Journey
Yijing — the sea road to Nālandā (671–695)
Yijing went entirely by sea, and his account is as much about Śrīvijaya as about India: he twice broke his journey in Sumatra, and wrote both his books there. He is the best evidence that by the seventh century the Buddhist world was a maritime as well as an overland system.
Stops (8)
- Guangzhou / Canton, China · home · sailed 671
He took a Persian ship out of Guangzhou in 671, alone — the companions who had agreed to come dropped out before sailing. He went entirely by sea in both directions, which is the point of his journey: by the seventh century a Chinese monk could reach Nalanda without crossing Central Asia at all.
- Palembang / Srivijaya · Srivijaya, six months
Stopped six months in Sumatra to learn Sanskrit grammar, and advises later pilgrims to do the same before attempting India. Srivijaya's monasteries held a thousand monks and taught the Indian curriculum, which is exactly his argument: the Buddhist world was already maritime as well as overland. His advice to learn Sanskrit in Sumatra first is practical rather than devotional, and it is the sort of thing only he thought worth writing down.
- Malaiyur (Jambi / Malayu, Sumatra) · Malayu, 672
On to Malayu, the Jambi river polity that Srivijaya was then absorbing, and then through the strait to the Nicobars and across the Bay. He lists the sailing seasons and the ports in order, so his account doubles as the earliest detailed itinerary of the Straits route. Malayu was swallowed within his lifetime.
- Kedah / Kadaram · Kedah, the isthmus
Kedah on the Malay peninsula, the transhipment point for the portage across the Kra isthmus and the last provisioning stop before the Bay crossing. It is the same place the Tanjore inscription calls Kadaram and lists first among Rajendra Chola's targets three and a half centuries later. The portage across the Kra isthmus avoided the Straits altogether, which is why both a Chinese monk and a Chola fleet wanted to know about it.
- Tamralipta / Tamluk · Tamralipti, a year
Landfall at Tamralipti, where he spent a year on Sanskrit before going up-country — and was robbed by bandits on the road, which he tells as a warning to later pilgrims about travelling alone. He treats a working knowledge of Sanskrit as the minimum any pilgrim needs before starting. He treats a working knowledge of Sanskrit as the minimum any pilgrim needs before starting out.
- Nālandā mahāvihāra · Nalanda, ten years
Ten years at Nalanda, copying some four hundred texts. His Record of Buddhist Practices describes how monks actually lived — how they bathed, ate, kept the rains-retreat, held property — written expressly to correct Chinese practice. He also left short biographies of sixty other Chinese monks who had made the journey, most of whom died on it.
- Bodh Gayā / Mahābodhi Temple · Bodh Gaya
Bodh Gaya, visited from Nalanda along with the other great sites, and by then a destination for Chinese monks for three centuries. He records the protocol rather than the emotion: how one circumambulates, what is offered, what a visiting monk may do, and what Chinese practice was getting wrong. Three centuries of Chinese monks had been coming here before him, and he is the one who wrote down the etiquette.
- Rājagriha / Rajgir · Rajgir
Rajagriha and the Vulture Peak, where the first council was held. His interest throughout is procedural — what a monk may eat, how a monastery's property is held, how the rains-retreat is counted. He is the only one of the pilgrims who wrote a manual rather than a travelogue. A manual of monastic practice is a stranger thing to bring back from a pilgrimage than a relic, and it is what the Chinese order actually needed.