When his last hour approached, he divided all his property among the poor, invited his friends to come and see him, and take a cheerful farewell of the impure body of Hiouen-thsang. I desire, he said, that whatever merits I may have gained by good works may fall upon other people. May I be born again with them in the heaven of the blessed, be admitted to the family of Mi-le, and serve the Buddha of the future, who is full of kindness and affection. When I descend again upon earth to pass through other forms of existence, I desire at every new birth to fulfil my duties towards Buddha, and arrive at the last at the highest and most perfect intelligence. He died in the year 664.
The life of Hiouen-thsang, and his narrative of travel, have been translated into French by M. Stanislas Julien. The foregoing particulars have been borrowed from a review of M. Juliens work, by Max Müller, which originally appeared in the Times of April 17 and 20, 1857.
We translate from Stanislas Juliens Vie et Voyages de Hiouen-thsang the Chinese narrative of the pilgrims last days:
After completing his translation of the Pradjñâ, the Master of the Law became conscious that his strength was failing, and that his end was near at hand. Accordingly he spoke to his disciples: If I came into the palace of Yu-hoa-kong, it was, as you know, on account of the sacred book of the Pradjñâ. Now that the work is finished, I feel that my thread of life is run out. When after death you remove me to my last resting-place, see that everything be done in a modest and simple manner. You will wrap my body in a mat, and deposit it in some calm and solitary spot in the bosom of a valley. Carefully avoid the neighbourhood of palace or convent; a body so impure as mine should be separated from it by a great distance.
On hearing these words, his disciples broke out into sobs and cries. Drying their tears, they said to him: Master, you have still a reserve of strength and vigour; your countenance is in no wise altered; why do you give sudden utterance to such miserable words?
I know it through and in myself, replied the Master of the Law; how would it be possible for you to understand my presentiments?
On the first day of the first moon in the spring of the first year Lin-te (664), the neighbouring interpreters and all the religious of the convent, came to solicit him, with the most pressing earnestness, to translate the collection of the Ratnakoûta soûtra .
he had received, and of the malady it had induced.
On the seventh day of the same month the Emperor, by a decree, ordered one of the imperial physicians to take with him medicaments and attend upon the Master of the Law, but by the time he arrived, the Master was already dead. Teou-sse-lun, governor of Fang-tcheou, announced by a report this melancholy event.
At the news, the Emperor shed tears copiously, and cried aloud in his sorrow, declaring that he had just lost the treasure of the empire. For several days he suspended the usual audiences.
All the civil and military functionaries abandoned themselves to groans and tears: the Emperor himself was unable to repress his sobs or moderate his grief. On the next day but one, he spoke to his great officers as follows:
What a misfortune for my empire is the loss of Thsang, the Master of the Law! It may well be said that the great family of Cakya has seen its sole support shattered beneath it, and that all men remain without master and without guide. Do they not resemble the mariner who sees himself sinking into the abyss, when the storm has destroyed his oars and his shallop? the traveller astray in the midst of the darkness, whose lamp dies out at the entrance to a bottomless gulf?
When he had uttered these words, the Emperor groaned again, and sighed many times.
On the twenty-sixth day of the same month, the Emperor issued the following decree:
In accordance with a report addressed to me by Teou-sse-lun on the death of the Master of the Law, Hiouen-thsang, of the convent Yu-hoa-sse , I order that his funeral take place at the expense of the State.
On the sixth day of the third moon, he issued a new decree as follows:
By the death of Thsang, the Master of the Law, the translation of the sacred books is stopped. In conformity to the ancient ordinances, the magistrates will cause the translations already completed to be copied carefully: as for the (Indian) manuscripts which have not yet been translated, they will be handed over in their entirety to the director of the convent Tse-en-sse (of the Great Beneficence,) who will watch over their safety. The disciples of Hiouen-thsang and the translators company, who previously did not belong to the convent Yu-hoa-sse , will all return to their respective convents.
On the fifth day of the third moon appeared the following decree: