away, the people of their various countries heard how pleasant the
land was, and flocked to it in numbers till it became a great nation.
The climate is temperate and attractive, without any difference of
summer and winter. The vegetation is always luxuriant. Cultivation
proceeds whenever men think fit: there are no fixed seasons for it.

When Buddha came to this country, wishing to transform the wicked nagas
by his supernatural power, he planted one foot at the north of the royal
city, and the other on the top of a mountain, [1] the two being fifteen
yojanas apart. Over the footprint at the north of the city the king
built a large tope, four hundred cubits high, grandly adorned with gold
and silver, and finished with a combination of all the precious
substances. By the side of the tope he further built a monastery, called
the Abhayagiri, where there are now five thousand monks. There is in it
a hall of Buddha, adorned with carved and inlaid work of gold and
silver, and rich in the seven precious substances, in which there is an
image of Buddha in green jade, more than twenty cubits in height,
glittering all over with those substances, and having an appearance of
solemn dignity which words cannot express. In the palm of the right hand
there is a priceless pearl. Several years had now elapsed since Fa-hien
left the land of Han; the men with whom he had been in intercourse had
all been of regions strange to him; his eyes had not rested on an old
and familiar hill or river, plant or tree: his fellow-travellers,
moreover, had been separated from him, some by death, and others flowing
off in different directions; no face or shadow was now with him but his
own, and a constant sadness was in his heart. Suddenly one day, when by
the side of this image of jade, he saw a merchant presenting as his
offering a fan of white silk; [2] and the tears of sorrow involuntarily
filled his eyes and fell down.

A former king of the country had sent to Central India and got a slip of
the patra tree, which he planted by the side of the hall of Buddha,
where a tree grew up to the height of about two hundred cubits. As it
bent on one side towards the southeast, the king, fearing it would fall,
propped it with a post eight or nine spans around. The tree began to
grow at the very heart of the prop, where it met the trunk; a shoot
pierced through the post, and went down to the ground, where it entered
and formed roots, that rose to the surface and w