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Fa Xian (Traditional Chinese: ??; Simplified Chinese: ??; Pinyin
Pinyin

Pinyin, more formally Hanyu pinyin, is the most commonly used Romanization system for Standard Mandarin. Hanyu is the Chinese Language, and pinyin means "phonetics", or more literally, "spelling sound" or "spelled sound"....
: Faxian; also romanized as Fa-Hien or Fa-hsien) (ca. 337 – ca. 422) was a Chinese Buddhist monk
Monk

A Monk is a person who practices religious asceticism, the unconditioning of mind and body in favor of the realization of one's true nature, and does so living either alone or with any number of like-minded people, whilst always maintaining some degree of physical separation from those not sharing the same purpose....
 who traveled to Nepal
Nepal

Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked country in South Asia and is the world's youngest republic. It is bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by India....
, India
India

India, officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and outlying territories by total area country by geographical area, the List of countries by population country, and the most populous liberal democracy in the world....
, and Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is an island country in South Asia, located about off the southern coast of India....
 to acquire Buddhist scriptures between 399 and 412 . His journey is described in his work A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms, Being an Account by the Chinese Monk Fa-Hien of his Travels in India and Ceylon
Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is an island country in South Asia, located about off the southern coast of India....
 in Search of the Buddhist Books of Discipline.






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Fa Xian (Traditional Chinese: ??; Simplified Chinese: ??; Pinyin
Pinyin

Pinyin, more formally Hanyu pinyin, is the most commonly used Romanization system for Standard Mandarin. Hanyu is the Chinese Language, and pinyin means "phonetics", or more literally, "spelling sound" or "spelled sound"....
: Faxian; also romanized as Fa-Hien or Fa-hsien) (ca. 337 – ca. 422) was a Chinese Buddhist monk
Monk

A Monk is a person who practices religious asceticism, the unconditioning of mind and body in favor of the realization of one's true nature, and does so living either alone or with any number of like-minded people, whilst always maintaining some degree of physical separation from those not sharing the same purpose....
 who traveled to Nepal
Nepal

Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked country in South Asia and is the world's youngest republic. It is bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by India....
, India
India

India, officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and outlying territories by total area country by geographical area, the List of countries by population country, and the most populous liberal democracy in the world....
, and Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is an island country in South Asia, located about off the southern coast of India....
 to acquire Buddhist scriptures between 399 and 412 . His journey is described in his work A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms, Being an Account by the Chinese Monk Fa-Hien of his Travels in India and Ceylon
Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is an island country in South Asia, located about off the southern coast of India....
 in Search of the Buddhist Books of Discipline. He is most known for his pilgrimage to Lumbini
Lumbini

Lumbini is a Buddhist pilgrimage site in the Kapilavastu district of Nepal, near the Indian border. It is the place where Queen Mayadevi is said to have given birth to Siddhartha Gautama, who in turn, as the Gautama Buddha, gave birth to the Buddhism....
, the birthplace of Lord Buddha.

On Fa Xian's return to China, he landed at Laoshan
Laoshan

Laoshan is a famous mountain in Qingdao, Shandong provinces of China, China. It lies about 30km east of the downtown of Qingdao, and is an important tourist destination....
 in what is now Shandong
Shandong

For the people of Shandong, see Shandong people is a coastal political divisions of China of eastern People's Republic of China. Its abbreviation is 'Lu', after the state of Lu that existed here during the Spring and Autumn Period....
 province, 30km east of the city of Qingdao
Qingdao

, best known in the West by its Chinese Postal Map Romanization Tsingtao, is a major city in eastern Shandong province of China, People's Republic of China....
 and went to Shandong's then-capital, Qingzhou
Qingzhou

Qingzhou is a county-level city, which is located in the west of Weifang City, Shandong Province, China. Qingzhou is a dynamic industry city, and also grows a great number of farm products....
, where he remained for a year translating and editing the scriptures he had collected.

His work is a travel book, filled with accounts of early Buddhism, and the geography and history of numerous countries along the Silk Road
Silk Road

The Silk Road is an extensive interconnected network of trade routes across the Asian continent connecting East, South, and Western Asia with the Mediterranean world, including North Africa and Europe....
s at the turn of the 5th century CE.

The following is from the introduction to a translation of Fa Xian's work by James Legge
James Legge

James Legge was a noted Scotland sinologist, a Scottish Congregational church, representative of the London Missionary Society in Malacca and Hong Kong , and first professor of Chinese language at Oxford University ....
:

See also

  • Buddhism in China
    Buddhism in China

    Chinese Buddhism refers collectively to the various schools of Buddhism that have flourished in China proper since ancient times. Many of these schools integrated the ideas of Confucianism, Taoism and other indigenous philosophical systems so that what was initially a foreign religion came to be a natural part of Chinese civilization, albe...
  • Zhang Qian
    Zhang Qian

    Zhang Qian was an imperial envoy to the world outside of China in the 2nd century BCE, during the time of the Han Dynasty. He was the first official diplomat to bring back reliable information about Central Asia to the Chinese imperial court, then under Emperor Wu of Han, and played an important pioneering role in the Chinese colonization an...
  • Xuanzang
    Xuanzang

    Xuanzang [602 ? - 664] was a famous China Buddhist monk, scholar, traveler, and translator that brought up the interaction between History of China and History of India in the early Tang Dynasty period....
  • Zheng He
    Zheng He

    Zheng He , was a Hui people China mariner, exploration, diplomat and fleet admiral, who made the voyages collectively referred to as the travels of "Eunuch Sanbao to the Western Ocean" or "Zheng He to the Western Ocean", from 1405 to 1433....
  • Fa Hien Cave
    Fa Hien Cave

    Fa Hien Cave is a cave in the district of Kalutara, Western Province, Sri Lanka, named after the Buddhism monk Faxian . The cave is important for the Late Pleistocene human skeletal remains discovered there in the 1960s and 1980s....
  • Hyecho
    Hyecho

    Hyecho , , was a Korean people Buddhist monk from the Korean monarchy of Silla.Hyecho studied esoteric Buddhism in Tang Dynasty China, initially under Subhakarsinha and then under Vajrabodhi who praised Hyecho as "one of six living persons who were well-trained in the five sections of the buddhist wiktionary:canon." On the advice of his In...
  • Yi Jing
    Yi Jing

    The Chinese language term Yi Jing may refer to:* I Ching, one of the Five Classics* I Ching , a Tang Dynasty Buddhist monk...

External links

  • , University of Adelaide
    University of Adelaide

    The University of Adelaide is a public university located in Adelaide, South Australia. Established in 1874, it is the third oldest university in Australia....
     Library, Australia
    Australia

    Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the southern hemisphere comprising the Australia of the world's smallest continent, the major island of Tasmania, and numerous list of islands of Australia in the Indian Ocean and Pacific Oceans....
    .
  • Extracts from James Legge's translation