On Yuan Chwang's Travels in India, 629–645 A.D. v2.c18.s2.68

v2.c18.s2.68

It must have been distressing for our pilgrim to go over the waste jungle-covered ruins of a district which he had known from the Buddhist scriptures to have been once very flourishing, full of life and beauty, loved and admired by the Buddha while he was on earth. In the "Tsa-a-han-ching" a great Nirgrantha teacher speaks in glowing terms of the district to the Buddha,¹ and in the "Sūtra of the Great Decease" and other treatises Buddha is reported as praising it in similar terms. "How charming", he says, "is Vaiśāli the home of the Vrijjians", and then proceeds to specify a few of its hallowed places. Its chaityas and temples were numerous, and some of them are often mentioned in the sacred books. There was the Chāpāla Chaitya, a favourite resort of the Buddha, given to him and his church by the Licchavis. In Chinese the name is sometimes rendered by Chit-kung or "Bow-taking", chāpa meaning a bow. This chaitya, which was at some distance from the city, was probably only a sacred spot, with trees, originally devoted to the worship of a local divinity.² There were also the Chaitya of the Seven Mango trees at which Purana-Kaśyapa lodged, the Gotamaka or Gautama Nyagrodha Chaitya, the Chaitya of the Many Sons, the Sārandada and the Udena Chaityas, and the Kapinahya Chaitya given to the Buddha and his Church.³ In or near Vaiśāli moreover, were at least three large Buddhist monasteries, one of them being the Swan-shaped Kūṭāgārasāla near the Monkey Tank in the Great Forest which has been already noticed. The city had in the Buddha's time at least one nunnery, the one in which the nun Bhadrā resided.⁴ Then there were the Su River⁵ in which the monks and nuns once bathed with childish enjoyment, the Mango Orchard of Jīvaka-kumāra which was a favourite resort of the Buddha, and the beautiful Park of the Licchavis.⁶ To these along with other pleasant scenes have to be added Āmrapālī's Mango Orchard and the Bālikācchavi given to the Buddha and the church by Bālikā. But the attractions of the Vaiśālī city and district had a serious set-off in the famines and pestilences to which they were subject.