James Legge.
Oxford: June, 1886.
[ Picture: Sketch Map Of Fa-Hien’s Travels
]
The accompanying Sketch-Map, taken in connexion with
the notes on the different places in the Narrative,
will give the reader a sufficiently accurate knowledge
of Fa-hien’s route.
There is no difficulty in laying it down after he
crossed the Indus from east to west into the Punjab,
all the principal places, at which he touched or rested,
having been determined by Cunningham and other Indian
geographers and archaeologists. Most of the places
from Ch’ang-an to Bannu have also been identified.
Woo-e has been put down as near Kutcha, or Kuldja,
in 43d 25s N., 81d 15s E. The country of K’ieh-ch’a
was probably Ladak, but I am inclined to think that
the place where the traveller crossed the Indus and
entered it must have been further east than Skardo.
A doubt is intimated on page 24 as to the identification
of T’o-leih with Darada, but Greenough’s
“Physical and Geological Sketch-Map of British
India” shows “Dardu Proper,” all
lying on the east of the Indus, exactly in the position
where the Narrative would lead us to place it.
The point at which Fa-hien recrossed the Indus into
Udyana on the west of it is unknown. Takshasila,
which he visited, was no doubt on the west of the river,
and has been incorrectly accepted as the Taxila of
Arrian in the Punjab. It should be written Takshasira,
of which the Chinese phonetisation will allow;—see
a note of Beal in his “Buddhist Records of the
Western World,” i. 138.
We must suppose that Fa-hien went on from Nan-king
to Ch’ang-an, but the Narrative does not record
the fact of his doing so.
Life of Fa-Hien; Genuineness and Integrity of the
Text of his Narrative; Number of the Adherents of
Buddhism.
1. Nothing of great importance is known about
Fa-hien in addition to what may be gathered from his
own record of his travels. I have read the accounts
of him in the “Memoirs of Eminent Monks,”
compiled in A.D. 519, and a later work, the “Memoirs
of Marvellous Monks,” by the third emperor of
the Ming dynasty (A.D. 1403-1424), which, however,
is nearly all borrowed from the other; and all in them
that has an appearance of verisimilitude can be brought
within brief compass.
His surname, they tell us, was Kung, and he was a
native of Wu-yang in P’ing-Yang, which is still
the name of a large department in Shan-hsi. He
had three brothers older than himself; but when they
all died before shedding their first teeth, his father
devoted him to the service of the Buddhist society,
and had him entered as a Sramanera, still keeping
him at home in the family. The little fellow fell
dangerously ill, and the father sent him to the monastery,
where he soon got well and refused to return to his
parents.
