Born c. 374, Wu-yang, Shansi, China
Died c. 462, Hupei, China
Fa-Hsien was born in the village of Wu-yang in China’s Shansi province. Because his three older brothers had all died in childhood, his father dedicated him to a Buddhist society in hopes of safeguarding his life. Thus he went to live in a Buddhist monastery at the age of three.
When Fa-Hsien was ten his father died, and his uncle urged him to return home. But the boy decided to continue the religious life his father had chosen for him. Fa-Hsien became a full monk at the age of twenty.
Also a scholar, Fa-Hsien felt that the Chinese translations of the Buddhist texts he used were of poor quality. He wished to make his own translations from the original texts, which were written in Sanskrit, the ancient holy language of India. In A.D. 399, when he was about twenty-five years old, he set off on a quest to discover authentic Buddhist writings. He planned to cross central Asia into India, following an ancient spice trading route.
Traveling with three other monks, Fa-Hsien began his journey in northern China. He made his way to Xining, at that time the country’s westernmost city. He then went along the south side of the Nan Shan Mountains to Dunhuang. Afterwards he followed the Tarim and Khotan Rivers around the great Takla Makan Desert and stopped at the oasis town of Khotan, located in what is now the Chinese province of Sinkiang. Khotan was an oasis town on the southern part of the “Silk Road” trading route that ran between China and India, thus facilitating the spread of Buddhism into China.
Fa-Hsien traveled to the city of Kashgar, located on the western edge of what is now Chinese Turkestan. He then passed with difficulty through the Pamir Mountains on his way to the Indus River. A second mountain range (probably the northwest Himalayas) gave the travelers even more trouble, for it had frequent storms and was deep with snow. Later, in his memoirs, Fa-Hsien would write of the mountains: “There are also among them venomous dragons, which, when provoked, spit forth poisonous winds, and cause showers of snow and storms of sand and gravel. Not one in ten thousand of those who encounter these dangers escapes with his life.”
Fa-Hsien and his party managed to reach Gilgit and then traveled down the Kabul River to the great city of Peshawar, in what is now Pakistan. Close to his destination, he crossed the Punjab plains into northern India. In the holy city of Magadha (near modern-day Patna), he spent the next three years collecting and copying Buddhist texts. During that time he also visited many shrines and holy sites where important events in Buddha’s life had taken place. Traveling down the Ganges River, Fa-Hsien reached the port of Tamralipti, where he spent another two years.
Leaving India, Fa-Hsien sailed to the nearby island of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), which was an important center of Buddhism. He spent two more years there. At that point, he had been abroad for more than a decade. In about 413 the monk began his journey back to China by sea. It would not be an easy trip.
Heading eastward across the Indian Ocean, Fa-Hsien’s ship was wrecked on a small island off the coast of Sumatra in Indonesia. He managed to make it to the nearby island of Java, where he spent the next five months waiting for a second ship to China. That boat, which was headed for the south Chinese city of Canton, got blown off its course and was adrift for seventy days. Finally, it touched land on the Shantung Peninsula in northern China. The year was 414.
Upon his return, Fa-Hsien went to Nanking (Nanjing), then China’s capital city. He spent the next several years working on Chinese translations of the Sanskrit texts he had brought back. He then retired to a monastery in the province of Hupei, where he wrote the story of his travels. Entitled Fo-Kwe-Ki (Memoirs of the Buddhist Realms), it told future Chinese pilgrims of the way to India over land and by sea. Fa-Hsien stayed at the monastery until his death at the age of eighty-eight.
The life of Buddha
Buddha was an Indian philosopher and the founder of Buddhism. He probably lived from 563 to 483 B.C. He was born at Kapilavastu, in the Himalayan foothills of what is now southern Nepal. The son of a Sakya chief, he was named Siddhartha Gautama. According to legend, he grew up in great luxury, married, and had a son. But growing weary of palace life and wishing to see more of the world, he left home at the age of twenty-nine and traveled around northern India. Siddhartha observed that human suffering and death were inescapable. Still, he knew that there were ways that man could make his life meaningful, and find inner peace. To discover those ways, he used yoga meditation. He also fasted and put himself through extreme punishments in an effort to become enlightened. Finally, at the age of thirty-five, the keys to man’s spiritual happiness came to him as he sat motionless under a pipal tree at Buddh Gaya. Thus he took the title Buddha—or the Enlightened One. For the next forty-five years he taught up and down the Ganges River valley, sharing all he had learned. He established a community of monks, the sangha, to continue his work. He died in Kusinagara, not far from his birthplace.
Baker, Daniel B., ed. Explorers and Discoverers of the World. Detroit: Gale Research, 1993.
Basic Teachings and Philosophical Doctrines of Buddhism. [Online] Available http://www.friesian.com/buddhism.htm, March 25, 1997.
Faxian Fa-Hsien. [Online] Available http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/texts/faxian.html, July 19, 1997.
Waldman, Carl, and Alan Wexler. Who Was Who in World Exploration. New York: Facts on File, 1992.
This is the complete article, containing 977 words
(approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page).
