The nearer you approach, however, the fainter it becomes,
as if it were only in your fancy. When the kings from the regions all
around have sent skilful artists to take a copy, none of them have
been able to do so. Among the people of the country there is a saying
current that "the thousand Buddhas(13) must all leave their shadows
here."

Rather more than four hundred paces west from the shadow, when
Buddha was at the spot, he shaved his hair and clipt his nails, and
proceeded, along with his disciples, to build a tope seventy or eighty
cubits high, to be a model for all future topes; and it is still
existing. By the side of it there is a monastery, with more than seven
hundred monks in it. At this place there are as many as a thousand
topes(14) of Arhans and Pratyeka Buddhas.(15)

NOTES

(1) Now in India, Fa-Hsien used the Indian measure of distance; but
it is not possible to determine exactly what its length then was. The
estimates of it are very different, and vary from four and a half or
five miles to seven, and sometimes more. See the subject exhaustively
treated in Davids' "Ceylon Coins and Measures," pp. 15-17.

(2) The present Hilda, west of Peshawur, and five miles south of
Jellalabad.

(3) "The vihara," says Hardy, "is the residence of a recluse or
priest;" and so Davids:--"the clean little hut where the mendicant
lives." Our author, however, does not use the Indian name here, but
the Chinese characters which express its meaning--tsing shay, "a
pure dwelling." He uses the term occasionally, and evidently, in this
sense; more frequently it occurs in his narrative in connexion with
the Buddhist relic worship; and at first I translated it by "shrine"
and "shrine-house;" but I came to the conclusion, at last, to employ
always the Indian name. The first time I saw a shrine-house was, I
think, in a monastery near Foo-chow;--a small pyramidical structure,
about ten feet high, glittering as if with the precious substances,
but all, it seemed to me, of tinsel. It was in a large apartment of
the building, having many images in it. The monks said it was the most
precious thing in their possession, and that if they opened it, as I
begged them to do, there would be a convulsion that would destroy the
whole establishment. See E. H., p. 166. The name of the province of
Behar was given to it in consequence of its many viharas.

(4) According