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Faxian, Xuanzang and Yijing:  Chinese Buddhist Pilgrims

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Faxian, Xuanzang and Yijing:  Chinese Buddhist Pilgrims

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Faxian, Xuanzang, and Yijing, while more notable than most, were just a few of hundreds of Chinese Buddhist monks who undertook a pilgrimage of India. between the 5th and 12th centuries. These pilgrimages not only held personal significance for the monks, but they also served as an important form of cultural transmission, and the records they left behind offer valuable information about the practices of Chinese Buddhists, about the relationship china had to the countries that surrounded it, and about how the two cultures interacted with and intermingled between each other.

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The Eleven Headed Avalokitesvara is considered a great savior in Buddhism. The Chinese Buddhist Pilgrims were able to retrieve art and doctrines of Avalokitsvara on their journey to India. East Asian and Indian art tells the modern world a lot about Buddhism and sacred figures.

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Pamphlet published by Max Muller defending his view of Nirvana. This pamphlet also discusses the Chinese Buddhist Pilgrims.

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Amazing Xuanzang and His Journey to the West

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Amazing Xuanzang and His Journey to the West

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The legacy left by Xuanzang is a product of his incredible journey compounded with the myth-builders that followed, which have inspired subsequent pilgrims to follow in his path and spread Buddhism and goodness. Myth-builders are essential in historical collaboration because they take amazing historical figures, blown their stories to legendary proportions, and interest in their heroics has grown exponentially, along with them. If their stories had been perpetuated more accurately and truthfully, they may have been forgotten in history, even though their stories were amazing without embellishment. The widespread greater good that came from these exaggerations, though, which was at least a millennium of positive transnational relationship building, outweighs the cost of historical accuracy.

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The map shows the path of Faxian, who was one of the first monks to make a pilgrimage to India, and probably the oldest, left China in 399. The map shows his journey from Chang'an, through the Gobi desert, all throughout India, then to southeast Asia, before finally returning back to the Chinese city of Nanjing. On the journey, Faxian took special care to make a record of all the different Buddhist pilgrimage he visited. Furthermore , the descriptions of Indian life and culture that he detailed in his writings on his travels titled "A Record of Buddhist Kingdoms" came to form the foundations of how the Chinese people viewed India in the centuries that followed his journey.

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Mahabodhi Temple is located at Bodhgayā - a Buddhist pilgrimage site in India. Bodhgayā is significant because it is said to be where Buddha found enlightenment 2,500 years prior.

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This is the Great Buddha statue located in the pilgrimage site Bodhgayā, Bodhgayā is considered the holiest site for the Buddhist religion due to its ties with Buddha.

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Xuanzang’s original motivation for going, illegally at first, on what became his 19-year odyssey to India and back was to obtain the original, more precise scriptures or sutras.

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Xuanzang felt that the previously acquired Buddhist scriptures presently being read and interpreted in China had not traveled or aged well.

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Xuanzang wanted to remedy this by studying Buddhism firsthand, which he did for several years in Nalanda under the venerable Silabhadra, the most prominent monk in India.

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They had been exchanged through too many hands, were now diluted, and interpretations were no longer consistent or useful. This, he felt, could be the explanation for why his people in Tang Dynasty China had been suffering.

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The image is a painting of Xuanzang, who undertook an extraordinary 19 year pilgrimage throughout India . In his various writings from his journeys, Xuanzang wrote about his experiences at the various pilgrimage sites throughout India as well as his interactions with the Indian people, leaders and overall culture of India. His journey helped to foster diplomatic relations between the Indian ruling class and the Tang court and left behind valuable accounts that highlight how the Indian people viewed the Chinese at the time. Xuanzang also brought back a large amount of original Buddhist sutras, which he spent the rest of his life translating into Chinese.

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The teacher/student Xuanzang/Silabhadra collaboration eventually became a driving force for the spread of Buddhism throughout China. Xuanzang also journeyed extensively throughout India to all the prominent pilgrimage sights and included his detailed account of that region, the only one of its time, as part of his Great Tang Records on the Western Regions, Xuanzang’s historiography, travel diary of his nineteen-year roundtrip odyssey.

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Highly unlikely film depiction example of various nomadic people who help Xuanzang enroute.