Turning Back Alone

Going east from the country of Varanasi, he came back to the city of Pataliputra. What Faxian had sought from the first was the rules of the Vinaya, but in the countries of North India they were handed down by word of mouth from master to master, and there was no book to copy. This is why he crossed so far and came at last to Central India. Here, at the sangharama of the Great Vehicle, he got one Vinaya, the Mohe sengqi zhong lü. It is what the first assembly practiced while the Buddha was in the world, and its text was handed down at the Jetavana monastery. The other eighteen schools each have their own line of masters, and in the main they do not differ, but in small things they are not the same, and what one allows another shuts off. This one, though, is the fullest and most complete in what it says. He also got one Vinaya in abridgment, some seven thousand verses, the Sapoduo zhong lü, which is what the monks of the land of Qin practice. This one too is handed down by word of mouth from master to master and is not set down in writing. From this assembly he also got the Za apitan xin, some six thousand verses, and the Yan jing (綖經) in one part, two thousand five hundred verses, and one roll of the Fangdeng banniyuan jing, some five thousand verses, and the Mohe sengqi apitan. So Faxian stayed here three years, learning the writing of Sanskrit and the speech of Sanskrit, and copying the Vinaya.

When Daozheng came to the Middle Country and saw the rule of the shramanas and the bearing of the monks, and how in every matter it was worth the seeing, he looked back and sighed over the land of Qin at the border, where the Vinaya of the assembly is broken and wanting. He made this vow: "From now until I attain buddhahood, may I not be born in a border land." So he stayed on and did not go home.

Faxian's heart from the first was to make the rules of the Vinaya flow through the land of Han, and so he turned back alone.

Going down eastward along the Ganges for eighteen yojanas, on its south bank there is the great country of Zhanpo. Stupas were raised at the Buddha's vihara, at the place where he walked, and at the places where the four Buddhas sat, and monks live there today.

Going east from here nearly fifty yojanas he reached the country of Tamralipti, which is the mouth of the sea. That country has twenty four sangharamas, and monks live in all of them, and the Law of the Buddha flourishes there as well. Faxian stayed here two years, copying sutras and painting images.