The Real Tripitaka and Other Pieces

By Arthur Waley

The Real Tripitaka gives an account of the seventh century pilgrim's adventures, spiritual and material, both in India and after his return to China. That legendary journey was fictionalized in the classic Journey to the West, translated in part by Waley. In addition this book contains an account of a Japanese pilgrim's visit to China in the ninth century, which describes the Wu-t'ai Shan, China's great place of Pilgrimage, and an eyewitness' account of the great persecution of Buddhism in 842-845 A.D.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Olympia Press
• Release date: Mar 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9781608724857

Book preview

978-1-60872-485-7

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

PARTS I AND II of this book (The Real Tripitaka and Ennin and Ensai) are here printed for the first time. Some of the other pieces have appeared in The Cornhill, Horizon, Lilliput, Ballet and Rider's Review. The Lady Who Loved Insects was published in a limited edition by the Blackmore Press in 1929, but has long been out of print. I should explain that in deference to the wishes of the printer an ordinary S has been used instead of S with a dash over it in words like Siva.

My book, down to page 265, is addressed to the general reader, who may also find the list of translations of Buddhist texts (page 279) useful. The remaining few pages (additional notes, etc.) will enable the specialist to check and criticize my statements, and in some cases to follow up and improve upon my results.

April 1951.

TO ANNA BONER

PART ONE

THE REAL TRIPITAKA

CHAPTER 1

BIRTH AND EARLY CAREER IN CHINA

READERS of the Chinese novel Monkey, which I translated some years ago, have often asked where they could find out more about the real and historic Tripitaka, the pilgrim whose legendary adventures are the subject of the novel. On looking into the matter I found that almost everything European writers have said about him is taken, directly or indirectly, from an incomplete and very imperfect French translation of his biography by Stanislas Julien, published nearly a hundred years ago. Numerous other Chinese sources had, I found, never been used at all. The following is not, however, an attempt to set down everything that can be discovered about the great pilgrim and his travels. I have merely tried to give the general reader a brief outline of the historical (as opposed to the legendary) Tripitaka's career.

He was born in A.D. 602 as the fourth child in a family of fairly high officials. When he was twelve a grand ordination of new Buddhist monks was held at Lo-yang.¹Tripitaka's elder brother Ch'ang-chieh was already a monk and Tripitaka longed for the time when he would be old enough to join him at the Pure Land Monastery. On the occasion of this great ordination he was found by Cheng Shan-kuo, the lay official in charge of the proceedings, loitering wistfully at the gates of the public building where the ceremony was to take place. Cheng got into conversation with him, was touched by his eager piety and despite his extreme youth accepted him for ordination. For the next five years Tripitaka lived with his brother at the Pure Land Monastery. In 618 a new dynasty, that of the T'ang, had set up its capital at Ch'ang-an, in the north-west. Conditions in Central China were still very disturbed, and Tripitaka persuaded his brother that it would be better to settle at Ch'ang-an, where law and order had already been restored. It turned out, however, that at Ch'ang-an handbooks of military strategy were the only literature that was studied; 'no one had time for Buddhism or Confucianism.' Most of the Buddhist teachers who had been prominent under the late regime had fled to Ch'eng-tu, far away to the south-west. Tripitaka persuaded his brother that it would be a waste of time to stay any longer at Ch'ang-an. They went first to Han-chung, about 130 miles south-west of Ch'ang-an, and here to their delight they found two learned monks, refugees from Ch'ang-an, with whom they studied for several weeks. At Ch'eng-tu, which had remained unaffected by the famine that had swept over the rest of China, they found a great concentration of Buddhist teachers who had taken refuge there from far and wide. It was a unique opportunity for study and Tripitaka worked unceasingly at every branch of Buddhist knowledge during 620 to 622. But in the autumn of that year he came to the conclusion that he had learnt all that his present masters could teach him and he decided to go back to Ch'ang-an and get fresh opinions about points concerning which he was in doubt. His brother Ch'ang-chieh tried to dissuade him. Ch'ang-chieh had in fact every reason for wishing to stay where he was. He had made a great impression at Ch'eng-tu, not only because of his learning (he could discourse with equal eloquence upon the Buddhist texts, Chinese history and Taoist philosophy), but also because of his personal beauty, which was so striking that whenever he went out into the town people stopped their carriages to look at him.

The Commander-General of Ch'eng-tu, Wei Yun-ch'i, famous for his victory over the Khitans in 605, and several other high officers made friends with the young monk and treated him with great deference. Unable to persuade his brother to go with him, Tripitaka joined a company of merchants, went by boat down the Chia-ling river to the Yangtze and down the Yangtze to Kingchow. Here he was asked to lecture on Buddhist philosophy, and among his hearers was the Emperor's cousin, the Prince of Han-yang, who was then GovernorGeneral of Kingchow. The prince was deeply impressed and loaded Tripitaka with presents, all of which he gave back. He then turned north, submitted a series of questions to a learned monk named Hui-hsiu at Hsiang-chou (the An-yang of modern times, where so many important archaeological discoveries have been made) and then proceeded to Chaochou, somewhat farther north, where he studied Harivarman's Satyasiddhi sa-stra under the monk Tao-shen. He must have found this work rather confusing, as it gives an account of the Universe which differs considerably from that given in the texts he had already studied. Thus he had learnt that there are a hundred different kinds of things, physical and mental. But the Satyasiddhi (or at any rate its interpreters) rearranged things into eighty-four categories. From Chaochou he went west and was soon hard at work again in Ch'ang-an. Things had begun to settle down; the military were not so prominent and many famous Buddhist teachers were holding classes. But most of them specialized in the Maha-ya-na Samgraha, which he had studied exhaustively in the south. He had now spent some fifteen years studying Buddhist philosophy and had mastered the doctrines of all the principal schools. The time had come for him to choose what was to be his own personal belief. He decided that only in India, the home of Buddhism, would he be able to find teachers who would once and for all put an end to his perplexities. So at any rate his biographers tell us. But Tripitaka knew well enough that in India the number of sects and schools was even greater than in China. Obviously, for a variety of reasons, Indian teachers spoke with greater authority; but this, so far from solving his dilemma, would only make it the more acute.

However, to a certain extent he had already made up his mind. We are told that one of his main objects in going to India was to get the Sanskrit text of the Yoga Sa-stra, a gigantic compendium of Idealist philosophy, of which only certain portions had hitherto reached China. It would seem that he was already veering towards the Yoga School, which (in the words of a rather later pilgrim) taught that 'the Outside does not exist, but the Inside does. All things are mental activities only'. To use a modern illustration: sometimes we think that odd noises we hear on the telephone were made by the distant person to whom we are talking when in reality they are due to a defect in our own receiving apparatus. According to the Yoga School, all our beliefs about the outside world, and its existence as apart from Mind, are misinterpretations rather of that kind. The later pilgrim's definition is, however, only a rough, popular description of the School's main belief. There were numerous sub-Schools and varieties of interpretation.

It was unlawful to leave China without obtaining the permission of the Government. Whether this applied to monks as well as to laymen was an open question. The Government did not want to lose trained officials or agricultural labourers, but it was less concerned about monks, who were in any case, economically speaking, a burden to the community. Long afterwards, when Tripitaka returned from India and apologized for having left China without leave, the Emperor (as we shall see) took the view that permission was not necessary. 'Your case, as a monk, was quite different from that of laymen', he said. Tripitaka did indeed apply for permission, partly no doubt because he believed that it was necessary to do so, and partly also because he hoped for official support for his mission, in the shape of credentials, escort, supplies and so on, which would greatly facilitate his journey. His application, however, was 'intercepted by officials' and never passed on to the proper authority. What happened, I think, was this. The virtual head of the Government at this time was a certain Hsiao Yu (A.D.574-6 47), who was a fervent Buddhist and even at one time applied for permission to retire from public life and become a monk. He spent his leisure at monasteries, discussing Buddhist philosophy. He met Tripitaka and became convinced that the young man had a great future before him. Hsiao Yu's brother Hui-ch'uan was a monk at the Chuang-yen monastery in Western Ch'ang-an. Tripitaka was living at the Ta-chio monastery, some distance away, and Hsiao Yu proposed that Tripitaka should move to the Chuang-yen. There is, I think, little doubt that it was Hsiao Yu himself who, anxious to have Tripitaka at hand to clear up points about the Eighteen Kinds of Nothing, the Stored Consciousness (A-layavijna-na) and the like, held up his request for a passport. Tripitaka made up his mind to go to India without permission and without official support. He knew that under these circumstances the journey would be a difficult one and to make sure that he was capable of facing the ordeals that awaited him, he submitted himself to a series of endurance tests, experimenting (we are told) with 'every hardship known to man'. He also went to various foreigners in Ch'angan for language lessons, learning perhaps the necessary traveller's phrases in Tocharian and some north Indian vernacular.

It happened that owing to untimely frosts the harvest had failed and a decree was issued ordering both monks and laymen to disperse so far as possible to parts of China that were relatively less affected. Taking advantage of this general dispersal, in the autumn of 629, he set out for the West. Before starting he dreamt that he saw Mount Sumeru, the King of Mountains, standing in the midst of the Great Sea. It was made of gold, silver, beryl and crystal and was of supreme beauty. He longed to cross the Sea and climb the mountain, but there was no boat or raft. Not at all intimidated he walked straight into the water. Under his foot there sprang up at once a lotus made of stone. No sooner did he stand upon it than it vanished and reappeared a few feet ahead of him. In this way, from stepping-stone to stepping-stone, he walked dry-footed to the base of the magic mountain. But when he tried to climb it he found that the sides were too steep; again and again he lost his foothold and slid down towards the Sea. Then suddenly a great wind buffeted against him and bore him straight up to the mountain-top. Vast spaces opened all around him, coloured by the mountain's golden glint. This dream gave him great encouragement.

STARTS ON HIS JOURNEY

At Liang-chou in western Kansu he was asked to expound the Scriptures and stayed for some weeks. The place was thronged by merchants from Central Asia and beyond the Pamirs. They were deeply impressed by Tripitaka's explanations of the Scripture of the Great Decease (Nirva-na Su-tra) and other books, and carried back to their countries enthusiastic accounts of him, which greatly facilitated his subsequent travels. The officials at Liang-chou had come rather tardily to the conclusion that monks as well as laymen needed official permission to leave China. Tripitaka was already at Kua-chou, the next large town to the west, when a warrant for his arrest was issued. Fortunately it fell into the hands of a Government clerk at Kua-chou who happened to be a devout Buddhist. He took the warrant to Tripitaka and tore it to shreds before his face, but naturally advised him to get away from Kua-chou as quickly as possible. The casual companions, monks and laymen, whom he had picked up during his journey, had all left him, and he badly needed someone to guide him safely across the Chinese frontier. He was praying (in the most literal sense) for guidance, in the Buddhahall of the monastery where he was staying, when a Central Asian came in, said his prayers to Buddha and then hung about near where Tripitaka was praying. They got into conversation. The man said his name was Bandha, and that he wanted to take the Five Vows--that is to say, not to become a full monk, but a kind of dedicated layman. Tripitaka administered the vows and Bandha presently reappeared with a gift of cakes and fruit. Tripitaka told him of his predicament and it turned out that his new disciple knew the way and was willing to act as guide.

They were to meet next day, but the morning and the afternoon went by without any sign of Bandha. At last, 'when the sun was down among the grass', Bandha appeared, followed by an aged Central Asian riding a skinny roan horse. Thinking that this old gentleman might prove a very inconvenient addition to the party, Tripitaka was much annoyed. The modern equivalent of Bandha--the chauffeur who at the last moment produces an uncle or grandfather who is apparently destined to occupy the only comfortable seat in the car, is familiar to all travellers. It turned out, however, that on this occasion 'uncle' had come nominally to give advice about the demons and other perils that would be encountered (he had been across the desert to Hami thirty times), but more immediately to plant upon Tripitaka the skinny roan horse, which was said to know the way almost as well as its master. It suddenly occurred to Tripitaka that a fortune-teller at Ch'ang-an had said to him: 'I see you leaving China on a skinny roan horse. You are riding on a lacquered saddle with an iron stud in front of the saddle-hump.' As uncle's horse and saddle were exactly as described, Tripitaka agreed to exchange horses, and the old man (who had, I suspect, made a scandalously good bargain) went off in high spirits. Tripitaka and Bandha, having ridden till darkness fell, spread their saddle-cloths on the ground and went to sleep. Shortly afterwards Tripitaka woke up, to find that Bandha was creeping towards him, knife in hand. He was about ten paces away, when he turned back and lay down again on his mat. Tripitaka got up and very naturally began praying to Kuan-yin, who protects us against robbers and assassins, and continued to do so till it seemed certain that his companion was again fast asleep. It must have been a considerable relief to him when Bandha announced next day, after they had walked a mile or two, that he had changed his mind. He could not risk crossing the frontier illicitly; his family responsibilities were too great. Tripitaka said he must do as he thought best. 'Yes, but if you go on alone and are caught,' said Bandha, 'the first thing you will do is to try to get off by putting the blame on me. ''I swear', said Tripitaka solemnly, 'that sooner will I suffer myself to be torn to small shreds than bring you into this business.' And he called 'heaven and earth, the moon and the stars' to bear witness to his words.

HE LEAVES CHINA

He set off alone. Suddenly the whole desert became peopled with swarms of barbarian riders, some on horseback, some on camels. But while he looked at them the shapes blended and changed, soon losing all solidity, and when he came level with them, vanishing altogether. They were the terrifying apparitions for which this desert is famous. Soon, however, he heard a voice in the sky saying, 'Do not be afraid, do not be afraid I' and emboldened by it was able to pick his way with indifference amid the phantom throngs.

He tried to slip past the first frontier 'beacon post' under cover of night. He was seen and shot at by the bowmen on guard; but when he came boldly forward, calling out that he was a monk, he was well received and taken to see the captain of the post, a well-meaning man who told Tripitaka he would never succeed in getting to India. If he wanted instruction in Buddhism he had far better go to Tun-huang, only a day's journey away, and consult the monk Chang-chiao, who was extremely learned. 'I am a Tun-huang man myself', the captain explained. Tripitaka was obliged to point out that he had been coached by all the best Masters in Central China and would hardly be able to learn anything fresh 'at this Tun-huang of yours'. The captain did not press the point, but instead gave Tripitaka provisions for his further desert crossing and an introduction to the officer at the next frontier post.

After he had successfully passed this next post a terrible disaster overtook him. He upset his water-container and lost the whole supply intended to last till he was across the desert. He was without water for four nights and five days.² But this terrible experience was his last real privation during the course of his journey to India. At Hami he fell in with envoys from the kingdom of Turfan, farther west. The dynasty that ruled Turfan was founded by a Chinese from western Kansu about A.D. 504. The government and institutions were modelled on those of China: but there was much less bureaucratic machinery (filing of papers and so on) and the king and his sons dealt personally with legal disputes. In the Audience Hall was a picture of 'the Duke of Lu asking Confucius about Government'. There was a college where the Confucian Classics were taught, but the sounds attached to the ideograms were native Turfanese words, not Chinese sounds.³ As in China, however, Buddhism existed alongside of Confucianism, and when the king of Turfan heard that Tripitaka was on his way, he sent an escort to meet him, and when he arrived wanted to install him as head of the Buddhist Church in Turfan. When every species of petting and cajolery had failed to induce Tripitaka to give up his Indian project, the king lost his temper and shouted, 'You'll either stay here or be sent back to China. So think it over!' Tripitaka hunger-struck for three days and this, on top of his previous hardships, reduced him to such a state of weakness that the king became alarmed, and decided to let him go, on condition that he stayed three years in Turfan on his way back. The king, however, died in 640 and Tripitaka, on his return from India in 645, found as we shall see that the kingdom of Turfan had ceased to exist.

Having reconciled himself to Tripitaka's departure the king equipped him for the journey in a truly royal fashion. He was given a hundred ounces of gold, thirty thousand 'silver coins', and five hundred rolls of silk--a provision reckoned as sufficient to keep him for twenty years. He was allotted thirty horses, twenty-five men-servants and four monks-in-attendance. He was also given letters of recommendation, along with suitable gifts, to the rulers of twenty-four countries.⁴ Henceforward, though a journey across the Pamirs can never in any circumstances be lacking in hardship and danger, he travelled as comfortably and as safely as the conditions of the time permitted. His escort was large enough to make bandits at any rate accept a compromise. On the way to Kharashahr his party was confronted by a band of robbers, but was able to bribe it to withdraw. A different fate awaited some Central Asian merchants who had joined Tripitaka's caravan. Anxious to skim the cream of the market they went on ahead, met bandits and were killed to a man.

At Kucha, a little farther on, Tripitaka had his first experience of what he regarded as heretical Buddhists-followers of the Hi-naya-na (the Lesser Vehicle). In doctrine they were most of them Materialists; that is to say, they believed that the outside world--the things we smell, hear, feel and so on--really exists, whereas Tripitaka (as we have seen) thought that the world is merely a series of misconceptions originating in consciousness and having no real existence of their own. They were not vegetarians, though the pretence had to be kept up that what they ate had not been killed specially for their consumption. Great Vehicle (Maha-ya-na) monks, such as Tripitaka, of course read the Little Vehicle scriptures, just as Christians read the Old Testament; but they regarded them as containing doctrines that were only gradual steps towards the final truths that are taught in the Great Vehicle (Maha-ya-na) books. There were no separate Little Vehicle monasteries 'in China. The five thousand monks at Kucha were all Hi-naya-nists and when Tripitaka was entertained by the king of the country, he was naturally offered meat. To the king's astonishment he would not eat it. 'I know that your Gradual Teachings leave it open to you to do so. But I have learnt the Great Vehicle which teaches otherwise.'

The great pundit of the place, a certain Mokshagupta, was at first inclined to treat Tripitaka rather contemptuously, as an ordinary visitor rather than as a fellow-philosopher. When he heard that he was going to India he told him that he would find everything he could possibly want 'here at Kucha'; and proceeded to name a number of common Little Vehicle books, all of which had long been known in China. 'But have you the Yoga Sa-stra?' asked Tripitaka. 'Why should you want a heretical book like that?' asked Mokshagupta. 'No true follower of Buddha studies it.' This horrified Tripitaka. 'Are you not aware,' he said, 'that the Yoga Sa-stra was preached by Maitreya, the Buddha of the Future, and that by calling it heretical you risk being cast into the nethermost pit of Hell?' Accused by Mokshagupta of never having really understood the profundities of the Little Vehicle, Tripitaka proceeded to turn the tables by cross-examining Mokshagupta about the meaning of a number of passages in the Abhidharma-kosa, that great compendium of Buddhist philosophy. It was quite evident that he did not understand them. Finally Mokshagupta, very much put out, denied that a passage quoted by Tripitaka occurred in the Kosa at all. The king's uncle, a distinguished monk, was sitting close by, and confirmed that the passage quoted did actually occur in the text; he even fetched a copy of the Kosa and found the passage. It must have been a considerable relief to Mokshagupta when this pert young Chinese intellectual set out for Tokmak, at that time in the hands of the Western Turks. On the way, Tripitaka had another narrow escape. His party encountered a band of about two thousand Turkish bandits. But it so happened that they were quarrelling about the division of a haul they had recently made, and showed no interest in Tripitaka's caravan.

The party then entered the T'ien Shan range, at this point some forty miles wide, by the Bedel Pass and travelled through the mountains for seven days. Over a third of the escort and an even higher proportion of their animals 'died of hunger or cold'. This implies that some specific disaster, such as an avalanche or ice-fall, must have befallen them. A well-equipped and well-provisioned party would not normally suffer losses on this scale, on a route that was the main line of communication between the Western Turks and their dependencies in the Tarim Basin. The Life mentions that at some points huge blocks of ice had broken away from the seracs on the glacier and fallen across the track. Probably a sentence indicating that part of the caravan was destroyed by one of these ice-falls has dropped out of the text.

Making their way along the side of the Issyk Kul they reached Tokmak, where they met the Khan of the Western Turks, who had come there on a hunting expedition. He wore a green silk gown. His head was bare save for a silken filet that bound his forehead and hung down to the ground. Two hundred captains stood round him, all in robes of brocade and with plaited hair. The Turks were fireworshippers, and as fire is produced from wood there was a tabu against the use of wood for bedsteads and the like. Tripitaka had to make the best of an iron bedstead. At dinner grape-juice was tactfully provided for Tripitaka (all Buddhists, both of the Great and the Little Vehicle, were forbidden to drink wine), and afterwards the Khan asked for a sermon. Thinking no doubt that a philosophical theme would be too difficult for the Turks to understand, he began with the Ten Commandments (against killing, stealing, adultery, lying, slander, tale-bearing, idle talk, greed, anger, perverse opinions), and the need to treasure and cherish the lives of fellow-creatures. He then went on to speak of Release through Higher Wisdom. The Khan smote his head with his hand, in sign of delighted acceptance of Tripitaka's teaching. 'I shouldn't go to Indika', he said afterwards (this is what the Turks called India). 'It is very hot there. The tenth month is like our fifth month here. I should think by the look of you that you would simply melt away. The people are like savages and have no manners. It's not worth going to see them.' But when Tripitaka rejected this advice, the Khan gave him a young man who had spent some years in China and was a good linguist to accompany him to Afghanistan.

SAMARKAND AND AFGHANISTAN

The next place of importance that they reached was Samarkand. The king and his subjects were fire-worshippers. There were two Buddhist monasteries, but they were now uninhabited. When the travellers tried to camp in one of them, the local people set fire to the place and drove them away. After a day or two the king, who had not treated the strangers with much respect on their arrival, allowed Tripitaka to preach to him, was deeply impressed and asked to receive Vows of Abstinence. Shortly afterwards two of the monks who were accompanying Tripitaka ventured to go and say their prayers