On Yuan Chwang's Travels in India, 629–645 A.D. v1.c12.s2.9

v1.c12.s2.9

For the words in the text here interpreted as meaning— “Surrounding the Hill-monastery for a circuit of twenty *li* were hundreds and thousands of Buddha-relic topes very close together”, Julien has— “Les couvents, qui s’élèvent tout autour de la montagne, occupent un circuit de vingt li. On compte par centaines et par milliers les stoupas qui renferment des *che-li* (Çariras-reliques) du Bouddha. Ils sont très-rapprochés et confondent mutuellement leur ombre”. This rendering seems to be inadmissible and to give a meaning very different from what the author intended to convey. Yuan-chuang does not make the absurd statement that there were Buddhist monasteries for twenty *li* all round a hill, but he tells us that there were thousands of relic-topes all round the “Hill monastery”. The “Hill monastery” was the Tamasāvana; and it was so called by the pilgrim because it was isolated, and not subject to a superior establishment. This use of the word *shan* (山) in the senses of wild, independent, rustic is very common, and the phrase *shan-ka-lan* meets us again in these Records. The monastery Tamasāvana as our pilgrim describes it was a spacious comprehensive establishment. It had accommodation for 300 Brethren: it contained a tope and sacred places of the Buddhas, and the caves and memorial topes of numerous deceased arhats; and then all round it for twenty *li* were many thousand Buddha-relic topes. In other treatises the establishment is called a Wood or Hill, and it was evidently different in character from ordinary vihāras.