Person · Chinese Buddhist pilgrim
Faxian
Also known as Fǎxiǎn, Fa-Hien, Fa-hsien, Fah-Hian, Fa Xian
A Chinese Buddhist monk who left Chang'an in 399, at about sixty, to find complete copies of the monastic rules, walked the overland Silk Road into India and came home by sea in 412. His Foguoji, written about 414, records ten years in India, at Taxila, Pataliputra and the Buddha's sites under Chandragupta II, then two in Sri Lanka. The Sanskrit texts he carried back and translated give a fixed date before which many Buddhist names, texts and ideas must fall.
- Date
- 337–c. 422 CE
- Function
- Travel & migration
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
Worth knowing
His father had him ordained a novice at three because his three elder brothers had all died young. On the voyage home a storm drove his ship to an island, probably Java, and a second ship bound for southern China was blown off course and landed him at Mount Lao in Shandong, after the crew had been cooking with seawater.
James Legge's 1886 introduction has him reaching India at twenty-five; later scholarship discards that and puts him at about sixty when he set out. His death is given as c. 422 at about eighty-five, while the older biography Legge summarised says he died at eighty-eight.
Connections (5)
- Traveller routePataliputra
Faxian learned Sanskrit and collected Indian manuscripts at Pataliputra during his ten years in India, and called it a prosperous city. His Record describes the towns of Magadha as the greatest in the middle country, their people rich and competing in charity, with a yearly procession of some twenty four-wheeled cars carrying images of the Buddha, which the Brahmans invited into the city while lamps burned all night. It is one of the few eyewitness pictures of the Magadhan capital around 400 CE.
- Traveller routeTakshashila / Taxila
Faxian entered the subcontinent from the north-west, and Taxila in Gandhara was one of three places, with Pataliputra and Oddiyana, where he gathered Indian literature to carry back to China. He describes a flourishing Buddhist community at Taxila living amid a generally non-Buddhist population, a rare dated observation of the religious mix of the old north-western city at the turn of the fifth century, written by a monk who had come specifically in search of monastic texts.
- Traveller routeTamralipta / Tamluk
Faxian left India by sea from Tamralipti, a port he places on the country's eastern coast, about the year 409, after some ten years in India. From the Bengal port he went on to Sri Lanka, beginning the long sea passage home that later wrecked him on an island, probably Java, and finally landed him in Shandong. Some of the Chinese companions who had set out with him from Chang'an chose to remain in India rather than make the return journey.
- Historical linkChandragupta II Vikramaditya
Faxian's ten years in India fell in the reign of the Gupta king Chandragupta II, so his Record is one of the few outside accounts of the Gupta heartland at its height. He describes royal support for elaborate public worship of the Buddha, prosperous cities in Madhyadesha from Mathura to Kannauj and Pataliputra, and townspeople who, he says, ate and dressed like the Chinese. His memoirs are valued as an independent record of the society and culture of the places he saw in the Gupta realm.
- Traveller routeLanka / Sri Lanka
After leaving India Faxian spent two years in Sri Lanka before sailing for China. His Record describes elaborate rituals and public ceremonies in honour of the Buddha there, supported by the king, as in India. The island was the last stage of his search for monastic texts; the voyage onward was wrecked by storm, landing him first on an island, probably Java, and after five months on another ship at Mount Lao in Shandong in 412.
Sources
Wikipedia, "Faxian". James Legge (trans.), A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms (1886); Tansen Sen, "The Travel Records of Chinese Pilgrims Faxian, Xuanzang, and Yijing", Education About Asia (2006); Max Deeg, "Chinese Buddhist Travelers: Faxian, Xuanzang, and Yijing" (2019).
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