On Yuan Chwang's Travels in India, 629–645 A.D. v1.c10.33

v1.c10.33

The stone with the miraculous footprints of the Buddha and the rock on which he had washed his robe and spread it out to dry are described in the Fo-kuo-chi and the Ka-lan-chi, and the accounts in these works should be compared with our pilgrim's narrative. For the words "the streams of the gorge flow west and as you go up them eastward", Julien has "Les eaux de la vallée se partagent à l’ouest et remontent ensuite du côté de l’orient.” This cannot, however, be taken as the meaning of the text which is 谷水西派逆流東上 lit. “the water of the mountain-valley goes off to the west; going up east against the course of the stream —”. The pilgrim is probably here describing a part of his journey from Udakahantu to the capital of Udyāna. In the last sentence of the present passage we have reference to a curious Jātaka. In a very far off time when there was no Buddha in the world the P‘usa was a brahmin student living on the Himavat; he knew all secular lore, but had never heard the teaching of Buddhism. He expressed his great desire to learn at any cost some of the doctrines of that religion, and Indra, wishing to prove the sincerity of the brahmin’s desire, disguised himself as a hideous rākshasa, came to the Himavat, and appeared before the Brahmin. On behalf of the latter he uttered half of the stanza beginning with the words “all things are impermanent”; the brahmin was delighted and asked for the other half. But the rākshasa refused to utter this until the brahmin promised to give himself up as food to the rakshasa in reward for the recital. When the second half of the stanza was uttered the brahmin threw himself from a tree towards the rākshasa; but the latter in his form as Indra saved the devotee’s life.¹