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A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms / Being an account by the Chinese monk Fâ-hien of his travels in India and Ceylon (A.D. 399-414) in search of the Buddhist books of discipline cover

A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms / Being an account by the Chinese monk Fâ-hien of his travels in India and Ceylon (A.D. 399-414) in search of the Buddhist books of discipline

Chapter 23: CHAPTER XIX. SHÂ-CHE. LEGEND OF BUDDHA’S DANTA-KÂSHṬHA.
By Faxian
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About This Book

A travel narrative recounts a lengthy pilgrimage undertaken to obtain authoritative Buddhist scriptures, offering sequential accounts of routes, towns, and regions visited. It records detailed descriptions of monasteries, relics, stupas, festivals, and local legends tied to sacred sites, together with observations on monastic discipline, communal practices, and material culture. The text is arranged chapter by chapter around places of interest and is accompanied by explanatory notes, textual annotations, and occasional reflections on religious observance and geography.

CHAPTER XIX.
SHÂ-CHE. LEGEND OF BUDDHA’S DANTA-KÂSHṬHA.

[Chinese]

Going on from this to the south-east for three yojanas, they came to the great kingdom of Shâ-che.1 As you go out of the city of Shâ-che by the southern gate, on the east of the road (is the place) where Buddha, after he had chewed his willow branch,2 stuck it in the ground, when it forthwith grew up seven cubits, (at which height it remained) neither increasing nor diminishing. The Brahmâns with their contrary doctrines3 became angry and jealous. Sometimes they cut the tree down, sometimes they plucked it up, and cast it to a distance, but it grew again on the same spot as at first. Here also is the place where the four Buddhas walked and sat, and at which a tope was built that is still existing.

1 Shâ-che should probably be Shâ-khe, making Cunningham’s identification of the name with the present Saket still more likely. The change of 祗 into 祇 is slight; and, indeed, the Khang-hsî dictionary thinks the two characters should be but one and the same.
2 This was, no doubt, what was called the danta-kâshṭha, or ‘dental wood,’ mostly a bit of the ficus Indicus or banyan tree, which the monk chews every morning to cleanse his teeth, and for the purpose of health generally. The Chinese, not having the banyan, have used, or at least Fâ-hien used, Yang (楊, the general name for the willow) instead of it.
3 Are two classes of opponents, or only one, intended here, so that we should read ‘all the unbelievers and Brahmâns,’ or ‘heretics and Brahmâns?’ I think the Brahmâns were also ‘the unbelievers’ and ‘heretics,’ having 外道, views and ways outside of, and opposed to, Buddha’s.