Bodhidharma, not being satisfied with the result of his interview with royalty, crossed the river Yang-tsze into the Wei kingdom and remained at Lo-yang. Here he sat with his face to a wall for nine years. The people called him the “Wall-gazing Brahmin.” When it was represented to the emperor of the house of Liang, that the great teacher, who possessed the precious heirloom of Shakya, the symbol of the hidden law of Buddha, was lost to his kingdom, he repented and sent messengers to invite him to return. They failed in their errand. The presence of the Indian sage excited the more ardent Chinese Buddhists to make great efforts to conquer the sensations. Thus one of them, we are told, said to himself: “Formerly, for the sake of religion, men broke open their bones and extracted the marrow, took blood from their arms to give to the hungry, rolled their hair in the mud or threw themselves down a precipice to feed a famishing tiger. What can I do?” Accordingly while snow was falling, he exposed himself to it till it had risen above his knees, when the patriarch observing him, asked him what he hoped to gain by it. The young aspirant to the victory over self wept at the question, and said: “I only desire that mercy may open a path to save the whole race of mankind.” The patriarch replied, that such an act was not worthy of comparison with the acts of the Buddhas. It required, he told him, very little virtue or resolution. His disciple, stung with the answer, took a sharp knife, severed his arm, and placed it before the patriarch. The latter expressed his high approval of the deed, and when after nine years’ absence he returned to India, he appointed the disciple who had performed this strange act to succeed him as patriarch in China. PAGODAS. The word Pagoda has been applied by French and Portuguese authors to temples where images are worshiped and priests live, but English writers confine the word to the high, tapering polygonal structures seen in China, which are called _tours_ by the French. Etymologically, the word signifies “house of idols,” or “abode of God,” being derived from the Persian words _but_, an idol, and _kadah_, a house, a temple. Some of the pagodas are built upon hill-tops and other places for the purpose of securing the prosperity of the locality by the laws of geomancy. These latter are not used for worshiping in.