went out at the gate to meet the image; and, with his head and face (bowed to the ground), he did homage at its feet, and then scattered the flowers and burnt the incense.  When the image was entering the gate, the queen and the brilliant ladies with her in the gallery above scattered far and wide all kinds of flowers, which floated about and fell promiscuously to the ground.  In this way everything was done to promote the dignity of the occasion.  The carriages of the monasteries were all different, and each one had its own day for the procession. (The ceremony) began on the first day of the fourth month, and ended on the fourteenth, after which the king and queen returned to the palace.

Seven or eight le to the west of the city there is what is called the King’s New Monastery, the building of which took eighty years, and extended over three reigns.  It may be 250 cubits in height, rich in elegant carving and inlaid work, covered above with gold and silver, and finished throughout with a combination of all the precious substances.  Behind the tope there has been built a Hall of Buddha,(15) of the utmost magnificence and beauty, the beams, pillars, venetianed doors, and windows being all overlaid with gold-leaf.  Besides this, the apartments for the monks are imposingly and elegantly decorated, beyond the power of words to express.  Of whatever things of highest value and preciousness the kings in the six countries on the east of the (Ts’ung) range of mountains(16) are possessed, they contribute the greater portion (to this monastery), using but a small portion of them themselves.(17)

   Notes

   (1) This fondness for music among the Khoteners is mentioned by Hsuan
   and Ch’wang and others.

(2) Mahayana.  It is a later form of the Buddhist doctrine, the second phase of its development corresponding to the state of a Bodhisattva, who, being able to transport himself and all mankind to nirvana, may be compared to a huge vehicle.  See Davids on the “Key-note of the ‘Great Vehicle,’” Hibbert Lectures, p. 254.

(3) Fa-hien supplies sufficient information of how the common store or funds of the monasteries were provided, farther on in chapters xvi and xxxix, as well as in other passages.  As the point is important, I will give here, from Davids’ fifth Hibbert Lecture (p. 178), some of the words of the dying Buddha, taken from “The Book of the Great Decease,” as illustrating the statement in this text:—­“So long as the brethren shall persevere in kindness of action, speech, and thought among the saints, both in public and private; so long as they shall divide without partiality, and share in common with the upright and holy, all such things as they receive in accordance with the just provisions of the order, down even to the mere contents of a begging bowl; . . . so long may the brethren be expected not to decline, but to prosper.”

(4) The Chinese {.} (t’ah; in Cantonese,