Page:Footfalls of Indian History.djvu/191

THE CHINESE PILGRIM 145 work which adorn the windows are such as cannot be equalled in the present age. They still exist." We who have seen the work done under Moghul emperors in marble, and the pierced sandstones of modern Benares, might not, had we seen them also, have been so ready as Fa-Hian to attribute a supernatural origin to the windows of the Asokan palaces. But the fact remains than an unimpeachable witness has assured us of the greatness and beauty of such work in Magadha, with the reputation of being ancient at the beginning of the fifth century A.D.

The great difficulty in the path of Fa-Hian was the scarcity of written documents. Everywhere he inquired for books, he tells us, but everywhere he found that the precepts were handed down by memory from master to disciple, each book having its given professor. At last, in the great temple of Victory in the Buddha country he found what he wanted, and there he stayed three years to copy. This is a most important light on many questions besides that with which it deals. It accounts, as nothing else could have done, for the tenacity with which the pure doctrine of Buddhism seems to have been held for so many centuries. The concentration of energy necessary for the carrying out of such a task as the memorising of a vast literature explains the gravity and decorum of the Orders so long maintained. "The decency, the gravity, the piety of the clergy," meaning the Buddhis't monks,

Fa-Hian takes several occasions to say, "are ad-