On Yuan Chwang's Travels in India, 629–645 A.D. v2.c18.47

v2.c18.47

), in Sanskrit “Antarābhava”, denotes, as the passage cited in Julien’s note shows, the “intermediate existence”, the state in which the spirit or self remains, between its separation from one mortal body and its union with another.¹ Then from a different point of view the *chung-yin* is the being which, acting independently of parents and without their knowledge, animates their offspring and makes its destiny. To the production of a child there come three agents, the two parents and the tertium quid or *chung-yin* which makes the individual, gives character and fortune. In the story of the dream, in our text, as soon as the Hero was killed he became an antarābhava, and then was incarnated in a brahmin lady, transferring to his new bodily life the habit of silence enjoined on him in the previous existence. This term *chung-yin* is also applied by some authorities to one who, like a Buddha, having experienced final death (parinirvāṇa), is freed from all transient existence, but lives for ever in a state of being absolute and incommunicable.