The nearer you approach, however, the fainter it becomes, as if it were only in your fancy.

When the kings from the regions all around have sent skilful artists to take a copy, none of them have been able to do so.

Among the people of the country there is a saying current that "the thousand Buddhas( 13) must all leave their shadows here." Rather more than four hundred paces west from the shadow, when Buddha was at the spot, he shaved his hair and clipt his nails, and proceeded, along with his disciples, to build a tope seventy or eighty cubits high, to be a model for all future topes; and it is still existing.

By the side of it there is a monastery, with more than seven hundred monks in it.

At this place there are as many as a thousand topes( 14) of Arhans and Pratyeka Buddhas.( 15) NOTES (1) Now in India, Fa-Hsien used the Indian measure of distance; but it is not possible to determine exactly what its length then was.