On Yuan Chwang's Travels in India, 629–645 A.D. v2.c18.60

v2.c18.60

Vārāṇasi, the capital of the Kāsi country, now „the sacred city of the Hindus”, was held sacred then by all Buddhists because at it the Buddha set the wheel of religion in motion, that is, gave the first teaching in the essentials of his new system. At the spot where he delivered this first sermon to Ājñātakaunḍinya and his four companions a tope is said to have been erected, and this is one of the Eight Great Topes of which later Buddhism tells. But to the Buddhists this city had even earlier claims on their reverence, for it was the second city to “arise” in the last renovation of the world, and it had been the scene of the ministrations of several of the Past Buddhas. The last of these Past Tathāgatas, Kāśyapa by name, had lived here in an ārāma near the Ṛiṣipatana Deer-Park. At this far off time the king of Kāsi was named Ki-li-ki (the Kikī of the Pali scriptures), and he was a lay adherent and a patron of Kāśyapa Buddha. It was at Vārāṇasi that this latter having ordained the young Jotipālo, the friend of Ghaṭikāro the potter, predicted that the disciple would in a distant future become the Buddha Sakyamuni.³