281-282 ASOKA . 257 towards the end of her life, Carumati retired to a vihdra which she had built to the north of the city and which still bears her name : the Vihara of Chabahil. Tradition still links Asoka with the famous shrine of the primordial Buddha Svayambhunatha, located in Western Nepal. g. — ASoka and Khotan*? Some sources which go no further back than the seventh century A.D. attribute to Asoka or his sons the founding of the kingdom of Khotan in Central Asia. It is unlikely, however, that the Mauryan empire extended beyond India itself. The most reasonable version of the legend is recorded by Hsiian tsang in his Hsi yié chi (T 2087, ch. 12, p. 943a-b) : ASoka banished from his empire the officials of Taksasila who, carrying out the orders of the cruel Tisyaraksita, had blinded his son Kunala. The exiles crossed the Snow Mountains and settled in a desert which covered the western part of Khotan. At the same period, a Chinese prince, who was also in exile, occupied the eastern part of Khotan. The two colonies came to blows; the leader of the Taxilians was vanquished and forced to flee, but he was captured and finally beheaded. The Chinese prince occupied the central portion of the kingdom, which extended between the two colonies — Chinese and Indian —, and established his capital there. The Life of Hstian tsang (T 2053, ch. 5, p. 251a) records these events in a somewhat different way : it is Kunala himself, ASoka’s son, who was banished and withdrew to Khotan where he set up his capital. Since he had no descendants, he went to the temple of the god Vaisravana and asked him for a son. A male child emerged from the god’s brow and, having no mother, was fed from a breast which issued miraculously from the ground near the temple. Hence the name of Kustana (stana “breast”) given to the child. Tle Buddhist prophecy in the Gosrigavyakarana*?, compiled about © On the history of Khotan, A. STEIN, Ancient Khotan, Oxford, 1907; S. Konow, Khotan Studies, JRAS, 1914, p. 233 sq. More recently, H.C. SetH, Central Asiatic Provinces of the Mauryan Empire, HQ, XII, 1937, p. 400; The Kingdom of Khotan under the Mauryas, THQ. XV, 1939. pp. 389-402; P.C. Baccut, Indian Culture in Central Asia, IBORS, XXXII, 1946, pp. 9-20. — J. BroucH, Legends of Khotan and Nepal, BSOAS, XII, 1948, pp. 333-9, notes the kinship of the Buddhist traditions concerning the origins of Khotan and Nepal. It scems that certain legendary facts, not easily explicable if of Nepalese origin, would be much more explicable if they were of Khotanese origin and later transferred to Nepal. 8? Translated and commented upon by F.W. THomas, Tibetan Literary Texts, I, London, 1935, pp. 11-36