On Yuan Chwang's Travels in India, 629–645 A.D. v2.c20.61

v2.c20.61

The "Mountain city" of this and other passages of the Records is evidently the city known as "Old Rājagaha", and the Girivraja of certain non-Buddhist writers. According to the "Hsing-chi-ching"¹ and the Pali authorities the Vipula mountain of the present passage was one of the five mountains which stood round Old Rājagaha city. But in certain other treatises it is merely a mountain near that city, and is an occasional resort of the Buddha.² Fa-hsien does not mention it or the Hot Springs, but the Sung pilgrim tells of the mountain to the north of Rājagaha with above twenty hot springs at its base. A contemporary of our pilgrim, the Chinese ambassador Wang Hsüan (or Yuan)-tsê, washed his head in one of these springs, and for five years afterwards his hair retained a remarkable glossy cleanness.¹ Our pilgrim's *Pi-po-lo* (畢鉢羅) cave is apparently the Pippala or Peepul Cave of other writers. Fa-hsien and the Sung pilgrim visited this cave in a mountain which was evidently the Vipula of our text. In some books, however, the Peepul cave is placed in the Vulture-Peak Mountain. In his translation of the last paragraph of the present passage Julien makes the pilgrim describe the Digambaras as circumambulating the Buddhist tope all day. But this does not seem to be the proper interpretation of Yuan-chuang's words—自旦至屠旋轉觀察—"from sunrise to sunset they revolve and watch". It was the sun which these Digambara devotees, like others already mentioned, followed in his daily course, turning with him, and observing him in all his journey from rising to setting.