Legends of Khotan and Nepal

Legends of Khotan
and Nepal

- John Brough

Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African
Studies, University of London,
Vol. 12, No. 2.
(1948), pp. 333-339.

Legends of Khotan and Nepal

By John Ebough

IT has already been noted by Professor F. W. Thomas l that there are several
striking coincidences in religious topography between Buddhist Khotan
and Nepal. In addition to place-names, however, there is also a considerable
body of legendary tradition common to the two countries.

1. Both countries possess the legend that at one time the land was a lake
which was drained through divine agency. This legend is of course very wide-
spread. It is known also in Tibet, 2 and, in a Hindu version, in Kashmir, 3
A more distant folkdore parallel is probably to be recognized in the Hebrew
tradition of Genesis i, 2. The versions of Khotan and Nepal, however, are
particularly closely connected.

According to the account of the Gosrnga-vydkarana,* ^akyamuni at one
time came to the hill of Gosrnga in Khotan. There he saw the great lake, and
prophesied the future of the country. Among his attendants on this occasion
the text mentions the Gandharva-king, Paftcasikha. Finally, the Buddha
ordered ^ariputra and Vaisravana to give the land manifest borders, and they,
with monk's staff and lance respectively, " dried half of the mountain of &a,
and, taking it, set it down on the western side and made a great water course.
The lake with its living beings they transferred into the middle of &o-rteaii-pQ
[a mountain (?) on the north of the lake]. In this wise they disclosed the stupa
of Go-ma-sada-gan-da and the hill of Gosrnga and the land of Li."

In Nepal the chief repositories of local legend are the Smyambhu-purana 5
and the Buddhist Vatnsa.m.ll. e The latter, compiled at the beginning of the
nineteenth century, draws largely on the former for the legendary period,
but has apparently utilized other sources as well. According to the account
of the Svayambku-puramt, 7 Manjudeva in early times came from the hill of
Manjusn in China to the valley of Nepal, which was originally a lake, Kalihrada
(Nagahrada in the version of the VamSamll). There he opened the six valleys
on the south side of the lake, thus draining off the water. Further, at the
south end of one of these valleys, Gandhavatl, he excavated a new lake, and
built up a mountain beside the former Kalihrada. On the top of this mountain

1 Tibetan Literary Texts and Docv/ments from Chinese Turkestan, vol. i, p. 6.

1 E.g. Dpag-btam-ljott-bzan (ed. Sarat Chandra Das), pp. 147, 148.

3 Stein, Ancient Khotan, p. 160; Ra-jatamngini, vol ii, pp. 388 f. {text, i, 25 ff.).

1 Thomas, Texts, i, 12-35 ; cf. also pp. 95, 307.

5 The work is known in three recensions, of which only the Brhat-sv.-p. has been published
(Haraprasad Sastri, Bibl. Ind., 1900), and in default of anything better, references are given here
to this edition.

« Cambridge Univ. Lib. Add. 1952a. The History of Nepal edited by D. Wright (1877)
is a " translation " of this work.

7 pp. 166 ff.

334 JOHN BROUGH—

he excavated a new lake, in which the Nag a-inhabit ants of Kalihrada were
invited to take up their residence. 1

2. The centre of religious life in K ho tan seems to have been the famous
hill of Gosrriga, which Stein identified with the modern. Kohmarl. 1 In the
Tibetan Gosmga-vyakarana, the bodhisattva Manjusn gives his special blessing
and protection to the site on this hill where at a later date the monastery
Par-spoh-byed would arise. s

In Nepal, the chief sanctuary of Buddhism is the Svayambhu hill, situated
about a mile and a half wast of KathmandG. According to the Svayambhu-
puram,* the name of this hill was Padraagiri in the Satya-yuga, because of
its five lotuses made of jewels. In the Treta-yuga it was called Vajrakuta,
in the Dvapara-yuga, Gosrriga, and in the Kali-yuga, Gopuccha. Close to the
Svayambhu-eaitya (according to Wright, on the western peak of the Svayambhfi
hill) is situated the Nepalese abode of Manjusri, the Manjusri-eaitya. 5

3. The foundation of the city of Khotan itself is attributed to a son of the
Indian emperor Asoka. This son, abandoned by his father, was miraculously
suckled by the goddess Earth, who for this purpose caused a swelling to arise
in the ground in the shape of a female breast. For this reason the child was
called " Earth-Breast ", Go-stana* a name afterwards transferred to the city
which he founded. The account of the legend given by the Chinese pilgrim
Hiian Tsang places the miraculous feeding in Khotan itself.

Since this legend is so definitely attached to Khotan, being simply ao
attempt to explain the name of the town by a popular etymology, one would
hardly expect to find it in Nepal, and it seems in fact not to have been of
sufficient interest to the Nepalese to have found a place in the Smyambhu-
purdfya. It is all the more surprising therefore to find it in the Vams&vall.
Here it is related that King Asoka visited Nepal, and that on his return journey
his wife TisyadaksmI (Tisya-raksita in Divydvaddwi, 397, etc.) gave birth
to a son whom she suckled as she sat on the ground. For this reason the child
was called Mahipana, " Earth-drink ", and the same name was given to the
place where he had been thus fed.'

i. The Khotan legend tells that the country was colonized by settlers

1 p. 174. The text is very corrupt at this point, hut the general sense seems certain.

2 Ancient Khoian, pp. 185 ff. See a.lso Levi, BEFEO., iv, 31, 40.

3 Thomas, Texts, i, 15.
* pp. 8-9.

5 Wright, History of Nepal, p. 79.

s The synonymous Ku-stana, which is one of the forms of the name found in the Central
Asian Kharosthl documents {in the derivative kustanaga-), has usually been employed hy
modern writers. But GostaMa, already argued for by Levi, BEFEO., v, 259 f., has since been
established as the indigenous form, Bailey, BSOS., IX, 541 ; X, 019.

' Wright, p. 111. The text in Camb. Univ. Lib. Add. 1952a, fol. 39a, reads : asotraja, aphna
sahar jav, bhani, nepal bata jadd, tisya-lalesmt rani >Ai H&pcd dyd packi, garbkadhan [sic} bka-ya
Li hu-nd Ze, nepdl bata pharki jada ba(a ma. putra. janma. bkaya ra, batai ma basi dud pUayd, Las
nimitta, tyo rajkumar ho nam mahlpan bhi.ni prakhyat bkai gayd, tas jaggd ko nam paiti mahipm
bhani prakhyat bkai gayd*

LEGENDS OP KHOTAN AND NEPAL 335

both from India and from China. In the version given in the Annals of IA-yvl l
the Chinese contingent was led by the eponymous founder Gostana, the adopted
son of the King of China, but in fact the son of Asoka. The Indian contingent
arrived later under a minister of Asoka named Yasas — a name which is known
elsewhere also in connection with Asoka, e.g. Divy. 382, etc. In the version
of Htian-tsang, it is the eldest son of Asoka who brought the Indians, the
Chinese having arrived under an unnamed son of the Chinese emperor. The
Gosritga-vycLkararta 2 makes Hjan-so, who is presumably the same as Yasas,
a minister of the Chinese emperor. Clearly the details of the legend have been
considerably confused in transmission.

The Svayambhu- purdna recounts that many people had accompanied
Manjusri from China on his first visit to the Svayambhu hill, and these pre-
sumably are to be understood as the first settlers. At the same period the
former Buddha Visvabhu came to Nepal in the company of a King Parvata,
bringing with him many cultivators from India. 3 The Purana also ascribes
a second wave of Indian immigration to the period of the Buddha Krakucchanda,
and mentions that at this time a certain Dharmakara, King of China, was
made King of Nepal. 4 According to the Vamsdvali this Dharmakara was
succeeded by Dharmapala, who had come to Nepal with Krakucchanda, that
is, from India. 5

5. The Nepalese sources tell that in the time of the Buddha Kanaka a
certain bhiksu called Dharmasrlmitra set out from Central India to visit
Manjusri on his hill in China, in order to learn from him the mystic significance
of the mantra of twelve letters. In Nepal, however, just north of the Svayambhu
hill, he met Manjusri in the guise of a peasant ploughing with a lion and a tiger.
Manjusri gave him hospitality for the night, and afterwards revealing himself
to him, gave him the desired instruction. 6

There is no direct mention of such a legend in the Tibetan accounts of
K ho tan. But it is perhaps not too far-fetched to see a reminiscence of it in
the bilingual Sanskrit-Khotanese document published by Bailey, BSOS., IX,
521 ff. In the curious disjointed dialogue contained in this document, one
speaker, it seems, has just set out from Khotan to go to China in order to learn
from Mahjusri, while the other speaker questions him about his object. When
asked about his preference in the matter of scripture, the traveller replies that
he prefers the Vajrayana, books, that is, precisely the same sort of Tantrio
mysticism which is the subject of the Nepalese story. The document, it seems,
is a schoolboy's exercise in translation, and it would of course be perfectly
natural for the subject matter of such an exercise to be taken from a well known
local legend.

G. In the Tibetan Prophecy of the. Li Country it is related that two nuns
who were arhants came to Khotan from Kashmir, and chose for the site of

1 Thomas, Texts, i, 97 ff. = Ibid., i, 17 f.

3 pp. HI ff, 147. * pp. 247 ff.

1 Wright, p. S3. '■ SiuyuiiLbkii-pumna, pp. 321 ff. ; Wright, pp. 84-5.

336 JOHN BROUGHT —

a monastery the land of a certain householder called Na-mo-bod. This place,
they said, was sanctified by the fact that there in former times the bodhisattva
Sa-sen had given away his two children to a Brahman. The householder
thereupon presented them with the land, and they built on it the monastery
Na-mo-hbu-gdoh. 1

The Nepalese Vamsdvall 2 mentions a mountain named Namobuddha,
and relates of it, not the story of Visvantara as in the Khotan version, but the
equally famous story of Mahasattva, son of King Maharatha, who gave up
his life for the sake of a hungry tigress. In the version of this story in the
Suvarnaprabhdsa-sutra, the locality is given as the country of the Panealas,
and the Vamsdvall turns this to account by making Maharatha king of Panavati
(Panautl), a village some eight miles south-east of Bhatgaon, and about five
miles from the Namobuddha mountain. The statement of the Vamsdvall
that PanautT was formerly called Pancala is of, course merely a worthless
popular etymology. But the attachment of the legend to the Namobuddha
mountain was not merely a personal fancy of the author of the Vamsdvall,
and its general acceptance in Nepal is confirmed by the fact that the Newari
Astaml-vrata-mdhatmya gives a close paraphrase of the SuvarnaprabMsa
version of the Mahasattva story, and here the scribe has noted in the
margin as a chapter -heading, " The Story of Namobuddha " (namobuddhd-
yd kha). 3

7. The Tibetan accounts refer to five forts in Khotan, and the city itself
is described as the " Five-fold " (Ina-ldsm). Elsewhere It has the mysterious
epithet " Nectarean " (dnar-ldan.), and it is not impossible that this is a mere
scribal corruption of Ina-ldan, the two being almost indistinguishable in pro-
nunciation in later Tibetan. The Chinese sources attribute five cities to the
country of Khotan, and in spite of Professor Thomas's misgivings, 4 this may
simply refer to the same fact.

The Nepalese legend tells that in the time of the Buddha Kasyapa a king
of Bengal, Pracanda, became a bhiksu, taking the name of Santikara, and
built five temples in the valley of Nepal, one to Samvara in Santipuri, to
Vasundhara in Vasupurl, to Varuna in Nagapurl, to Vayu in Vayupuri, and
to Agni in Agnipuri. These five are called collectively pancapurl.

It is of interest to add that at a later period of his career this Santikara
made for himself a cave, called Gunagarta, 5 in which he dwelt in meditation,
thus providing a parallel with the arhant of Khotan, Gomasala-gandha, who
dwelt in the cave in Gos"rhga. 6

1 Thomas, Texit, i, 133 ; cf. also Bailey, BSOAS., X, 923.

2 Wright, p. 110.

3 Cambridge Univ. Lib. Add. 1336, fol. 394. I hope shortly to publish s-n edition and transla-
tion of this text.

* Asia Major, ii, 256. Cf. also Bailey, BSOAS., X, 023-4.

4 So R. Mitra, B'ti/UhUt Literature of Nepal, p. 2!57, probably correctly. The Bihl. Indira
edition, p. 4S7, ha.fi the unintelligible reading, guruiti garttam.

6 Stein, Ancient Kkotavh, pp. 186 flf.

LEGENDS OP KHOTAN AND NEPAL 337

The above instances doubtless do not exhaust the possible list of parallels
between Khotaii and Nepal Enough, however, has been cited to show that
a chance coincidence is most improbable. How then is the situation to be
accounted for % Only a tentative answer can at present be given. It seems
nevertheless most probable that the whole cycle of legends originally belonged
to Khotan, and that they have been bodily transferred to Nepal at a later date.
The fact that the Nepalese sources are considerably later in date than those
for Khotan is in itself hardly significant. The most decisive argument lies in
the real significance of the Earth-breast story as a piece of popular etymology
for the name of Khotan, whereas in Nepal it has no raison d'etre at all. In
Khotan, again, the presence of a Chinese element in the population is well
attested by the use of Chinese place names, not only in the Tibetan sources,
but also in native Khotanese documents. In Nepal, on the other hand, there
are no grounds for assuming a Chinese colonization. The bulk of the Buddhist
population, it is true, are speakers of an Indo-Chinese language, Newari. But
it seems most improbable that they would ever have seriously considered
themselves to be Chinese. The name of the sacred hill, Gosrnga, is regularly
used in Khotan, whereas in Nepal the explanation that it was the name of
the Svayamhhu hill in a former age has every appearance of an afterthought.

A further argument in favour of the priority of Khotan may be seen in
the name Namobuddhd, which in Nepal is mentioned only as a place-name.
Wright prints it as Namobuddha, but the manuscript of the Vanisdvali and
the Astaml-wata both have -a. This form has no very obvious explanation
either from Sanskrit or Newari. It is, moreover, an unusual sort of name for
a place. On the other hand, as a personal name, the type is well known, though
so far as I am aware it is not common among Buddhists. In South India,
names such as Namak-sivaya Mudali'.ydr are not uncommon, and Western
Puritanism provides examples of personal names such as Ghry-to-God, or Praise-
Jehomh. As a man's name, then, Namohuddhah can be readily understood as
a nominative manufactured for the exclamation namo buddfidya, and it is
found in this form in Khotanese itself, as Namaubuda, represented in the
Tibetan account by Na-mo-bod. From the man's name, the name of the place
connected with him is formed by the suffix -ana, -am,, thus *Natnaubudam,
Tib. Na-mo-libu-gdoh} If such a name were then transferred to Nepal, it would
naturally appear as Namobuddha, since a final nasal could be understood,
if at all, only as a Sanskrit accusative case-ending, and would therefore not be
felt to be part of the word itself.

Again, in Nepal, the name yxincapuri is hardly a natural one for five temples,
whereas it would be perfectly apposite to the five forts of Khotan. But in any
case, it is possible that the application of the term liui-Uan to the forts of Khotan
may be secondary, and that the original application was to the hill of Gosrnga
itself, and that it was so called as being the local representative of the famous
Five-peaked Hill of Manjusrf in China. It is true that the sources for Khotan

1 Cf. Bailey, BSOAS., X, 923.

338 JOHN BROUGH—

do not directly assert such a relationship. But, as we have seen, in the legends
as transferred to Nepal, the Svayambhu hill takes the place of the Khotanese
Gosrtiga, and it is therefore not improbable that some of its attributes, even,
though not transmitted to us in the Khotan sources, may nevertheless really
belong originally to Khotan. Now, the Svayambhu hill is clearly thought of
as a local representative of the Chinese hill of Manjusri. Its five jewelled lotuses
in the Satya-yuga are obviously the reflection of the five jewelled peaks of
the Chinese hill, which are in fact mentioned later by the Svayambhu- purdna
itself L ; and the name PancaMrsa is given to MarLjus'ri's Chinese home. 2 It is
possible that the Gandharva-king Paheasikha owes his place in the Khotan
legend to the same fact. If then we may assume that the Khotan Gosruga
equally represents the Chinese hill, the conjecture may he hazarded that the
Chinese name of Gosrnga current in Khotan Niu-t'ou-san (ngisu-d'du-san,
Karlgren 673, 1015, 849) " Ox-head Hill ", may be simply a local corruption
or popular etymology of U-t'ai-san (ng'tM-d'ai-san, K. 1280, 964) "Five-
terrace Hill ". Some slight support for this may be seen in the fact that the
Tibetan rendering of the name varies in our texts between hgeku-to-san and
ftgelm-te-san.

A possible explanation for the transfer of the legend-cycle from Khotan
to Nepal might lie in the Tibetan use of the name Li. As is well known, Li-yul
was the old Tibetan name of Khotan, But after the disappearance of Khotan
as an independent kingdom, a good deal of uncertainty seems to have been
felt about the location of Li-yul. Thus, S. C. Das writes, " Li-yul is identified
with Nepal by the translators of the Kahgyur. I have been able to ascertain
that the ancient name of Nepal was Li-yul." 3 Again, Das translates from
" Dsam-ling Gyeshe ", 4 by Tsanpo Noman Khan : " The country called Thokar
by the Tibetans and vulgarly Malaya Phokhar or Little Phokhar is identified
by some with Li-yul. . . . Li-yul was situated to the north of Tibet. Many
Tibetan authors in their descriptions of Li-yul have confounded its position.
Some say Li-yul is in Mongolia, some say Li-yul is a province of Tibet ; accord-
ing to others Li is Pal-yul (Nepal)." 6 Rockhill, who correctly saw that Li was
Khotan, was nevertheless unduly sceptical of other renderings at a later date,
and remarks, " The only passage in Tibetan writers which places Li-yul south
of Tibet is in E. Schlagintweit's Ko-nige von Tibet, p. 850." fi But in Taranatha's
History of Buddhism, Asoka is said to have conquered all India, in the north
as far as " the Himalaya and the glacier region beyond the land of Li " (fiyah-
phyog.i Hia-ha-mn"dart, li-yul-gyi rgyab-kyi gaits (fan)? In this context, Nepal is
certainly better historical sense than Khotan, and may well have been intended
by Taranatha. There is, however, no possible amhiguity in the mention by the
author of the Dpag-hmM-ljon-bzaii- of the Great Caitya of Nepal ese Li, i.e.

i p. 1,17. ' pp. 322, 324.

3 JASB., IiO (1881), p. 222. * hdzatfL-glifirigynsMnd.

■'■ JASB., 55, p, 201. s Life of Ike Buddha, p. 130.

' Ed. SchiefiMT, p. 27.

LEGENDS OP KHOTAN AND NEPAL 339

Svayambhfi (bal-po li mchod-rt&n chen-po}. 1 We may therefore imagine that
some Tibetan lama who was familiar with the old Tibetan texts dealing with
the legends and traditions of Li had attributed them to Nepal. The Nepalese
who, as Hodgson found, held the Tibetans in high esteem in religious matters 2 ,
would doubtless not have been averse to accepting such a revelation, and
would assuredly have had little difficulty in finding appropriate sacred sites
to adorn with the legends.

1 Ed. S. C. Das, p. 170.

2 Cf. also Hodgson, Essays on the Languages, Literature and Religion of Nepdl and Tibet,
p. 21, note: " The temples of Kasachit a,nd of Swayambhu Natha though aitua-ted in the valley
of Nepaul, ire almost exclusively in the keeping of the Tibetans, a-rtd Lamas are the permanent
ministering f anctionariea."

Vol. in. part 1.