The kingdom of Funan扶南國

The kingdom of Funan lies in a great gulf west of the sea south of the Rinan commandery, some seven thousand li from Rinan and more than three thousand li southwest of Linyi. Its walled city is five hundred li from the sea. There is a great river ten li wide that flows from the northwest and enters the sea in the east. The kingdom is more than three thousand li around, and its land is low-lying, level and broad; its climate and its customs are much the same as those of Linyi. It produces gold, silver, copper, tin, chenmuxiang, ivory, peacocks and kingfishers, and parrots of five colors.

More than three thousand li beyond its southern border is the kingdom of Dunsun (頓遜國), which lies on a headland of the sea. Its land is a thousand li square and its walled city is ten li from the sea. It has five kings, all of them bound in subjection to Funan. On the east Dunsun's border opens to Jiaozhou, and on the west it adjoins Tianzhu, Anxi and the kingdoms beyond their frontiers, and they go back and forth and trade. The reason is that Dunsun curves more than a thousand li out into the sea, and the Zhanghai (漲海) is so wide that it has no shore, so that ships have never been able to pass straight through. In its market east and west meet together, and there are more than ten thousand people there every day; of rare goods and precious wares there is nothing that is not to be had. There is also a wine tree, like a pomegranate: they gather the juice of its flowers and let it stand in a jar, and in a few days it becomes wine.

Beyond Dunsun, among the islands of the great sea, there is also the kingdom of Piqian (毗騫國), eight thousand li from Funan. It is said that its king is twelve feet tall and his head three feet long, and that from ancient times he has not died, so that no one knows his age. The king is holy, and knows all the good and evil of the people of the kingdom and all that is to come, and therefore none dares deceive him. In the south they call him Changjingwang (長頸王), the long-necked king. By the custom of the kingdom they have houses and clothing and eat nonglutinous rice. Their speech differs a little from that of Funan. There is a mountain that yields gold, and the gold lies bare upon the rocks without limit. By the law of the kingdom, when a criminal is punished they all eat his flesh before the king. The kingdom takes in no merchants, and any who go there are likewise killed and eaten, so traders dare not come. The king always lives in an upper storey, eats nothing of blood, and does not serve the ghosts and spirits. His children and grandchildren are born and die like ordinary people; only the king does not die. The king of Funan often sends envoys and letters and they answer one another, and he always sends the king of Funan eating vessels of pure gold for fifty men. Some are shaped like a round platter and some like an earthen bowl, and these are called duoluo (多羅) and hold five sheng; others like a cup hold one sheng. The king can also write the script of Tianzhu, and his writing runs to some three thousand words, telling how his former destiny came about; it is like a Buddhist sutra and discusses good works as well.

It is also said that the eastern border of Funan is the great Zhanghai, that there is a great island in that sea, and on the island the kingdom of Zhubo (諸薄國), and east of that kingdom the Mawu islands. Going east again across the Zhanghai more than a thousand li, one comes to the great island of Ziran (自然大洲). Upon it there is a tree that grows in fire. The people near the island strip off its bark and spin it into cloth, and at the most they get a few feet, enough to make a hand cloth. It is no different from banana hemp (蕉麻), but its color is faintly blue-black. If it is a little soiled, it is thrown into the fire and comes out clean again. Some make lamp wicks of it, and use them without their ever being spent.

The custom of the kingdom of Funan was originally to go naked, to tattoo the body and wear the hair loose, and not to make clothes. They took a woman for their ruler, called Liuye (柳葉). She was young and strong, much like a man. To the south was the kingdom of Jiaoguo (徼國), where there was a man who served the spirits, named Huntian (混塡). He dreamed that a spirit gave him a bow and told him to board a merchant ship and go out to sea. At dawn Huntian went to the shrine, and under the spirit's tree he found a bow; then, as in the dream, he boarded a ship and went out to sea, and so came into an outlying town of Funan. When Liuye's people saw the ship arrive they meant to seize it, but Huntian drew his bow and shot at their ship, and the arrow pierced through one side and reached an attendant. Liuye was greatly afraid and surrendered her whole host to Huntian. Huntian then taught Liuye to pierce a cloth and pull it over her head, so that her body was no longer bare, and he governed that kingdom and took Liuye to wife, and the sons she bore were made kings over seven towns, each in his portion. Afterward king Hunpankuang, by guile and by force, set the towns at odds so that they distrusted one another, then raised troops and attacked them and joined them together, and sent his sons and grandsons to divide the towns and govern them, and they were called the lesser kings (小王).

Pankuang died at over ninety, and set up his middle son Panpan, entrusting the affairs of the kingdom to his great general Fan Man (范蔓). Panpan died in the third year after he was set up, and the people of the kingdom together raised Man to be king. Man was brave and strong and full of stratagem, and again with the terror of arms he attacked the neighboring kingdoms, so that all submitted and became his subjects, and he styled himself great king of Funan. He then built great ships and went to the ends of the Zhanghai, attacking Qudukun, Jiuzhi, Diansun and more than ten other kingdoms, and opened up five or six thousand li of land. Next he was to strike the kingdom of Jinlin, but Man fell ill and sent the heir apparent Jinsheng in his place. Man's sister's son Zhan (旃) was then a commander of two thousand men, and he took the throne from Man and set himself up, and sent men to deceive Jinsheng and kill him. When Man died he had a son still at the breast, named Zhang (長), who was among the common people; at the age of twenty he gathered the stout men of the kingdom and fell upon Zhan and killed him. Then Zhan's great general Fan Xun (范尋) killed Zhang in turn and set himself up. He put the kingdom in order again, raised towers and halls and took his pleasure in them, and received guests three or four times a day, at morning, at noon and at dusk. The people used bananas, sugarcane, tortoises and birds as gifts of ceremony. The law of the kingdom has no prison. One who is charged first fasts and purifies himself for three days; then an axe is heated red hot and the party to the suit is made to carry it seven paces. Or a gold ring and a hen's egg are thrown into boiling water and he is made to reach in and take them out: if he is not in the right, his hand is at once scorched and ruined; if he has reason on his side, it is not. Again, crocodiles are kept in the moat of the city and fierce beasts are penned outside the gate, and the guilty are given to the fierce beasts and the crocodiles to eat. If the beasts and the creatures will not eat them, they are held guiltless, and after three days they are set free. The crocodiles, the big ones, are more than twenty feet long, shaped like a Chinese alligator (鼉), with four feet and a snout six or seven feet long, and teeth on both sides sharp as a sword. They usually eat fish, but if they come upon a roe deer or a man they will swallow that too. They are found everywhere south of Cangwu and in the lands beyond.

In the time of Wu, Kang Tai the palace gentleman and Zhu Ying, attendant officer for spreading civilization, were sent as envoys to Xun's kingdom. The people were still naked, and only the women wore a garment pulled over the head. Tai and Ying said to him, "The kingdom is truly fine; only it is strange that the people go bare." Xun then first ordered the men of the kingdom to wear a crosswise breadth of cloth. The crosswise breadth is the ganman of today. Great households cut brocade to make it, and the poor used plain cloth.

In the Taikang years of Emperor Wu of Jin, Xun first sent an envoy with tribute. In the first year of Shengping under Emperor Mu, king Zhu Zhantan presented a memorial and offered a tame elephant, and an edict said: "This creature costs no small labor and expense. Let it be kept there and not sent." The later king Jiaochenru (憍陳如) was originally a Brahman of Tianzhu. A spirit spoke to him, saying, "You shall be king in Funan." Jiaochenru rejoiced in his heart and went south as far as Panpan, and when the people of Funan heard of it the whole kingdom gladly upheld him, and they met him and set him up. He changed the institutions again and used the law of Tianzhu. Jiaochenru died, and the later king Chilituobamo presented a memorial with local products in the time of Emperor Wen of Song. In the Yongming years of Qi, king Shexiebamo sent an envoy with tribute.

In the second year of Tianjian, Bamo again sent an envoy to bring a coral image of the Buddha and to offer local products with it, and an edict said: "Jiaochenru Shexiebamo, king of Funan, dwelling apart beyond the sea, has for generations carried on his submission in the south. His sincerity is manifest from afar, and through a chain of interpreters he offers precious things. It is fitting that he be requited and received, and that a title of honor be proclaimed for him. Let him be General Who Calms the South and king of Funan."

The people of that kingdom today are all ugly and black, with curly hair. Where they live they dig no wells; several tens of households share one pond and draw from it. Their custom is to serve the god of heaven, and they make the god's image of bronze: those with two faces have four arms, and those with four faces have eight arms, and each hand holds something, now a small child, now a bird or a beast, now the sun and the moon. Their king rides an elephant when he goes out and comes in, and so do his consorts and his attendants. When the king sits he squats to one side with one knee raised, letting his left knee down to the ground, and a white cloth is spread before him with a gold basin and an incense burner set upon it. By the custom of the kingdom, those in mourning shave off beard and hair. The dead have four burials: in water burial they are cast into the river current; in cremation they are burned to ashes; in earth burial they are buried in the ground; in bird burial they are left in the open fields. The people are greedy and mean by nature, without ritual or right, and men and women follow one another as they please.

In the tenth year and the thirteenth year, Bamo sent envoys with tribute again and again. That year he died, and his son by a concubine, Liutuobamo, killed his younger brother of the main line and set himself up. In the sixteenth year he sent the envoy Zhu Dangbaolao to present a memorial with tribute. In the eighteenth year he again sent envoys bringing the auspicious sandalwood image of Tianzhu and leaves of the baluo tree, and offering huoqi pearls and yujin (鬱金), suhe (蘇合) and other incenses. In the first year of Putong, the second year of Zhongdatong and the first year of Datong, he sent envoys again and again with tribute of local products. In the fifth year he sent an envoy again and offered a live rhinoceros, and said also that his kingdom had a hair of the Buddha, twelve feet long; by edict the monk Shi Yunbao was sent to go with the envoy and fetch it.

Before this, in the eighth month of the third year, Gaozu rebuilt the pagoda of the Ashoka temple and brought out the relics beneath the old pagoda, with the Buddha's nails and hair. The hair was dark blue-black, and when the monks stretched it with their hands it grew long or short as the hand moved, and when they let it go it curled back into the shape of a conch. The Sengqie sutra says, "The Buddha's hair is blue and fine, like the filaments of a lotus stalk." The Fo sanmei sutra says, "Long ago in the palace I washed my head, and measuring the hair with a rule I found it twelve feet long; when I let it go it turned to the right and became a conch pattern again." This agrees with what Gaozu found.

King Ashoka was the Iron Wheel King, and ruled over Jambudvipa, one whole world. After the Buddha passed into extinction, in one day and one night he set the spirits to work and built eighty-four thousand pagodas, and this is one of them. In the time of Wu a nun lived on that ground and made a small chapel there, but Sun Chen soon tore it down, and the pagoda vanished along with it. After Wu was pacified, the men of the Way built it again on the old site. Zhongzong of Jin first crossed the river and had it repaired and adorned anew. In the Xian'an years of Emperor Jianwen, the monk An fashi was set to plan and build a small pagoda, but he died before it was finished, and his disciple Sengxian took it up and raised it. By the ninth year of Taiyuan under Emperor Xiaowu, the gold wheel-mast and the dew basin were set upon it.

Afterward, in Lishi county of Xihe, a Hu man (胡人) named Liu Sahe fell ill and died suddenly, but below the heart he was still warm, so his household did not dare coffin him, and after ten days he revived. He said: "Two clerks came and took me in charge, and we went to the northwest, I could not tell how far, until we reached the eighteen hells, where according to the weight of their deeds men were suffering every kind of torment. I saw Guanshiyin, who said to me, 'Your bond is not yet finished. If you are able to live, become a monk. At Luoyang, Qicheng, Danyang and Kuaiji there are Ashoka pagodas; go and worship at them. Then when your life ends you will not fall into hell.' When these words were done, it was as though I fell from a high cliff, and all at once I woke." Because of this he left the household life, and was named Huida (慧達). He traveled about and worshiped at the pagodas, and came in turn to Danyang, but did not know where the pagoda was, so he climbed Yuecheng and looked out on every side, and saw a strange air and color over the village of Changgan (長干). He went there and worshiped, and it was indeed the site of the Ashoka pagoda, and it gave out light again and again. From this he knew for certain that relics must be there, so he gathered a company and dug. Going down ten feet they found three stone tablets, each six feet long. In the middle tablet was an iron casket, within the casket a silver casket, and within that again a gold casket, holding three relics and one nail and one hair, the hair several feet long. They moved the relics at once to the north, west of the pagoda Emperor Jianwen had built, and raised a one-storey pagoda there. In the sixteenth year the monk Sengshangjia was set to make it three storeys, and this is the one Gaozu opened. At first they dug four feet into the earth and found a dragon's cave, and rings and bracelets and hairpins and tweezers of gold and silver and other treasures of many kinds that men of old had given. At about nine feet down they came to a stone plinth, and beneath the plinth was a stone casket, and inside the casket an iron pot holding a silver jar, and inside the jar a bottle inlaid with gold, holding three relics the size of millet grains, round and true, bright and clean.

Inside the casket there was also a glass bowl, in which they found four relics and hair and nails; the nails were four, all the color of chenxiang. On the twenty-seventh day of that month Gaozu came to the temple again to worship, held a great unrestricted assembly, and granted a general amnesty to the empire. That day water was put in a gold bowl and the relics floated in it, and the smallest of them hid in the bowl and would not come out; Gaozu bowed several tens of times, and then the relic gave out light within the bowl and circled about for a long while, and at last came to rest in the middle of the bowl. Gaozu asked Huinian, the chief rector of monks, "Have you seen today a thing past all thought?" Huinian answered, "The dharma body abides always, clear and unmoving." Gaozu said, "Your disciple wishes to ask for one relic and take it back to the palace to make offerings to it." On the fifth day of the ninth month he held a great unrestricted assembly at the temple again and sent the heir apparent, the princes and marquises and the honored men of the court to receive it with reverence. That day the wind and the light were bright and mild, and the capital poured out, and those who watched were a million and more. The gold and silver vessels for offering and the other things he had provided were all left at the temple for its offerings, and he gave ten million cash besides as an endowment for the temple. On the fifteenth day of the ninth month of the fourth year Gaozu came to the temple again and held a great unrestricted assembly, and set up two pagoda masts (刹). In each a gold jar and then a jade jar were set one inside the other to hold the relics and the nails and hair, and these were put into a pagoda of the seven treasures. The precious pagodas were placed in stone caskets and divided beneath the two masts, and the gold, silver, rings, bracelets and other rare treasures given by princes and marquises, by consorts and princesses, and by rich households among the people, were heaped up full.

On the second day of the eleventh month of the eleventh year, the monks of the temple again invited Gaozu to the temple to open the theme of the Prajna sutra, and that evening both pagodas gave out light together. By command, Lun, Prince of Shaoling and General Who Guards the East, composed the text of the temple's Stele of Great Merit.

Before this, in the second year, the pagoda of Mao county in Kuaiji was rebuilt, and the old pagoda was opened and the relics taken out. Four monks, Shi Jingtuo of the Guangzhai temple and others, and the court secretary Sun Zhao, were sent to bring them for a time to the palace; and when Gaozu had finished his worship they were sent straight back to the county and put beneath the new pagoda. The pagoda of this county too was one that Liu Sahe had found.

In the Xianhe years of Jin, Gao Kui, the intendant of Danyang, came to the Zhanghou bridge and saw a light of five colors several feet long in the shallows. Not knowing what strange thing it was, he had men dig where the light was and look, and they found a golden image (金像), with no halo and no pedestal. Kui came down from his carriage, loaded the image and went back; but when he reached the head of the Changgan lane the ox would not go on, so Kui told the driver to let the ox go where it would, and the ox drew the carriage straight to the temple. Kui thereupon left the image in the keeping of the temple monks. Every midnight it would give out light, and a ringing as of metal and stone (金石) was heard in the air. A year later a fisherman, Zhang Xishi, saw all at once a bronze lotus pedestal floating on the water at the mouth of the sea; Xishi took it and sent it to the county, the county sent it to the palace, and when it was fitted to the feet of the image it matched exactly. In the first year of Xian'an under Emperor Jianwen, Dong Zongzhi, a man of Hepu in Jiaozhou, went down into the water gathering pearls and found a Buddha's halo on the bottom. Jiaozhou sent it under escort to the palace, and when it was fitted to the image it matched again. From the getting of the image in the Xianhe years to the beginning of Xian'an, more than thirty years passed before the halo and the pedestal were complete.

At first, after Gao Kui got the image, five Hu monks of the Western Regions came to Kui and said, "Long ago in Tianzhu we obtained an image made by King Ashoka and brought it as far as Ye; but we met with the disorder of the Hu (胡) and buried the image by the riverside, and now that we seek it the place is lost." The five said that one night they had all dreamed together that the image spoke, saying, "I have already come out to Jiangdong, and Gao Kui has found me." Kui then brought the five monks to the temple, and when they saw the image they sobbed and wept, and the image gave out light and lit up the halls. Again, Huisui of the Waguan temple wished to copy the form of the image, but Sengshang, the abbot, feared the gold color would be marred, and said to Sui, "If you can make the image give out light and turn its body to face west, then I may allow it." Huisui bowed and entreated with all his heart, and that night the image turned upon its seat and gave out light and turned its body to face west, and the next morning the copying was allowed. On the pedestal of the image there had always been a foreign writing that no one could read, but afterward the tripitaka master Naqiubamo read it, and said that King Ashoka had made the image for his fourth daughter. In the Datong years, when the relics of the old pagoda were brought out, an edict ordered the house plots of several hundred households beside the temple to be bought to widen the temple grounds, and halls and chambers and the galleries round the auspicious image and the rest were built, and their splendor was carried to the utmost. The sutra tableaux (經變) painted there were all from the hand of Zhang Yao, a man of Wu, and Yao's skill with brush and color was without equal in his time.