your bridge home
Saints and Poets
A general captured him to own him, and held him for seventeen years. In that time he learned perfect Chinese, which is the only reason we have the texts.
He was taken as plunder. A general who had conquered a city carried him off the way one carries off treasure, and kept him for seventeen years.
It is the reason East Asia has its Buddhist scriptures.
Kumarajiva was born about 344 at Kucha. An oasis kingdom on the Silk Road, in what is now Xinjiang.
A wealthy Buddhist city, on the road between India and China.
His father, Kumarayana, was a brahmin from Kashmir. He had been in line for high office, and had walked away from it to travel as a monk.
He got as far as Kucha. And there the king pressed his sister on him in marriage.
His mother, Jiva, was that princess. She later became a nun, over her husband's objection, and took her son with her into the monastic life when he was seven.
The rest of this story, read aloud, and a new one every day.