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Anxiety (Skt. Shrikantha Sutra. Nanjio’s Catalogue, No. 398).
The Sutra says that when the Buddha Sakyamuni was saying[errata 1] in the Venuvanavihara at Rajagriha a terribly virulent epidemic disease was raging there, of which innumerable people died daily. The Government Authorities were at a loss how to act. A Brahman priest proposed to propitiate the angry gods or demons, by erecting an altar in their honour. Another Brahman priest advised that a great temple be erected to these gods or demons at the cross-roads in the capital and thereby propitiated the plague would cease, a third advised a still more efficacious remedy, viz,, to worship the gods or demons by offering several hundreds of white animals—horses, camels, cows, sheep, cocks, and white dogs, and beseeching them not to inflict such a fearful pestilence upon the citizens.
144. Scrophularia oldhami Oliv.
145. Belamcanda Punctata Moench (=B. chinensis Lem).
146. Or, tear-glass. Coix Lacraymajabi L.
147. Or, prickly ash. Xanthoxylum Piperitum D. C.
148. Juglans.
149. We find the myth of Pan Ku in a certain Chinese book, entitled Teio-Go-Un-Rekinenki (Ti-Wang-Wu-Yun-Li-Nien-Chi.[errata 2] Cf. Ninbo’s Jitsu-I-Ki[errata 3] (Jen-Fang’s Shu-I-Chi.[errata 4]
We venture to use Aston’s quotation from Mayer’s Chinese Manual, p. 174, which says, “Pan-Ku came into being in the Great Waste. His origin is unknown. When dying, he gave birth to the existing material universe. His breath was transmuted into the wind and clouds; his voice into thunder; his left eye into the
