Legend of the Diamond Valley 7 



Prince Kie of Shu (Sze-ch'uan) paid a visit to the Emperor Wu, 1 and, 

 in the course of conversations which he held with the Emperor's scholars 

 on distant lands, told this story: 'In the west, arriving at the Mediter- 

 ranean,* there is in the sea an island of two hundred square miles {It). 

 On this island is a large forest abundant in trees with precious stones, 

 and inhabited by over ten thousand families. These men show great 

 ability in cleverly working gems, 8 which are named for the country 

 Fu-lin 4$, ^. In a northwesterly direction from the island is a ra- 

 vine hollowed out like a bowl, more than a thousand feet deep. They 

 throw flesh into this valley. Birds take it up in their beaks, whereupon 

 they drop the precious stones. The biggest of these have a weight of 

 five catties.' There is a saying that this is the treasury of the Devaraja 

 of the Rupadhatu £^^£." 4 



From several points of view this text is of fundamental importance. 

 First of all, it contains the earliest mention in Chinese records of the 

 country Fu-lin, antedating our previous knowledge of it by a century. 



Huei-ch'uang, Wan-kie, Wei-t'uan, and Chang-ki; the work was written by Chang 

 Yue (667-730), a statesman, poet, and painter of the T'ang period. The text trans- 

 lated above is given in Vu shu tsi ch'ing, section on National Economy 321, chapter 

 on Precious Commodities (poo huo); it is reprinted in the writer's Optical Lenses 

 (Toung Poo, 1915, p. 204). 



1 He was the first emperor of the Liang dynasty and bore the name Siao Yen; he 

 lived from 464 to 549. 



1 Literally, "the Western Sea " (Si hai). Compare Hirth, The Mystery of Fu-lin 

 II (Journal Am. Or. Soc, Vol. XXXIII, 1913, p. 195). 



•Literally, "implements or vessels of precious stones" (poo k'i), among which 

 also antique intaglios are presumably included. 



* A Sanskrit-Buddhist term meaning "the Celestial King of the Region of 

 Forms." Region of Forms is the second of the three Brahmanic worlds (trailokya). 

 The detailed discussion of this subject on the part of O. Franke (Chinesische Tem- 

 pelinschrift, Abhandl. preuss. Akad., 1907, pp. 47-50) is especially worth reading. 

 There are four Celestial or Great Kings guarding the four quarters of the world, 

 each posted on a side of the world-mountain Sumeru. The one here in question is 

 Kubera or Vaicravana, the regent of the north and God of Wealth, the ruler of the 

 aerial demons, called Yaksha. In earlier Buddhist art he is represented as standing 

 on a Yaksha (see the writer's Chinese Clay Figures, pp. 297 et seq.) ; in later art he 

 is figured holding in his right hand a standard and in his left an ichneumon (nakula) 

 spitting jewels (compare A. Foucher, Bull, de I'Ecole jranqaise, Vol. Ill, p. 655). 

 This animal is known as the inveterate enemy of snakes; and snakes, in Indian belief, 

 are the guardians of precious stones and other treasures. By devouring the snakes, 

 the ichneumon (or, to use its Anglo-Indian name, mangoose) appropriates their 

 jewels, and has hence developed into the attribute of Kubera. The reference to the 

 Indian God of Wealth in the above text is, of course, not an element inherent in the 

 story, as it was transmitted from Fu-lin, but an interpolation of the Chinese author 

 prompted by a reflection regarding a tradition hailing from India. This Indian story 

 has been recorded by him in another passage of the same work, and will be discussed 

 farther on (p. 18). 



