The Country of Moluojuzha秣羅矩咤國

The country of Moluojuzha is more than five thousand li around. The great capital city of the country is more than forty li around. The soil is salt, and the good of the land does not grow well. Many of the precious things of the islands of the sea are gathered in this country. The climate is burning hot, and the people are mostly dark of face. In will and in nature they are hard and keen, and they honor the false and the true together. They do not hold the arts of leisure in esteem, and they are good only at chasing gain. Of the old sites of monasteries there are truly many traces left, but those that remain are already few, and the monks are few as well. The temples of the gods are several hundred and the followers of other ways are very many, and most of them are of the company that goes naked.

Not far east of the city there is an old monastery. Its courts and its buildings have gone to waste, but the foundations are still there. It was raised by Dadi, the younger brother of King Wuyou. East of it there is a stupa. Its high base has already sunk, but the overturned bowl remains. This was raised by King Wuyou. Long ago the Tathagata spoke the Law here and showed great divine power and carried across a multitude beyond measure, and to make the holy trace plain a mark was set up here. The longer the years go on, the more divine it becomes, and those who pray here sometimes have their wish granted.

On the shore of the sea south of the country there is Mount Molaye. Its cliffs are high and its ridges are steep, its valleys are hollowed out and its streams run deep. Within it there are white sandalwood trees and Zhantannipo trees. These trees are like the white sandalwood and cannot be told apart from it. Only in high summer do men climb to a high place and look far off, and where they see a great snake coiled about a tree they know it by that. It is because the nature of that wood is cool and cold that the snakes coil there. When they have seen it from afar they shoot an arrow to mark it, and only after the snakes have gone into hiding for the winter do they cut the tree down and take it. The Jiebuluo incense tree has a trunk like a pine, but its leaves are different and its flowers and fruits differ too. When it is first taken it is still wet and has no scent yet, but after the wood has dried and is split along the grain there is a scent within it, shaped like mica and colored like ice and snow. This is what is called longnao incense.

East of Mount Molaye there is Mount Budaluojia. The mountain paths are dangerous and steep, and the crags and the valleys lean over. On the top of the mountain there is a pool whose water is clear as a mirror. It parts and becomes a great river that runs twenty times around the mountain and enters the southern sea. Beside the pool there is a palace of the gods made of stone, where the bodhisattva Guanzizai comes and goes and stays and wanders. Those who wish to see the bodhisattva give no thought to body or life. They push through the water and climb the mountain and forget how hard and how dangerous it is, and few indeed are those who can reach it. But when the people who live at the foot of the mountain pray with their hearts and ask to see him, he takes now the form of the god Zizai, now that of a follower of another way smeared with ashes, and he comforts and teaches them, and indeed he grants their wish.

Northeast of this mountain, on the shore of the sea, there is a city. This is the road that goes to the country of Sengjialuo in the southern sea. It is heard from the people of that land that if one takes to the sea from here and goes about three thousand li to the southeast, one comes to the country of Sengjialuo.