On Yuan Chwang's Travels in India, 629–645 A.D. v1.c8.s12: Sickness and Death
On Yuan Chwang's Travels in India, 629–645 A.D. v1.c8.s12
- Language
- English
Sickness and Death
v1.c8.s12.1
We have next a few particulars as to the ways in which the people of India treat their sick and dead. Our author tells us—
v1.c8.s12.2
Every one who is attacked by sickness has his food cut off for seven days. In this interval the patient often recovers, but if he cannot regain his health he takes medicine. Their medicines are of various kinds, each kind having a specific name. Their doctors differ in medical skill and in prognostication.
v1.c8.s12.3
At the obsequies for a departed one [the relatives] wail and weep, rending their clothes and tearing out their hair, striking their brows and beating their breasts. There is no distinction in the styles of mourning costume, and no fixed period of mourning. For disposing of the dead and performing the last rites there are three recognized customs. The first of these is cremation, a pyre being made on which the body is consumed. The second is water-burial, the corpse being put into a stream to float and dissolve. The third is burial in the wilds, the body being cast away in the woods to feed wild animals.
v1.c8.s12.4
When the sovereign dies the first thing is to place his successor on the throne in order that he may preside at the religious services of the funeral and determine precedence. Meritorious appellations are conferred on the living; the dead have no honorary designations. No one goes to take food in a family afflicted by death, but after the funeral matters are again as usual and no one avoids [the family]. Those who attend a funeral are regarded as unclean, they all wash outside the city walls before entering [the city].
v1.c8.s12.5
As to those who have become very old, and whose time of death is approaching, who are afflicted by incurable disease and fear that their goal of life has been reached, such persons are content to separate from this world, and desire to cast off humanity, contemptuous of mortal existence and desirous to be away from the ways of the world. So their relatives and friends give them a farewell entertainment with music, put them in a boat and row them to the middle of the Ganges that they may drown themselves in it, saying that they will be born in Heaven; one out of ten will not carry out his contemptuous views.
v1.c8.s12.6
The Buddhist Brethren are forbidden to wail aloud (i. e. over a departed one); on the death of a parent they read a service of gratitude; their "following the departed" and "being earnest about his death" are securing his bliss in the other world.
v1.c8.s12.7
The clause "one out of ten will not carry out his contemptuous views" is a literal rendering of the original *Shih-yu-ch'i-yi-wei-chin-pi-chien* (十有其一未盡鄙見). Julien, connecting the first part of this with what precedes and the latter part with what follows, translates—" *On en compte un sur dix. Il y en a d'autres qui, n'ayant pas encore complètement renoncé aux erreurs du siècle, sortent de la famille et adoptent la vie des religieux*". The words which I have placed in italics are the translator's interpolations, and the last clause is for the words *Ch'u-chia-sêng-chung* which belong to the next sentence. This treatment of the text quite destroys its meaning. What the author states is that out of ten old men who declare that they are sick of life, and want to leave it, only one is found acting inconsistently at the critical moment, saying that he is sick of life, and yet shrinking from suicide by drowning in the Ganges.
v1.c8.s12.8
The Buddhist Brother, we are told, may not lament over the death of a parent, but he shews his grateful remembrance by a religious service, and his filial piety by obtaining for a deceased parent a happy hereafter. The expressions "following the departed" and "being earnest about his death" are taken from the first *chuan* of the Lun-yü. There Tseng-tzŭ says that "if there be earnestness about the death [of a parent] and a following of the departed one (i. e. parent) the moral character of the people will return to a state of thorough goodness". By "earnestness about the death of a parent" the Confucianist meant being careful to have all the funeral rites duly observed; and by "following the departed parent" he meant keeping up the solemn services of worship to the deceased. These were services in which a man shewed his perfect filial piety, but the professed Buddhist carried out his views of filial piety and a future state in securing to his parents happiness in other spheres of existence.¹ To the Confucianist the death of a relative was the "end" of the relative, but to the Buddhist death was only a passing to another life.
v1.c8.s12.9
¹ Lun-Yü, *ch.* 1.