On Yuan Chwang's Travels in India, 629–645 A.D. v2.c21.4

v2.c21.4

The name given by our pilgrim to the country here described, viz— I-lan-na-po-fa-to has been restored by Julien as Hiraṇyaparvata, or "Golden Mountain", and the restoration has been blindly accepted. The latter part of this restoration is apparently correct, but I-lan-na cannot be taken to represent Hiraṇya, nor is there anything golden in the country or mountain in the pilgrim's description. The syllables I-lan-na apparently stand for īraṇa which denotes a piece of wild or barren land. We find the word used by Nāgārjuna who compares a Brother living in violation of the Vinaya to an īraṇa (i-lan) in a wood of sandal trees.¹ In the Life I-lan-na, or as we may provisionally restore the word, Īraṇa is used to designate the country. St. Martin, followed by Cunningham and Fergusson, identifies this region with the modern district of Monghyr.² In the statement that the capital "on its north side was close to the Ganges" I have followed the D text which has lin (臨), near to. Instead of this the other texts have lu (路), a road, which does not seem to make good sense. Our pilgrim, we learn from the Life, remained at the capital a year studying the “Vibhāsha-lun” (No. 1279) and the “Abhidharma-shun-chêng-li-lun”, (No. 1265). His teachers were apparently Tathāgatagupta and Kshāntisimha, two prominent Brethren of the Sarvāstivādin Monasteries of which he makes mention. In the notice of the Īraṇa mountain in the above passage the pilgrim describes it as “having dark mists” which eclipsed sun and moon. For the words within inverted commas the original is *han-t'u-yen-hsia* (含吐煙霞) literally “holding ejecting smoke-mists”. Julien’s translation is “d'ou sortent des masses de fumée et des vapeurs”. This is much more than is in the text, which is merely a poetic expression for “over the mountain hang dark clouds which efface sun and moon”. As the mountain had always been inhabited it could not have been an active volcano.