There may be there more than seven hundred monks. When it is near
mid-day, they bring out the bowl, and, along with the common people,
make their various offerings to it, after which they take their mid-day
meal. In the evening, at the time of incense, they bring the bowl out
again. It may contain rather more than two pecks, and is of various
colors, black predominating, with the seams that show its fourfold
composition distinctly marked. Its thickness is about the fifth of an
inch, and it has a bright and glossy lustre. When poor people throw into
it a few flowers, it becomes immediately full, while some very rich
people, wishing to make offering of many flowers, might not stop till
they had thrown in hundreds, thousands, and myriads of bushels, and yet
would not be able to fill it.[5]
Pao-yun and Sang-king here merely made their offerings to the alms-bowl,
and then resolved to go back. Hwuy-king, Hwuy-tah, and Tao-ching had
gone on before the rest to Nagara, to make their offerings at the places
of Buddha's shadow, tooth, and the flat-bone of his skull. There
Hwuy-king fell ill, and Tao-ching remained to look after him, while
Hwuy-tah came alone to Purushapura, and saw the others, and then he with
Pao-yun and Sang-king took their way back to the land of Ts'in.
Hwuy-king came to his end in the monastery of Buddha's alms-bowl, and on
this Fa-hien went forward alone towards the place of the flat-bone of
Buddha's skull.
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