it he flung himself down on the ground and wept
bitterly. Thereupon he thanked the abbot for all that the latter had
done for him. He set out for the city in which his mother dwelt, ran
around the yamen of the mandarin, beat upon the wooden fish and cried:
"Deliverance from all suffering! Deliverance from all suffering!"

After the robber who had slain his father had slipped into the post he
held by false pretences, he had taken care to strengthen his position
by making powerful friends. He even allowed Tschen's wife, who had now
been a prisoner for some ten years, a little more liberty.

On that day official business had kept him abroad. The woman was
sitting at home, and when she heard the wooden fish beaten so
insistently before the door and heard the words of deliverance, the
voice of her heart cried out in her. She sent out the serving-maid to
call in the priest. He came in by the back door, and when she saw that
he resembled his father in every feature, she could no longer restrain
herself, but burst into tears. Then the monk of the Yangtze-kiang
realized that this was his mother and he took the bloody writing out
and gave it to her.

She stroked it and said amid sobs: "My father is a high official, who
has retired from affairs and dwells in the capital. But I have been
unable to write to him, because this robber guarded me so closely. So
I kept alive as well as I could, waiting for you to come. Now hurry to
the capital for the sake of your father's memory, and if his honor is
made clear then I can die in peace. But you must hasten so that no one
finds out about it."

The monk then went off quickly. First he went back to his cloister to
bid farewell to his abbot; and then he set out for Sianfu, the
capital.

Yet by that time his grandfather had already died. But one of his
uncles, who was known at court, was still living. He took soldiers and
soon made an end of the robbers. But the monk's mother had died in the
meantime.

From that time on, the Monk of the Yangtze-kiang lived in a pagoda in
Sianfu, and was known as Huan Dschuang. When the emperor issued the
order calling the priests of Buddha to court, he was some twenty years
of age. He came into the emperor's presence, and the latter honored
him as a great teacher. Then he set out for India.

He was absent for seventeen years. When he returned he brought three
collections of books with him, and each collection comprised
five-hundred and forty rolls of