The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c8.17

c8.17

Besides, whatever may be the exact date of the introduction of Buddhism into Gandhâra, it must there have been specially successful. We shall end by finding there, duly acclimatized and deeply rooted, a quantity of legends which the missionaries had brought with them from the low country. Some did not hesitate to bring Buddha himself on the scene. It was, they said, the Master in person, who had overcome the terrible Nâga of the Swât river, and had limited the disastrous inundations, whence this aquatic genius derives all his subsistence, to one in every twelve years. In the same way it was no longer at Râjagriha, but at one stage to the north-west of Pushkarâvatî, that the Blessed One is now supposed to have converted the insatiable ogress of Smallpox. Thanks to the want of orthodoxy on the part of mothers, when the health of their children is in question, this last superstition has in the minds of the present inhabitants of the country almost alone survived the total wreck of Buddhism. A small quantity of earth from a certain tumulus, placed in the *taviz*, or amulet-case, usually suspended round the neck of the new-born, is still considered an infallible preservative against the terrible infantile epidemic; and it is owing to this curious property, joined to the topographical information of Hiuan-tsang, that I was able to recognize the traditional site of this miracle.