Fantastics and other Fancies/Hiouen-thsang
HIOUEN-THSANG[1]
The story of him who gave the Lotus of the good Law unto four hundred millions of his people in the Middle Kingdom, and remained insensible unto honors even as the rose-leaf to the dew-drop. . . .
Twelve hundred years ago, in a town of China, situated in the inmost recesses of the kingdom called Celestial, was born a boy, at whose advent in this world of illusions the spirits of good rejoiced, and marvelous things also happened—according to the legends of those years. For before his birth, the mother dreaming beheld the Shadow of Buddha above her, radiant as the face of the Mountain of Light; and after the Shadow had passed, she was aware of the figure of her son, that was to be, following after It over vast distances to cities of an architecture unknown, and through forests of strange growth that seemed not of this world. And a Voice gave her to know that her boy would yet travel in search of the Word through unknown lands, and be guided by Lord Buddha in his wanderings, and find in the end that which he sought. . . .
So the boy grew up in wisdom; and his face became as the white face of the God in the Temple beyond Tientsin, where the mirage shifts its spectral beauties forever above the sands, typifying to the faithful that the world and all within it are but a phantasmagoria of illusion. And the boy was instructed by the priests of Buddha, and became wiser than they.
For the Law of Buddha had blossomed in the land unnumbered years, and the Son of Heaven had bowed down before it, and there were in the Empire many thousand convents of holy monks, and countless teachers of truth. But in the lapse of a thousand years and more the Lotus Flower of the Good Law had lost its perfume; much of the wisdom of the World-honored had been forgotten; fire and the fury of persecution had made small the number of holy books. When Hiouen-thsang sought for the deeper wisdom of the Law he found it not; nor was there in all China one who could inform him. Then a great longing came upon him to go to India, the land of the Savior of Man, and there seek the wondrous words that had been lost, and the marvelous books unread by Chinese eyes.
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Before the time of Hiouen-thsang other Chinese pilgrims had visited the Indian Palestine;—Fabian had been sent thither upon a pilgrimage by a holy Empress. But these others had received aid of money and of servants,—letters to governors and gifts to kings. Hiouen-thsang had neither money nor servants, nor any knowledge of the way. Therefore he could only seek aid from the Emperor, and permission. But the Son of Heaven rejected the petition written upon yellow silk, and signed with two thousand devout names. Moreover, he forbade Hiouen-thsang to leave the kingdom under penalty of death.
But the heart of Hiouen-thsang told him that he must go. And he remembered that the caravans from India used to bring their strange wares to a city on the Hoang-ho—on the Yellow River. Secretly departing in the night, he traveled for many days, succored upon his way by the brethren, until he came to the caravansary, and saw the Indian merchants with their multitude of horses and of camels, resting beside the Hoang-ho.
And presently when they departed for the frontier, he followed secretly after them, with two Buddhist friends.
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So they came to the frontier, where the line of the fortifications stretched away lessening into the desert, with their watch-towers fantastically capped, like Mandarins. But here only the caravan could pass; for the guards had orders from the Son of Heaven to seize upon Hiouen-thsang;—and the Indian merchants rode away far beyond the line of the watch-towers; and the caravan became only a moving speck against the disk of the sun, to disappear with his setting. Yet in the night Hiouen-thsang passed with his friends, like shadows, through the line of guards, and followed the trail.
Happily the captain in charge of the next watch-tower was a holy man, and moved by the supplications of the Buddhist priests, he permitted Hiouen-thsang to pass on. But the other brethren trembled and returned, leaving Hiouen-thsang alone. Yet India was still more than a thousand miles distant, by the way of the caravans.
Only the men of the last watch-tower would not allow Hiouen-thsang to pass; but he escaped by them into the desert. Then he followed the line of the caravan, the prints of the feet of camels and horses leading toward India. Skeletons were whitening in the sands; the eyeless sockets of innumerable skulls looked at him. The sun set and rose again many times; the sand-sea moved its waves continually with a rusting sound; the multitude of white bones waxed vaster. And as Hiouen-thsang proceeded phantom cities mocked him on the right hand and upon the left, and the spectral caravans wrought by the mirage rode by him shadowlessly. Then his water-skin burst, and the desert drank up its contents; the hoof-prints disappeared. Hiouen-thsang had lost his way. . . .
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From the past of twelve hundred years ago, we can hear the breaking of that water-skin;— we can feel the voiceless despair that for a moment chilled the heart and faith of Hiouen-thsang,—alone in the desert of skeletons,—alone in the infinite platitude of sand broken only by the mockeries of the mirage. But the might of faith helped him on; prayers were his food, Buddha the star-compass that illuminated the path to India. For five days and five nights he traveled without meat or drink under blistering suns, under the vast throbbing of stars,—and at last the sharp yellow line of the horizon became green!
It was not the mirage,—it was a land of steel-bright lakes and long grass,—the land of the men who live upon horseback,—the country of the Oigour Tartars.
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The Khan received the pilgrim as a son; honors were showered upon him,—for the fame of Hiouen-thsang as a teacher of the Law had reached into the heart of Asia. And they desired that he should remain with them, to instruct them in the knowledge of Buddha. When he would not,—only after having vainly essayed upon him such temptation and coercion by turns that he was driven to despair, the Khan at last permitted him to depart under oath that he would return. But India was still far away. Hiouen-thsang had to pass through the territories of twenty-four great kings ere reaching the Himalayas. The Khan gave him an escort and letters to the rulers of all kingdoms, for his memory is yet blessed in the Empire Celestial.
It was in the seventh century. Rivers have changed their courses since then. Hiouen-thsang visited the rulers of kingdoms that have utterly disappeared; he beheld civilizations where are now wastes of sand; he conversed with masters of a learning that has vanished without leaving a trace behind. The face of the world is changed; but the words of Hiouen-thsang change not;—lakes have dried up, yet we even now in this Western republic drink betimes from that Fountain of Gold which Hiouen-thsang set flowing—to flow forever!
So they beheld at last, afar off, the awful Himalayas, whose white turbans touch the heaven of India, vested with thunder-clouds, belted with lightnings! And Hiouen-thsang passed through gorges overhung by the drooping fangs of monsters of ice—through ravines so dark that the traveler beholds the stars above him at noonday, and eagles like dots against the sky—and hard by the icy cavern whence the sacred river leaps in roaring birth —and by winding ways to valleys eternally green—and ever thus into the glowing paradise of Hindustan. But of those that followed Hiouen-thsang, thirteen were buried in the eternal snow.
He saw the wondrous cities of India; he saw the sanctuaries of Benares; saw the great temples since destroyed for modern eyes by Moslem conquerors; saw the idols that had diamond eyes and bellies filled with food of emeralds and carbuncles; he trod where Buddha had walked; he came to Maghada, which is the Holy Land of India. Alone and on foot he traversed the jungles; the cobra hissed under his feet, the tiger glared at him with eyes that flamed like emeralds, the wild elephant's mountain-shadow fell across his path. Yet he feared nothing, for he sought Buddha. The Phansigars flung about his neck the noose of the strangler, and yet loosened him on beholding the holiness of his face; swarthy robbers, whose mustaches were curved like scimitars, lifted their blades to smite, and beholding his eyes turned away. So he came to the Dragon-Cavern of Purushapura to seek Buddha. For Buddha, though having entered Nirvana a thousand years, sometimes there made himself visible as a luminous Shadow to those who loved him.
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But in the cavern was a darkness as of the grave, a silence as of death; Hiouen-thsang prayed in vain, and vainly wept for many hours in the darkness. At last there came a faint glow upon the wall, like a beam of the moon—and passed away. Then Hiouen-thsang prayed yet more fervently than before; and again in the darkness came a light—but a fierce brightness as of lightning, as quickly passing away. Yet a third time Hiouen-thsang wept and prayed; and a white glory filled all the black cavern—and brighter than the sun against that glory appeared the figure and face of Buddha, holier of beauty than all conceptions of man. So that Hiouen-thsang worshiped with his face to the earth. And Buddha smiled upon him, making the heart of the pilgrim full of sunshine—but the Divine spoke not, inasmuch as he had entered into Nirvana a thousand years.
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After this Hiouen-thsang passed sixteen years in the holy places, copying the Law, and seeking the words of Buddha in books that had been written in languages no longer spoken. Of these he obtained one thousand three hundred and thirty-five volumes. Other volumes there were in the Island of Elephants far to the South—in sultry Ceylon; but thither it was not permitted him to go.
He was a youth when he fled from China into the desert; he was a gray man when he returned. The Emperor that had forbade his going now welcomed his return, with processions of tremendous splendor, in which were borne the Golden Dragon and numberless statues in gold. But Hiouen-thsang withdrew from all honors into a monastery in the mountains, desiring to spend the rest of his life only in translating the word of Buddha contained in those many hundred books which he had found. And of these before his death he translated seven hundred and forty into one thousand three hundred and thirty-five volumes, as the books of the Chinese are made. Having completed his task, he passed away in the midst of great sorrow;—the Empire wept for him—four hundred millions mourned for him.
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Did he see the Shadow of Buddha smile upon him before he passed away, as he saw it in the Dragon-Cavern at Purushapura? . . . It is said that five others with him also beheld that luminous presence in the cave. Yet we may well believe that he only saw it—faith-created; for Buddha having passed into Nirvana may be sought only in the hearts of men, and seen only by the eyes of faith!
Twelve hundred years ago Hiouen-thsang devoted his life to the pursuit of that he believed to be Truth,—abandoned all things for what he held to be Duty,—encountered such hardships as perhaps no other man ever encountered in the search for Wisdom. To-day nations that were unborn in his years are reaping the fruits of his grand sacrifice of self. His travels have been recently translated into the French tongue; his own translations are aiding the philologists of the nineteenth century to solve historical and ethnical problems; Max Müller lectures[2] upon his wonderful mission to India in the seventh century; and stories from the books he brought back from Maghada are in the hands of American readers. Who shall say that there is no goodness without the circle of Christianity!—who declare that heroism and unselfishness, and truth, and purest faith may not exist save within the small sphere of what we fancy the highest ethical civilization! The pilgrims to the Indian Palestine, the martyrs of the Indian Christ, are surely the brethren of all whom we honor in the history of self-abnegation and the good fight for truth.