affectionate benevolence and tender pity, the fervour of his zeal or his inviolable
attachment to the practices of the Law. He was reserved in his friendship, made
no hasty bonds, and when once he had entered his convent, nothing but an
imperial decree could have drawn him from his pious retreat.
On the third day of the second moon (of the period Lin-te,—664), the Master of
the Law had sent Hiu-hiouen-pi to inform the Emperor of the wound he had
received, and of the malady it had induced.
On the seventh day of the same month the Emperor, by a decree, ordered one of
the imperial physicians to take with him medicaments and attend upon the
Master of the Law, but by the time he arrived, the Master was already dead.
Teou-sse-lun, governor of Fang-tcheou, announced by a report this melancholy
event.
At the news, the Emperor shed tears copiously, and cried aloud in his sorrow,
declaring that he had just lost the treasure of the empire. For several days he
suspended the usual audiences.
All the civil and military functionaries abandoned themselves to groans and
tears: the Emperor himself was unable to repress his sobs or moderate his grief.
On the next day but one, he spoke to his great officers as follows:
“What a misfortune for my empire is the loss of Thsang, the Master of the Law!
It may well be said that the great family of Cakya has seen its sole support
shattered beneath it, and that all men remain without master and without guide.
Do they not resemble the mariner who sees himself sinking into the abyss, when
the storm has destroyed his oars and his shallop? the traveller astray in the midst
of the darkness, whose lamp dies out at the entrance to a bottomless gulf?”
When he had uttered these words, the Emperor groaned again, and sighed many
times.
On the twenty-sixth day of the same month, the Emperor issued the following
decree:
“In accordance with a report addressed to me by Teou-sse-lun on the death of the
Master of the Law, Hiouen-thsang, of the convent Yu-hoa-sse, I order that his
funeral take place at the expense of the State.”
On the sixth day of the third moon, he issued a new decree as follows: