Faxian and Xuanzang Travel to India and Translate Its Texts
Chinese pilgrims cross Central Asia to study at Nalanda, then spend the rest of their lives translating what they carried home
Quick facts
- Faxian's journey
- 399-414 CE
- Xuanzang's journey
- 629-645 CE
- Key destination
- Nalanda monastery, India
- Xuanzang's written record
- Great Tang Records on the Western Regions, 646 CE
What happened
Between roughly 400 and 700 CE, hundreds of Chinese Buddhist monks made the journey to India to study Buddhism at its source and bring back accurate texts, and two of the most famous, Faxian and Xuanzang, left behind detailed travel accounts. Faxian traveled earlier, and his "Record of the Buddhist Kingdoms" is considered the first eyewitness account in Chinese of Buddhist practice and pilgrimage sites across Central and South Asia. Xuanzang departed Chang'an in 629 CE against an imperial ban on foreign travel, crossed the Tarim Basin and the Hindu Kush, and spent much of his 16 years abroad at Nalanda monastery, "the intellectual and spiritual center of Buddhism for many centuries." He returned to Chang'an in 645 CE to a celebratory welcome and then devoted the rest of his life to translating the Sanskrit manuscripts he had carried back into Chinese.
Why it matters
Faxian and Xuanzang's journeys, and the hundreds of Buddhist texts they and monks like them translated into Chinese, gave Chinese Buddhism direct textual access to Indian source material rather than relying only on earlier, sometimes garbled translations, and their travel writings remain invaluable historical sources for historians and archaeologists studying Central and South Asia in this period.
How we know
Both monks left detailed written travel accounts in their own words, Faxian's Record of the Buddhist Kingdoms and Xuanzang's Great Tang Records on the Western Regions, composed at the request of the Tang emperor and preserved as continuous texts down to the present.
Sources
- The Sogdians, Smithsonian Institution. Xuanzang · Reputable sourcesogdians.si.edu · The domain "sogdians.si.edu" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- University of Washington, Silk Road Seattle. Xuanzang's Record of the Western Regions · Primary source (author-declared)depts.washington.edu · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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Related timelines
- History of China → · See the History of China timeline for the Tang dynasty court that sponsored Xuanzang's return and translation work in Chang'an.