Buddhist Records of the Western World

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This book is a gripping record of the travels by the celebrated Chinese traveler Hiuen Tsiang, born in 603. He was the youngest of four brothers and was ordained into the Ising-tu temple at the age of 13.

In this translation of Buddhist Records of the Western World, Samuel Beal has also included the early travel writings of Hiuen Tsiang's predecessors. The principal Chinese Buddhist Pilgrims who visited India before Hiuen Tsiang and wrote the accounts of their travels were Fa-hien, Sung-Yun and Hwei-Sang and I-tsing during the early centuries of the Christian era. The records are very interesting as they refer to the geography, history, manners and religion of the people of the countries West of China, of India in particular.

The book is an interesting read and highlights Hiuen Tsiang's fascinating journey starting from China, covering Central Asia and finally into India where he spent about eight years. including fifteen months at Nalanda where he learnt the Yogacara doctrine which he afterwards enunciated in a book on his return to his country.

Samuel Beal was an Oriental scholar, who translated many early Chinese texts into English.

THE progress which has been made in our knowledge of Northern Buddhism during the last few years is due very considerably to the discovery of the Buddhist literature of China. This literature (now well known to us through the catalogues already published) contains, amongst other valuable works, the records of the travels of various Chinese Buddhist pilgrims who visited India during the early centuries of our era. These records embody the testimony of independent eye-witnesses as to the facts related in them, and having been faithfully preserved and allotted a place in the collection of the sacred books of the country, their evidence is entirely trustworthy.

It would be impossible to mention seriatim the various points of interest in these works, as they refer to the geography, history, manners, and religion of the people of India. The reader who looks into the pages that follow will find ample material for study on all these questions. But there is one particular that gives a more than usual interest to the records under notice, and that is the evident sincerity and enthusiasm of the travellers them selves. Never did more devoted pilgrims leave their native country to encounter the perils of travel in foreign and distant lands; never did disciples more ardently de sire to gaze on the sacred vestiges of their religion; never did men endure greater sufferings by desert, mountain, and sea than these simple-minded earnest Buddhist priests. And that such courage, religious devotion, and power of endurance should be exhibited by men so aluggish, as we think, in their very nature as the Chinese, this is very surprising. and may perhaps arouse some con sideration.

**Contents and Sample Pages**