THE CHINESE PILGRIM 147
literary instead of a verbal transmission of the canonical scriptures.
The difference between "India of the North"—or the Gandharan provinces beyond the Indus—and India proper in all matters of learning and the faith comes out very prominently in the pages of Fa-Hian, and ought to refute sufficiently all who imagine Gandhara as possessed of a culture in any way primary and impulsive, instead of entirely derivative and passive.
As if forecasting our need on this very point, the pilgrim particularly notes that on reaching India proper (and apparently in the great temple of Chhi'honan or Victory in Kosala) his last remain- ing companion, Tao-chhing, when he "beheld the law of the Shaneen, and all the clergy grave, decorous, and conducting themselves in a manner greatly to be admired, reflected, with a sigh, that the inhabitants of the frontiers of the kingdom of Thsin (China) were deficient in the Precepts and transgressed their duties; and said that if hereafter he could become Buddha, he wished that he might not be reborn in the country of the frontiers; on this account he remained, and returned not. Fa-Hian, whose first desire was that the precepts should be diffused and should penetrate into the land of Han, returned therefore alone."
About this same "India of the North" we have still more detail. The pre-Buddhistic Buddhism, which undoubtedly existed and was represented in Buddha's own day by his cousin Devadatta, was
