CHAPTER X Chinese Travellers About the seventh century A.D.. when Europe was still in the “Dark Ages’, India and China lived an intense political, intellectual. religious and artistic life. ©The common bond created between them by Buddhism generated a great cur- rent of humanism which spread from Ceylon to Japan. After a thousand years of eventful development, Buddhist mysti- cism reached its apogee and Indian aesthetics and philosophy received fresh inspiration from it. abhadra of Nalanda and his pupil. Yuan Chwang. the Master of the Law from China, represent one aspect. while the outburst of naturalism in art at Mamallapuram (Mahabalipuram) may be taken to represent another. Both were borne along by a current of creative forces of enduring value. China. realizing a new unity under strong T'ang rule, was hospitable to new ideas and ready to allow its force to be softened by the gentle influence of India. Yuan Chwang and I-tsing, only two well-known pilgrims among many, have left records which recall much of this vast movement in which even Japan had a share. The temple of Horyuji. founded by Shotoku Taisha at Nara in 607 A.D., still remains the time-honoured witness of this transformation Fua-hien, two centuries carlier, was its precursor, the earliest Chinese visitor to India to leave a record of his travels. Fa-hien Fa-hien, the first of the three Chinese pilgrims, has tecorded his own travels. He practically walked all the way from Central China across the Gobi desert, over the256 2500 YEARS OF BUDDHISM Hindu Kush and right across Northern India to the seaport of Tamralipti in Bengal. There he embarked for Ceylon and returned to China by sea after an adventurous voyage marked by several hairbreadth escapes. He brought back with him what he had gone to seek in India—sacred books of Buddhism and images of Buddhist deities. Fa-hien was distressed at the state of the Buddhist ‘dis- ciplines’ in China, and made up his mind, together with several friends, to go to India and try to obtain the ‘rules’. Starting from Chang-an and travelling by stages they reached Tun-huang at the end of the great wall, the governor of that place gave them all that was required to enable them to cross the Gobi desert. “In this desert”, records Fa-hien, “there are a great many evil spirits and also hot winds, those who encounter them perish to a man. ‘There are neither birds above nor beasts below. Gazing on all sides as far as eye can reach in order to mark the track. no guidance is to be obtained save from the rotting bones of dead men, which point the way.” He notices the prevalence of Indian culture in the states he visited in Central Asia In the country of Shan-Shan (south of Lop-Nor) there were some four thousand priests of the Lesser Vehicle and the common people practised the religion of India with certain modifications. “From. this point travelling westwards, the nations that one passes through are all similar in this respect. . . At the same time, all those who have ‘left. the family’ (priests and novices) study Indian books and the Indian spoken language.” The pilgrim spent two months and some days in Kara-shahr which also had over 4,000 priests of the Lesser Vehicle. His next important stage was Khotan, a prosperous and happy State with tens of thousands of priests, mostly of the Greater Vehicle. Fa-hien and his companions were lodged in the large and comfortable Gomati Vihara by the ruler of the country. Discipline in the vihara was perfect. “At the sound of a gong, three thousand priests assemble to eat. When they enter the refectory, their demeanour is grave andCHINESE TRAVELLERS 257 ceremonious; they sit down in regular order, they all keep silence; they make no clatter with their bowls, etc.; and they do not call out to the attendants to serve more food, but only make signs with their hands.” While some of his companions advanced to Kashgar. Fa-hien and others stayed behind in Khotan for three months to be able to witness the impressive procession of images in which the priests of the Gomati took the first place among the fourteen large monasteries (without counting the smaller ones) and the king and queen and the Court ladies also took part. The procession was like the Car Festival held in a large Indian temple to this day, only more gorgeous. “The cars are all different; each monastery has a day for its own Procession, beginning on the first of the fourth moon and lasting until the fourteenth when the processions end and the king and queen go back to the palace.” Seven or eight /i—a li is about a third of a mile—to the west of the city of Khotan was the king’s New Monastery which took eighty years to build, was about 250 feet high and commanded the devotion and munificence of the kings of six countries. After the processions were over, Fa-hien moved on and reached Kashgar after more than two months, in time to witness the pafica-parisad, ‘the great quinquennial assembly held by the king of that country. Such an assembly was held in India at a later date by the great Harsa Vardhana of Kanavj in the presence of Yuan Chwang. The Kashgar assembly must, however, have been much smaller. The pious and credulous Fa-hien says of Kashgar, “This country has a spittoon which belonged to the Buddha; it is made of stone and is of the same colour as his alms bowl. There is also a relic of the Buddha's teeth, for which people have raised a pagoda.” Many notes on relics and miracles can be found throughout the narrative, but we must pass them by, stopping to note only the most interesting or sig- nificant among them. A particularly dangerous section of his route along the258 2500 YEARS OF BUDDHISM Bolor-Tagh range and the first crossing of the Indus as des- cribed by Fa-hien are worth reproducing. “Keeping to the range, the party journeyed on in a south-westerly direction for fifteen days over a difficult, precipitous, and dangerous toad, the side of the mountain being like a stone wall ten thousand feet in height. On nearing the edge, the eye becomes confused; and wishing to advance, the foot finds no resting place. Below, there is a river named Indus. The men of former times had cut away the rock to make a way down, and had placed ladders on the side of the rock. There are several hundred rock-steps in all; and when these and the ladders have been negotiated, the river is crossed by a suspension bridge of ropes. The two banks of the river are somewhat less than eighty paces apart.” After spending the next summer in retreat in Udyana, then a flourishing centre of Buddhism, Fa-hien marched South to Gandhara and Taksasila, where the Master cut off his head for a fellow creature, and records the Buddha’s pro- phecy that Kaniska would raise a pagoda in Peshawar. This pagoda was seen and described at length by Yuan Chwang, and its foundations are believed to have been dis- covered by archeologists. Fa-hien also writes: “Of all the pagodas and temples seen by the pilgrims. not one could compare with this in grandeur and dignity, and tradition says that of the various pagodas in the inhabited world this one takes the highest rank From Peshawar Fa-hien proceeded alone to Nagarahara (Hadda), his companions having left him. That city had a shrine containing the Buddha's skull bone. It was sealed with eight seals every night for safety, each in the custody of one of the leading men in the city. “Every morning the king makes offerings and worships the relic.” Half a yojana to the south of the city the pilgrim notes the cave inside which the Buddha left his shadow. “The kings of the various countries round about”, he aftirms, “have sent skilful artists to sketch it, but they have not been able to do so.” Fa-hien also notes the other sacred spots and relics in theCHINESE TRAVELLERS 259 neighbourhood. In Afghanistan, which he entered after crossing the Safed Koh, there were three thousand priests belonging to both the Greater and Lesser Vehicles; there were the same number at Bannu, but all belonging to the Lesser Vehicle. Cross- ing the Panjab, the pilgrim reached the Mathura country after passing many monasteries where there were nearly ten thousand priests. Buddhism was very popular in the Mathura region and its priests were honoured by the people and the officials of the Court who waited personally upon them at table. “At the end of the meal they spread carpets on the ground, and sit down facing the president not ven- turning to sit on couches in the presence of priests”’—an arrangement handed down from the days of the Buddha. Then Fa-hien reached the Middle Kingdom, the heart of the Gupta Empire. His oft-quoted description of the coun- try is brief but to the point: “It has a temperate climate, without frost or snow, and the people are prosperous and happy, without registration or official restrictions. | Only those who till the King’s land have to pay so much on the profit they make. Those who want to go away may go; those who want to stop may stop. The King in his adminis- tration has no corporal punishments; criminals are merely fined according to the gravity of their offences. Even for a second attempt at rebellion the punishment is only the loss of the right hand. The men of the King’s body-guard have all fixed salaries.” In the rest of what he says, however, Fa-hien seems to apply to the whole country what he observed in the viharas; for he affirms: “Throughout the country no one kills any living thing, nor drinks wine, nor eats onions or garlic.” Again, “In this country they do not keep pigs or fowls, there are no dealings in cattle, no butchers’ shops or distilleries in their market-place.” He takes note parti- cularly of the cindalas (untouchables) who lived apart, had to announce their presence on the roads in the city or near the market by beating a piece of wood, and were the only class that went hunting and dealt in flesh. Cowries were260 2500 YEARS OF BUDDHISM used as a medium of exchange, and charitable endowments in favour of Buddhist priests were numerous, time-honoured and well respected. “Rooms with beds and mattresses, food and clothes are provided for resident and travelling priests without fail. and this is the same in all places.” Fa-hien then visited in succession Sankasya (Kapitha); Kanyakubja (Kanauj)—‘the city of hump-back maidens’; Sha-ki, Saketa or Ayodhya; Sravasti with its shrine of the Garden of Gold, a place where many miracles were performed and are duly noticed by the pilgrim; Kapilavastu, the city of Suddhodana, the Buddha’s father—‘then just like a wilder- ness, except for priests and some tens of families’; Vaisali (Besarh); and the country of Magadha and the city of Patali- putra where he saw the marvellous palace of ASoka ‘all built by spirits’. He has high praise for Magadha. “Of all the countries of central India, this has the largest cities and towns. Its people are rich and thriving and emulate one another in practising charity of heart and duty to one’s neighbour. Regularly every year, on the eighth day of the second moon, they have a procession of images.” He men- tions the free hospitals in the cities with much admiration. From there he went to Nalanda (Bargaon), Rajagrha and Gaya—a complete waste within its walls’, but surrounded by many hallowed spots, all duly noted by Fa-hien; Banaras, including the Deer Forest at Sarnath, where the Buddha preached his first sermon, and lastly Kausambi with its gar- den of Ghociravana, the Ghositarama of recent discovery. At this point he records what he heard of the Paravata monastery in the Deccan; the account is unreliable and not easily matched by known facts. From Banaras Fa-hien returned to Pataliputra. What he records of his efforts to gain written texts of Buddhism is interesting. Usually, they were transmitted orally from generation to generation, and only at the shrine of the Garden of Gold in Sravasti in a monastery of the Greater Vehicle he ‘obtained a copy according to the text accepted at the First Great Assembly and practised by priests gene-CHINESE TRAVELLERS 261 rally while the Buddha was still alive’-—a declaration that modern scholars will not be ready to accept. Fa-hien spent three years ‘learning to write and speak Sanskrit (or Pali) and copying out the Disciplines’. He then moved on to Tamluk by way of Campa and stayed two years there ‘copy- ing out siitras and drawing pictures of images’ before embarking for Ceylon on his way back to China. Sailing in a big merchant vessel with the first favourable monsoon wind, Fa-hien reached Ceylon in fourteen days and spent two years there collecting and copying Sanskrit texts unknown in China. Early in his stay on the island, Fa-hien felt homesick. “He had now been away from his own land of Han for many years . . . moreover, those who had travelled with him had left hin—some remaining behind in these countries, others being dead. Now, beholding only his own shadow, he was constantly sad at heart; and when suddenly, by the side of this jade image (of the Buddha of Abhayagiri vihdra of Anuradhapura), he saw a merchant make offering of a white silk fan from China, his feelings overcame him and his eyes filled with tears.” Fa-hien des- cribes the viharas, the Tooth festival. and Mihintale, and gives an attractive account of Simhalese Buddhism as a whole. From Ceylon Fa-hien sailed in another big merchant vessel carrying two hundred souls or more; there was a smaller vessel also in tow. After sailing for two days the ship encountered a violent storm which lasted for thirteen days; Fa-hien spent his time in prayer fixing his thoughts upon Kuan Yin, the Hearer of Prayers, and put his life into the hands of the Catholic Church in China. He was also afraid that the merchants might throw his books and images overboard. But nothing happened; a leak in the vessel was discovered near an island and stopped, and Java was reached after another storm-tossed voyage of over ninety days. Fa-hien stayed in Java for five months or so; there he found Brahmanism flourishing ‘while the Faith of the Buddha was in a very unsatisfactory condition’. Another big merchant vessel and an equally troublesome and pro-262 2500 YEARS OF BUDDHISM tracted voyage brought him to the prefecture of Ch’ing-chou in China where he spent a winter and a summer before going, south to the capital, Nanking, where he handed over to the ecclesiastics the sitras and the Disciplines he had collected. The conclusion of his account is very touching; he says: “Fa-hien spent six years in travelling from Ch’ang-an to central India; he stayed there for six years, and it took him three more to reach Ch’ing-chou. The countries he passed through amounted to rather fewer than thirty. From the sandy desert westwards all the way to India the dignified deportment of the priesthood and the good influence of the Faith were beyond ail expression in detail. As, however, the ecclesiastics at home had had no means of hearing about these things, Fa-hien had given no thought to his own un- important life, but came home across the seas, encountering still more difficulties and dangers. Happily, he was accorded Protection by the divine majesty of the Precious Trinity, and was thus preserved in the hour of danger. Therefore, he wrote down on bamboo tablets and silk an account of what he had been through, desiring that the gentle reader should share this information.” Yuan Chwang Born at Lo-yang in 602, Yuan Chwang amazed his father even at the age of eight by his observance of the Confucian rites, and it looked as if, like many of his ancestors, he would be a famous literary man of the traditional type. But the example of his elder brother who had just become a Buddhist monk influenced him, and he also took his vows in the monastery of Lo-yang when he was just thirteen. He began the study of Indian philosophy and soon mastered its intri- cacies. About 617 A.D., the end of Sui rule plunged the country into disorder from which it did not recover till Emperor T’ang T’ai-tsung established his firm rule after a series of brilliant campaigns begun in 618 A.D., the year in which Yuan Chwang sought refuge from anarchy in the mountains of Spu-ch’uan. In spite of the trouble, however,CHINESE TRAVELLERS 263 he soon mastered the Law of Buddhism and held many popular discourses. He thus rapidly qualified for the first place in philosophical debates wherever Sanskrit learning prevailed—from the Deccan to Japan, from Turfan to Sumatra. The capital of the new dynasty. Ch’ang-an (now Si-am-fu), ome of the chief centres of Buddhism in the Far East, became the centre of his activity from 662 A.D. But soon he was struck by the numerous differences among the schools and uncertainties in doctrine, and he made a vow to travel to the countries of the West and learn the truth from the wise men there on the points which were troubling his mind. But when he applied for permission to leave China, the Emperor refused it. However, putting his trust in the invisible protection of the saints of Buddhism, the intrepid monk per- sisted in his plan. He was twenty-six when he set forth on his journey, and handsome and tall, like many Chinese of the North. People discouraged him on sundry occasions, but were impressed by his calm courage and helped him to the best of their ability. He travelled secretly, hiding by day and travelling by night. Mirages and apparitions thwarted him often, near one frontier fortress he was shot at and narrowly escaped death from an arrow. In spite of everything, he crossed the desert all alone with nothing to guide him except his own shadow and reached Ha-mi, where he received an invitation from the king of Turfan (then known as Kao-ch’ang), a pious Buddhist. Turfan in the central part of the Gobi, to all intents and purposes dead to-day, then throbbed with the lively econo- mic, political and cultural life of a Buddhist population speak- ing a dialect of Tocharian. Its ruler, Ch'u-Wen-tai (620— 40 A.D.), was of Chinese extraction; he was a vassal of the Turkish Khan and had relations with T’ai-tsung. His invita- tion to Yuan Chwang was a command and the pilgrim was almost carried off by force to Turfan. A pious Buddhist, but somewhat rough and ready, Ch’u-Wen-tai, although most hospitable and respectful to Yuan Chwang, had planned to264 2500 YEARS OF BUDDHISM detain him personally in his Court as its ecclesiastical head. “I insist on keeping you”, he said, “in order to offer you my homage, and it would be easier to shift the mountain of Pamir than to shake my determination.” “It is for the sub- lime Law that 1 have come,” replied Yuan Chwang heroi- cally, “the king will only be able to keep my bones; he has no power over my spirit nor my will.” He followed this up by refusing to touch food for three days; the king became alarmed and yielded. The Master of the Law agreed to stay a month longer to preach at the Court, and at the end of the month the king let him go well provided with introductions to all the kings on his route, including the Turkish Khan whose writ ran to the very gates of India. Yuan Chwang was no longer an unknown refugee fleeing in secret; but an accredited pilgrim with an official standing. He was sump- tuously provided for for the rest of the journey to India. From Turfan he proceeded to Kara-shahr, also a Tocha- rish-speaking city, which contained some ten monasteries and two thousand monks of the Hinayana sect. The people here were friendly to Yuan Chwang, but not to his Turfan escort; so he spent only one night there and moved on to Kucha (Skt. Kuchi), perhaps the most important town in Central Asia at the time and an Indian outpost, but subject to Iranian influences also. Its material prosperity and the brilliance of its civilization impressed Yuan Chwang, and archaeological explorations in the twentieth century have enabled scholars to reconstruct many a probable scene in which the Master of the Law may have taken part. But Kucha was only an oasis in the Gobi, surrounded and coveted by the Turko-Mongols, and its ruling classes were forced to remain warriors. The throne of Kucha was still occupied by a Tocharian ruler, Suvarna-deva, the son and successor of Suvarna-puspa. In his kingdom there were 5,000 monks to whom he gave active protection. He maintained diploma- tic relations with the T’ang emperor. At Kucha Yuan Chwang engaged in religious disputations with Hinayana monks who did not take kindly to the Yoga-Sastra whichCHINESE TRAVELLERS 265 Yuan Chwang preferred. But the difference did not take an unfriendly turn, and amiable relations were maintained with the old sage Moksagupta of Kucha during two more months that the Master of the Law was forced to spend there on account of the weather. When he left. the king gave him servants, camels, horses, a whole caravan, and accompanied him to the outskirts of the city followed by the monks and lay devotees of the town. Two days after he had left Kucha, Yuan Chwang encoun- tered robber bands on the road; and then came the glaciers on the slopes of the T’ien-Shan. These he has described pic- turesquely, anticipating some of the great explorers of recent tumes. He worked his way to the region of Issiq-Kul (warm lake) where the great Khan of the Western Turks had encamped. This was early in 630 A.D. The Khan was not devoid of religious culture and had leanings towards Bud- dhism which his predecessors had been taught fifty years before by a monk from Gandhiara, Jinagupta by name. The Khan had established his sway as far as Gandhara. He treated Yuan Chwang with great deference, invited him to dinner with the Chinese envoys and ambassadors from the king of Turfan and provided him with ‘pure food’—rice cakes, cream, milk, crystallized sugar. honey and raisins. At the end of the dinner, the master expounded the principles of his faith. and the Khan joyously said that he accepted the teaching with the faith. After making an unsuccessful effort to dissuade the master from continuing his journey, he gave him his official protection for the journey to India which enabled him easily to cross the passes of the Pamirs and Bactria. Samarquand, Marakanda of old, was already an ancient city in the seventh century. It was the capital of Sogdiana and Yuan Chwang’s next important halt. It was the termi- nus of the caravan routes between India and China. and was tich in rare and precious merchandise. It wavered between Zoroastrianism and Buddhism and the master’s visit did much to raise the status of Buddhism in this Turko-Iranian king-266 2500 YEARS OF BUDDHISM dom; he held an assembly at which he ordained a number of monks and restored the old desecrated monasterics for wor- ship. From Samarquand, the pilgrim marched South over difficult mountain routes till he reached the ‘Gates of Iron’, the southern frontier of the Western Turkish Empire, at the end of the defile through which even now passes the caravan track between Samarquand and the Oxus. South of the Gates of Iron, Yuan Chwang crossed the Oxus and entered Bactria, then under the rule of Tardu Shad, a son of the great Khan of the Turks, and brother-in-law of the king of Turfan, who was also a pious Buddhist. Bactria probably received its Buddhism very early from the missions of Asoka. At time of the master’s arrival, there occurred the death of the Turfan princess. Tardu Shad took a new queen almost immediately, but she loved her stepson more than her husband; she poisoned the king, and put her lover on the throne. The latter was friendly to Yuan Chwang and persuaded him to visit Balkh, the capital city, before going South. Balkh and Bactria still had many monasteries, in spite of the ruin wrought by the Huns in the fifth and sixth centuries, and though they were all Hinayanist, the master was on friendly terms with them and he derived much good, he says, from his conversations with one of their doctors, Prajfiakara. Then the pilgrim made the most difficult crossing of the Hindu Kush and reached Bamiyan, a station of primary importance on the road from Central Asia to India. Modern archzologists were struck by the accuracy of his description of the site. “On the north”, he says, “it leans against the steep rock. This country has winter corn, but few flowers and fruits. It is suitable for cattle breeding and abounds in sheep and horses. The climate is very cold. Manners are rough. Clothing is of fur and coarse woollen materials, which are also products of the country.” There were ten Buddhist monasteries with several thousand monks in them. Yuan Chwang mentions the celebrated grottos and the two colossal statues of the Buddha, about 170 and 115 feet high, but somehow not theCHINESE TRAVELLERS 267 frescoes which have evoked great interest in our times. The gilt surface of one of the large Buddhas Jed him to think that it was a statue of bronze. He left Bamiyan for Kapisa by the difficult pass of Shibar, 9,000 feet high. where he was overtaken by a storm and lost his way which he regained with the aid of local hunters. Kapisa (now the village of Begram) to the north of Kabul commanded the principal passes of the Hindu Kush, and con- sequently the great trade routes between India and Bactria; it abounded in every kind of merchandise. The king was a devout Buddhist of the Mahayana persuasion. To please Prajfiakara, his travelling companion from Balkh, the master lived in a Hinayana monastery, but at the king’s request, took part in an assembly of different sects, which lasted five days. After spending the summer of 630 A.D. there, he took the road to the east again and reached Jalalabad, ancient Nagarahara, through Lampaka. Here he was on Indian soil proper and he duly noted the contrast between the mountain country he had left behind with its sturdy people, and the hot plains of thinner, easy-going men. He says: “At Lampaka the ground is suitable for the cultivation of rice, and produces a large quantity of sugarcane... The climate is fairly mild. There is some frost but never snow . .. The inhabitants live in ease and happiness, and love song. They are, moreover, effeminate, pusillanimous and given to fraud .. . They are short in stature and their movements are brisk and impetu- ous. The majority are clothed in white cotton, and like to adorn their costume with brilliantly coloured ornaments.” This land of Greco-Buddhism, rich in its artistic tradition, bad suffered terribly at the hands of the Huns and now had only ruined monasteries and works of art. The Arab inva- sion, twenty years later, dealt the final death-blow. From here the master made a hazardous diversion on a road infest- ed with brigands to visit a cave in which the Buddha after quelling the Naga Gopala had left his shadow. He gives a thrilling account of his encounter with robbers, and of the miracle vouchsafed to him in the cave, a remarkable instance268 2500 YEARS OF BUDDHISM of courage, persistence and faith. From Lampaka the pilgrim entered Gandhara by the Khyber Pass. This was a second holy land of Buddhism where art had flourished for nearly six centuries without a break under strong Greco-Roman influence. Peshawar, the capital of Kaniska, had given birth to Asanga and Vasubandhu, the two chief authors of mystical idealism so dear to Yuan Chwang. But when he came to Peshawar, it had suffered from the Huns like other places. He notes sadly: “The royal race is wiped out and the country has been annexed to the kingdom of Kapisa. Towns and vil- lages are almost empty and abandoned, and only a few in- habitants are seen in the country. One corner of the royal town (Peshawar) contains about a thousand families . . There are a million Buddhist monasteries which are in ruins and deserted. They are overgrown with weeds and they make a mournful solitude. The majority of the stiipas are also in ruins.” Still the pilgrim made it a point to visit most of the hallowed spots, till he left the main road to India for a northerly excursion into the mountain country of Udyana or Uddiyana which had suffered even more than Gandhara from Hun inroads; once it had 1,400 viharas and 18,000 monks; the country had not yet ceased to be Bud- dhist and the people were divided between the two vehicles, though Mahayana Buddhism was tending towards Tantrism. Leaving Uddiyana and Gandhara, the master crossed the Indus at Udabhanda or Udakakhanda (north of Attock) and visited Taksasila where too there were many monasteries ruined by the Huns. From there he went for a while to Kashmir where Buddhism still prevailed. There were still a hundred monasteries with 5,000 monks, and the country cherished memories of Asoka and Kaniska. The king of Kashmir received the pilgrim with great honour in his capital, Pravarapura (Srinagar). Yuan Chwang found there a venerable Mahayanist doctor aged seventy, from whom he was able to receive in all its purity the tradition of the idealist school of Buddhist philosophy. He spent two years inCHINESE TRAVELLERS 269 Kashmir, from May 631 to April 633 A.D., studying philo- sophy and having Buddhist siitras and Sastras copied to take home with him to China. Coming down from Kashmir, one of his first halting places was Sakala (Sialkot), the seat of the Greek king Menander of old. and of the Hun tyrant Mahirakula (or Mihirakula) of more recent times, but also the shelter, two centuries before the master’s visit, of the illustrious philo- sopher, Vasubandhu. On his way thence to Cinabhukti on the left bank of the Beas, the master narrowly escaped a band of brigands and then met an old brahmana who was learned in Buddhist doctrine (Madhyamika) with whom he spent a month in a village. He lived over a year in Cina- bhukti and went in 634 A.D. to Jalandhara during the rains. He next went to Mathura, famous in Hindu tradition and Buddhist art, and it may be presumed that he saw and admired the celebrated standing Buddha, a masterpiece of Gupta art, now in the National Museum, New Delhi. From Mathura he ascended the Yamuna up to Sthanesvara in Kuru- ksetra; modern scholars are agreed that his remarks about the latter show that he recalled the Mahabharata war and the essence of the Bhagavadgita. Travelling East, he reached the upper Ganges and observed the growing triumph of Hinduism and the relative decline of his own creed. He visited Kapitha (old Sankasya) and like Fa-hien witnessed the miracles associated with the place. Though he spent some months in Kanyakubja, which Harsa had made the political capital of the North, he did not meet the king who was away in the East and afterwards became his great friend and patron. His account of Harsa is marked by deep admiration: “His rule”, he says, “was just and humane. He forgot to eat and drink in the accomplishment of good works.” On the whole, however, we think that Yuan ‘Chwang exaggerates the monarch’s Buddhist leanings just as his Court poet Bana lays undue stress on the Saivism of the king, who seems really, like many other Indian rulers, to have held the scales even between the different creeds which270 2500 YEARS OF BUDDHISM existed in his kingdom. After visiting Ayodhya and on his way to Prayag along the Ganges, the master fell into the hands of water thugs, devotees of Durga, who wanted to sacrifice him to their goddess; courage, prayer, and a mira- culous and timely storm saved the pilgrim’s journcy from an untimely end. At Prayag he noted again with regret that Buddhists were in the minority, and passed on to Kausambi where he was shown mementos of the Buddha’s visit, of Vasubandhu’s writing and of Asanga’s life. though as every- where else Brahmanism was in the ascendant. Here the master made up his mind to visit the birth- place of the Buddha without further delay and turned due North. First he came to Sravasti, the hamlet of Sahet- Mahet, on the right bank of the Rapti, practically deserted at the time but full of sacred spots and memories; then Kapilavastu, the Buddha's native town with the garden of Lumbini where he was born; then Ramagrama and _ lastly KuSinagara (Kasia. on the right bank of the middle Gandak) where he attained nirvana. All these places have been satisfactorily identified by modern archaeology, and_ this imparts a vivid significance to the pilgrim’s narrative of what he saw and heard. From here, Yuan Chwang went along a forest route straight to Banaras, a place sacred alike to Hindus and Buddhists Yuan Chwang’s account of Banaras is curiously modern. “The greater part worship Siva. Some cut off their hair, others pile it on the top of their heads. Some there are (the Jainas)who are naked, others rub their bodies with ash, or practise cruel mortifications in order to escape sam- sara...” He mentions a colossal statue of Siva ‘full of grandeur and majesty’. He must also have seen at Sarnath the seated Buddha turning the Wheel of Law, ‘the purest incarnation of the Gupta ideal’ in art. The city was full of tender and marvellous Icgends. From Banaras the pil- grim went further north to Vaisali (Besarh), the city of the famous courtesan Amrapali who offered to the Sangha the park of mango trees; at Vaisali also the second BuddhistCHINESE TRAVELLERS 271 Council had been held a hundred years after the Buddha’s passing. Magadha in southern Bihar was the true sacred land of Buddhism, the most important region for the pilgrim. Its capital, Pataliputra. the centre of two great empires in the past, was in decay, and the pilgrim saw the ruins of many palaces and viharas of which scarcely two or three still stood. He describes with deep emotion his journey from Pataliputra to Bodh Gaya, the place where the Buddha attained knowledge and where almost every square foot of ground had witnessed sacred scenes. Yuan Chwang was not only a keen philosopher learned in the doctrine, but a man of tender piety which suffuses the narrative of his visits to these sacred spots. To the north-east of Bodh Gaya lay Nalanda, the great international university of the time. Yuan Chwang’s detailed description of this enormous foun- dation. richly endowed by the munificence of generations of kings and nobles, is well borne out by modern excavations. There were ten huge vihdras with spaces between divided into eight courtyards, all within a brick wall enclosure. There were ten thousand monks. all followers of the Maha- yana. They eagerly studied. besides Buddhist works, the Vedas, medicine, arithmetic. the occult sciences and other popular subjects. The head of the establishment was the old and venerdble Silabhadra who came in the direct line of Asanga and Vasubandhu’s pupils and summed up in himself the final result of seven centuries of Indian thought. Some time earlier he had had a dream which warned him of the coming of the Chinese Master of the Law; so he received him with honour. and the pilgrim spent fifteen months there learning the Yogacdra doctrine which he afterwards cast in the form of a book known as the Siddhi; he also studied Brahmana philosophy and perfected his knowledge of Sanskrit. He interrupted his studies for a while only to visit Rajagrha of ancient fame where the first Buddhist Council had met soon after the death of the Blessed One. After leaving Nalanda, Yuan Chwang spent the year272 2500 YEARS OF BUDDHISM 638 A.D. in Bengal and Campa, and finally reached Tamra- lipti, intending to embark for Ceylon to study the Hinayana there. Tamralipti was a great emporium in those days and the pilgrim must have met many sailors and traders from the eastern lands; he gives a fairly accurate and valuable, though brief, account of the Hindu kingdoms of contem- porary Indo-China. Some monks from the South told Yuan Chwang that Ceylon was within easy reach of South India, and there was no need to risk a long sea voyage. He accepted the advice and worked his way south to Kaiici- puram by way of Orissa, MahakoSala, the land of Nagarjuna and Arya Deva, as also Kipling’s Mowgli, Andhra and the Telugu-Goda countries. His observations on the people and politics are very valuable. He probably spent the rainy season of 639 A.D. at Amaravati and reached Kaifici in 640 A.D. There he learned that Ceylon was in turmoil; a civil war was raging and he had to give up his idea of a visit to the island. He worked his way back to the North by western Deccan, no doubt meeting Pulakesin II, the great Badami Clukya ruler at Nasik (641 A.D), and visiting Bharukaccha (Bharoch) and Valabhi. Here he learnt much about Iran on the eve of the onslaught of Islam and his pic- ture of the Sassanid empire just before its fall is of great value to history. After visiting Sindh and Multan in the West, Yuan Chwang turned towards the East for a second stay at Nalanda and its neighbourhood where great Mahayana scholars like Jayasena lived; when his visits to the holy places were over, the master gave his time up fully to his studies; he was interested in many subjects and had vast, encyclopaedic learning. He often took part in philosophi- cal debates and delighted in exposing the flaws in other creeds. But his thoughts were ever directed to his return to China to give her the benefit of his new learning, and he turned down the request of the monks of Nalanda that he should not leave them. Indian kings heard of the ChineseCHINESE TRAVELLERS 273 master’s great ability, and Bhiskaravarman, the king of Assam (Kamrup), invited him to his Court. So he went there, and his notes on Assam are remarkably accurate. Very soon Harsa Vardhanasent word to Assam, whose king was his friend and vassal, inviting Yuan Chwang to his own camp on the Ganges; they went and were warmly received by Harsa who had been impatient at the delay in their arrival. In 643 A.D. Yuan Chwang attended the two cele- brated assemblies convened by Harsa at Kanauj and Prayag, of which we have detailed descriptions from Yuan Chwang and his biographers, though these are obviously one-sided. Harga, according to these accounts, had difficulty in protecting the Mahayanist doctor from the debating zeal of the followers of other creeds, particularly the brahmanas; drastic rules calculated to stifle free speech caused resentment and even the lives of the king and the pilgrim were endangered. Such is the account that we have no means of verifying. The assembly at Prayag was the usual quinquennial meeting at which the king gave away his accumulated treasure. This was the last function for which the Master of the Law put off his return to China. Harsa also failed to dissuade him from returning to his native land, and very unwillingly bade him farewell. After spending two months of the rainy sea- son in the region to the north of Kanauj, Yuan Chwang crossed the Panjab by way of Jalandhar and Taksasila, taking in the opposite direction the route he had taken ten years before. Crossing the Indus, early in 644 A.D., he was met at Udabhanda (Und) by the kings of Kapisa, and Kashmir, the former helping him to get from Uddiyana fresh copies of some of the books which had been lost in crossing the Indus. He lodged in a monastery in Nagarahara for some time. Then he crossed the Hindu Kush with great difficulty in July 644 A.D., despite the aid of the king of Kapisa, and farther on a Turkish prince gave him an escort for the cross- ing of the Pamirs. His narrative here contains many marvel- lous tales and dramatic adventures. He duly noted the274 2500 YEARS OF BUDDHISM Indian origin of the civilization of the Central Asian states; he passed through Kashgar, Yarkand and Khotan where he spent seven to eight months from September 644 A.D.; during this period he replaced the manuscripts lost in transit and awaited the permission of the imperial government to Teturn to the country which he had left ten years earlier without a proper permit. His notes on the places he visited show clearly the geographical changes that had occurred since the days of Fa-hien. After resting some time at Tun- huang, he approached Ch’ang-an in the Spring of 645 A.D. and was received with great honour by the officials and monks of the capital. He presented his respects to the Emperor T’ai-tsung at Lo-Yang some days later. Not only was his secret exit from China forgiven, but he soon became the hero of the hour and part of the glory of the T’angs, the Emperor himself congratulating him on having risked his life for the salvation and happiness of all men. He refused to accept the post of Minister offered him by the Emperor, and spent the rest of his life in a monastery, specially built in the capital to lodge him and his band of translators who rendered into Chinese the six hundred Sanskrit works brought from India. The Emperor T’ai-tsung died in July 649 A.D.; his successor was quite friendly, but Yuan Chwang’s visits to the palace became less frequent and he devoted himself more and more to translation and active preaching. He knew his end was approaching, and died in peace and content in 664 A.D. with the consciousness of having led a good and purposeful life. Ltsing I-tsing was about ten years of age when Yuan Chwang returned to China, but he had prepared himself for the life of a Buddhist monk. He was admitted to the Order when he was fourteen. Though he formed the idea of travelling to India in 652 A.D., he did not carry it out till his thirty- seventh year (671 A.D.). He was away for 25 years (671— 695 A.D.) and travelled through more than thirty countries.CHINESE TRAVELLERS 275 After his return to China in 695 A.D., he translated 56 works out of about 400 he had brought back with him, between the years 700 and 712 AD. He died in 713 A.D. in his seventy-ninth year. He took the sea route to India both ways. His itineraries lack the variety and scientific interest of those of Yuang Chwang, but they are full of human interest. On his out- ward voyage (671 A.D.) he spent eight months in Sumatra, six at Sri-vijaya, a rising maritime state (now Palembang), and two in Malaya in the neighbourhood. He landed at Tamra- lipti in 673 A.D., and thence went to Magadha, the holy land Par excellence and worshipped at Bodh Gaya and other sacred spots. He spent ten years at Nalanda, hearing the teaching of the Doctors of the Law and collecting holy books. He had many companions with him of whom he was to write an account later, and from them he took leave, never to see them again, in 685 A.D. when he left India, again by way of Tamralipti. He spent four years in Sri-vijaya with its Sanskrit background in order to translate the sacred works, in 689 A.D. he went to China to fetch collaborators for his work and after another five years at Sri-vijaya he finally returned to China in 695 A.D. Like Yuan Chwang before him he found the Court interested in his voyages and was given an official reception. One of I-tsing’s works, A Record of the Buddhist Religion as practised in India and the Malay Archipelago, has been translated into English by the Japanese scholar, J. Takakusu. More interesting in some ways are his Memoirs on the Eminent Monks who went in Search of the Law in the Western Countries, of this work a French version by Chavannes is available. It gives us a fair idea of the earnestness and devotion of the pilgrims whose num- bers were larger than we are apt to imagine and of the spirit with which they braved the dangers of their enter- prise. It is, in fact, a melancholy succession of tales, full of pathetic incidents both on land and sea. I-tsing remarks wistfully: “However triumphal, the path was strewn276 2500 YEARS OF BUDDHISM with difficulties; the Holy Places were far away and vast. Of dozens who brought forth leaves and flowers, and of several who made an attempt, there was scarcely one who bore any fruit or produced any real results, and few who completed their task. The reason for this was the immensity of the stony deserts of the Land of the Elephant (India), the great rivers and the brilliance of the sun which pours forth its burning heat, or else the towering waves heaved up by the giant fish, the abysses, and the waters that rise and swell as high as the heavens. When marching solitary, beyond the Tron Gates between Samarquand and Bactria, one wandered amongst the ten thousand mountains, and fell into the bot- tom of precipices; when sailing alone beyond the Columns of Copper (South of Tongking), one crossed the thousand deltas and lost one’s life . . . That is how it is that those who set out were over fifty in number, while those who survived were only a handful of men.” Several Korean monks had gone to India, the majority across Central Asia, some by the sea route; of them [-tsing says: “They died in India, and never saw their country again.” Indeed the Central Asian route was becoming more and more difficult after the weakening of the T’ang empiré and the revolt of Tibet, not to speak of the Islamic Arabs who soon appeared on the scene. On the maritime route the Chinese pilgrims saw India coming out to meet them. The impress of Indian civiliza- tion on Indo-China and Indonesia could not escape their notice, and I-tsing recommends that one should stay in Srivijaya and perfect his knowledge of Sanskrit before going on to India. During this period there was a perpe- tual exchange of ideas, books and art products between India and Ceylon and Java, Cambodia, Campa and the ports of the Canton region of China. Thus, in this bright period of Asian history, the Chinese pilgrims of the great T’ang dynasty linked the Far East to India more closely by their travels and their translations of the Sacred Books.