[Pramāṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/) › [Studies](https://indike.org/pramana/ins) › [Historical geography](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.geography) › [On Yuan Chwang's Travels in India, 629–645 A.D.](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.geography.watters-1904) › v2.c19.62 # On Yuan Chwang's Travels in India, 629–645 A.D. v2.c19.62 On Yuan Chwang's Travels in India, 629–645 A.D. v2.c19.62 - **Language:** English ### [v2.c19.62](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.geography.watters-1904.v2.c19.62) This is an interesting account, and has to be studied in connection with statements in the Life. This latter treatise makes Yuan-chuang travel south-west from the Cock-Monastery six or seven yojanas (about 50 miles) to the \*Ti-lo-li\* (var. \*Che-\*)ka monastery, from which some score of the Brethren came out to welcome him. This is evidently the \*Ti-lo-shi-ka\* monastery of our text, and Julien writes the name so in his translation of the Life. The difference in the distance may be accounted for by the pilgrim giving the length of his journey, and the Life giving the distance in a straight line. In another passage of the Life we read that when Yuan-chuang, on his way back to China, visited Nālanda for the second time, he learned that three yojanas from it west was a monastery called \*Ti-lo-shi-ka\*, in which was a learned Buddhist Doctor by name Prajñā-bhadra. Here the reading in Julien’s text was \*Ti-lo-tse-ka\* for which he suggests Tilaṭaka as the original, but the old Sung edition has \*Ti-lo-shi-ka\*. This monastery is evidently the \*Ti-lo-che-ka\* of the previous passage in the Life, the learned Doctor having come to reside in it after the pilgrim’s first visit to Nālanda. Bōhtlingk-Roth suggest Tilaḍhaka as the name of this Buddhist establishment, but the suggestion cannot be adopted. All the texts of the Records have \*Ti-lo-shi-ka\*, and the \*tse\* (擇) of the second passage in the Life is apparently a copyist’s error for the \*shi\* (釋) of the old texts. Then this monastery has been identified with I-ching’s \*Ti-lo-t'u\* and \*Ti-lo-ch'a\* which probably represent one word like Tiladha.¹ He gives the name to a monastery in Magadha about two yojanas from Nālanda. It was probably in the great Buddhist establishment of \*Ti-lo-shi-ka\* that Pārśva and Aśvaghoṣa had the meeting already mentioned as having taken place in Shi-ka. Cunningham by manipulating his texts finds Yuan-chuang's Tilo-shika, which he calls Tiladaka, in the modern Tillāra, and Fergusson places it in the Barabar hills. The full name of the monastery may have been Tira-śaka or as Julien suggests Tila-śakya, its designation among the people being something like Tiladha. It was a large and famous establishment flourishing in the 7th century, between 40 and 50 miles in a southwest direction from the Kukkuṭārāma, and about 20 miles to the west of Nālanda. Yuan-chuang tells us that the monastery was built by the last descendant of Bimbisāra, but according to the books the last descendant of that king on the throne of Magadha was Pushyamitra, an enemy and persecutor of Buddhism. We note the temple of Buddha flanked by a temple to Tāra on one side, and by a temple to Kuan-yin on the other. Here, as in a subsequent passage where we have another temple of Tāra, that person is simply a Bodhisattva without any indication of sex. This P'usa, "the Saviour", became "Holy Mother Tāra", the spiritual wife of Kuan-yin. She resides at the foot of a mountain in the Southern Ocean, and Kuan-yin sojourns on the top, but it is in Tibet and Mongolia that Tāra is chiefly worshipped.¹ - [Previous: v2.c19.61](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.geography.watters-1904.v2.c19.61) - [Next: v2.c19.63](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.geography.watters-1904.v2.c19.63) - [Up: v2.c19](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.geography.watters-1904.v2.c19) --- Source: [https://indike.org/pramana/ins.geography.watters-1904.v2.c19.62](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.geography.watters-1904.v2.c19.62) · Pramāṇa