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A Record of the Buddhist Religion, As Practised in India and the Malay Archipelago (a.d. 671–695) - Max Muller, 1896 - Complete Book

English

tells us that I-tsing was twenty-five years (671-698) abroad and travelled in more than thirty countries, and that he came back to China at Midsummer in the first year of the Chéng-shéng period (695) of T‘ien-hou (the queen-usurper, 684-704); further that he brought home some four hundred different texts of Buddhist books, the slokas numbering 500,000, and a real plan of the Diamond Seat (Vagrdsana) of the Buddha. In a.v, 700-712 I-tsing translated 56 works in 230 volumes, though some of them were of an earlier date. Among these works there are several important Sftras and SAstras, but to know how he represented the M@lasarvastivada School, with which our Record is particularly connected, it will suffice to give here only the Vinaya texts as below :— A. The India Office Collection. No. 1110. Milasarvastivada-vinaya-stitra, 1 vol. 99 9, *Winaya, 50 vols. ” ” ~samyukta-vastu, 40 vols. ” ~Saighabhedaka-vastu, 20 vols, ” -bhikshust-vinaya, 20 vols, ” ” -Vinaya-sangraha, 14 vols, ” -ekasatakarman, Io vols. ” ” snidna, 5 vols. ” ” x *matv7ka, § vols. ” 93 *Vinaya-nidna-matrzk4-gatha (15 leaves). ” -Samyukta-vastu-gatha (10 leaves). ” ” s9 *Vinaya-gath, 4 vols. ” ” +bhikshus-vinaya-sitra, 2 vols. Bodleian Library Collection (Jap. 65°) besides the above. é 2. yy 118 3 yy W120, 4) 1123, 5+ ay TE24. 6. 4, 1124, 7 5 TIBI 8 4, 1133, 9 9 1134. IO. 4, 1140, Il. 4, LI4t. 12, 4, 1143. 13. 53 114g. B. The 14. No. (1). 15. yy (2). 16. 45 (3). 7 3 G4). 18 4, (8). 19 (6) Millasarvastivada-pravragy4(-upasampada-)vastu, 4 vols, (Cf. Mahavagga, Khandhaka 1.) Malasarvastivada-varshav4sa-vastu, 1 vol. (Cf. Mahav., Khandh, ITI.) Mfilasarvastivada-pravarama-vastu, 1 vol. (Cf. Mahay., Khandh. IV.) Milasarvastivada-Zarma-vastu, 1 vol. (Cf. Mahav., Khandh, V.) Millasarvastivada-bhaishagya-vastu, 18 vols. (Cf. Mabay., Khandh. VI.) Milasarvastivada-kathinakivara-vastu, 1 vol. (Cf. Mahav., Khandh. VIL.) ’ The Sung-kao-séng-ch'nan, chap. i (Nanjio’s Catal.. No. raox): Chavannes Memoire. Xxxviii GENERAL INTRODUCTION. He thus represented the whole texts of the Vinaya belonging to his own Nikaya, and founded a new school for the study of this branch of Buddhist literature in China. He died a.p. 713, in his seventy-ninth year. His life and works are greatly commended by the emperor Chung-tsung, his contemporary, in the preface to the Tripisaka Catalogue. ; NOTES ON SOME GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES. I, The Country of the Naked People (# A, [aQ). I-tsing passed this island when he sailed for India. It is ten days distant in the north from Ka-cha, and it points to one of the smaller Nicobar Islands lying on the north side. The description given by I-tsing agrees with some of the later accounts of the islands, so much so, that we are fully justified in identifying his Lo-jén-kuo with the present Nicobar. The group is believed to be the Lanja- bdlus or Lankhabdhis of the Arab navigators in the ninth century, who recorded as follows : ‘These islands support a numerous population. Both men and women go naked, only the women wear a girdle of the leaves of trees. When a ship passes near, the men come out in boats of various sizes and barter ambergris and cocoa-nuts for iron'’ The description of Marco Polo in the thirteenth century does not agree so well as the above. He says: ‘When you leave the island of Java (Java the less= Sumatra) and the kingdom of Lambri, you sail north about 150 miles, and then you come to two islands, one of which is called “ Necuveran ” (or Necouran)*. In this island they have no king nor chief, but live like beasts; and I tell you they all go naked, both men and women, and do not use the slightest covering of any kind. They are idolators ; there are all sorts of fine and valuable trees, such as red sanders and Indian nuts and cloves and brazil and sundry other good spices *.’ * Colonel Yule, Marco Polo, vol. ii, chap. xii, p. 289 seq.; Relation des Voyages faits par les Arabes et les Persans dans l'Inde et 4 la Chine, dans le ixe siécle de Y’ére Chrétienne, by Reinaud, tom. i, p. 8. ? Rashiduddin uses the name of Nakvdram (not Lakvaram), which may be a less corrupted form of the name, perhaps allied with N4ga (Yule, Cathy, p. 96). This may be Hiuen Thsang’s Nalikera-dvipa (Cocoa-nut Island), as Yule thinks. * Yule, Marco Polo, vol. ii, chap. xii, p. 289 ; he says (p. 291): ‘ The natives now do not go quite naked; the men wear a narrow cloth. the women 2 crass girdle. Fathous for the ahundanre NOTES ON GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES. xxxix The above two accounts as well as I-tsing’s certainly refer to one and the same island, though the latter does not mention any name for it. It seems to have passed under the name of ‘ Lo-jén-kuo,’ just like ‘Insulae Nudorum,’ as marked in Prof. Lassen’s map. The group of the Nicobar Islands was called the ‘ Land * of Rékshasas’ in the history of T‘ang (618-906) *. II. The Islands of the Southern Sea (sy AE # wy). One must not confound what I-tsing calls the Islands of the Southern Sea with what we know as the South Sea Islands. By the term ‘ Nan-hai’ is meant the Southern China Sea or Malay Archipelago, and I-tsing includes in it Sumatra, Java, and the then known neighbouring islands. There are, he tells us *, more than ten countries, and all are under the influence of Buddhism. The Islands of the Southern Sea are:— 1. P'o-lu-shi Island; Pulushih (2 @ i pH). 2. Mo-lo-yu Country ; Malayu (fe AE SBE MY)‘: or, Shib-li-fo-shih Country ; Sribhoga (JF Fil HB Shi [z). 3. Mo-ho-hsin Island; Mahdsin (& Fol {8 DH). 4. Ho-ling Island, or Po-ling ; Kalinga (ial ing WA). 5. Tan-tan Island; Natuna (WH. HAL DH). 6, P*én-p’én Island ; Pem-pen (4 $#t wa). 7- Pro-li Island; Bali (32 Ha Hy). 8, K‘u-lun Island; Pulo Condore OR Si PH). 9. Fo-shih-pu-lo Island ; Bhogapura (HB Bid rail ME ph). 1o, A-shan Island, or O-shan (ep 3 wi). 11. Mo-chia-man Island; Maghaman Cx jon pa). There are many more islands, not mentioned here. The above eleven islands are, according to the author, enumerated from the 1 Karte von Alt-Indien zu Prof. Lassen’s Indischer Alterthumskunde, Bonn, 1853. ® Book 222; see also the Essays on Indo-China, second series, vol. i, p. 207. Some Chinese accounts of the Andaman Islands (Chinese, Yen-t‘o-mang; Japanese, An-da-ban) also agree with I-tsing’s, e. g. nakedness, iron, &c.; they were, of course, the same race. Chao-ju-kua’s description of it was given by Dr. Hirth, J. A. S. China, vol. xxii, Notes and Queries, p. 103. xl GENERAE INTRODUCTION. west, and following this order, we shall try to assign each its own place, as far as possible. 1, P‘o-lu-shi (Pulushih). P'o-lu-shi may at first seem to represent the Barussae Insulae, which are, in Lassen’s:map, a group of the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean. I-tsing, how- ever, does not seem to be referring to an island so far away, when he says that two Korean priests went on board to the country of P‘o-lu-shi, west of Sribhoga, and there they fell ill and died?. . Prof. Chavannes found in the History of T‘ang (chap. ccxxii c) a country called ‘Lang-po-lou-se,’ which is said to be the western part of Shih-li-fo-shih, and identified with our P‘o-lu-shi and Marco Polo’s Ferlec (=Parlék), which is the present Diamond Point. His identification seems to be ° correct, as the country of Sribhoga extended (see below) as far as the coast of Malacca during the T‘ang dynasty (618-906). 2.. Mo-lo-yu (Malayu), or Shih-li-fo-shih (Srfbhoga), Sribhoga seems to have been a very flourishing country in the time of our author, who went there twice and stayed some seven years (688-695), studying and translating the original texts, either Sanskrit or Pali. In his works he uses the name ‘ Bhoga’ or ‘ Sribhoga’ indiscriminately *. It seems that the capital of this country was from the first called Bhoga, probably a colony of Java, and that, when the kingdom became great, and extended so far as Malayu, which seems to have been annexed or to have come spontaneously under the realm of the Bhoga prince, the whole country as well as the capital received the name of Sribhoga. The change of the name Malayu to Sribhoga must have happened just before I-tsing’s time or during his stay there, for whenever he mentions Malayu by name he adds that ‘it is now changed into Stibhoga or Bhoga.’ As our author is the earliest writer who mentions these names, his account well deserves a careful examination. From his Record and Memoirs we gather the following facts :— 1, Bhoga the capital was on the river Bhoga, and it was the chief trading port with China, a regular navigation between it and Kwang-tung being con- ducted by a Persian merchant (p. xxviii, note 8). 2. The distance from Kwang-tung to Bhoga was about twenty days by a favourable wind, or sometimes a month (pp. xxx, xlvi). 1 Chavannes, Memoirs, p. 36, §§ 8, 9, and note. ? About nine times Srfbhoga and twelve times Bhoga (the latter more often referring to the “ie ae NOTES ON GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES. xli Malayu, which newly received the name of Sribhoga, was fifteen days’ sail from Bhoga the capital, and from Malayu to Ka-cha was also fifteen days,—so that Malayu lies just halfway between the two places (p. xlvi). The country of Sribhoga was east of Pulushih (p. xl). The king of Bhoga possessed ships, probably for commerce, sailing between India and Bhoga (pp. xxx, xlvi). The Bhoga king as well as the rulers of the neighbouring states favoured Buddhism (p. xxxiv). . The capital was a centre of Buddhist learning in the islands of the Southern Sea, and there were more than a thousand priests (p. xxxiv). 8. Buddhism was chiefly what is called the Hinaydna, represented for the most part by the Malasarvastivada School.