On Yuan Chwang's Travels in India, 629–645 A.D. v2.c22.s14: Sindh
On Yuan Chwang's Travels in India, 629–645 A.D. v2.c22.s14
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Sindh
v2.c22.s14.1
The narrative in the Records proceeds to state that the pilgrim went back from Maheśvarapura to Guchala and from that proceeded north again through a wild rugged region for 1900 *li* and crossing the *Sin-tu* (Sindh) river reached the country with the same name. Yuan-chuang describes Sindh as being above 7000 *li* in circuit and its capital, *Pi-shan-p'o-pu-lo* by name, as above thirty *li* in circuit. The products of the country were early wheat (in B text, millet and wheat), gold, silver, *t'u-shih*, and it had oxen, and sheep, and dromedaries, and mules; it yielded also various kinds of salt, red, white, and black, and a white rock-salt; the people of various foreign countries used the salt as medicine. The inhabitants were quick-tempered but upright, quarrelsome and vituperative and of superficial learning; they were thorough believers in Buddhism. There were several hundreds of monasteries and above 10000 Brethren all of the Hīnayānist Sammatiya school. Most of these were indolent worthless persons; of the superior Brethren who, leading lives of lonely seclusion, never relaxed in perseverance, many attained arhatship. There were above thirty Deva-Temples and the various sectaries lived pell-mell. The king, who was of the Sudra caste, was a sincere man and a believer in Buddhism. The Buddha while in this world had travelled in this country, and Asoka had erected some tens of topes as memorials of his visits; there were also monasteries or topes erected where the great arhat Upagupta, who often visited this country, had preached and taught. Among the low marshes near the *Sin-tu* (Sindh, Indus) for above 1000 *li* were settled some myriads of families of ferocious disposition, who made the taking of life their occupation, and supported themselves by rearing cattle; they had no social distinctions and no government; they shaved off their hair and wore the bhikshu garb, looking like bhikshus yet living in the world; they were bigoted in their narrow views and reviled the "Great Vehicle". According to local accounts the ancestors of this people were originally cruel and wicked and were converted by a compassionate arhat who received them into the Buddhist communion; they thereupon ceased to take life, shaved their heads and assumed the dress of Buddhist mendicants; in the course of time, however, the descendants of these men had gone back to their old ways, but they still remained outwardly bhikshus.
v2.c22.s14.2
In this passage, the reader will observe, the pilgrim represents himself as having gone back from Maheśvara to Guchala, and to have continued his journey thence north to Sindh. But the Life makes him return from Maheśvara to Suraṭha and go from that to A-tien-p'o-ki-lo, thence on to Lang-ka-lo and Pitośila and Avanta, and then from this last east 700 li to Sindh. Julien suggests Vichavapura as possibly the original for the name of the capital here transcribed P'i-shan-p'o-pu-lo, and other restorations have been proposed, but no one seems to be perfectly satisfactory. The name given in our text moreover may have been a book name, and not current among the people at the time. Cunningham takes it to be another name for Alor the capital of Upper Sindh about this period.¹ General Haig writes—"Hiuen Tsang's Sindh, in fact, is not the Sindh of any period known to history, and his description of it is wholly irreconcilable with the facts which we gather from the contemporary history embodied in the "Tārīkh Hind-wa-Sind".² He thinks that Julien's Sin-tu country must have included the Salt Range, and that its capital must be looked for somewhere in the Derajāt. In a Dhāraṇī Sūtra the "Mālava (Mo-la-wan) country and the Indus-river city" are mentioned, along with other districts, as places in which "Perfection" may may be sought.³ According to I-ching Sin-tu and Lo-t'u, (or -ch'a) or Sindh and Lāṭa, were in West India and Sindh lay between Kapis and Lāṭa, the latter being in Central Gujarat according to Professor Bühler.¹
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¹ J. III, p. 409; A. G. I. p. 249 and 259.
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² "The Indus Delta Country", p. 34.
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³ Fo-shuo-ta-pei &c. ch. 2 (No. 1060).
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¹ Hsi-yü-ch‘iu, ch. 1; Nan-hai-ch‘i-kuei, ch. 1, and Takakusu pp. 9, 217.
v2.c22.s14.7
As to the strange inhabitants in the lowlands along the Indus the Fan-chih gives an account slightly different from the pilgrim’s. The Fang-chih places the tribe on the side of the Black (Wu 烏) River, and makes the people to have been sheep-rearers; it adds that all of them, male and female, shaved off their hair, wore the monk’s garb, and were outwardly bhikshus.