Strange vapours coiled around the cliffs.
The scent of wild flowers was all along the path,
Deep, deep the green of the bamboos.
A thatched gatehouse,
A fenced yard,
Both pretty as a picture.
A stone bridge,
Whitewashed mud walls:
Charming austerity.
The loneliness of autumn,
Airy isolation.
Yellow leaves lay fallen beside the path,
White clouds drifted above the peaks.
Mountain birds sang in the woods
While a puppy barked outside the gate.
When he reached the gate, the high warden Liu Boqin threw down the tiger and shouted, “Where are you, lads?” Three or four servants of strange and repulsive appearance came out, and with much pulling and tugging they carried the tiger in. Boqin told them to skin it at once and prepare it to offer to their guest, then turned round to welcome Sanzang in. When they had formally greeted each other Sanzang bowed to Boqin to thank him for taking pity on him and saving his life.
“Why bother to thank me? We're fellow countrymen.” When Sanzang had been offered a seat and served with tea, an old woman came out to greet him followed by a young one. Liu Boqin explained that they were his mother and his wife.
“Madam, please take the highest seat while I bow to you,” said Sanzang.
“You are a guest from afar, venerable monk, so let us each preserve our dignity and neither bow to the other,” the old woman replied.
“Mother,” said Liu Boqin, “he has been sent by His Majesty the Tang Emperor to go to the Western Heaven to see the Buddha and fetch the scriptures. I met him on the mountain, and I thought that as we were fellow-countrymen I should invite him home to rest before I take him on his way tomorrow.” The old woman was delighted.
“Good, good,” she said. “But it would be even better to ask him to stay longer. Tomorrow is the anniversary of your father's passing away, and I would like to trouble the venerable monk to say some prayers and read a sutra for him; you could take him on his way the day after.” Although this Boqin was a tiger-killer and the high warden of the mountain, he was a dutiful son, and when he heard this suggestion he made ready paper and incense and asked Sanzang to stay.
While they talked they had not noticed the evening drawing in. The servants set out a table and stools, then brought in several dishes of tender tiger-meat, which they placed steaming hot on the table. Liu Boqin asked Sanzang to help himself while he served the rice. Putting his hands together in front of his chest, Sanzang replied, “This is wonderful, but I must tell you frankly that I have been a monk ever since I left my mother's womb, so I am quite unable to eat meat.” Boqin thought for a while before replying, “Venerable monk, our family has not eaten vegetarian food for generations. When we cut bamboo shoots, pick fungus, gather wild vegetables for drying, or make bean-curd we always cook them in the fat of roebuck, deer, tiger or leopard, so even they aren't really vegetarian; and our two cooking pots are steeped in fat, so what are we to do? I'm afraid it was wrong of me to ask you here.”
“There's no need to worry,” Sanzang answered. “Please go ahead and eat. I'd go without food for four or five days, or even starve, rather than break the monastic rule about vegetarian food.”
“But we can't have you starving to death,” protested Liu Boqin.
“Thanks to your great kindness, High Warden, I was saved from the packs of tigers and wolves. Even if I were to starve to death, it would be better than providing a meal for tigers.”
Liu Boqin's mother, who had been listening to their conversation, said, “Don't talk nonsense, son. I've got some vegetarian things that we can offer to him.”
“Where did you get them from?” Liu Boqin asked, to which mother replied, “Never you mind how, but I've got them.” She told her daughter-in-law to take down the little cooking-pot, burn the fat out of it, scrub it and wash it several times over, then put it back on the stove. Then they half filled it with boiling water that they threw away. Next she poured boiling water on mountain-elm leaves to make tea, boiled up some millet, and cooked some dried vegetables. This was then all put into two bowls and set on the table. Then the old woman said to Sanzang, “Please eat, venerable monk. This is completely pure tea and food that I and my daughter-in-law have prepared.” Sanzang thanked them and sat down in the seat of honour. Another place was laid for Liu Boqin, where were set out bowls and dishes full of the meat of tiger, roebuck, snake, fox, and hare, as well as dried venison, all cooked without salt or sauce, which he was going to eat while Sanzang had his vegetarian meal. He had just sat down and was on the point of picking up his chopsticks when he noticed Sanzang put his hands together to recite some scripture, which so alarmed him that instead of picking up his chopsticks he stood beside him. When Sanzang had recited a few lines he urged Boqin to eat.
“Are you a short-sutra monk then?” Boqin asked.
“That wasn't a sutra, it was a grace before eating.”
“You get up to all sorts of tricks. Fancy reciting sutras at mealtimes,” was Boqin's comment.
When the meal was over and the dishes had been cleared away, Liu Boqin invited Sanzang out into the gathering darkness for a stroll at the back. They went along an alley and came to a thatched hut. On pushing the door open and going in Sanzang saw bows and crossbows hanging on the walls and quivers filled with arrows. From the beams were slung two gory and stinking tiger-skins, and at the foot of the wall were stood many spears, swords, tridents and clubs. In the middle were two seats. Liu Boqin urged Sanzang to sit down, but Sanzang could not bear to stay there long among the horrifying filth, and so he went outside. Going further to the back they came to a large garden full of clumps of yellow chrysanthemums and red maple-trees. Then with a whinnying noise about a dozen plump deer and a large herd of roebuck ran out; they were docile and unfrightened on seeing humans.
“Were those roebuck and deer raised by you?” asked Sanzang.
“Yes,” replied Boqin. “When you Chang'an people have some money you buy valuables, and when you have land you accumulate grain; but we hunters can only keep a few wild animals for a rainy day.” Dusk had fallen unnoticed as the two of them talked, and now they went back to the house to sleep.
Early the next morning the whole family, young and old, got up and prepared vegetarian food for the monk, and then they asked him to start reciting sutras. Sanzang washed his hands, went to the family shrine of the high warden, burned incense there, and worshipped, then beat his “wooden fish” as he recited first a prayer to purify his mouth, then a holy spell to purify his body and mind, and finally the Sutra to Deliver the Dead. When he had finished, Boqin asked him to write out a letter of introduction for the dead man and also recite the Diamond Sutra and the Guanyin Sutra. Sanzang recited them in a loud, clear voice and then ate lunch, after which he read out the several chapters of the Lotus Sutra, the Amitabha Sutra, as well as one chapter of the Peacock Sutra and told the story of the cleansing of the bhikshu. By now it was dark, and when they had burned all kinds of incense, paper money, and paper horses for all the gods, and the letter of introduction for the dead man, the service was over and everyone went to bed and slept soundly.
The soul of Boqin's father, now delivered from being a drowned ghost, came to the house that night and appeared in a dream to everyone in the family.
“I suffered long in the underworld, unable to find deliverance,” he said, “but now that the saintly monk has wiped out my sins by reading some scriptures. King Yama has had me sent back to the rich land of China to be reborn in an important family. You must reward him generously, and no half measures. Now I'm going.” Indeed: