The Country of Quzhi屈支國

The country of Quzhi is more than a thousand li from east to west and more than six hundred li from north to south. The great capital city of the country is seventeen or eighteen li around. The soil suits millet and barley, there is non glutinous rice, and grapes and pomegranates grow there. Pears, crabapples, peaches and apricots are plentiful. The land yields gold, copper, iron, lead and tin. The seasons are mild and the customs are plain. Their writing takes its pattern from India, with rough changes here and there. In strings and pipes and music they are better than all the countries around. For clothing they wear brocade and coarse cloth, they cut their hair and wear headcloths and caps. For money they use gold coins, silver coins and small copper coins. The king is of the Quzhi stock. He is poor in wits and counsel, and he is pressed by his strong ministers. In their custom, when a child is born they press its head with a board, wishing it to be even all around. There are more than a hundred monasteries and more than five thousand monks, and they study the Sarvastivada school of the Lesser Vehicle. The scriptures and the rules of discipline take their pattern from India, so those who read and study them keep to the text itself. They are still bound to the gradual teaching, and in their food they take the three kinds of clean meat. They keep themselves clean and delight in study, and men vie with one another in their work.

North of the city on the eastern border of the country, in front of a temple of the gods, there is a great dragon pool. The dragons change their shape and couple with the mares, and so dragon colts are born, wild and hard to drive. Only the young of the dragon colts can be broken and harnessed. This is why fine horses are plentiful in this country. It is said in the old records that in recent times there was a king called Jinhua. His rule and his teaching were clear, and so he came to drive dragons and ride them. When the king was near his death he touched a dragon's ear with his whip, and it hid itself away from that time to this. There is no well inside the city, and the people draw the water of that pool. A dragon changed into a man and lay with many of the women, and the children born were strong and swift, and when they ran they could catch a galloping horse. So it spread little by little, until all the people were of dragon stock. Trusting in their strength they grew overbearing and would not obey the king's commands, and the king then brought in the Turks and killed the people of this city. Old and young alike were cut down, and scarcely a living soul was left. The city now is choked with weeds, and the smoke of men has ceased there.

More than forty li north of the ruined city, where the land meets the foot of the mountains, with one river between them, there are two monasteries. Both bear the name Zhaohuli, and they are called by east and west. The adorning of the Buddha images is beyond what human hands seem able to do, and the monks keep their fasts and are truly diligent. In the Buddha hall of the eastern Zhaohuli there is a jade stone. Its face is more than two feet across, and its color runs yellow and white like a sea shell. On it is the mark of a footprint the Buddha left, one foot eight inches long and something over six inches wide. On fast days it sometimes shines with a bright light.

Outside the west gate of the great city, on the left and the right of the road, there are standing images of the Buddha more than ninety feet high. Before these images they set up the place where the great assembly is held every fifth year. Every year, for some days about the autumn equinox, the monks of the whole country gather there. From the ruler above to the officers and the common people below, they lay aside their worldly business and hold to the fast and the precepts, and they receive the scriptures and hear the Law, begrudging the short day and forgetting their weariness. The monasteries adorn their Buddha images, making them bright with rare jewels and dressing them in brocade and silk, and they carry them out on carriages, and these are called the images that go in procession. Often they are counted in the thousands, and they gather at the meeting place like clouds. On the fifteenth day and the last day of the month the king and his great ministers always take counsel on the affairs of the country, and only after asking the high monks do they make it known.

Northwest of the assembly ground, across the river, one comes to the monastery of Asheli'er. Its courts and halls are bright and open, and the Buddha images are finely wrought. The monks are grave and diligent and never slack, and all of them are old in years and deep in virtue, great in learning and high in talent. Men of parts from far countries come there out of love for that spirit. The king and his great ministers, the officers and the common people and the powerful houses make them offerings of the four kinds, and the longer it goes on the more they revere them. It is said in the old records that long ago a former king of this country honored the Three Jewels, and wished to travel about and pay his respects at the traces of the holy ones. So he ordered his younger brother by the same mother to take charge of what was left behind. The brother received the order, and in secret he cut off his own manhood, to stop the thing before it could sprout. He sealed it in a golden box and brought it up to the king. The king said, "What does this mean?" He answered, "On the day your carriage turns back, then it may be opened." The king handed it at once to an officer, who kept it in his charge with the army. When the king returned there was indeed one who framed a charge against him, saying, "The man you left to watch the country has defiled the inner palace." The king heard it and was struck with anger, and would have put him to a heavy punishment. The brother said, "I do not dare flee the blame. I ask only that the golden box be opened." The king then opened it and looked, and it was the severed flesh. He said, "What strange thing is this? What would you make clear by it?" He answered, "When the king went traveling in the past and gave me charge of what was left behind, I feared there would be some slander and harm, and I cut myself to make my case plain. Now the sign has indeed come. I ask you to look on it." The king was deeply startled and thought it wonderful, and his love for him grew all the greater. He went in and out of the inner palace with nothing to bar him. Afterwards the king's brother was on the road and met a man driving five hundred oxen, meaning to geld them. He saw it and thought, "Seeing my own kind moves my heart the more. Now that my body is maimed, how is this not the work of a former life?" Then with his goods and treasure he ransomed this herd of oxen and set them free. By the power of that mercy and goodness the form of a man came back to him little by little. Because his body was whole again, he went into the palace no more. The king wondered at it and asked him, and he set out the whole of it from beginning to end. The king held it a rare and wonderful thing, and he built a monastery to mark that fine deed and carry its fragrance to the ages after.

Going west from here more than six hundred li, one passes a small sandy waste and reaches the country of Balujia.