Note 22 — Chapter XX · KOŚALA AND ŚRÂVASTÎ. THE JETAVANA VIHÂRA AND OTHER MEMORIALS AND LEGENDS OF BUDDHA. SYMPATHY OF THE MONKS WITH THE PILGRIMS.

This mention of ‘the future world’ is an important difference between the Corean and Chinese texts. The want of it in the latter has been a stumbling-block in the way of all previous translators. Rémusat says in a note that ‘the heretics limited themselves to speak of the duties of man in his actual life without connecting it by the notion that the metempsychosis with the anterior periods of existence through which he had passed.’ But this is just the opposite of what Fâ-hien’s meaning was, according to our Corean text. The notion of ‘the metempsychosis’ was just that in which all the ninety-six erroneous systems agreed among themselves and with Buddhism. If he had wished to say what the French sinologue thinks he does say, moreover, he would probably have written 皆知今世耳. Let me add, however, that the connexion which Buddhism holds between the past world (including the present) and the future is not that of a metempsychosis, or transmigration of souls, for it does not appear to admit any separate existence of the soul. Adhering to its own phraseology of ‘the wheel,’ I would call its doctrine that of ‘The Transrotation of Births.’ See Rhys Davids’ third Hibbert Lecture.