Four Pilgrims

It was uninhabited ; but a day's rest there refreshed man and beast ; and on the third day the traveller saw the last of the shifting sands of Shamo and came to the pastures of the. [...] The Oxus was reached and crossed and our pilgrim now deviates considerably from the direct route to fulfil a promise which he had made to the Khan of the Uighurs to visit his son-in-law the son of the great. [...] HE passed the wet season at Kapi6a and then protected by the King's envoys went along the North bank of the Kabul river and through districts memorable in the record of the Indian expedition of Alexander the Great. [...] Hiuen-Tsiang went up and down and to and fro in these frontier-states threading many a delicious valley which nestled among the mountains and was overlooked by the snows of Himalaya ; and returning from time to time to the more enervating atmosphere of the valley of the Indus. [...] The stones of st4pas monasteries pagodas and hospitals for men and beasts cumbered the ground."THROUGH INDIA 35 While Hiuen-Tsiang was staying at the place where Gautama Sakyarnani" as he was called during the ascetic portion of his career—that is to say a the sage of the family of the Sikyas—became " Buddha " or " the Enlightener of men " a deputation of four of the most distinguished monks o