South of the city, half a yojana, there is a rock-cavern, in a great hill fronting the south-west; and here it was that Buddha left his shadow.  Looking at it from a distance of more than ten paces, you seem to see Buddha’s real form, with his complexion of gold, and his characteristic marks(12) in their nicety clearly and brightly displayed.  The nearer you approach, however, the fainter it becomes, as if it were only in your fancy.  When the kings from the regions all around have sent skilful artists to take a copy, none of them have been able to do so.  Among the people of the country there is a saying current that “the thousand Buddhas(13) must all leave their shadows here.”

Rather more than four hundred paces west from the shadow, when Buddha was at the spot, he shaved his hair and clipt his nails, and proceeded, along with his disciples, to build a tope seventy or eighty cubits high, to be a model for all future topes; and it is still existing.  By the side of it there is a monastery, with more than seven hundred monks in it.  At this place there are as many as a thousand topes(14) of Arhans and Pratyeka Buddhas.(15)

   Notes

(1) Now in India, Fa-hien used the Indian measure of distance; but it is not possible to determine exactly what its length then was.  The estimates of it are very different, and vary from four and a half or five miles to seven, and sometimes more.  See the subject exhaustively treated in Davids’ “Ceylon Coins and Measures,” pp. 15-17.

   (2) The present Hilda, west of Peshawur, and five miles south of
   Jellalabad.

(3) “The vihara,” says Hardy, “is the residence of a recluse or priest;” and so Davids:—­“the clean little hut where the mendicant lives.”  Our author, however, does not use the Indian name here, but the Chinese characters which express its meaning—­tsing shay, “a pure dwelling.”  He uses the term occasionally, and evidently, in this sense; more frequently it occurs in his narrative in connexion with the Buddhist relic worship; and at first I translated it by “shrine” and “shrine-house;” but I came to the conclusion, at last, to employ always the Indian name.  The first time I saw a shrine-house was, I think, in a monastery near Foo-chow;—­a small pyramidical structure, about ten feet high, glittering as if with the precious substances, but all, it seemed to me, of tinsel.  It was in a large apartment of the building, having many images in it.  The monks said it was the most precious thing in their possession, and that if they opened it, as I begged them to do, there would be a convulsion that would destroy the whole establishment.  See E. H., p. 166.  The name of the province of Behar was given to it in consequence of its many viharas.

   (4) According to the characters, “square, round, four inches.” 
   Hsuan-chwang says it was twelve inches round.