On Yuan Chwang's Travels in India, 629–645 A.D. v1.c8.s2.8

v1.c8.s2.8

Another enumeration of Indian measures of space is given in the Lalitavistara and its translations Tibetan and Chinese, and another in the Avadāna XXXIII of the Divyāvadāna of Messrs Cowell and Neil.² The latter is represented in the Chinese collection of Buddhist books by four treatises. In none of all these works is there anything corresponding to the words "copper" and "water" of our author's list. Moreover each of them makes the Window-Dust or Sunbeam-mote—the "Crevice-Dust" of our author—to be one seventh of a Hare (or Moon)-Dust and equal to seven particles of Fine Dust. Julien took the "copper water" of our text to be one term and translated it by "l'eau de cuivre (Tamrāpa?)", but this is undoubtedly wrong.³ In this gradation of measures the "Extremely Fine Dust" is a monad of thought, a logical necessity, and has no separate existence in matter. The lowest actual unit of matter is the *aṇu* of the Divyāvadāna, which is the "Fine Dust" of our author. This too, however, though visible to the deva-sight, is invisible to the human sight and impalpable to the other human senses. But it is a material substance, the most minute of all material sizes and quantities, and the ultimate atom into which dust or metal or water can be analysed. It takes seven of these, according to some, to equal one Atom (truṭi or tuṭi), and seven of these to make one Sunbeam-mote. If we omit the two words "Copper" and "Water" from our text, and remove the term "Crevice-Dust" to its place, we have an enumeration of measures which agrees substantially with that of the Divyāvadāna up to the Krośa. Some of the Chinese texts represent the Krośa, translated by shêng (聲) a sound, to be 2000 Bows, and in some the Barley-grain is subdivided, not as by Yuan-chuang, but into seven Mustard-seeds.