(3) “The city surrounded by rivers;” the modern Benares, lat. 25d 23s
   N., lon. 83d 5s E.

(4) “The rishi,” says Eitel, “is a man whose bodily frame has undergone a certain transformation by dint of meditation and ascetism, so that he is, for an indefinite period, exempt from decrepitude, age, and death.  As this period is believed to extend far beyond the usual duration of human life, such persons are called, and popularly believed to be, immortals.”  Rishis are divided into various classes; and rishi-ism is spoken of as a seventh part of transrotation, and rishis are referred to as the seventh class of sentient beings.  Taoism, as well as Buddhism, has its Seen jin.

   (5) See chap. xiii, note 15.

   (6) See chap. xxii, note 2.

   (7) For another legend about this park, and the identification of “a
   fine wood” still existing, see note in Beal’s first version, p. 135.

(8) A prince of Magadha and a maternal uncle of Sakyamuni, who gave him the name of Ajnata, meaning automat; and hence he often appears as Ajnata Kaundinya.  He and his four friends had followed Sakyamuni into the Uruvilva desert, sympathising with him in the austerities he endured, and hoping that they would issue in his Buddhaship.  They were not aware that that issue had come; which may show us that all the accounts in the thirty-first chapter are merely descriptions, by means of external imagery, of what had taken place internally.  The kingdom of nirvana had come without observation.  These friends knew it not; and they were offended by what they considered Sakyamuni’s failure, and the course he was now pursuing.  See the account of their conversion in M. B., p. 186.

(9) This is the only instance in Fa-hien’s text where the Bodhisattva or Buddha is called by the surname “Gotama.”  For the most part our traveller uses Buddha as a proper name, though it properly means “The Enlightened.”  He uses also the combinations “Sakya Buddha,"="The Buddha of the Sakya tribe,” and “Sakyamuni,"="The Sakya sage.”  This last is the most common designation of the Buddha in China, and to my mind best combines the characteristics of a descriptive and a proper name.  Among other Buddhistic peoples “Gotama” and “Gotama Buddha” are the more frequent designations.  It is not easy to account for the rise of the surname Gotama in the Sakya family, as Oldenberg acknowledges.  He says that “the Sakyas, in accordance with the custom of Indian noble families, had borrowed it from one of the ancient Vedic bard families.”  Dr. Davids ("Buddhism,” p. 27) says:  “The family name was certainly Gautama,” adding in a note, “It is a curious fact that Gautama is still the family name of the Rajput chiefs of Nagara, the village which has been identified with Kapilavastu.”  Dr. Eitel says that “Gautama was the sacerdotal name of the Sakya family, which counted the ancient rishi Gautama among its ancestors.”  When