Chinese Pilgrims to Central Asia and India
Essay questions
- What were the Chinese pilgrims hoping to achieve in undertaking such long and dangerous journeys to India and what material objects, cultural and religious insights, and forms of learning did they take with them when they returned to China?
- What type of information do the Chinese pilgrims give in their accounts of their travels to Central Asia and India and how reliable are these accounts?
- Compare the accounts of two or three different Chinese pilgrims to a select number of sites in Central Asia or India and discuss the differences and their
References
N.B. For the accounts of Faxian and Xuanzang, the best translations are by Rongxi.
General accounts
Deeg, Max. 2007. “Has Xuanzang really been in Mathurā? Interpretatio Sinica or Interpretatio Occidentalia — How to Critically Read the Records of the Chinese Pilgrim.” In Christian Wittern and Shi Lishan, eds. Essays on East Asian Religion and Culture: Festschrift in Honour of Nishiwaki Tsuneki on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday, pp. 35–
- Kyoto: Editorial Committee for the Festschrift in Honour of Nishiwaki Tsuneki. [ask me for pdf]
———. 2014. “Buddhist Pilgrimage – an Introduction. In Christopher Ceuppers and Max Deeg, eds. Searching for the Dharma, Finding Salvation – Buddhist Pilgrimage in Time and Space. Proceedings of the Workshop “Buddhist Pilgrimage in History and Present Times” at the Lumbini International Research Institute (LIRI), Lumbini, 11–13 January 2010, pp. 1–28. Lumbini: Lumbini International Research Institute. [ask me for pdf]
Sen, Tansen. 2006. “The Travel Records of Chinese Pilgrims Faxian, Xuanzang, and Yijing: Sources for Cross-Cultural Encounters between Ancient China and Ancient India.” Education about Asia 11.3: 24–33. [available on the internet]
Chinese collected biographies
Chaudhuri, Saroj Kumar, tr. 2008. Lives of Early Buddhist Monks: The Oldest Extant Biographies of Indian and Central Asian Monks. New Delhi: Abha Prakashan. [Fisher 294.3657092 3]
Lahiri, Latika, tr. 1986. Chinese Monks in India: Biography of Eminent Monks who went to the Western World in Search of the Law during the Great T’ang dynasty by I-chin. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. [Fisher 294.3089951 1]
Faxian (Fǎxiǎn) 法顯 (399–414 CE)
Beal, Samuel, tr., 1869. Travels of Fah-Hian and Sung-Yun, Buddhist Pilgrims, from China to India (400 A.D. and 518 A.D.). London: Trübner. [reprinted New Delhi: Asian Education Services, 1993]
Beal, Samual, tr., 1884. Si-yu-ki Buddhist Records of the Western World, Translated from the Chinese of Hiuen Tsiang (A.D. 629). Vol. 1, pp. xxiii–lxxxiii. London: Trübner [reprinted London: Routledge; Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1994] [Fisher 294.34351 1]
Giles, H.A., tr., 1959. Travels of Fa-hsien (399–414 A.D.) or Record of the Buddhistic Kingdoms. Cambridge: Cambridge at the University Press. [Fisher 915 42]
Legge, James, tr., 1886. A Record of the Buddhistic Kingdoms: Being an Account by the Chinese Monk Fâ-hien of his Travels in India and Ceylon (A.D. 399–414) in Search of the Buddhist Books of Discipline. Oxford: Clarendon Press. [reprinted New York: Paragon/Dover, 1965]
Rongxi, Li, tr. 1996. The Great Tang Dynasty Record of the Western Regions: Translated by the Tripitaka-Master Xuanzang under Imperial Order; Composed by Śramaṇa Bianji at the Great Zongchi Monastery (Taishō, Volume 51, Number 2087). BDK English Tripiṭaka
- Berkeley: Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research. [Fisher 294.34351 2]
Songyun (Sòngyún) 宋雲 & Huisheng (Huìshēng) 惠生 (518–521 CE)
Beal, Samual, tr., 1884. Si-yu-ki Buddhist Records of the Western World, Translated from the Chinese of Hiuen Tsiang (A.D. 629). Vol. 1, pp. lxxxiv–cviii. London: Trübner [reprinted London: Routledge; Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1994] [Fisher 294.34351 1]
Chavannes, Édouard. 1903. “Voyage de Son Yun dans l’Udyāna et le Gandhāra.” Bulletin de l’Ecole française d’Extrême Orient 3: 379–429. [Electronic access: http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb32720607b/date]
Jenner, W.J.F. 1981. Memories of Loyang: Yang Hsüan-chih and the Lost Capital (493–534). Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 255–72. [Fisher 951.18 1]
Wang, Yi-t’ung, tr., 1984. A Record of Buddhist Monasteries in Lo-yang, by Yang Hsüan- chih. Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 215–48. [Fisher 294.3657 11]
Xuanzang (Xuánzàng) 玄奘 (629–645 CE)
Beal, Samual, tr., 1884. Si-yu-ki Buddhist Records of the Western World, Translated from the Chinese of Hiuen Tsiang (A.D. 629). 2 vols. London: Trübner [reprinted London: Routledge; Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1994] [Fisher 294.34351 1]
Rongxi, Li, tr. 1996. The Great Tang Dynasty Record of the Western Regions: Translated by the Tripitaka-Master Xuanzang under Imperial Order; Composed by Śramaṇa Bianji at the Great Zongchi Monastery (Taishō, Volume 51, Number 2087). BDK English Tripiṭaka
- Berkeley: Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research. [Fisher 294.34351 2]
———, tr. 1995. A Biography of the Tripiṭaka Master of the Great Ci’en Monastery of the Great Tang Dynasty. Berkeley: Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research. [Fisher 294.361 11]
Wriggins, Sally Hovey. 1996. Xuanzang: a Buddhist Pilgrim on the Silk Road. Boulder: Westview Press. [Fisher 294.392 27]
Yìjìng 義淨 (677–695 CE)
Takakusu, J. tr., 1896. A Record of the Buddhist Religion as Practised in India and the Malay Archipelago (A.D. 671–695) by I-tsing. Oxford: Oxford at the Clarendon Press. Reprinted Taiwan: Ch’eng Wen, 1970. [Fisher 294.3 54 A]
Huichao (Korean Hyecho) (723–727 CE)
Fuchs, Walter. 1939. Huei-ch’ao’s Pilgerreise durch Nordwest-Indien und Zentral-Asien um 726. (= Sonderausgabe aus dem Sitzungsberichte der Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-hist. Klasse, 1938, no. 30.) Berlin: Verlag der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Kommission bei Walter de Gruyter.
Yang, Han-sung, Jan Yün-hua, Shotaro Iida, and Laurence W. Preston, eds. and tr., 1980. The Hye-Ch’o Diary: Memoir of the Pilgrimage to the Five Regions of India. Religions of Asia
- Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press; Seoul: Po Chin Chai. [Fisher 915.40421 1]
