Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c8.83

c8.83

Between the Nepalese lower range of the Himalaya and the middle part of the course of the Rapti,* which runs through the north-eastern part of the province of Oudh, there stretches a strip of level, fruitful land,† some thirty English miles broad, well-watered by the numerous streams that issue from the Himalayas. Here lay the not very extensive territory over which the Sakyas claimed supremacy and dominion. On the east the Rohinî separated their lands from their neighbours; to this day this stream has preserved the name which it bore more than two thousand years ago.* On the west and south the rule of the Sakyas extended quite up, or nearly so, to the Rapti.†