On Yuan Chwang's Travels in India, 629–645 A.D. v1.c5.41

v1.c5.41

The A-nu-p’o-ta-to (Anavatapta) Lake is here, we have seen, described as being in the middle of Jambudvipa to the south of the Perfume (that is Fragrance-intoxicating or Gandhamādana) Mountain, and north of the Great Snow (Himavat) Mountain. This is the situation ascribed to the Lake in certain śāstras, but in the Chang-a-han-ching and some other authorities it is on the summit of the Great Snow Mountain. In a note to our text we are told that the Chinese translation of the name is Wu-jê-nao (無熱惱) or "Without heat-trouble". This is the rendering used by Yuan-chuang in his translations and it is the term commonly employed by Chinese writers and translators, but the word Anavatapta means simply "unheated". It is said to have been the name of the Dragon-king of the Lake and to have been given to him because he was exempt from the fiery heat, the violent storms, and the fear of the garuḍas which plagued other dragons.¹ Our pilgrim's statement that the Ganges, Indus, Oxus, and Sitā (or Sitā) all have their origin in this Lake is found in several Buddhist scriptures: one of these as translated by Yuan-chuang used the very words of our passage,² but in two of them there are differences as to the directions in which the rivers proceed.³ Nāgasena speaks of the water of this Lake, which he calls Anotatta daha, as flowing into the Ganges.⁴ In the early Chinese versions of Buddhist works the name is given, as in the note to our text, A-nu-ta (阿耨達) which evidently represents the Pali form Anotatta. Then the pilgrim mentions a supposition that the Sitā had a subterranean course for a distance and that where it emerged, at the Chi-shih (積石) "Accumulated-rocks" Mountain, it was the source of the Yellow River. The Chi-shih-shan of this theory is the Chi-shih of the Yü-kung chapter of the Shu-Ching. This Chi-shih was the place at which, according to some, the Yellow River had its source and it was a district in what is now the western part of Kansuh Province. But the term Chi-shih is also used in the sense of "mountain" as a synonym of shan.