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POPULAR SUPPORT
191
says nothing about the little detail of the dolmens which would have settled once for ever the identity of Konkinapulo.
However we may all the same observe that, both on the strength of his own statements and on that of the lithic records, the description of the holy place as given by Yuan Chwang seems to point to a Jaina centre rather than to a Buddhist stronghold. In the first place, the Chinese pilgrim uses an epithet in regard to Śronavimśatikoți which is striking. He calls him Arhat Śroṇavimśatikoți, and he tells us that the latter constructed an image of Maitreya in Konkinapulo; that near the Aśokan tope was the spot where the same Arhat made miraculous exhibitions; that there were the remains of a monastery built by that Arhat; and that there was a tope in the neighbourhood of Konkinapulo which contained the relics of Śronavimśatikoți. This Arhat Śroṇavimśatikoți was no other than the bhiksu Šrotavimśatikoti," who is said to have been born in a place which lay south-west of the capital of I-lan-na-po-fa-to country. While it is certainly admitted that the term Arhat was commonly applied in Buddhist canonical literature to Buddha himself and to transcendental beings, it cannot be understood how the Chinese traveller came to transform his bhiksu into an Arhat. The only supposition is that, notwithstanding his close observation of the Digambara and Svetambara Jainas in other parts of the country,+ Yuan Chwang seems in this one
3
1. Waters, op. cit., II, p. 237.
2. On the wrong use of this name by the Chinese traveller, read Watters, ibid, II, pp. 180, 238.
3. Watters, ibid., II. pp. 178 180.
4. Watters, ibid., II. pp. 2, 154, 155, 252. On the term Arhat used in regard to Buddha, read Rhys Davids, Dialogues of the Buddha, Part I, p. 2. See also ibid., pp. 63, 105, 138, 264, where the term is used in regard to laymen, the real Brahman, and priests of God. (S. B. E. Vol. II).
