Chapter VII

Keeping along (Ts’ung)-ling, they journeyed southwest for fifteen days. The road was difficult and broken, with steep crags and precipices in the way. The mountain-side is simply a stone wall standing up 10,000 feet. Looking down, the sight is confused, and on going forward there is no sure foothold. Below is a river called Sin-t’u-ho. In old days men bored through the rocks to make a way, and spread out side-ladders, of which there are seven hundred (steps?) in all to pass. Having passed the ladders, we proceed by a hanging rope-bridge and cross the river. The two sides of the river are something less than 80 paces apart, as recorded by the Kiu-yi; but neither Chang-kin nor Kan-ying of the Han arrived here. The body of priests asked Fa-hian whether it was known when the eastward passage of the religion of Buddha began. Hian replied, “When I asked the men of that land, they all said there was an old tradition that from the time of setting up the image of Maitreya Bodhisattva, and afterwards, there were Sramanas from India who dispatched the dharma-vinaya beyond this river.” The setting up of the image took place rather more than three hundred years after the Nirvana of Buddha, in the time of Ping-wang of the Chau family. According to this, we may say that the extension of the great doctrine began from this image. If, then, Maitreya Mahasattva be not the successor of Sakya, who is there could cause the three gems to spread everywhere, and frontier men to understand the law? As we certainly know that the origin of the opening of the mysterious revolution is not man’s work, so the dream of Ming Ti was from this also.