The Ancient Geography of India. I. The Buddhist Period, including the Campaigns of Alexander, and the Travels of Hwen-Thsang c6.s3.t23.5

c6.s3.t23.5

The only name now associated with the ruins near Kasia is that of *Máthá Kuär*, or the "Dead Prince." Mr. Liston gives the name as *Máta*, but a Brahman of the neighbouring village of Bishanpur, who wrote the name for me, spelt it as I have given it, *Máthá*. As this spelling points to the derivation of the word from *Matha*, or Mâtha, "to kill," I have translated *Máthá Kuär* as the "Dead Prince," which I refer to Buddha himself after his death, or, in the language of the Buddhists, after his obtainment of *Nirvâna*. Hwen Thsang, when speaking of *Sákya's* assumption of the mendicant's dress, calls him *Kumára Rája*, or the "Royal Prince;" but although this title was never, I believe, applied to him by the learned after his assumption of Buddhahood, it does not seem at all improbable that it may have remained in common use amongst the people. We know from Hwen Thsang that on the spot where Buddha died there was a brick *vihár*, or temple monastery, in which was enshrined a recumbent statue of Buddha on his death-bed, with his head towards the north. Now this statue would naturally have been the principal object of veneration at Kusinagara, and although amongst the learned it might have been called the "statue of the *Nirvâna*,"