The Country of Sengjialuo僧伽羅國

The country of Sengjialuo is more than seven thousand li around, and the great walled capital of the country is more than forty li around. The land is rich and fat, and the climate is warm and hot. Sowing and reaping are done in their season, and flowers and fruits are abundant on every side. Households are many and thriving, and families are rich in goods. The people are low of body and dark of skin, and their nature is rough and fierce. They love learning and hold virtue high, they honor goodness and are diligent in works of merit.

This country was in origin an isle of treasure. Rare treasures were many there, and spirits and demons dwelt in it. Afterward a king of one country in South India betrothed his daughter to a neighboring country. On a lucky day they sent her off, and on the road they met a lion. The attendants who guarded her abandoned the girl and fled from the danger. The girl stayed in her carriage, and in her heart she was willing to lose her life. Then the lion king carried the girl off on his back. He went into the deep mountains and lived in a hidden valley, and he caught deer and gathered fruit and supplied her in season. When years and months had piled up she conceived and bore a son and a daughter. Their shape and their face were the same as a man's, but their nature and their stock were of a beast. The boy grew bigger little by little, and his strength was a match for fierce beasts. When he was just twenty the wisdom of man opened in him, and he asked his mother, "What am I to be called? My father is a wild beast and my mother is a human. They are not of one kind, so how did they come to be mated?" His mother then set out what had happened long ago and told her son. The son said, "Man and beast go by different roads. We should flee away quickly." His mother said, "I fled before this, and I could not save myself." After that the son followed his lion father, climbing the mountains and crossing the ridges, and he watched where his father went and where he stayed, so that they might escape. He waited until his father had gone out, and then he carried his mother and his younger sister and went down to the villages where men lived. His mother said, "Each of you must be careful and keep it close. Do not speak of where this came from. If men come to hear of it, they will make light of us and look down on us." So they came to her father's own country, but there was no one of her house in that country, and the sacrifices of her line had already ceased. They put themselves in the care of the townspeople, and the people said to them, "What country are you from?" They said, "We were of this country in origin. We wandered in other lands, and mother and children have led one another back to our old home." The people all pitied them, and they joined together to supply them. When the lion king came back there was nothing to be seen. He longed for his son and his daughter, and rage rose in him. He came out of the mountain valley and went back and forth among the villages and towns, roaring and bellowing, cruelly harming men and their goods and savagely killing living things. The townspeople went out at last to take him and kill him. They beat drums and blew conches, they carried crossbows and held spears, and they gathered in crowds to make a host, and only then did they escape harm. The king feared that his benevolent rule was not reaching far enough, so he loosed hunters upon the beast and set a time for the capture. The king himself led troops of the four kinds, a host counted in the ten thousands. They closed in upon the woods and marshes and spread across the mountains and valleys. The lion shook the air with his roar, and men and beasts drew back. When they had failed to take him, he called for volunteers again, saying that whoever should seize the lion and rid the country of its trouble would be repaid with a heavy reward, and his fine deed would be made known in due form. The son heard the king's order and said to his mother, "Hunger and cold are already hard upon us. I should answer the call, and if I gain anything by it, we can care for one another and live." His mother said, "You must not speak so. Though he is a beast, he is still called your father. How can hardship raise in you a mind to turn on him and harm him?" The son said, "Man and beast are of different kinds. Where are rites and right in that? We are already cut off from him, so what can this heart hope for?" Then he put a small knife in his sleeve and went out to answer the call. At that time a thousand men on foot and ten thousand on horse were massed like clouds and joined like mist, and the lion crouched in the woods, and no one dared come near. The son went before him, and his father grew tame and lay down. In his love for his son he forgot his anger, and the son drove the blade into his belly. Still he held his kindness and love, and there was no rage or venom in him, and even when his belly was cut open he kept his pain within and died. The king said, "What manner of man is this, to be so unlike other men?" He drew him on with blessing and gain and shook him with power and ruin, and only then did the man set out the whole matter from beginning to end and tell fully how it had been. The king said, "This is rebellion. He harmed even his father, so how much more one who is not his kin. The stock of a beast is hard to tame, and a fierce heart is easily stirred. He has removed a harm from the people, and his merit is great. He has cut off his father's life, and his heart is rebellious. If I repay his merit with a heavy reward and punish his rebellion by casting him far away, then the law of the country is not broken and the word of the king is not two." So he fitted out two great ships and stored much grain and dried food in them. The mother was kept in the country and the reward for the merit was supplied to her in full, and the son and the daughter each went in one ship and were set adrift on the waves. The ship of the son floated on the sea and came to this isle of treasure. He saw that rare jade was plentiful there, and he stayed in it. Afterward merchants came again to the isle to gather treasure, and he killed the master of the merchants and kept their sons and daughters. In this way they multiplied, and their sons and grandsons were many. At last they set up ruler and subject and ranked high and low, they founded a capital and built towns, and they held a land of their own. Because their forefather had seized the lion, they took up that first merit and made it the name of the country. The ship of the daughter floated to the west of Bolasi. Spirits and demons bewitched her there, and she bore and raised a host of women, and therefore the great country of women in the west is this. So the people of the country of Shizi are low of body and dark of skin, with square jaws and broad foreheads, and their feelings and their nature are rough and fierce, and they think nothing of what is as cruel as the poison of the zhen bird. This too is the stock left behind by a fierce beast, and therefore its people are for the most part brave and strong. This is one account.

What is written in the Law of the Buddha says this. Long ago five hundred rakshasa women lived in the great iron city on this isle of treasure. On the tower of the city they set up two tall banners to show the signs of good and ill fortune. When there was a lucky matter the lucky banner moved, and when there was an unlucky matter the unlucky banner moved. They always watched for merchants coming to the isle of treasure. Then they changed into beautiful women, took incense and flowers, played music, and came out to meet them and comfort them with questions, and they lured them into the iron city, and when the feasting and the pleasure were over they put them in an iron pen and ate them little by little. At that time there was in the continent of Shanbu a great master of merchants named Sengjia, and his son was called Sengjialuo. His father was already old, so the son took charge of the affairs of the house in his place. He went to sea with five hundred merchants to gather treasure, and wind and wave drove them about until they came by chance to the isle of treasure. Then the rakshasa women saw the lucky banner move, and they brought incense and flowers, beat drums and played music, and led one another out to meet them and wait for them, and lured them into the iron city. The master of the merchants then took his pleasure in feasting with the queen of the rakshasa women, and the rest of the merchant company were each matched with one of them, and as the years and the seasons went by they all bore a son. The rakshasa women grew cold in their feeling toward the men they already had, and they meant to shut them in the iron pen and watch for other merchants. Then one night Sengjialuo was troubled by an evil dream and knew it was no lucky sign. He secretly looked for a way home, and he came upon the iron pen, and there he heard the sound of sorrowful crying. He climbed a tall tree and asked, "Who is bound there, and grieves so bitterly?" They said, "Do you not know? The women in the city are all rakshasas. Long ago they lured us into the city for pleasure. When you came, they shut us in this pen, and little by little they have made us their food, and more than half of us are gone already. You too will meet this same disaster before long." Sengjialuo said, "What plan should we make, that we may escape this peril?" They answered, "We have heard that on the shore of the sea there is a heavenly horse. If you pray to him with utmost sincerity, he will surely carry you across." When Sengjialuo had heard this he told the merchant company in secret, and together they went to the shore of the sea and sought rescue with all their heart. Then the heavenly horse came and told them, "Let each of you take hold of my mane and not look back, and I will carry you over. You shall cross the sea and escape the danger, and reach the continent of Shanbu, and come safely to your own land." The merchants obeyed what he had told them, single in mind and without a second thought, and took hold of his mane. Then the heavenly horse sprang up on the road of the clouds and carried them across to the shore of the sea. The rakshasa women suddenly found that their husbands had fled. They told one another and wondered where they had gone, and each took her little child and rode the empty air back and forth. When they knew that the merchants were about to go out by the seashore, they called one another and flew far in search of them. Before the hour was out they met the merchant company, and grief and joy came upon them together and their tears flowed and mingled, and each hid her weeping and said, "I was moved by our meeting and was blessed to find a good husband. There was joy in our house and our love has been long, and now you cast us off and go far away, and wife and child are left alone. Who could bear this heart of mine that has no end? I pray you to stay and look on us, and to return to the city with us." The hearts of the merchants were not yet willing to turn back, and when their pleading had done no good the rakshasa women loosed their unearthly charms and used every coaxing to bewitch them. The merchant company loved them and longed for them and could not bear their feelings, and their hearts wavered between going and staying, and their bodies all fell back and dropped down. The rakshasa women bowed to one another and gave one another joy, and they took those merchants by the hand and went away. As for Sengjialuo, his wisdom was deep and firm and his heart had no clinging burden, so he was able to cross the great sea and escape that peril. Then the queen of the rakshasa women came back empty to the iron city, and the women said to her, "You have no wisdom or plan, and your husband has cast you off. Since your skill and your power are small, you should not live here." Then the queen of the rakshasa women took the son she had borne and flew before Sengjialuo, and she loosed the utmost of her charms and coaxed him and begged him to come back. Sengjialuo chanted a holy spell with his mouth and swung a sharp sword with his hand, and he rebuked her and said, "You are a rakshasa and I am a man. Man and demon go by different roads, and they are no match for one another. If you press me hard, I will cut off your life." The rakshasa woman knew that her bewitching would not succeed, and she rode the empty air away. She came to the house of Sengjialuo and said to his father Sengjia, "I am the daughter of a king of a certain country. Sengjialuo took me as his wife, and I have borne one son. We carried treasure and goods and were coming back to his native land. We floated on the sea and met a wind, and the boat was swept away and sank, and only I and my child and Sengjialuo were barely saved. Mountains and rivers blocked the road, and we were frozen and starved and in hard straits, and when one word of mine went against his will I was cast off. His abuse was rude, and he reviled me as a rakshasa. If I go back, my home and my country are far away. If I stay, I am a lone stranger left behind. I have nothing to lean on whether I go forward or back, and so I make bold to lay my case before you." Sengjia said, "If it is truly as you say, you should come into the house at once." She had not been living there long when Sengjialuo came. His father said to him, "Why do you hold goods and treasure heavy and your wife and child light?" Sengjialuo said, "She is a rakshasa woman." Then he told his father and mother the whole of what had happened before, and all his kin and his relatives set themselves to driving her out. Then the rakshasa woman laid her complaint before the king, and the king was going to punish Sengjialuo. Sengjialuo said, "She is a daughter of the rakshasas, and her feelings are full of unearthly bewitching." The king held this to be untrue, and in his heart he was pleased with her gentle beauty, and he said to Sengjialuo, "If you will surely cast this woman off, I shall keep her now in the rear palace." Sengjialuo said, "I fear it will bring calamity. Since she is a rakshasa, she eats nothing but blood and flesh." The king did not listen to the words of Sengjialuo, and he took her in as his wife. Afterward, in the middle of the night, she flew back to the isle of treasure and called the other five hundred rakshasa demon women, and together they came to the royal palace. With venomous spells and arts they slaughtered all within the palace, and of all the men and the beasts they ate the flesh and drank the blood, and they took the bodies that were left and went back to the isle of treasure. At dawn the officials gathered for the court, but the king's gate was shut and did not open. They waited and listened a long while and heard no human voice. Then they pushed at the door and threw the gate wide, and they followed one another in haste and came to the palace court, and it was still and empty of men, and there were only bones. The officials and their aides looked at one another and were at a loss, and they cried out and wept bitterly, but they could not fathom the source of the disaster. Sengjialuo told them the whole from beginning to end, and the officials and the people believed it, and the disaster had been called down by the king himself. Then the ministers of the state, the old counselors, the officials and the veteran generals asked all round for one of clear virtue to raise up to the high seat, and they all looked up to the merit and the wisdom of Sengjialuo, and they took counsel together and said, "To be lord over men, how can it be a light thing? First he must have merit and wisdom for his means, and next he must embody clear insight. Without merit and wisdom none can enjoy the precious seat, and without clear insight how shall the business of the state be governed? Sengjialuo is such a man. In a dream he saw the working of the disaster, and his prayer moved the heavenly horse. He was loyal in warning his lord, and his wisdom was enough to plan for his own life. The course of fortune rests here, and a new song shall be made." The multitude gladly pressed him forward, and they honored him and set him up as king. Sengjialuo declined and could not be excused, and he held to the middle in good faith, and he bowed courteously to the officials and then ascended the throne. Then he changed the abuses of former times and set up the good and worthy as a model. He sent down an order and said, "My former merchant companions are in the country of the rakshasas, and whether they live or die cannot be known, nor can good be told from ill. Now I shall save them from danger, so let arms and armor be put in order. To rescue those in peril and relieve those in trouble is the blessing of the country, and to gather what is rare and store up treasure is the profit of the country." So he put his troops in order and floated over the sea and went. Then the unlucky banner on the iron city moved, and the rakshasa women saw it and were afraid, and they loosed their unearthly charms and came out to meet them and lure them and deceive them. The king had known their deceit all along, and he had his soldiers chant holy spells with their mouths and rouse the might of arms in their bodies. The rakshasa women stumbled and fell and were driven back and broken. Some fled and hid on lonely islands, and some sank and drowned in the great flood. Then he tore down the iron city and broke open the iron pen, and he rescued the merchants and gained much rare treasure. He called for common people and moved them to live on the isle of treasure, and he founded a capital and built towns, and so there came to be a country. Therefore the name of the king was made the name of the country. This Sengjialuo is the Sakyamuni Tathagata in a former birth.

In earlier times the country of Sengjialuo honored only wanton sacrifices. In the hundredth year after the Buddha left the world, Moxiyintuoluo, the younger brother of King Wuyou, put away desire and love and set his will on the holy fruit. He gained the six powers and possessed the eight deliverances, and he walked the empty air with his feet. He came traveling to this country, and he proclaimed the true Law widely and spread abroad the teaching that had been left behind. From that time down the customs of the people have been simple and believing. There are several hundred monasteries and more than twenty thousand monks, and they follow and practice the Law of the Sthavira school of the Greater Vehicle. More than two hundred years after the teaching of the Buddha came here, each took a branch of its own and they divided into two schools. The first is called the Mohepiheluozhu school. It rejects the Greater Vehicle and studies the teaching of the Lesser. The second is called the Abayeqilizhu school. Its learning takes in both vehicles, and it expounds the three baskets widely. The monks are upright and pure in keeping the precepts, and their meditation and their wisdom are settled and clear. Their bearing and their rule may be taken for a master's, and they are many and stately.

Beside the royal palace there is the shrine of the Buddha's tooth, several hundred feet high. It is made to shine with pearls and adorned with rare jewels. On top of the shrine a marking pillar is raised, and a great jewel of botanmoluojia is set on it. The light of the jewel blazes and shines on unbroken, lighting day and night, and seen from afar it burns like a bright star. The king washes the Buddha's tooth three times a day with scented water and scented powder, now bathing it and now burning incense, and he strives for what is most rare and wonderful, and he makes his offering in due form.

Beside the shrine of the Buddha's tooth there is a small shrine, and it too is made to shine and adorned with many jewels. Within it there is a golden image of the Buddha, cast by a former king of this country to the size of his own body, and its fleshy topknot is adorned with precious jewels. Afterward there was a thief who watched for a chance to steal it, but the doors were doubled and the railings ran all round, and the guard kept over them was clean and close. The thief then bored a hole for a passage and entered the shrine and dug into it, and when he was about to take the jewel the image grew higher and farther away little by little. Since the thief could not get what he sought, he drew back and sighed and said, "When the Tathagata practiced the way of a bodhisattva long ago, he raised a wide and great mind and made a vast vow, and from his own body and life above down to his country and his walled city below, he pitied the four kinds of birth and gave to all. Why then does the image he left behind grudge a jewel? To speak of it quietly here, it does not make his practice of old shine out." The Buddha then bowed his head and gave him the jewel. When the thief had it he went at once to sell it, and some who saw it all said to him, "This jewel is the jewel from the topknot on the head of the former king's golden image of the Buddha. Where did you get it, that you come here to sell it?" So they seized him and told the king. The king asked where he had got it, and the thief said, "The Buddha gave it to me himself. I am no thief." The king held this to be untrue and ordered a messenger to go and look, and the image still had its head bowed. When the king saw this holy sign his believing heart became simple and firm, and he did not punish the man but bought the jewel back at a heavy price, and he adorned the topknot of the image in due state and set the jewel on its head again. Because of this the image has kept its head bowed until now.

Beside the royal palace a great kitchen was built, and food was prepared there every day for eighteen thousand monks. When the time for the meal came, the monks took their bowls and received the food, and when they had got their food each went back to his own dwelling. From the time the teaching of the Buddha spread over the land this offering was set up, and sons and grandsons carried on the line and kept up the work until now. For the last ten years and more the government of the country has been in disorder and there has been no settled lord, and so this work has been given up.

The country borders on a corner of the sea, and the land yields rare treasures, so when the king sacrifices in person the spirits offer up wonderful goods. The people of the capital and the sons of good houses come and go and seek to gather them, and what they get is not the same, but follows the reward of their merit. There are grades of tax laid on them according to the pearls they get.

In the southeastern corner of the country is Mount Lengjia. Its rocks and valleys are hidden and steep, and spirits and demons roam and dwell there. Long ago the Tathagata preached the Lengjia jing here.

Floating south from the country over the sea for several thousand li, one comes to the island of Naluojiluo. The people of the island are low and small, a little more than three feet tall, with the body of a man and the beak of a bird. They sow no grain and eat only coconuts.

Floating west from the island of Naluojiluo over the sea for several thousand li, on the eastern cliff of a lonely island, there is a stone image of the Buddha more than a hundred feet high. It sits facing east, and a moon love pearl is its fleshy topknot. When the moon is about to turn and shine on it, water at once hangs down and flows, pouring in torrents over the cliff and the ridge and falling into the streams and the hollows. Once a company of merchants met a wind and drifted on the waves, and they floated where the water carried them and came at last to the lonely island. The sea was salt and could not be drunk, and they had long been thirsty and worn out. It was then the fifteenth day of the month, and water flowed from the crown of the image, and the whole company was saved. They took it that their utmost sincerity had moved a holy spirit to rescue them, and so they stayed there and passed several days. Every month, when the moon hid behind the high rock, the water did not flow. Then the master of the merchants said, "It is not certain that the water flows in order to save us. I once heard that the moon love pearl makes water flow down when the moonlight shines on it. Is there not perhaps such a jewel on the crown of the image of the Buddha?" So he climbed the cliff and looked, and the topknot of the image was indeed made of a moon love pearl. When one met those men, they told the whole of it from beginning to end.

Floating west from the country over the sea for several thousand li, one comes to a great isle of treasure. No one lives there, and only spirits dwell in it. On a still night, seen from afar, a light shines over its hills and its waters. Many merchants have gone there, and none of them has got anything.

From the country of Daluopitu one goes north into forest and open country, past lonely walled towns and through small villages, where fierce men band together and do harm to travelers. Going more than two thousand li, one comes to the country of Gongjiannabuluo.