On Yuan Chwang's Travels in India, 629–645 A.D. v2.c17.s2: Rāma or Rāmagrāma
On Yuan Chwang's Travels in India, 629–645 A.D. v2.c17.s2
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Rāma or Rāmagrāma
v2.c17.s2.1
The pilgrim goes on to relate that "from this" (that is, the Lumbini Garden) he travelled through a wild jungle east for more than 200 *li* (about 40 miles) to Lan-mo (Rāma) country. This had been waste and wild for a long time, and its area was not defined: its towns were heaps of ruins and there was a very scanty population.
v2.c17.s2.2
To the sout-heast of the old city (that is, the former capital), he tells us, was a brick tope nearly 100 feet high. This had been built by the king of this country (who obtained one of the eight portions of the Buddha's relics) to enclose his share for preservation and worship. Beside this Relic Tope was a clear tank the dragon of which, when he went out for a stroll, assumed the form of a snake, and performed pradakshiṇa to the Tope by crawling round it to the right. The wild elephants also came in companies and strewed flowers at the tope; all this went on without intermission. When king Asoka was dispersing the Buddha-relics of the eight topes, having taken away those of seven of the topes, he came to Rāma in order to carry off the relics in its tope also. As he was about to begin work the dragon of the tank, afraid of being dispossessed, changed himself into a brahmin and tapping the [king's] elephant in the face, said "Your Majesty's kindness extends to all Buddhadom, and you have largely sown the seeds of good works. I venture to beg you to dismount and deign to visit my abode". Asoka accepted the invitation, and followed the dragon to his palace. There overpowered by the splendour of the dragon's paraphernalia for the worship of the relics, he granted the dragon's petition, and abandoned the idea of rifling the tope. A memorial at the place of coming out from the tank recorded the event.
v2.c17.s2.3
The situation here assigned to Rāma agrees with that given by Fa-hsien who places it five yojanas to the east of the place where the Buddha was born.¹ The Fang-chih also agrees with the Records, but the Life makes Rāma to be above 500 *li* (about 100 miles) east from Kapilavastu, and this distance agrees roughly with that given in some of the Buddhist books, that is, thirteen Yojanas.
v2.c17.s2.4
¹ Fo-kuo-chi, ch. 23.
v2.c17.s2.5
Some texts of the Life place the Relic Tope to the east of the old capital, and some make its height to be only fifty feet. The Life also does not make any mention of the dragon of the tank changing himself into a snake, but states that he often assumed the form of a man and performed pradakshiṇa to the tope.
v2.c17.s2.6
For the words in the above passage "tapping the [king's] elephant in the face, said" the original is *Ch'ien-k'ou-hsiang-yue* (前叩象曰), and Julien translates this— "se prosternant aux pieds de l'éléphant, lui parle ainsi". This rendering is manifestly wrong from every point of view. The phrase *k'ou-hsiang* here means to *tap* or *strike* the elephant as *k'ou-ma* is to *tap* a horse. But these phrases are used figuratively in the senses of *boldly, sternly, seriously*, and it is not necessary to suppose that any actual tapping or knocking takes place. In the present passage the word "king's", which I have added, is really not needed, and we are only to understand that the dragon-brahmin faced the king, and addressed to him an earnest remonstrance.
v2.c17.s2.7
The story of king Asoka and the dragon who guarded the Relic Tope at Rāma is told in several Buddhist books with variations. The Divyāvadāna, like our pilgrim's narrative, represents king Asoka as going to the Nāga's Relic Tope, and on seeing the nāga's worship, as going away without interfering with the sacred relics.¹ But the "Tsa-a-han-ching" represents Asoka as carrying off the relics in the tope in spite of the dragon's remonstrances.² The Sinhalese have a legend about the nāga (or also nāgas) and this tope. According to one of their books the relics were removed from Rāmagāma (probably the Rāma of our author) by supernatural means to Ceylon; but this is a late and local fiction.³
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¹ Divyāv. p. 380.
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² Tsa-a-han-ching, ch. 23.
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³ Mah. ch. 31. See Rhys Davids on these legends; J. R. A. S. 1901, pp. 397—410.
v2.c17.s2.11
Near to the Relic Tope, the pilgrim records, was the Śrāmaṇera Monastery so called because its temporal affairs were always managed by a śrāmaṇera or unordained Brother.
v2.c17.s2.12
We have a short history of the origin of this Monastery, and the account given agrees in the main with the narrative by Fa-hsien at whose time the establishment was a recent institution. Yuan-chuang found in it only a small number of Brethren, who were very civil and hospitable.
v2.c17.s2.13
From the Śrāmaṇera Monastery the pilgrim, we are told, went east through a great wood above 100 *li* (about 20 miles) to a great Asoka tope. This was at the place where the Prince (the P'usa) made a halt, having gone over the city-wall of Kapilavastu at midnight and ridden on until daylight. Here also he gave expression to the settled purpose of his life in these words— "Here I go out of prison, put off fetters, unyoke for the last time".¹ Then the Prince took the jewel from his crown and handed it to his groom Chandaka to take back to the king, his father. At the same time he gave the groom this message to the king— "My present retirement to a great distance is not a wanton separation from you—I desire to have done with impermanence and put an end to moral defects". Then he spoke words of comfort to the disconsolate servant, and sent him back.
v2.c17.s2.14
¹ The Chinese for this soliloquy is— 是我出籠樊去罷銷最後釋駕之處, and Julien translates— "Aujourd'hui, je sors enfin de ma prison et je brise mes liens. Ce fut en cet endroit qu'il quitta son char pour la dernière fois." This rendering mistranslates the first word of the sentence, and ignores the construction.
v2.c17.s2.15
Fa-hsien agrees with our pilgrim in placing the tope of the "sending back" at about 20 miles east from the Śrāmaṇera Monastery, but he does not ascribe the tope to Asoka. So also in the Lalitavistara,² and in other works where this tope is mentioned it is merely said to have been erected by "people of after times". It was known as the Tope of Chandaka's Return, that is, the tope which marked the spot where the Prince's groom began his journey back to Kapilavastu with his master's horse. But the Chinese scriptures are not agreed as to the precise locality at which the parting between the Prince and Chandaka took place, some representing it as at a much greater distance than 20 miles from Kapilavastu.
v2.c17.s2.16
² Lalitavistara, Foucaux, p. 214.
v2.c17.s2.17
To the east of the tope of Chandaka's Returning was a dead jambu, tree and at the side of this was a small tope. It was here that the Prince (the P'usa) exchanged his princely robes for the deer-skin dress given to him by a hunter who was Indra in disguise.
v2.c17.s2.18
Near this spot was an Asoka tope to mark the place at which the P'usa cut off his hair, and had his head shaved by a deva; the hair cut off was taken by Indra to Heaven to be an object of worship.
v2.c17.s2.19
The pilgrim next mentions incidentally that accounts varied as to the age of the P'usa when he went out from home, some making him nineteen, and some twenty nine years old at the time. So also, he tells us, authorities differed as to whether it was on the 8th or the 15th day of the second half of the month Visakha that the Prince left his home to begin the religious life.
v2.c17.s2.20
From the Head-shaving Tope the pilgrim travelled, he tells us, south-east through a wild country for more than 180 *li* (about 36 miles) to a Banyan Grove which had a tope above 30 feet in height. This, he says, was the Embers Tope built by the brahmins of the place over the charcoal fragments which they found at the scene of the Buddha's cremation. These brahmins arrived too late to obtain a share of the actual relics, and they were allowed to take a portion of the dead embers— "ashes-charcoal" —from "the place of cremation". Carrying these to their native place the brahmins there erected this shrine for the worship of the embers; ever since its erection the tope has given miraculous testimonies, and at it many prayers of the afflicted have been answered.
v2.c17.s2.21
In an old monastery near the Embers Tope were remains of the sitting-place and exercise-walk of the Four Past Buddhas. Then on either side of this monastery, the pilgrim adds, were some hundreds of topes among which was one built by king Asoka which, although in ruins, still shewed more than 100 feet above ground.
v2.c17.s2.22
In this passage Yuan-chuang places the Embers Tope in the Nyagrodhavana or Banyan Grove, and this agrees with a Tibetan account translated by Mr. Rockhill.¹ In it it is only one Brahmin, named Nyagrodha from the Nyagrodhika country, who obtains the embers. In the Pali account of the distribution of the relics it is "the Moriyas of Pipphalavana" who come late to the scene of the cremation, and have to be content with the remnants of burnt fuel.² So also in two Chinese writings the "Changa-han-ching" and the "Mahāmāya-ching", it is Pi-po (that is Pippala) villagers who get the embers.¹ One treatise, the "Pan-ni-huan-ching", has an Embers Tope, and also an Ashes Tope, erected by different men at different places;² the former is built by a Tao-shi, or saintly recluse, and the latter by a brahmin; but neither of these topes seems to have been at a place near Rāmagrāma. The "Fo-pan-ni-huan-ching" agrees with the "Pan-ni-huan-ching" as to the erection of an Embers and an Ashes Tope, and places the latter in the Che-ka-kie country.³ In the "Ta-pan-nie-pan-ching",⁴ however, there is only the Embers Tope and it seems to be located at Kuśinagara.
v2.c17.s2.23
¹ Rockhill, Life, p. 147.
v2.c17.s2.24
² Rhys Davids, 'Buddhist Suttas' (S. B. E. Vol. XI.) p. 134.
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¹ Ch'ang-a-han-ching, ch. 4: Mahāmāya-ching, ch. 2 (No. 382).
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² Pan-ni-huan-ching, ch. 2 (No. 119).
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³ Fo-pan-ni-huan-ching, ch. 2 (No. 552).
v2.c17.s2.28
⁴ Ta-pan-nie-p'an-ching, ch. 2 (No. 118).
v2.c17.s2.29
The "Rāma Country" of the Chinese pilgrims, the Rāma Village (Rāmagrāma) of various writers, seems to have been little known until it attained celebrity for its tope containing bodily relics of Gautama Buddha. And it is interesting to observe that in the accounts of the division of the relics which assign a portion to Rāmagrāma there are some differences of detail, and that all accounts do not agree in assigning a share to this place. In the Pali sūtra of the "Great Decease" the "Koliyas of Rāmagāma" go to Kusinārā and obtain an eighth share of the relics; so also in a Vinaya treatise the Kou-lu-lo of Lo-mo (Rāma) obtain a share.⁵ In the Pali version from which Bigandet's information was obtained it was the "king of Rama" who took action in the matter.⁶ In the appendix to the Mahāmāya-ching it is the Kou-li (Koli) people of Lo-mo-ka (Rāmaka, or for Rāmagrāma) who obtain the relics, and so in the "Yu-hsing-ching" of the Ch'ang-a-han-ching, and also in the Pan-ni-huan-ching where the name of the country is given as k'o-lo (可樂) that is "Enjoyable", evidently for Rāma. But in no other of the Nirvāṇa treatises in Chinese translations, so far as I know, is there any mention of Rāmagrāma in connection with the distribution of the Buddha's relics. And the Tibetan text translated by Rockhill is also apparently without the name of either the country Rāma, or the people Koliya, in this matter. But Rockhill thinks that the Sgra-sgrogs of his text may be Rāmagrāma, and the Kshatriya "Krodtya of Sgra-sgrogs" obtained a share, and this was "honoured by a king of nāgas".¹
v2.c17.s2.30
⁵ Rhys Davids, S. B. E. Vol. XI. p. 132: Shih-sung-lü, ch. 60 (No. 1115).
v2.c17.s2.31
⁶ Bigandet, 'Legend' Vol. II. p. 92.
v2.c17.s2.32
¹ Rockhill, 'Life' p. 145 and 147: As. Res. Vol. XX. p. 315.
v2.c17.s2.33
The Lalitavistara and some other treatises which treat of the subject do not mention Rāmagrāma as the first halting place of Prince Siddhartha in his flight from home, the place where he sent back his groom and horse, exchanged garments with the hunter, and had his head shaven.
v2.c17.s2.34
It is unnecessary now to notice the opinious of General Cunningham and Mr. Carlleyle as to the modern representative of the Rāma of our pilgrims. Further researches in the Nepāl Terai may lead to the discovery of some trustworthy indication as to the site of the old city. To some of the Buddhist writers it was evidently a frontier or a foreign place beyond what was known to them as Jambudvīpa or India. It has been identified with the Devadaha or Koli of the Sakyas mentioned in the romances about the origin of the family from which Gautama Buddha sprang, and there is much in favour of the identification.