Born 634
Died c. 712
I-Ching was one of a large number of Chinese Buddhist monks who traveled to India—the birthplace of Buddhism— to visit holy sites and study original religious texts there. One early Buddhist traveler was the Chinese priest Fa-Hsien (399–414), who began his journey in 399. Traveling by land and sea, he showed future Chinese pilgrims how to make their way to and from India. Beginning in 629, another Chinese monk, Hsüan-Tsang (602–664), made an epic sixteen-year journey through much of central Asia and the Indian subcontinent. He recorded all he saw and brought back many Buddhist relics and texts. This inspired I-Ching to undertake his own religious journey to India.
I-Ching set out in 671. Unlike most pilgrims before him, he could not take the usual land route to India across central Asia and the Himalayas. There was political turmoil in Tibet and Afghanistan and their surrounding areas, making overland travel dangerous. So the Buddhist monk would have to make his way to India by a more southerly route, most of it by sea.
At the southern Chinese port of Canton, I-Ching boarded a Persian boat headed for the islands of the East Indies, what we now call Indonesia. His first stop was at the city of Palembang—a center of Buddhist studies in southeast Asia—located on the southeast coast of the island of Sumatra. There I-Ching remained for six months learning Sanskrit, the ancient holy language of India. He then headed through the Strait of Malacca to the island’s northwest tip, where he boarded a Sumatran ship going to the Nicobar Islands. From there he traveled across the Bay of Bengal to the great port of Tamralipti in the delta of the Ganges River, not far from India’s present-day city of Calcutta.
At Tamralipti, I-Ching stayed in the Buddhist temple of Vahara for another year, continuing his study of Sanskrit. He then wished to tour sacred Buddhist sites, located in the lower Ganges River valley. He was especially interested in visiting Magadha, an area where Buddhism first developed, and where the religious center of Nalanda was located. I-Ching had a difficult time making his way there, however, encountering mountains, woods, and swamps; illness and bandits further slowed his progress.
At last arriving in Nalanda, I-Ching set about studying and copying original Sanskrit texts of Buddhist religious writings. He remained there for ten years, collecting some five hundred thousand Sanskrit stanzas (sections of verse) that he believed would fill one thousand volumes when translated into Chinese. While in India, I-Ching visited nearly thirty different kingdoms or principalities (regions ruled by princes).
Making his way home the same way he had come, I-Ching again stopped in Palembang around 682, where he decided to stay and begin the enormous task of translating his collection. He hoped to finish the job in about ten years. But finding that he had underestimated the project, he made a trip to Canton in 689 to recruit help and return to Palembang. I-Ching and his staff of Buddhist monks remained there until 695, working on the translations. I-Ching also worked on a detailed geographic account of his travels through India, and through the East Indies islands and along the Malay Peninsula. Considered I-Ching’s most valuable contribution to world exploration, this written account—which still survives—is a rare record of the early history, culture, and religions of the peoples of Indonesia.
I-Ching returned to his native province of Honan in China after an absence of twenty-four years. Until his death around 712 he continued his scholarly writings and worked on his Buddhist translations. He also wrote books on the religious practices of the people of India and Sumatra, and about other Buddhist monks and pilgrims who had made the long voyage to India.
Baker, Daniel B., ed. Explorers and Discoverers of the World. Detroit: Gale Research, 1993.
Delpar, Helen, ed. The Discoverers: An Encyclopedia of Explorers and Exploration. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1980.
Waldman, Carl and Alan Wexler. Who Was Who in World Exploration. New York: Facts on File, 1992.
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