He finds resolution to many of the obscure passages by sifting through the old commentaries, carefully comparing variant texts, and utilizing his knowledge of unearthed documents and ancient inscriptions. He rarely invokes any Western -isms to infuse Confucius thought with philosophical leanings that were not originally there. A Philosophical Translation references the bamboo strip fragments of the Analects unearthed at Ding Zhou in an attempt to understand Confucius words and deeds as they were recorded back then, as opposed to how we want to interpret them today.

Credence is indeed what we strive for in our argumentation and writings. Such credence stems from a solid grasp of the facts. In sinological studies, the texts are the facts; our subjective interpretation of them is the argumentation. What documentology aims to do is to help us close the gap, to the best of our abilities, between the text itself and our subjective reading of it. This is the inescapable importance of textual studies. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

China—History—Taiping Rebellion, ——Religious aspects. Although the cover is dated , the use of the term Qinding in the title is documented only for the years following Courtesy of the British Library. I would like to acknowledge those contributions here.

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Toward the end of my time there, I was asked to teach a class on the relationship of Christianity to Chinese culture, and I referred to the Taiping movement to help illustrate some of the abiding issues concerning that relationship. For the few years I was living in Taiwan, a number of individuals and groups aided the development of my thinking about these issues.

Several individuals outside of these churches were instrumental in developing and testing my thinking about Taiping and Chinese Christianity, including Rev. A number of missionary friends contributed to my thinking about these issues and helped me, too, with more practical matters, and they include Dave and Linda Ludwig, Dennis and Claudia Brice, and Phil and Anne Towner. Cynthia Brokaw during a post-baccalaureate year at the University of Oregon in the spring of It was largely due to her recommendation ix x Acknowledgments that I began graduate study the following year at the University of Washington, where I had the good fortune to study under Dr.

In his Modern China graduate seminar, I completed a paper on the Taiping that became the nucleus of my dissertation. From the start, Dr. Guy encouraged my study of the Taiping, believing that what I was discovering about the Taiping was something unique and important. Throughout my years at the UW, he set high standards for me and the rest of his students, and at the same time worked tirelessly to enable us to meet his standards.

A better teacher, I have not had. I am also thankful to Dr. She pointed out the connection between the war against images idols and the struggle against monarchy in the Reformation, which proved to be a pivotal point in my understanding of the political motivations of the Taiping movement. When the time came for me to undertake research for my dissertation, several individuals and institutions contributed to its successful completion.

During the several months of my work in China, Professor Mao Jiaqi of Nanjing University graciously introduced me to various experts on the Taiping movement. He recommended me to Dr. Martha Smalley, I was able to survey years of missionary journals in a short two-week period. For my time in China, funding for research leading to this publication was provided by the Research Enablement Program, a grant program for mission scholarship supported by the Pew Charitable Trusts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and administered by the Overseas Ministries Study Center, Acknowledgments New Haven, Connecticut.

Mark Mir of the institute acquainted me with several reference works for the study of early Chinese Catholicism. Here in Malibu, Dr. Darlene Rivas, and Dr. Glenn Webb have always been supportive of my work. Glenn Webb especially has shouldered the heavy administrative burden of the Asian Studies program during these years in order to give me the time I needed to work on the manuscript. Dan Bays, now of Calvin College, commented on an earlier form of the manuscript and has been an encouraging voice along the way. The University of Washington Press has done a wonderful work, especially in the person of Lorri Hagman.

Tammy Ditmore did a splendid job creating the index. One outside reader in particular, whose identity I still do not know, was particularly helpful in his or her comments. Because of the comments and criticisms of Dr. Dan Bays, and this anonymous reviewer, the manuscript is all the stronger.

I am grateful that they took my work so seriously and were so generous in the time they gave to the task. Finally, I must thank my wife, Mei-na, and my son, John Patrick, for sustaining me through the long and sometimes discouraging process of researching and writing this manuscript: Over the thirteen-year course of the insurrection, from to , twenty million people lost their lives, and Qing imperial and Taiping rebel armies fought in and over almost every province of the Chinese empire.

Scholars have assembled a list of factors to explain why the Taiping rebels failed in their immediate bid to topple the emperor. Many have placed the alien character of the Taiping faith at the top of the list. Inspired by Christian teachings, the core of the Taiping creed focused on the belief that Shangdi Sovereign on High , the high god of classical China, had chosen the Taiping leader, Hong Xiuquan — , to establish his Heavenly Kingdom on earth.

Does admitting that this faith was new and that it was inspired by Christianity oblige us at the same time to declare that it was alien? And who are we saying found it alien? The Taiping rebel creed may have repelled certain groups, particularly those that wielded power in the established system, such as the gentry. A rebellion, like a revolution, is not a dinner party, after all. But the Taiping faith did not repel the common people.

In this study, I am interested in understanding what in the Taiping creed initially appealed to the common people. How was the Taiping movement able to generate more interest, recruit more followers, and sponsor more radical social changes than even the earlier native White Lotus and Eight Trigram sectarian rebellions? The Taiping faith, albeit kindled by AngloAmerican Protestantism, developed into a dynamic new Chinese religion, one whose conception of the title and position of the sovereign deity challenged the legitimacy of the imperial order.

Hong Xiuquan presented this new religion,Taiping Christianity, as a revival and a restoration of the ancient classical faith in Shangdi. This was the substance of the Taiping appeal. In accordance with their faith in Shangdi, the Taiping rebels denounced the divine pretensions of the imperial title Huangdi. Huangdi is the term that the ruler of the Qin dynasty — b. Previous rebellions had declared their contemporary dynasties corrupt and therefore in need of renewal; the Taiping, by contrast, declared the longstanding imperial order blasphemous and in need of replacement.

In the Taiping movement and religion we witness a new development in Chinese history: The Taiping movement, then, was not based on the traditional appeal of a sectarian rebellion. On the contrary, the Taiping leaders did not see themselves as sectarians or rebels. They related their faith more to the native Chinese classical religious tradition than to popular forms of sectarianism.

Restoration of the classical political order was important to the Taiping mission, but restoration of the classical religious order drove the movement. Religion was at the heart of the Taiping movement, and Taiping culture was the physical expression of these religious beliefs. This intended religious transformation would express itself in every dimension of Taiping cultural life: The Taiping religious vision antedated the call to political rebellion. It was the worship of a new god that demanded the establishment of a new king, not vice versa. One cannot deny the intention of the Taiping to stage a political rebellion.

Yet, they did so because this political aim served the larger religious goals of the movement. This reluctance is due in part to a reaction against the exuberance of some nineteenth-century missionary observers, who saw in the initial stages of the movement the promise of the conversion of the whole of China to Anglo-American Protestantism. As a result, little scholarship to this point has acknowledged Taiping Christianity as both a dynamic new Chinese religion seeking to identify with classical tradition and as an authentic expression of Christianity.

Two of the earliest twentieth-century scholars who dealt with Taiping religion at length were Vincent Shih and Eugene Boardman. In his The Taiping Ideology: It is a statement that seems counterintuitive to the manner in which people normally come to believe in a faith: They were seeking some positive outlook that would enable them to break the hold of the orthodox ideology upon the minds of the people.

Even for non-Marxists, the Taiping religion was an ideology of revolution and a tool of the rebels. In this line of interpretation, the core of the movement was a political ideology and not a religion, and political and religious motivations were seen to be mutually exclusive. When Shih does address religion, he assigns it an instrumental role only.

He does not acknowledge that the Taiping took their religion seriously. He tends, however, to treat Taiping Christianity as some cheap, foreign copy of the real thing. That real thing would be Anglo-American Protestantism, the same standard by which nineteenth-century Protestant missionaries judged the Taiping religion.

Boardman would have commended the man the nineteenth-century missionaries hoped would serve as a model of Christianity for the Taiping, Hong Rengan, the Shield King and former London Missionary Society evangelist. Boardman does not appreciate that distinctiveness. He seems incognizant to the possibility that in some respects Taiping Christians could be more faithful to other, more universal values, such as apostolic Christian standards, than their European cousins.

Hong and his followers, for example, exposed European Christian cultural assumptions concerning capitalist economic ideas and also opposed the Enlightenment principle of the 7 8 Introduction division between secular and sacred realms. A study of the Taiping and their religion that serves as a bridge between the scholarship of the previous generation and that of our own is P.

Bohr takes Taiping religion seriously and sees the impetus to revolt as arising out of the same eschatological impulse that provoked revolts among messianic groups in Europe and America. He highlights this integral aspect of Taiping religion, one that was also an important element of Chinese popular religion, but fails to address the even more important restoration of the worship of Shangdi.

Indeed, he does not even discuss the distinctive Taiping doctrine of God, which was integral to the restorationist impulse. Whereas the earlier generation of scholars working on Taiping religion emphasized the Christian character of the Taiping, even while they regarded the rebels as imitation Protestants, more recent scholarship has tended to diminish and, in some cases, dismiss the Christian aspect altogether. These scholars have emphasized the connections between the Taiping religion and its local, popular, and indigenous religious contexts.

Rudolf Wagner in his Reenacting the Heavenly Vision: By contrast, in Resistance, Chaos and Control in China: While the incorporation of local religious elements might help explain how the Taiping were able to initially attract some followers, how could local religion alone have sustained the rebellion as the Taiping moved away from these peripheral areas? How could a religion primarily constituted of elements from Guangxi local culture attract men and women from areas such as Hunan and Hubei?

Of all the popular religious elements, Weller especially highlights the role of spirit possession. Several of the documents produced by the Taiping and translated by Franz Michael in his collection of source materials testify to the impact of spirit possession on the movement. The Political Impact of the Demonological Paradigm. These three scholars are correct in pointing out various local, popular religious elements within Taiping religion, but I want to comment on some of the conclusions that they draw from their work. First, Weller and ter Haar seem to believe that the presence of popular religious elements in Taiping religion argues against its Christian character.

Moreover, the popular religious elements on which these scholars focused—demonological symbols, visions, and spirit possession—are not necessarily alien to the Christian message, and are present in the gospels of the New Testament. While these phenomena may not have been a prom- Introduction inent part of Anglo-American Protestantism, Taiping practices did not contradict the teachings of early Christianity. The most problematic aspect of this approach to Taiping religion, especially as it is represented in Weller and ter Haar, is its distortion of the character of the movement.

Chinese and Western observers of the time most commented on the distinctively Christian aspects of the rebel religion. Taiping soldiers were expected to memorize the Ten Commandments, to attend worship services where they prayed to Shangdi as the Heavenly Father and sang their version of the traditional Christian doxology, and to attack and destroy religious statuary regarded as idolatrous.

All of these elements illustrate the uniquely Christian character of the movement. In my view, these scholars have emphasized what is marginal and have marginalized what should be emphasized. Yet the White Lotus and especially the Eight Trigram rebellions, to name two of the most prominent, can be characterized only as local and short-lived. Neither of these movements demonstrated the kind of creative impulse and constructive energy that the Taiping displayed.

These same studies, however, virtually ignore what the Taiping themselves deemed the most important element of their movement: These same texts also dominate lists of royally sanctioned works, lists that were published regularly by the Taiping. If the Taiping permitted only these explicitly Christian texts to be published, should we not likewise consider these texts as most authoritative for understanding the character of the movement?

These same texts and publications are commented on by both foreign and Chinese observer alike, and the Christian aspect of the movement accounts for the captivation of early Western observers of the Taiping. Missionaries and diplomats expected the presence of popular religious elements in a Chinese movement such as the Taiping, but where, they wanted to know, did these Christian elements come from, and how was it that they played such a prominent role? But in many ways he tends to view the Christianity of the Taiping as a copy of modern Protestantism.

Spence, in a fashion similar to Bohr, stresses the apocalyptic elements of the Taiping faith. He makes use of the accounts discovered by Wang Qingcheng and various Christian publications of the Taiping. Spence has written a vivid and moving narrative account, with a dramatic focus on the person of Hong Xiuquan. These works leave room for a study such as mine, which seeks to construct a wider religious and ideological context for the Taiping and to explore some of these same texts with an eye to their challenge to the imperial system.

An earlier generation treated Taiping Christianity as a warmed-over Protestantism; the current generation tends to dismiss the Christian dimension of Taiping religion alto- Introduction gether. Taiping religion was something new: These elements all played a part in the creation of Taiping Christianity, but the creation transcended the sum total of the parts. The Jesuits applied this idea to the traditional paradigm of the Three Teachings that is, Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism; during the Ming dynasty [—] especially, there was an attempt, encouraged by such emperors as Ming Taizu, to create a more syncretic religious culture.

The Catholic missionaries spoke of Christianity as completing Confucianism— providing the Confucian school a religious basis rooted in the classical religion—and displacing Buddhism. In this sense, then, Ricci was able to identify with Chinese culture. Yet his religion does not ultimately correspond with the traditional cultural paradigm.

Catholicism, however, corresponded with the Three Teachings well enough that it did not challenge the tra- Introduction ditional imperial order; it did not require any kind of radical paradigm shift. The Heavenly Lord Sect would instead in be designated a Chinese heterodox sect, and this created problems—and opportunities—of another kind.

The arrival of Protestant missionaries in China at the beginning of the nineteenth century—well over two hundred years after Catholic missionaries had arrived in China and almost a hundred years since Catholicism was declared a heterodox sect—comprises the second chapter of this book. Protestants also attempted to identify with the classical religion and were more successful in doing so at one especially critical point: But the Protestants still were unable to break through the imperial religious order and connect with Chinese culture and society in any new and novel fashion.

It was Hong Xiuquan, whose imaginative mind adopted the central idea of identifying with the classical religion, who created a new paradigm for Chinese thought and culture. This is the subject of chapter 3 of my study. Not only was Hong not bound by the constraints imposed on Ricci, but he was positively enabled by the circumstances in which he found himself. Hong introduced a paradigm to replace that of the Three Teachings: Hong presented his Christian-inspired creed as an alternative to Confucianism, not a completion of it. Hong opposed the imperial system, which the Confucians supported, as inimical to the classical religion.

This examination of the Taiping religious creed looks at three of the central tenets of the faith and explores the Taiping interpretation of these concepts. A wide range of Taiping documents, together with missionary literature, including some of the earliest Chinese-language Protestant Bibles and catechisms, provides an extensive and in-depth analysis of Taiping beliefs.

Complementing this study of the Taiping creed, chapter 4 examines the practice of the creed, focusing especially on the actions of iconoclasm and desacralization in Taiping-occupied China. These actions were aimed at destroying the imperial institution and image. In describing the depth and breadth of the impact of Taiping religious practice, this analysis relies mostly on accounts of Qing and Western observers. On the one hand, the gentry characterized the Taiping Rebellion as an ordinary sectarian rebellion, thereby salvaging the traditional way of conceptualizing Chinese political thought and covering up how the Taiping had exposed the imperial order as antagonistic to the classical order.

On the other hand, the gentry, by identifying the Taiping rebels with Catholicism, stigmatized Chinese Catholicism as a perverse and heterodox doctrine. This part of the study examines a gentry-produced anti-Catholic publication that documents this campaign. This interpretation of the Taiping movement seeks to understand the Taiping religion not primarily in the context of a traditional peasant rebel- Introduction lion or as a new sect competing with the established teachings of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism. Beyond establishing the fundamentally Christian character of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, this study of the Taiping Christian movement is important for at least two reasons.

For if the emperor was the religious symbol that the Taiping depicted, removing him did not just signal a mundane political change, a mere shifting of chairs on the political dais, but a deep and transforming ideological revolution as well. Second, this examination of the Taiping experience helps us make sense of religious changes that are occurring in China today. These changes are especially evident in the countryside, where the revival of traditional religions and the birth of new faiths is taking place, including the rise of a Chinese Christianity.

My hope is that a more nuanced perspective can be considered, one that acknowledges a certain divergence between Roman Catholic, American Southern Baptist, or even Russian Orthodox cultures and Chinese culture, but that leaves room for the development of a dynamic new culture created by religious movements such as Taiping Christianity. In this book, I make a case for this new Chinese Christianity and the fundamentally Christian nature of the whole Taiping movement.

Incongruous as it may seem, Ricci presented Christianity as a way for the Chinese to return to their ancient faith. However, by choosing to present Christianity as a complementary aspect of the classical religion and not as some new, foreign religion, Ricci failed to challenge the dominant paradigm of the Three Teachings Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism. If the language of Buddhism could so easily be used to translate these doctrines and rituals, how did Catholicism distinguish itself from the Indian religion? Thus, the Jesuit strategy in targeting the Confucian elite can be said to have ultimately failed.

Nevertheless, contrary to how several studies of Christianity in China have portrayed the events, the history of early Chinese Christianity did not end with the proscription of the faith in The era of the imperial proscription was as important to the development of Chinese Christianity as was the era of Matteo Ricci and the early Jesuits. For it was during these years of persecution following the imperial decree that Chinese Catholicism developed into what, to all appearances, can be called an indigenous Chinese sect: By the time of the Opium War and the treaties concluding that war, the Heavenly Lord sect had become indistinguishable in some of its language and in several of its rituals and practices from other ordinary Chinese sects.

The missionaries attempted to draw a distinction between themselves and Buddhist sectarians especially in their beliefs and doctrines. They still attempted, however, to associate these doctrines with the classical religion even while they used Buddhist terminology to articulate these beliefs. Ricci and the early Jesuits sought to create a Chinese Christianity.

Their most notable contribution to the development of a Chinese Christianity was the translation of Christian apologetic literature, doctrinal teaching, and liturgy into Chinese. The Jesuits were able to translate into authentic Chinese the most fundamental Christian concepts, save two of the most important, the terms for God and Christ. The following discussion of names, terms, and titles used in the translation of Christianity serves as an important introduction to the issues faced by the Jesuits and also lays the foundation for examining these same issues when they are later addressed by Protestant missionaries and the Taiping.

This was the most controversial question in the translation process. Pope Clement XI in ruled out the use of the term Shangdi in the same decree in which he ruled against Christian participation in Confucian rites. Every other concept—including Holy Spirit, devil, angel, holy, sin, heaven, and hell— was successfully translated into an authentically Chinese term.

Several Jesuit missionaries, including Frs. Ruggieri, Ricci, and Valignano, made the decision to blend Christianity with Confucianism rather than Buddhism. This decision followed an unsuccessful experiment in adopting the clothing and spiritual role of the Buddhist monks, and thereafter the Jesuits did not turn back from their decision to identify in dress, thinking, and social status with the Confucian literati. Xu Guangqi expressed this plan in the form of a short, memorable phrase of the type of which the literati were so fond.

Even more, he wanted to go back to the sources of Confucianism, the Five Classics, rather than the writings of the philosopher himself.

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Such a view is supported especially by the Jesuit apologetic works most Western scholars have used in their analysis of the impact of the Jesuit mission. The Jesuit apologist structured his discussion of the Catholic religion in three basic parts. In referring to God, Ricci most frequently used the terms Shangdi Sovereign on High and Tianzhu Lord of Heaven , and he used these titles interchangeably. Ricci certainly attempted to link the names Tianzhu and Shangdi, evidently believing that this association would overcome the inadequacies of using either term separately.

At more than one point, Ricci very directly equated the deity that the Jesuits spoke of as the Lord of Heaven with Shangdi, the god whom the ancient Chinese worshipped in the classics. Included among these is a reference from the Book of Songs sometimes called the Book of Odes: Most of the studies that examine the impact of early Catholic missionaries focus on the response among the highest-level elite, especially the three pillars of the Chinese church: Xu — , the Ming dynasty grand secretary, is credited with articulating the four-character phrase buru yifo complete Confucianism, displace Buddhism , which summarized the strategy.

In this document we have the testimony of a local magistrate. A prefect, ruling in Shanxi province in the summer of , issued a proclamation that used Jesuit ideas he even refers to a Jesuit missionary by name to bolster his campaign against sectarians. Here he refers to Heaven as a personalized deity, after the teachings of the Jesuits. How did the Jesuit missionaries conceive of this aspect of their evangelical task? While Ricci, in The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven, may have left his preference for the terms for God intentionally vague, his antagonism towards any kind of Buddhist or Daoist understanding of God was not at all veiled.

Following his discussion of the Lord of Heaven as creator and ruler of the universe, Ricci mounted an attack on what he regarded as mistaken notions concerning God and his relation to the creation. Ricci was particularly relentless in his attacks on Buddhism in those sections where he discussed the nature of spiritual beings and the human soul, especially in a section where he refuted the idea that God, creation, and humanity were an indistinguishable unity. Arrogance is the enemy of virtue. The moment an arrogant thought is conjured up in our minds, all our conduct is corrupted.

Sakyamuni happened to be planning to establish a new religion in India. He accepted the theory of reincarnation and added to it the teaching concerning the Six Directions, together with a hundred other lies, editing it all to form books which he called canonical writings. Many years later some Chinese went to India and transmitted the Buddhist religion to China. India is a small place, and is not considered to be a nation of the highest standing.

It lacks the arts of civilization and has no standards of moral conduct to bequeath to posterity. The histories of many countries are totally ignorant of its existence. Could such a country adequately serve as a model for the whole world? The Jesuits appropriated Buddhist vocabulary, concepts, and language for their own missionary purposes.

Ricci and his Jesuit colleagues may have reassured themselves that they could still maintain their connection to Confucianism in spite of these translation decisions. And the connections are maintained. The missionaries continued to support Confucian ideas of the authority of the Five Classics, and even notions of orthodoxy. They continued to identify with Confucian scholars and to distance themselves from Buddhist monks. They continued to risk papal wrath in their defense of Christians participating in the Confucian rites. Nonetheless, these translation decisions at the least would have made their support of Confucian positions more problematic.

Indeed, the possible risks of spiritual pollution posed by Christians participating in Confucian rites seem mild when compared with the dangers posed by this cultural and linguistic borrowing. Even when the Jesuit fathers did not borrow a word directly from the Buddhist lexicon, they did so indirectly, combing the popular religious vocabularies for their translations.

But could they have done otherwise? Wright comments on the Han dynasty b. The terms of Neo-Taoism were the most appropriate for attempting to render the transcendental notions of Buddhism. Early Catholic missionaries seem to have been just as comfortable as their early Buddhist counterparts in making use of the Chinese common religious lexicon in translating their own doctrine, and maybe even more so.

Buddhism, on the other hand, featured several such transliterated terms, even for its cardinal doctrines. Early Jesuit missionaries, by contrast, showed little such caution, boldly The Early Catholic Search for the Name of God borrowing from both popular religious and Buddhist lexicons. At the time of appropriation, these ideas were transformed.

We Confucians do not believe this teaching. The word for the devil mogui was another borrowed term, being a construct based on the Buddhist name for the destroyer or the evil god along with the common Chinese term for ghost, or malevolent spirit. It does not occur in their classical literature, and moreover there is a Buddhist deity with the same name. Other terms, while possessing strong religious connotations and used by the Buddhists, were originally drawn from the Chinese secular world.

The Jesuits were no 29 30 The Early Catholic Search for the Name of God pioneers here, as the Buddhists earlier had adopted this same sense of the word for describing their own holy people, places, and things. Sheng was also used in a secular sense to denote things imperial, so that the Chinese would refer to the imperial throne as the shengzuo imperial or sacred throne , and an imperial edict was likewise referred to as shengyu sacred words or imperial decree. Another term that the Catholics took from the secular world, again following the Buddhist example, was fanzui committing a sin or crime.

The provenance of the Chinese term was the legal world, where it meant to commit a crime. The religious meaning of committing a sin can be distinguished only by context, for the primary sense of fanzui remained a legal one. By using terms borrowed directly from Buddhist scriptures or from the literature of popular religious Daoism, or indirectly from the Chinese secular mostly political and legal world, the Jesuits faced a dilemma. In China, syncretism, especially at the popular level, was the rule. Catholic missionaries attempted to set their religion apart from Buddhism by pointing to the distinctive doctrines and teachings of the church, yet that distinctiveness was lost in part when they employed Buddhist terms to translate key Catholic doctrines and teachings.

The missionary was mainly concerned about challenges to the doctrine of worshipping one God. While Buddhism in its early centuries was not a theistic religion, it became so in China. Where did these spirits or gods come from? And there are even more shen god or spirit than these: All of a sudden, there is not one god, or three gods, but a whole choir full of gods, a reality not dissimilar from the Chinese popular religious vision of the spiritual world.

Another kind of problem arose in relation to the person and role of Jesus. The Jesuits had decided to transliterate this term as Jilisidu rather than translate it. That is to say, the Saviour of the World. The missionaries were correct in this belief, for it was a prejudice of the Confucians to believe that judgments rendered by the imperial government in this life would be upheld by the court of the rulers of the next world. This failure to translate the title Christ, then, may have prevented the Jesuit missionaries from exposing the religious claims of the Chinese emperor and from exploring the role that the emperor served in the Chinese religious world.

Ignoring the political implications, however, moved Jesus into a role more closely associated with the Buddha. For example, to the question concerning when this savior will descend again into the world comes this response: On that day My Lord Jesus from Heaven will suddenly appear and judge the sin [zui] of all people. In , Pope Paul V granted Jesuit missionaries the right to translate the liturgy of the mass and the sacramental rites into Chinese.

The work of translation was assigned to one Father Ludovico Buglio, an Italian Jesuit missionary who served in China from his arrival in Macao in until his death in Beijing in It is unclear from the various studies whether permission was withdrawn only for translating the celebration of the mass or if the ruling also included translation of the sacramental rituals.

Thus, as the Rites Controversy heated up, missionary timidity replaced earlier evangelical boldness. His translation of this ritual manual was intended to provide guidance to missionaries and native priests in conducting various sacramental rites. These translated terms suggest that the Jesuits made the closest contact with Chinese popular religion through the liturgical life of the church. The manual makes clear the importance of baptism; without it, one could not enter the Kingdom of Heaven Tianguo.

At the baptism, these words of institution were to be spoken: Other terms used in these formulas were part of the common heritage of Chinese popular religion and were also used by Buddhist believers. The priest then led a prayer that closed in the name of Jesus and that focused on his apocalyptic role: So it is also with the part of the creed where the believer confesses his faith in the Son and the Holy Spirit. More than baptism, the rites concerned with sickness and burial would have been associated with religious matters normally presided over by Buddhist priests.

At these occasions there was less dependence on transliterated Latin and more leaning on traditional Chinese religious language. At the last rites, the Catholic priest was to instruct the stricken believer to repeat a prayer that ends this way: The cosmologies of both traditional Catholicism and popular Buddhism included a world inhabited by spirits, malevolent and benevolent. While the Jesuit interpreter of the manual distinguished between such spirits or gods by using adjectives such as heavenly, evil, good, and unclean, the target of the rite of exorcism was a gui, which, since this term usually refers in Chinese thinking to a malevolent presence especially when it is hungry , is probably best translated as demon or ghost rather than spirit.

The priest begins by reading the exorcism classic chuguijing 45, and the text leads him through the steps involved: The demon-possessed person whether he laughs or is silent, speaks of private, secret matters or takes on some strange form [qiyizhe], the priest should [steel himself and] not believe his empty words. Rather, the teacher, my Lord the Exorcist, should command the demon not to speak and instead to speedily come out. At all times, he should concentrate on being humble.

It is absolutely necessary to the success of the exorcism to remember that demons are only beings created by the Lord of Heaven [Tianzhu]. By all means do not do so. If after three times, the demon has not come out, do not lose hope and give up. Jesus Christ [ Jilisidu]. Formerly you bestowed authority on your followers: This is because your virtue has conquered death. As churches were established and missionaries began to expound Christian doctrinal teachings and practice Christian sacramental rituals, the religion of the Heavenly Lord appeared to the Confucians to more closely mimic popular Buddhist religious doctrines and practices than Confucian teachings and rites.

Such was the case especially with missionary practice in the provinces, where the Dominicans and Franciscans eagerly and openly displayed the more supernatural elements of the religion. Was it a result of the more oppressive and increasingly rigid intellectual world of Qing China?

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That the literati had increasingly lost interest in the religion of the Heavenly Lord is noted and lamented by every scholar sympathizing with the Jesuit mission. Hinderer was the sole missionary in Hangzhou at this time, he was assisted by thirty catechists who had been trained in the Jesuit college. In his letter of 27 September , Fr. All south from this is named the Middle Kingdom. After Buddha attained to pari-nirvana, 6 the kings of the various countries and the heads of the Vaisyas 7 built viharas for the priests, and endowed them with fields, houses, gardens, and orchards, along with the resident populations and their cattle, the grants being engraved on plates of metal, 8 so that afterwards they were handed down from king to king, without any daring to annul them, and they remain even to the present time.

The regular business of the monks is to perform acts of meritorious virtue, and to recite their Sutras and. Where a community of monks resides, they erect topes to Sariputtra, 11 to Maha-maudgalyayana, 12 and to Ananda, 13 and also topes in honour of the Abhidharma, the Vinaya, and the Sutras. A month after the annual season of rest, the families which are looking out for blessing stimulate one another 14 to make offerings to the monks, and send round to them the liquid food which may be taken out of the ordinary hours.

All the monks come together in a great assembly, and preach the Law; 15 after which offerings are presented at the tope of Sariputtra, with all kinds of flowers and incense. All through the night lamps are kept burning, and skilful musicians are employed to perform. When Sariputtra was a great Brahman, he went to Buddha, and begged to be permitted to quit his family and become a monk.

The great Mugalan and the great Kasyapa 17 also did the same. The bhikshunis 18 for the most part make their offerings at the tope of Ananda, because it was he who requested the World-honoured one to. From the place where the travellers crossed the Indus to Southern India, and on to the Southern Sea, a distance of forty or fifty thousand le, all is level plain.

From this they proceeded south-east for eighteen yojanas, and found themselves in a kingdom called Sankasya, 1 at the place where Buddha came down, after ascending to the Trayastrimsas heaven, 2 and there preaching for three months his Law for the benefit of his mother. They then saluted and questioned each other, and when this was over, Buddha said to Mugalan, "Seven days after this I will go down to Jambudvipa;" and thereupon Mugalan returned.

At this time the great kings of eight countries with their ministers and people, not having seen Buddha for a long time, were. Then the bhikshuni Utpala 6 thought in her heart, "To-day the kings, with their ministers and people, will all be meeting and welcoming Buddha. I am but a woman; how shall I succeed in being the first to see him? As Buddha descended from his position aloft in the Trayastrimsas heaven, when he was coming down, there were made to appear three flights of precious steps.

Buddha was on the middle flight, the steps of which were composed of the seven precious substances. The king of Brahma-loka 9 also made a flight of silver steps appear on the right side, where he was seen attending with a white chowry in his hand. Sakra, Ruler of Devas, made a flight of steps of purple gold on the left side, where he was seen attending and holding an umbrella of the seven precious substances. An innumerable multitude of the devas followed Buddha in his descent.

When he was come down, the three flights all disappeared in the ground, excepting. Through Buddha having for three months partaken of the food of heaven, his body emitted a heavenly fragrance, unlike that of an ordinary man. He went immediately and bathed; and afterwards, at the spot where he did so, a bathing-house was built, which is still existing.

At the place where the bhikshuni Utpala was the first to do reverence to Buddha, a tope has now been built. At the places where Buddha, when he was in the world, cut his hair and nails, topes are erected; and where the three Buddhas 16 that preceded Sakyamuni Buddha and he himself sat; where they walked, 17 and where images of their persons were made. At all these places topes were made, and are still existing. At the place where Sakra, Ruler of the Devas, and the king of the Brahma-loka followed Buddha down from the Trayastrimsas heaven they have also raised.

At this place the monks and nuns may be a thousand, who all receive their food from the common store, and pursue their studies, some of the mahayana and some of the hinayana. Where they live, there is a white-eared dragon, which acts the part of danapati to the community of these monks, causing abundant harvests in the country, and the enriching rains to come in season, without the occurrence of any calamities, so that the monks enjoy their repose and ease.

In gratitude for its kindness, they have made for it a dragon-house, with a carpet for it to sit on, and appointed for it a diet of blessing, which they present for its nourishment. Every day they set apart three of their number to go to its house, and eat there. Whenever the summer retreat is ended, the dragon straightway changes its form, and appears as a small snake, 18 with white spots at the side of its ears. As soon as the monks recognise it, they fill a copper vessel with cream, into which they put the creature, and then carry it round from the one who has the highest seat at their tables to him who has the lowest, when it appears as if saluting them.

When it has been taken round, immediately it disappeared; and every year it thus comes forth once. The country is very productive, and the people are prosperous, and happy beyond comparison. When people of other countries come to it, they are exceedingly attentive to them all, and supply them with what they need. Fifty yojanas north-west from the monastery there is another, called "The Great Heap. When it was being made over to an Arhat by pouring water on his hands, 20 some drops fell on the ground. They are still on the spot, and however they may be brushed away and removed, they continue to be visible, and cannot be made to disappear.

At this place there is also a tope to Buddha, where a good spirit constantly keeps all about it swept and watered,. At this place there are a hundred small topes, at which a man may keep counting a whole day without being able to know their exact number. If he be firmly bent on knowing it, he will place a man by the side of each tope. When this is done, proceeding to count the number of men, whether they be many or few, he will not get to know the number. There is a monastery, containing perhaps or monks, in which there is a place where a Pratyeka Buddha used to take his food.

The nirvana ground where he was burned 22 after death is as large as a carriage wheel; and while grass grows all around, on this spot there is none. The ground also where he dried his clothes produces no grass, but the impression of them, where they lay on it, continues to the present day. Fa-hien stayed at the Dragon vihara till after the summer retreat, 1 and then, travelling to the south-east for seven. Having crossed the Ganges, and gone south for three yojanas, the travellers arrived at a village named A-le, 4 containing places where Buddha preached the Law, where he sat, and where he walked, at all of which topes have been built.

Going on from this to the south-east for three yojanas, they came to the great kingdom of Sha-che. Going on from this to the south, for eight yojanas, the travellers came to the city of Sravasti 1 in the kingdom of Kosala, 2 in which the inhabitants were few and far between, amounting in all only to a few more than two hundred families; the city where king Prasenajit 3 ruled, and the place of the old vihara of Maha-prajapti; 4 of the well and walls of the house of the Vaisya head Sudatta; 5 and where the Angulimalya 6 became an Arhat, and his body was afterwards burned on his attaining to pari-nirvana.

At all these places topes were subsequently erected, which are still existing in the city. The Brahmans, with their contrary doctrine, became full of hatred and envy in their hearts, and wished to destroy them, but there came from the heavens such a storm of crashing thunder and flashing lightning that they were not able in the end to effect their purpose. As you go out from the city by the south gate, and 1, paces from it, the Vaisya head Sudatta built a vihara, facing the south; and when the door was open, on each side of it there was a stone pillar, with the figure of a wheel on the top of that on the left, and the figure of an ox on the top of that on the right.

On the left and. When Buddha went up to the Trayastrimsas heaven, 8 and preached the Law for the benefit of his mother, after he had been absent for ninety days, Prasenajit, longing to see him, caused an image of him to be carved in Gosirsha Chandana wood, 9 and put in the place where he usually sat. When Buddha on his return entered the vihara, Buddha said to it, "Return to your seat. After I have attained to pari-nirvana, you will serve as a pattern to the four classes of my disciples," 10 and on this the image returned to its seat. This was the very first of all the images of Buddha , and that which men subsequently copied.

Buddha then removed, and dwelt in a small vihara on the south side of the other , a different place from that containing the image, and twenty paces distant from it. The Jetavana vihara was originally of seven storeys. The kings and people of the countries around vied with one another in their offerings, hanging up about it silken streamers and canopies, scattering flowers, burning incense, and lighting lamps, so as to make the night as bright as the day.

This they did day after day without ceasing. It happened that a rat, carrying in its mouth the wick of a lamp, set one of the streamers or canopies on fire, which caught the vihara, and the seven storeys were all consumed. The kings, with their officers and people, were all very sad and distressed, supposing that the sandal-wood image had been burned; but lo! They were all greatly rejoiced, and co-operated in restoring the vihara. When they had succeeded in completing two storeys, they removed the image back to.

When Fa-hien and Tao-ching first arrived at the Jetavana monastery, and thought how the World-honoured one had formerly resided there for twenty-five years, painful reflections arose in their minds. Born in a border-land, along with their like-minded friends, they had travelled through so many kingdoms; some of those friends had returned to their own land , and some had died , proving the impermanence and uncertainty of life; and to-day they saw the place where Buddha had lived now unoccupied by him.

They were melancholy through their pain of heart, and the crowd of monks came out, and asked them from what kingdom they were come. Four le to the north-west of the vihara there is a grove called "The Getting of Eyes. Six or seven le north-east from the Jetavana, mother Vaisakha 13 built another vihara, to which she invited Buddha and his monks, and which is still existing. To each of the great residences for monks at the Jetavana vihara there were two gates, one facing the east and the other facing the north. The park containing the whole was the space of ground which the Vaisya head Sudatta purchased by covering it with gold coins.

The vihara was exactly in the centre. Here Buddha lived for a longer time than at any other place, preaching his Law and converting men. At the places where he walked and sat they also subsequently reared topes, each having its particular name; and. Further, at the place where the discussion took place, they reared a vihara rather more than sixty cubits high,. Four le south-east from the city of Sravasti, a tope has been erected at the place where the World-honoured one encountered king Virudhaha, 23 when he wished to attack the kingdom of Shay-e, 23 and took his stand before him at the side of the road.

Fifty le to the west of the city bring the traveller to a town named Too-wei, 1 the birthplace of Kasyapa Buddha. Over the entire relic of the whole body of him, the Kasyapa Tathagata, 3 a great tope was also erected. Going on south-east from the city of Sravasti for twelve yojanas, the travellers came to a town named Na-pei-kea, 4 the birthplace of Krakuchanda Buddha.

At the place where he and his father met, and at that where he attained to pari-nirvana, topes were erected. Going north from here less than a yojana, they came to a town which had been the birthplace of Kanakamuni Buddha. At the place where he and his father met, and where he attained to pari-nirvana, topes were erected. Less than a yojana to the east from this brought them to the city of Kapilavastu; 1 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 2 there have been made images of the prince his eldest son and his mother; 3. Several le north-east from the city was the king's field, where the heir-apparent sat under a tree, and looked at the ploughers. Fifty le east from the city was a garden, named Lumbini, 17 where the queen entered the pond and bathed.

Having come forth from the pond on the northern bank, after walking twenty paces, she lifted up her hand, laid hold of a branch of a tree, and, with her face to the east, gave birth to the heir-apparent. Two dragon-kings appeared and washed his body. At the place where they did so, there was immediately formed a well, and from it, as well as from the above pond, where the queen bathed, 19 the monks even now constantly take the water, and drink it. There are four places of regular and fixed occurrence in the history of all Buddhas: The country of Kapilavastu is a great scene of empty desolation.

The inhabitants are few and far between. On the roads people have to be on their guard against white elephants 21 and lions, and should not travel incautiously. East from Buddha's birthplace, and at a distance of five yojanas, there is a kingdom called Rama. By the side of it there was a pool, and in the pool a dragon, which constantly kept watch over the tope , and presented offerings to it day and night.

When king Asoka came forth into the world, he wished to destroy the eight topes over the relics , and to build instead of them 8. Afterwards , the ground all about became overgrown with vegetation, and there was nobody to sprinkle and sweep about the tope ; but a herd of elephants came regularly, which brought water with their trunks to water the ground, and various kinds of flowers and incense, which they presented at the tope.

Once there came from one of the kingdoms a devotee 5 to worship at the tope. When he encountered the elephants he was greatly alarmed, and screened himself among the trees; but when he saw them go through with the offerings in the most proper manner, the thought filled him with great sadness—that there should be no monastery here, the inmates of which might serve the tope, but the elephants have to do the watering and sweeping. Forthwith he gave up the great prohibitions by which he was bound , 6 and resumed the status of a Sramanera. East from here four yojanas, there is the place where the heir-apparent sent back Chandaka, with his white horse; 1 and there also a tope was erected.

Four yojanas to the east from this, the travellers came to the Charcoal tope, 2 where there is also a monastery. Going on twelve yojanas, still to the east, they came to the city of Kusanagara, 3 on the north of which, between two trees, 4 on the bank of the Nairanjana 5 river, is the place where the World-honoured one, with his head to the north, attained to pari-nirvana and died. There also are the places where Subhadra, 6 the last of his converts ,.

In the city the inhabitants are few and far between, comprising only the families belonging to the different societies of monks. Going from this to the south-east for twelve yojanas, they came to the place where the Lichchhavis 10 wished to follow Buddha to the place of his pari-nirvana, and where, when he would not listen to them and they kept cleaving to him, unwilling to go away, he made to appear a large and deep ditch which they could not cross over, and gave them his alms-bowl, as a pledge of his regard, thus sending them back to their families.

There a stone pillar was erected with an account of this event engraved upon it. Three le north-west of the city there is a tope called, "Bows and weapons laid down. The superior wife, jealous of the other, said, "You have brought forth a thing of evil omen," and immediately it was put into a box of wood and thrown into the river. Farther down the stream another king was walking and looking about, when he saw the wooden box floating in the water. He had it brought to him , opened it, and found a thousand little boys, upright and complete, and each one different from the others.

He took them and had them brought up. They grew tall and large, and very daring, and strong, crushing all opposition in every expedition which they undertook. By and by they attacked the kingdom of their real father, who became in consequence greatly distressed and sad. His inferior wife asked what it was that made him so, and he replied, "That king has a thousand sons, daring and strong beyond compare, and he wishes with them to attack my kingdom; this is what makes me sad. Only make a high gallery on the wall of the city on the east; and when the thieves come, I shall be able to make them retire.

In a subsequent age, when the World-honoured one had attained to perfect Wisdom and become Buddha , he said to is disciples, "This is the place where I in a former age laid down my bow and weapons. The thousand little boys were the thousand Buddhas of this Bhadra-kalpa. It was by the side of the "Weapons-laid-down" tope that Buddha, having given up the idea of living longer, said to Ananda, "In three months from this I will attain to pavi-nirvana;" and king Mara 9 had so fascinated and stupefied Ananda,. Three or four le east from this place there is a tope commemorating the following occurrence: Hereupon the Arhats and Bhikshus observant of the rules, to the number in all of monks, examined afresh and collated the collection of disciplinary books.

Four yojanas on from this place to the east brought the travellers to the confluence of the five rivers. On the other hand , the Lichchhavis of Vaisali had heard that Amanda was coming to their city , and they on their part came to meet him. In this way , they all arrived together at the river, and Ananda considered that, if he went forward, king Ajatasatru would be very angry,.

Having crossed the river, and descended south for a yojana, the travellers came to the town of Pataliputtra, 1 in the kingdom of Magadha, the city where king Asoka 2 ruled. The royal palace and halls in the midst of the city, which exist now as of old, were all made by spirits which he employed, and which piled up the stones, reared the walls and gates, and executed the elegant carving and inlaid sculpture-work,—in a way which no human hands of this world could accomplish. King Asoka had a younger brother who had attained to be an Arhat, and resided on Gridhra-kuta 3 hill, finding his delight in solitude and quiet.

The king, who sincerely reverenced him, wished and begged him to come and live in his family, where he could supply all his wants. The other, however, through his delight in the stillness of the mountain, was unwilling to accept the invitation, on which the king said to him, "Only accept my invitation, and I will make a hill for you inside the city.

In this city there had resided a great Brahman, 4 named Radha-sami, 5 a professor of the mahayana, of clear discernment and much wisdom, who understood everything, living by himself in spotless purity. The king of the country honoured and reverenced him, and served him as his teacher. If he went to inquire for and greet him, the king did not presume to sit down alongside of him; and if, in his love and reverence, he took hold of his hand, as soon as he let it go, the Brahman made haste to pour water on it and wash it.

He might be more than fifty years old, and all the kingdom looked up to him. By means of this one man, the Law of Buddha was widely made known, and the followers of other doctrines did not find it in their power to persecute the body of monks in any way. By the side of the tope of Asoka, there has been made a mahayana monastery, very grand and beautiful; there is also. Shamans of the highest virtue from all quarters, and students, inquirers wishing to find out truth and the grounds of it, all resort to these monasteries.

There also resides in this monastery a Brahman teacher, whose name also is Manjusri, 7 whom the Shamans of greatest virtue in the kingdom, and the mahayana Bhikshus honour and look up to. The cities and towns of this country are the greatest of all in the Middle Kingdom. The inhabitants are rich and prosperous, and vie with one another in the practice of benevolence and righteousness. Every year on the eighth day of the second month they celebrate a procession of images.

They make a four-wheeled car, and on it erect a structure of four storeys by means of bamboos tied together. This is supported by a king-post, with poles and lances slanting from it, and is rather more than twenty cubits high, having the shape of a tope. White and silk-like cloth of hair 8 is wrapped all round it, which is then painted in various colours. They make figures of devas, with gold, silver, and lapis lazuli grandly blended and having silken streamers and canopies hung out over them. On the four sides are niches, with a Buddha seated in each, and a Bodhisattva standing in attendance on him.

There may be twenty cars, all grand and imposing, but each one different from the others. On the day mentioned, the monks and laity within the borders all come together; they have singers and skilful musicians; they pay their devotion with flowers and incense.

The Brahmans come and invite the Buddhas to enter the city. These do so in order, and remain two nights in it. When king Asoka destroyed the seven topes, intending to make eighty-four thousand, 9 the first which he made was the great tope, more than three le to the south of this city. In front of this there is a footprint of Buddha, where a vihara has been built. The door of it faces the north, and on the south of it there is a stone pillar, fourteen or fifteen cubits in circumference, and more than thirty cubits high, on which there is an inscription, saying, "Asoka gave the jambudvipa to the general body of all the monks, and then redeemed it from them with money.

This he did three times. On the pillar there is an inscription recording the things which led to the building of Ne-le, with the number of the year, the day, and the month. A yojana south-west from this place brought them to the village of Nala, 5 where Sariputtra 6 was born, and to which also he returned, and attained here his pari-nirvana. Over the spot where his body was burned there was built a tope, which is still in existence. Another yojana to the west brought them to New Rajagriha, 7 —the new city which was built by king Ajatasatru.

There were two monasteries in it. Three hundred paces outside the west gate, king Ajatasatru,. Entering the valley, and keeping along the mountains on the south-east, after ascending fifteen le, the travellers came to mount Gridhra-kuta. Thirty paces to the north-west there is another, where Ananda was sitting in meditation, when the deva Mara Pisuna, 2 having assumed the form of a large vulture, took his place in front of the cavern, and frightened the disciple.

Then Buddha, by his mysterious, supernatural power, made a cleft in the rock, introduced his hand, and stroked Ananda's shoulder, so that his fear immediately passed away. The footprints of the bird and the cleft for Buddha's hand are still there, and hence comes the name of "The Hill of the Vulture Cavern. In front of the cavern there are the places where the four Buddhas sat. There are caverns also of the Arhats, one where each sat and meditated, amounting to several hundred in all.

At the place where in front of his rocky apartment Buddha was walking from east to west in meditation , and Devadatta, from among the beetling cliffs on the north of the mountain, threw a rock across, and hurt Buddha's toes, 3 the rock is still there. The hall where Buddha preached his Law has been destroyed, and only the foundations of the brick walls remain. On this hill the peak is beautifully green, and rises grandly up; it is the highest of all the five hills.

In the New City Fa-hien bought incense- sticks , flowers, oil and lamps, and hired two bhikshus, long resident at the place , to carry them to the peak. When he himself got to it, he made his offerings with the flowers and incense, and lighted the lamps when the darkness began to come on. He felt melancholy, but restrained his tears and said, "Here Buddha. Out from the old city, after walking over paces, on the west of the road, the travellers found the Karanda Bamboo garden, 1 where the old vihara is still in existence, with a company of monks, who keep the ground about it swept and watered.

North of the vihara two or three le there was the Smasanam, which name means in Chinese "the field of graves into which the dead are thrown. As they kept along the mountain on the south, and went west for paces, they found a dwelling among the rocks, named the Pippala cave, 3 in which Buddha regularly sat in meditation after taking his midday meal. Going on still to the west for five or six le, on the north of the hill, in the shade, they found the cavern called Srataparna, 4 the place where, after the nirvana 5 of Buddha, Arhats collected the Sutras. When they brought the Sutras forth, three lofty seats 6 had been prepared and grandly ornamented.

Sariputtra occupied the one on the left, and Maudgalyayana that on the right. Of the number of five hundred one was wanting. Mahakasyapa was president on the middle seat. Along the sides of the hill, there are also a very great many cells among the rocks, where the various Arhans sat and meditated. As you leave the old city on the north, and go down east for three le, there is the rock dwelling of Devadatta, and at a distance of fifty paces from it there is a large, square, black rock. Formerly there was a bhikshu, who, as he walked backwards and forwards upon it, thought with himself: But he thought again: With the first gash into the flesh he attained the state of a Srotapanna; 13 when he had gone half through, he attained to be an Anagamin; 14 and when he had cut right through, he was an Arhat, and attained to pari-nirvana; 15 and died.

From this place, after travelling to the west for four yojanas, the pilgrims came to the city of Gaya; 1 but inside the city all was emptiness and desolation. Three le west from here they came to the place where, when Buddha had gone into the water to bathe, a deva bent down the branch of a tree, by means of which he succeeded in getting out of the pool. Two le north from this was the place where the Gramika girls presented to Buddha the rice-gruel made with milk; 3 and two le north from this again was the place where, seated on a rock under a great tree, and facing the east, he ate the gruel.

The tree and the rock are there at the present day.

The rock may be six cubits in breadth and length, and rather more than two cubits in height. In Central India the cold and heat are so equally tempered that trees will live in it for several thousand and even for. Half a yojana from this place to the north-east there was a cavern in the rocks, into which the Bodhisattva entered, and sat cross-legged with his face to the west. As he did so , he said to himself, "If I am to attain to perfect wisdom and become Buddha , let there be a supernatural attestation of it. At this moment heaven and earth were greatly moved, and devas in the air spoke plainly, "This is not the place where any Buddha of the past, or he that is to come, has attained, or will attain, to perfect Wisdom.

Less than half a yojana from this to the south-west will bring you to the patra 4 tree, where all past Buddhas have attained, and all to come must attain, to perfect Wisdom. As they thus went away, the Bodhisattva arose and walked after them. At a distance of thirty paces from the tree, a deva gave him the grass of lucky omen, 5 which he received and went on. After he had proceeded fifteen paces, green birds came flying towards him, went round him thrice, and disappeared.

The Bodhisattva went forward to the patra tree, placed the kusa grass at the foot of it, and sat down with his face to the east. Then king Mara sent three beautiful young ladies, who came from the north, to tempt him, while he himself came from the south to do the same. The Bodhisattva put his toes down on the ground, and the demon soldiers retired and dispersed, and the three young ladies were changed into old grand- mothers.

At the place mentioned above of the six years' painful austerities, and at all these other places, men subsequently reared topes and set up. Where Buddha, after attaining to perfect wisdom, for seven days contemplated the tree, and experienced the joy of vimukti; 7 where, under the patra tree, he walked backwards and forwards from west to east for seven days; where the devas made a hall appear, composed of the seven precious substances, and presented offerings to him for seven days; where the blind dragon Muchilinda 8 encircled him for seven days; where he sat under the nyagrodha tree, on a square rock, with his face to the east, and Brahma-deva 9 came and made his request to him; where the four deva kings brought to him their alms-bowls; 10 where the merchants 11 presented to him the roasted flour and honey; and where he converted the brothers Kasyapa and their thousand disciples; 12 —at all these places topes were reared.

When king Asoka, in a former birth, 1 was a little boy and played on the road, he met Kasyapa Buddha walking. The stranger begged food, and the boy pleasantly took a handful of earth and gave it to him. The Buddha took the earth, and returned it to the ground on which he was walking; but because of this the boy received the recompense of becoming a king of the iron wheel, 2 to rule over Jambudvipa.

Once when he was making a judicial tour of inspection through Jambudvipa, he saw, between the iron circuit of the two hills, a naraka 3 for the punishment of wicked men. Having thereupon asked his ministers. Soon after this a bhikshu, pursuing his regular course of begging his food, entered the gate of the place. When the lictors of the naraka saw him, they were about to subject him to their tortures; but he, frightened, begged them to allow him a moment in which to eat his midday meal.

Immediately after, there came in another man, whom they thrust into a mortar and pounded till a red froth overflowed. As the bhikshu looked on, there came to him the thought of the impermanence, the painful suffering and insanity of this body, and how it is but as a bubble and as foam; and instantly he attained to Arhatship. Immediately after, the lictors seized him, and threw him into a caldron of boiling water. There was a look of joyful satisfaction, however, in the bhikshu's countenance. The queen asked where the king was constantly going to, and the ministers replied that he was constantly to be seen under such and such a patra tree.

She watched for a time when the king was not there, and then sent men to cut the tree down. When the king came, and saw what had been done, he swooned away with sorrow, and fell to the ground. His ministers sprinkled water on his face, and after a considerable time he revived. He then built all round the stump with bricks, and poured a hundred pitchers of cows' milk on the roots; and as he lay with his four limbs spread out on the ground, he took this oath, "If the tree do not live, I will never rise from this.

Fa-hien 1 returned from here towards Pataliputtra, 2 keeping along the course of the Ganges and descending in the direction of the west. After going ten yojanas he found a vihara, named "The Wilderness,"—a place where Buddha had dwelt, and where there are monks now. Pursuing the same course, and going still to the west, he arrived, after twelve yojanas, at the city of Varanasi 3 in the kingdom of Kasi. Rather more than ten le to the north-east of the city, he found the vihara in the park of "The rishi's Deer-wild.

When the World-honoured one was about to attain to perfect Wisdom, the devas sang in the sky, "The son of king Suddhodana, having quitted his family and studied the Path of Wisdom , 6 will now in seven days become Buddha. Buddha wished to convert Kaundinya 8 and his four companions; but they, being aware of his intention , said to one another, "This Sramana Gotama 9 for six years continued in the practice of painful austerities, eating daily only a single hemp-seed, and one grain of rice, without attaining to the Path of Wisdom ; how much less will he do so now that he has entered again among men, and is giving the reins to the indulgence of his body, his speech, and his thoughts!

When you go north-west from the vihara of the Deer-wild park for thirteen yojanas, there is a kingdom named Kausambi. Now, as of old, there is a company of monks there, most of whom are students of the hinayana. East from this , when you have travelled eight yojanas, is the place where Buddha converted 14 the evil demon. There, and where he walked in meditation and sat at the place which was his regular abode, there have been topes erected.