The Country of Senghebuluo僧訶補羅國

The country of Senghebuluo is three thousand five or six hundred li around. On the west it reaches the river Xindu. The great capital city of the country is fourteen or fifteen li around. It leans on the mountains and holds the ridge, and it is firm and steep and strong. Little labor goes into the farming, but much is gathered from the good of the land. The season is cold, and the nature of the people is fierce. Their customs honor swiftness and courage, but they are also full of deceit. The country has no ruler of its own, and it is subject to the country of Jiashimiluo.

Not far south of the city there is a stupa which King Wuyou built. Its adornment is broken, but divine wonders follow one after another. Beside it there is a monastery, but it is empty and has no monks.

Going forty or fifty li southeast of the city, one comes to a stone stupa which King Wuyou built, more than two hundred feet high. There are more than ten ponds, and they shine on either side and ring it about. Stone is carved to make their banks, and their shapes and kinds are strange. The water strikes and runs clear and pours down swiftly, and dragons and fish and the creatures of the water live in caves and swim below. Lotus flowers of four colors fill the clear pools. All manner of fruits are thick everywhere, blooming together in different colors, and the woods and the ponds shine on one another, so that it is truly a place to wander and enjoy. Beside it there is a monastery, but it has long been without monks.

Not far from the stupa there is the place where the founder of the white-robed followers of another way awoke to the principle he had been seeking and first preached his Law. A mark has now been set up there, and beside it a temple of the gods has been built. His followers practice hard austerities, working with all their strength day and night, with no leisure to rest. Much of the Law their founder preached is stolen from the meaning of the scriptures of the Buddha, and he set up his teaching according to the kinds of men and took the rules and the bearing of the Buddhists for his model. The greater ones he called monks, and the lesser ones he called novices. Their bearing and their keeping of rules are much like the way of the Buddhist monks. Only they leave a little of their hair, and they add to this the baring of the body, and if they wear anything it is white, and this is the difference. By such divisions they are told apart a little. The image of the master they revere as divine is secretly modeled on the Tathagata. The clothing differs, but the marks of the body are no different.

From here one returns again to the north border of the country of Dachashiluo and crosses the river Xindu, and going southeast more than two hundred li one passes a great stone gate. Long ago Prince Mohesaduo threw down his body here and fed a starving tiger. A hundred and forty or fifty paces south of it there is a stone stupa. Mohesaduo pitied the starving beast, which had no strength left, and he came to this land and pierced himself with dry bamboo and fed it with his blood, and then at last the beast ate. The earth there, and the grasses and trees, are faintly touched with crimson, as though stained with blood. When a man walks on that ground it is as though he bore thorns, and whether he doubts or believes, there is none who does not grieve.

North of the place where he gave up his body there is a stone stupa more than two hundred feet high, which King Wuyou built. Its carving is of strange make, and at times a divine light shines from it. Small stupas and stone niches, often counted by the hundred, ring this burial ground. When the sick walk around them, many are healed.

East of the stone stupa there is a monastery with more than a hundred monks, and all of them study the teaching of the Greater Vehicle.

Going east from here more than fifty li, one comes to a lone mountain, and within it there is a monastery with more than two hundred monks, and all of them study the Law and teaching of the Greater Vehicle. Flowers and fruits are thick, and the springs and ponds are clear as a mirror. Beside it there is a stupa more than two hundred feet high. This is where the Tathagata, long ago, converted an evil yaksha here and made him stop eating flesh. Going southeast from here through the mountains more than five hundred li, one comes to the country of Wulashi.