The Country of Mohelacha摩訶剌侘國

The country of Mohelacha is more than six thousand li around. The great walled capital of the country looks west upon a great river, and it is more than thirty li around. The land is rich and fat, and sowing and reaping are ample and full. The climate is warm and hot, and the customs of the people are simple and plain. Their bodies are tall and great and their nature is proud and unbending. If there is a kindness they always repay it, and if there is a grudge they always pay it back. If a man treats them with scorn and shames them, they give up their lives to take revenge, and if one hard pressed by danger throws himself upon them, they forget their own bodies to save him. When they are about to avenge a grudge they always give warning of it first, and each puts on his hard armor, and only then do they cross blades. In battle they pursue those who flee, but they do not kill one who has already surrendered. When soldiers and generals lose the advantage, no punishment is laid upon them; they are given women's clothing, and being stirred by that they put themselves to death. The country keeps brave warriors, several hundred men. Whenever they are about to fight a decisive battle they drink wine until they are deep in drink, and when one of them breaks the blade point, ten thousand men lose their edge. If they meet a man and do him harm as they please, the punishment of the country is not laid upon them, and whenever they go out and travel, drums are beaten to lead the way before them. They also feed fierce elephants, several hundred head in all. When they are about to draw up and fight, these too are first given wine to drink, and they run in a herd and trample all down, and no firm enemy stands before them. Their king trusts in these men and these elephants, and he lightly overrides the neighboring countries. The king is of the Kshatriya stock, and his name is Buluojishe. His plans are wide and far and his kindness and mercy are broadly spread, and his officials serve him and give him all their loyalty. Now the great king Jieri has campaigned to the east and struck to the west, and the far come as guests and the near are respectful, but the men of this country alone do not bow as his subjects. Again and again he has led the armored soldiers of the five Indias and called up the fiercest generals of every country and gone in person to attack them, and still he has not won. Such are their soldiers, and such are their customs. The people know how to love learning, and they honor the false and the true alike. There are more than a hundred monasteries and more than five thousand monks, and they study both vehicles, the Greater and the Lesser, with equal effort. There are a hundred temples of the gods, and the followers of other ways are very many.

Within and without the great city there are five stupas, and all of them are places where the four Buddhas of the past sat and left the traces of their walking back and forth, and King Wuyou built them. Besides these, the stupas of stone and of brick are very many in number, and it is hard to name them all.

Not far south of the city there is an old monastery, and within it there is a stone image of the bodhisattva Guanzizai. Its holy light is spread abroad unseen, and those who pray and ask of it gain much fruit.

In the eastern border of the country there is a great mountain, where ridge is folded on ridge in an unbroken wall and peak is piled on peak in sheer summits. There is a monastery there, founded in a hidden valley. High halls and deep chambers open into the cliff and pillow on the peaks, and storied towers and terraces turn their backs to the rock and face the ravine. The arhat Azheluo built it. The arhat was a man of West India. When his mother had died he looked to see into what path she had been born, and he saw that she had received the body of a woman in this country. So the arhat came here, meaning to lead her and teach her, and he took her in as the occasion allowed. He went into the village to beg for food and came to the house where his mother had been born, and when the woman brought food and gave it to him her milk began to flow. Her kinsfolk saw it and thought it no good omen, and the arhat told them the cause of it from of old, and the woman then witnessed the holy fruit. The arhat was moved by the kindness of her bearing and rearing him, and he held in his heart what the bond of his acts had brought about, and to repay her heavy favor he built this monastery.

The great shrine of the monastery is more than a hundred feet high. Within it there is a stone image of the Buddha more than seventy feet high, and above it are seven tiers of stone canopy that hang in the air with nothing joining them, each canopy more than three feet from the next. It is heard from the records of former men that they said, "This is held up by the power of the arhat's vow." Some say it is the power of divine gifts and some say it is the work of the art of drugs, but when the true records are examined the cause of it is not clearly known. On the carved stone walls that run round the four sides of the shrine are made the deeds of the Tathagata on the several grounds of cause, when he practiced the way of a bodhisattva long ago. The auspicious signs of his witnessing the holy fruit and the holy course of his entering quiet extinction are cut and carved in full, and nothing great or small is left out. Outside the gate of the monastery, to the left and to the right on the north and the south, there is one stone elephant on each side. It is heard from the custom of that place that they said, "When these elephants at times cry out with a great voice, the earth shakes for it." Long ago the bodhisattva Chenna often stayed in this monastery.

Going west from here more than a thousand li and crossing the Naiwatuo river, one comes to the country of Balujiechanpo.