Chinese Buddhist pilgrims to India
Chinese Buddhist pilgrims to India were monks who travelled from China to the holy places of Buddhism in South Asia, mainly between about 400 and 700 CE. Hundreds made the journey by land along the Silk Road or by sea through South East Asia. Their travel accounts are valuable not only to students of religion but to historians of trade, geography and navigation.
Pilgrims as chroniclers
According to James F. Hancock, the three most famous pilgrims were Faxian, Xuanzang and Yijing. They left detailed descriptions of Buddhist practice, of shrines in Central and South Asia, and of the hardships of travel. They translated hundreds of Buddhist texts into Chinese and described social and political life in India and Ceylon (Sri Lanka). Hancock quotes the historian Tansen Sen, who says their accounts "offered remarkable insights into cross-cultural perceptions and interactions".[1]
Three journeys
Faxian set out in 399 CE at the age of 60. He spent ten years crossing the deserts and mountains of the Silk Road and visiting the great pilgrimage sites of India, then two years in Ceylon. He returned by a dangerous sea voyage through the Strait of Malacca, reaching home in 413, and spent his last years translating the texts he had brought back.[1]
Xuanzang, born around 600 CE, left in 629 by the Silk Road to Kashmir and the plains of the Ganges. He studied the sutras for five years at the monastery of Nalanda and visited sacred sites in what are now Pakistan, India, Nepal and Bangladesh, returning about sixteen years later.[1]
Yijing travelled mostly by sea, leaving in 671 and returning in 695. His route ran from Yangzhou to Guangzhou, through the Malay Archipelago and on to India. He was robbed by bandits in India. He spent six months in Srivijaya, studying the Malay peoples and learning Sanskrit, and eleven years at Nalanda.[1]
Pilgrimage and the sea
These journeys show how closely pilgrimage was tied to trade: monks travelled the same land and sea routes that carried spices and silk, often on merchant ships. Faxian's account of the voyage home, quoted by Hancock, describes pirates "to meet with whom is speedy death", an open ocean with "no knowing east or west" except by the sun, moon and stars, ships drifting with the wind in darkness and rain, and waves that glowed with a brightness like fire.[1] Nalanda and Srivijaya appear in these accounts as centres of learning as well as stops on trading routes.