Faxian's Pilgrimage to India (AD 399): A Chinese Monk's Record

Faxian was a Chinese Buddhist monk who in AD 399 set out from Chang’an to walk to India in search of Buddhist scriptures, returning by sea in 412. His short book, the Record of the Buddhist Kingdoms, is the earliest surviving first-hand account of India by a Chinese traveller. It describes the deserts and mountains of Central Asia, the holy places of Buddhism and daily life in northern India during the Gupta Empire, making it a key source for historians.

Background

Buddhism had reached China along the Silk Road by the 1st century AD, and by the 4th century it had many followers among both ordinary people and elites. Chinese monks depended on translations of Indian texts, which were often partial and inconsistent. The rules of monastic discipline, the Vinaya, were especially incomplete, leaving communities unsure how to live.

Faxian, whose family name was Gong, was born in the mid-4th century in what is now Shanxi province and entered monastic life as a child. By the time he set out he was already in his sixties, by most estimates. His aim was to bring back complete Vinaya texts from the land of the Buddha.

The journey west

Faxian left Chang’an in 399 with several companions, including the monks Huijing, Daozheng, Huiying and Huiwei; others joined and left the group along the way. They passed through the Hexi Corridor to Dunhuang and then crossed the desert beyond it. Faxian wrote that there were no birds in the sky or animals on the ground, and that the only way to find the route was by the bones of those who had died before.

The travellers reached the kingdom of Shanshan and then Khotan, a great Buddhist centre where Faxian watched a splendid procession of images. They crossed the Pamirs, which he called the Onion Mountains, along narrow paths cut into cliffs, and descended into the valley of the Indus and the land of Udyana (Swat).

In Gandhara and the region of Peshawar he visited stupas and relics, including the great stupa built by the Kushan king Kanishka. Crossing the Little Snowy Mountains, in what is now eastern Afghanistan or north-western Pakistan, his companion Huijing died of the cold. Of the original group, only Faxian and Daozheng reached central India together.

Faxian in Gupta India

From about 402 Faxian toured the Ganges plain, visiting Mathura, Sankasya, Shravasti, Kapilavastu, Kushinagar, Vaishali, Rajagriha, Bodh Gaya and Sarnath, the places linked with the life of the Buddha. Some, such as Kapilavastu, he found almost deserted.

He stayed three years in Pataliputra, the old Maurya capital, learning Sanskrit and copying texts. There he obtained a Vinaya of the Mahasanghika school, part of a Vinaya of the Sarvastivada school and other scriptures. He then spent two years at the port of Tamralipti in Bengal copying sutras and drawing images. Daozheng chose to stay in India.

Faxian described the region he called the Middle Kingdom as well ordered. According to his account, people were prosperous, did not have to register their households, and paid rent only if they farmed royal land. Criminals were usually fined rather than executed, and only repeated rebels lost a hand. In Pataliputra wealthy families ran free houses of medicine for the poor and sick.

He also recorded that respectable people did not kill living creatures, drink alcohol or eat onions and garlic, and that the Chandalas, an outcaste group, lived apart and struck a piece of wood to warn others of their approach. This is one of the earliest outside descriptions of untouchability in India. The reigning king was Chandragupta II, but Faxian, interested in Buddhism rather than politics, never names him.

Sri Lanka and the voyage home

Around 409 Faxian sailed from Tamralipti to Sri Lanka, which he called the Land of the Lion. He stayed two years, visiting the Abhayagiri monastery at Anuradhapura, watching the festival of the Buddha’s tooth relic and obtaining further texts, including a Vinaya of the Mahishasaka school. Seeing a Chinese silk fan offered at a shrine, he wrote, made him weep with homesickness.

In 411 he boarded a large merchant ship bound east. After a storm and a long passage the ship reached a land called Yepoti, probably on Java or Sumatra, where he waited about five months. On the next stage, bound for Guangzhou, the ship was blown off course for weeks; some Brahmin passengers proposed putting the Buddhist monk ashore as a bringer of bad luck, but a patron defended him. In 412 the ship finally landed on the Shandong peninsula, near modern Qingdao.

Translation work and death

Faxian went south to Jiankang (modern Nanjing), where he worked with the Indian monk Buddhabhadra to translate the Mahasanghika Vinaya and a version of the Mahaparinirvana Sutra into Chinese. These translations helped shape Chinese monastic practice and doctrine. He wrote his travel account at about the same time, around 414–416. According to Chinese biographical tradition he died at Jingzhou in his eighties, probably in the early 420s.

Legacy

Faxian’s record became a model for later pilgrims, above all Xuanzang, who travelled to India more than two centuries later. In the 19th century European scholars translated it, beginning with a French version by Abel Rémusat in 1836, followed by English translations by Samuel Beal, Herbert Giles and James Legge. Archaeologists such as Alexander Cunningham used it to identify Buddhist sites in India.

The book is short and written in a plain, factual style. It mixes travel distances and directions with descriptions of monasteries, relics, festivals and local customs, and with stories about the Buddha attached to particular places. Faxian counts monks, describes the condition of buildings and notes which schools of Buddhism were followed in each region, giving later scholars an unusual statistical and geographical snapshot.

Historians value the account because it gives an outsider’s view of a period otherwise known mostly from royal inscriptions. Its descriptions are shaped by his Buddhist interests and sometimes idealised, but many of the places and practices he described have been confirmed by archaeology.

Key people

• Faxian: the leader and chronicler of the journey, already elderly when he set out, who completed the round trip of about 13 years.
• Huijing: a fellow monk who died of cold while crossing the Little Snowy Mountains.
• Daozheng: Faxian’s companion as far as Pataliputra, who decided to remain in India, impressed by the discipline of its monasteries.
• Buddhabhadra: an Indian monk from the north of the subcontinent living in China, who worked with Faxian on translating the texts he brought home.

Timeline

• 399: Faxian leaves Chang’an with fellow monks.
• 400–401: The group crosses the desert to Shanshan and Khotan and then the Pamirs.
• c. 402: Faxian reaches the Ganges plain; Huijing dies in the mountains on the way.
• c. 404–407: Faxian studies and copies texts at Pataliputra.
• c. 407–409: Two years at the port of Tamralipti.
• c. 409–411: Stay in Sri Lanka.
• 412: After a stormy voyage, Faxian lands on the Shandong peninsula.
• c. 414–416: He writes his account and translates texts in Jiankang (Nanjing).

Why it matters

Faxian’s journey linked China and India at a crucial moment in the spread of Buddhism. The texts he brought helped organise Chinese monastic life, and his clear, plain record remains one of the best windows onto Central Asia, Gupta India and Sri Lanka around AD 400.