apart. Here, as Maximus too well knew, lay the great difficulty

[4] According to the characters, "square, round, four inches." Hsuan- chwang says it was twelve inches round.

[5] In Williams' Dictionary, under { .}, the characters, used here, are employed in the phrase for "to degrade an officer," that is, "to remove the token of his rank worn on the crown of his head;" but to place a thing on the crown is a Buddhistic form of religious homage.

[6] The Vaisyas, or bourgeois caste of Hindu society, are described here as "resident scholars."

[7] See Eitel's Handbook under the name vimoksha, which is explained as "the act of self-liberation," and "the dwelling or state of liberty." There are eight acts of liberating one's self from all subjective and objective trammels, and as many states of liberty (vimukti) resulting therefrom. They are eight degrees of self- inanition, and apparently eight stages on the way to nirvana. The tope in the text would be emblematic in some way of the general idea of the mental progress conducting to the Buddhistic consummation of existence.

[8] This incense would be in long "sticks," small and large, such as are sold to-day throughout China, as you enter the temples.

[9] "The illuminating Buddha," the twenty-fourth predecessor of Sakyamuni, and who, so long before, gave him the assurance that he would by-and-by be Buddha. See Jataka Tales, p. 23.

[10] The staff was, as immediately appears, of Gosirsha Chandana, or "sandal-wood from the Cow's-head mountain," a species of copper-brown sandal-wood, said to be produced most abundantly on a mountain of (the fabulous continent) Ullarakuru, north of mount Meru, which resembles in shape the head of a cow (E. H., pp. 42, 43). It is called a "pewter staff" from having on it a head and rings and pewter. See Watters, "China Review," viii, pp. 227, 228, and Williams' Dictionary, under { .}.

[11] Or Sanghati, the double or composite robe, part of a monk's attire, reaching from the shoulders to the knees, and fastened round the waist (E. H., p. 118).

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