Faxian's pilgrimage
pilgrimage · 399 AD–413 AD
The Chinese monk Faxian set out from Chang'an in 399, already in his sixties, to find complete texts of the Buddhist monastic rules. He crossed the Taklamakan and the Pamirs to India, spent years copying texts at Pataliputra and Tamralipti, sailed to Sri Lanka, and came home by sea by way of Southeast Asia, landing in Shandong after a storm. His Record of Buddhist Kingdoms is the earliest surviving first-hand account of a Chinese journey to India. Dates are approximate, and the island he stopped at on the way home, Yepoti, may be Java or Sumatra.
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Recorded boundaries
| Period | Control | Confidence | Evidence | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 399 AD | — | high confidence | no observation date recorded | Set out from Chang'an. |
| 400 AD | — | medium confidence | no observation date recorded | Reached Zhangye → Dunhuang → Shanshan → Karashahr. Crossed the desert beyond, where, he wrote, the only guides were the bones of the dead. |
| 401 AD | — | medium confidence | no observation date recorded | Reached Khotan. Watched the great festival procession of Buddha images. |
| 402 AD | — | medium confidence | no observation date recorded | Reached Swat → Peshawar. |
| 403 AD | — | medium confidence | no observation date recorded | Reached Nagarahara. Crossing the mountains beyond, his companion Huijing died of cold. |
| 404 AD | — | medium confidence | no observation date recorded | Reached Mathura → Sankassa → Sravasti → Kapilavastu. |
| 405 AD–406 AD | — | medium confidence | no observation date recorded | Reached Vaishali → Pataliputra. Spent about three years learning Sanskrit and copying the monastic rules he had come for. |
| 407 AD | — | medium confidence | no observation date recorded | Reached Bodh Gaya → Varanasi. |
| 408 AD–409 AD | — | medium confidence | no observation date recorded | Reached Tamralipti. Spent two years copying sutras and drawing images. |
| 410 AD | — | medium confidence | no observation date recorded | Reached Anuradhapura. Spent two years in Sri Lanka, where the sight of a Chinese silk fan offered at a shrine made him weep with homesickness. |
| 411 AD | — | low confidence | no observation date recorded | Reached Yepoti. Java or Sumatra; the identification is disputed. Waited five months for a ship to China. |
| 412 AD | — | medium confidence | no observation date recorded | Reached Laoshan. Blown far off course, the ship landed on the Shandong coast after nearly three months. |
| 413 AD | — | medium confidence | no observation date recorded | Reached Jiankang. Settled in the southern capital, now Nanjing, to translate the texts he had brought. |
Each row is a snapshot the source recorded, not a continuous history. The period between two observations is an inference this atlas shows rather than hides.
Sources
- Faxian; translated by James Legge, A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms: Being an Account by the Chinese Monk Fâ-Hien of His Travels in India and Ceylon (A.D. 399–414), (1886)