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Faxian (337–), formerly romanized as Fa-hien and Fa-hsien, was a Han Chinese Chinese Buddhism bhikkhu and translator who traveled on foot from Jin China to medieval India to acquire Buddhist scriptures. His birth name was Gong Sehi. Starting his journey about age 60, he traveled west along the overland Silk Road, visiting Buddhist sites in Central Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. The journey and return took from 399 to 412, with 10 years spent in India.
Faxian's account of his pilgrimage, the Foguoji or Record of the Buddhist Kingdoms, is a notable independent record of early Buddhism in India. He returned to China with a large number of Sanskrit texts, whose translations greatly influenced East Asian Buddhism and provide a terminus ante quem for many historical names, events, texts, and ideas therein.
In 399 CE, about age 60, Faxian was among the earliest attested pilgrims to India. He set out from Chang'an, the capital of the Buddhist Later Qin dynasty, along with four others to locate sacred Buddhist texts and was later joined by five more pilgrims at Zhangye. He visited India in the early fifth century. He is said to have walked all the way from China across the icy desert and rugged mountain passes. He entered India from the northwest and reached Pataliputra. He took back with him a large number of Sanskrit Buddhist texts and images sacred to Buddhism. Upon his return to China, he is also credited with translating these Sanskrit texts into Chinese.
Faxian's visit to India occurred during the reign of Chandragupta II. He entered the Indian subcontinent through the northwest. His memoirs describe his 10 years stay in India. He visited the major sites associated with the Buddha, as well the renowned centres of education and Buddhist monasteries. He visited Kapilvastu (Lumbini), Bodh Gaya, Benares (Varanasi), Shravasti, and Kushinagar, all linked to events in Buddha's life. Faxian learned Sanskrit, and collected Indian literature from Pataliputra (Patna), Oddiyana, and Taxila in Gandhara. His memoirs mention the Hinayana and emerging Mahayana traditions, as well as the splintering and dissenting Theravada sub-traditions in 5th-century Indian Buddhism. Before he had begun his journey back to China, he had amassed a large number of Sanskrit texts of his times.
On Faxian's way back to China, after a two-year stay in Sri Lanka, a violent storm drove his ship onto an island, probably Java.Buswell, Robert E. & Lopez, Donald S. Jr. (2014). The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. 297 After five months there, Faxian took another ship for southern China, but again it was blown off course and he ended up landing at Mount Lao in what is now Shandong in northern China, east of the city of Qingdao. He spent the rest of his life translating and editing the scriptures he had collected. These were influential to the history of Chinese Buddhism that followed.
Faxian returned in 412 and settled in what is now Nanjing. He wrote a book on his travels around the year 414, filled with accounts of early Buddhism and the geography and history of numerous countries along the Silk Road as they were at the turn of the 5th century CE. He spent the next decade until his death translating the Buddhist he had brought with him from India.
The following is the introduction to James Legge's 19th-century translation of Faxian's work. Legge's speculations, such as Faxian visiting India at the age of 25, have been discredited by later scholarship but his introduction provides some useful biographical information about Faxian:
Faxian noted that central Asian cities such as Khotan were Buddhist, with the clergy reading Indian Manuscripts in Indian languages. The local community revered the monks. He mentions a flourishing Buddhist community in Taxila (now in Pakistan) amid a generally non-Buddhist community. He describes elaborate rituals and public worship ceremonies, with support of the king, in the honour of the Buddha in India and Sri Lanka. He wrote about cities like Pataliputra, Mathura, and Kannauj in Madhyadesha. He also wrote that inhabitants of Madhyadesha eat and dress like Chinese people. He declared Pataliputra to be a prosperous city. He left India about 409 from Tamralipti, a port he states to be on its eastern coast. However, some of his Chinese companion pilgrims who came with him on the journey decided to stay in India.
Rémusat's translation of the work caused a stir in European scholarship, although deeply perplexing many with its inability to handle the many Sanskrit words Faxian transcribed into Middle Chinese characters.
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