On Yuan Chwang's Travels in India, 629–645 A.D. v2.c17.s3.35

v2.c17.s3.35

Exception may be taken to this rendering though it is followed in the German translation by Hardy in his "Der Buddhismus".² One Chinese version of the passage gives us the following— "When I was twenty-nine years old I became an ascetic to seek goodness (shan-tao). Subhadra, fifty years have gone since I became Buddha: the practice of discipline, samādhi, and spiritual wisdom I now declare the essentials of my system: outside of it there is not a śramaṇa."³ In other books the Buddha tells Subhadra that for fifty years he had thought in solitude on the practice of samādhi, a pure life, and spiritual wisdom. These Chinese translations were apparently made from Sanskrit originals, and not from the Pali text here given. Thus the mention of samādhi must be due to the presence of a word meaning "practising samādhi", and probably the phrase "and one year more" is not the meaning of samādhikāni in the Pali text. Then for "through the wide realms" (padesavatti) the Sanskrit was probably pradeśavartin, which the translators took to mean "occupied with the exposition of". The last line of the quotation is a separate sentence, as the text