On Yuan Chwang's Travels in India, 629–645 A.D. v2.c18.s2.32

v2.c18.s2.32

The original here translated by "garden" is *yuan* (園), a word which means a garden or orchard, but it is also used to translate the Indian word *ārāma* in the sense of a Buddhist monastery. In Pali scriptures we find the gift which Ambapālī presents to the Buddha called a *vana* and *ārāma*. Thus the Vinaya represents the lady as giving "this Ambapālīvana" to Buddha who accepts the "ārāma"; and in the Mahāparinibbāna-sutta the lady gives and the Buddha accepts the *ārāma*. The accounts generally seem to agree in placing the Āmra Garden (or Āmrapālī's Orchard) to the south of Vesālī, and at a distance of three or four *li* from the city according to Fa-hsien, or seven *li* according to a Nirvāṇa sūtra. But here our pilgrim seems to locate the Āmra-yuan at some distance north-west from the city. It is perhaps possible that he uses the word *yuan* here in its sense of Buddhist establishment or monastery. But it is better to take the words of the text as meaning that the tope was at the spot where Āmrapālī performed the ceremony of making a formal gift of the orchard to the Buddha and his Brethren. This is the sense in which the compilers of the Life and the Fang-chih understood the passage. But then the authorities are not agreed as to the place at which the ceremony was performed, some making it the lady's residence and others the orchard itself.