The Buddhist monk Fa Xian felt he was missing something. As a Buddhist monk, the Books of Discipline he possessed were tattered. But he wanted to obtain the knowledge provided by those books. As Buddhist knowledge travelled to China from India, he decided to embark on a mission to find the rules written in the Books of Discipline by journeying to India.
Fa Xian was one among the many pilgrims who came to India from China. These pilgrims played a role in the cultural exchange between the two countries. Some Chinese religious scholars thought of India as a land of mysticism, the land of the sacred. But Fa Xian was different. He was a chronicler, an ancient journalist, who meticulously wrote a detailed account of his journey.
His book, though ancient, serves as an important historical resource. It informs the reader about rituals performed by the Buddhists in South, South-East and East Asia. Also, it mentions the socio-political situation of South Asia with particular attention to the route between India and China.
Fa Xian began his trip from Chang’An, once the prosperous capital of the Western Jin Dynasty, in 399. However, by the time he returned to Chang’An fourteen years later, he had travelled through monasteries in Taklamakan (present-day Xinjiang Autonomous Region), India and Sri Lanka. His eyewitness account of pilgrimage sites and Buddhist practices in Chinese is fascinating.
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