with a blow of his fist. Nanda (not Ananda, but a
half-brother of Siddhartha), coming that way, saw the carcass lying on
the road, and pulled it on one side; but the Bodhisattva, seeing it
there, took it by the tail, and tossed it over seven fences and ditches,
when the force of its fall made a great ditch.]

[Footnote 2: They did this, probably, to show their humility, for Upali
was only a Sudra by birth, and had been a barber; so from the first did
Buddhism assert its superiority to the conditions of rank and caste.
Upali was distinguished by his knowledge of the rules of discipline, and
praised on that account by Buddha. He was one of the three leaders of
the first synod, and the principal compiler of the original Vinaya
books.]

[Footnote 3: The Srotapannas are the first class of saints, who are not
to be reborn in a lower sphere, but attain to nirvana after having been
reborn seven times consecutively as men or devas. The Chinese editions
state there were one thousand of the Sakya seed. The general account is
that they were five hundred, all maidens, who refused to take their
place in king Vaidurya's harem, and were in consequence taken to a pond,
and had their hands and feet cut off. There Buddha came to them, had
their wounds dressed, and preached to them the Law. They died in the
faith, and were reborn in the region of the four Great Kings. Thence
they came back and visited Buddha at Jetavana in the night, and there
they obtained the reward of Srotapanna.]

[Footnote 4: Fa-hien does not say that he himself saw any of these white
elephants, nor does he speak of the lions as of any particular color. We
shall find by and by, in a note further on, that, to make them appear
more terrible, they are spoken of as "black."]

CHAPTER XXIII

~Legends of Rama and its Tope~

East from Buddha's birthplace, and at a distance of five yojanas, there
is a kingdom called Rama. The king of this country, having obtained one
portion of the relics of Buddha's body, returned with it and built over
it a tope, named the Rama tope. By the side of it there was a pool, and
in the pool a dragon, which constantly kept watch over the tope, and
presented offerings at it day and night. When king Asoka came forth
into the world, he wished to destroy the eight topes over the relics,
and to build instead of them eighty-four thousand topes. [1] After he
had thrown down the seven others, he wished next to destroy this tope.
But then the