The first person in China to travel west to learn the scriptures was master Fa Xian

In 1761, French historians first published a paper entitled "Chinese Sailing and Habitation Along the Coast of america." Since then, historians from Various Western countries have published more than 30 treatises on whether Chinese reached the Americas before Columbus. Around 1900, French historians first put forward the idea that Chinese Fa Xian arrived in the Americas before Columbus. Shortly thereafter, the master of traditional Chinese studies, Zhang Taiyan, wrote the article "The Theory of the Discovery of the Western Hemisphere by Fa Xian". In the 1960s and 1980s, Taiwanese scholars published "The First Discovery of america" and "Chinese discovered America", arguing that the "Yebati country" reached by Faxian was actually the American continent today. In 1992, Mr. Lian Yunshan, a senior reporter of the People's Daily, published the book "Who Arrived in america first", which demonstrated from a scientific point of view that Faxian had once arrived in the Americas.

So, who is this Dharma Manifest? What was his experience? Why did he say he had reached the Americas? In order to solve these mysteries, let's go into the life of the Fa Xian!

Fa Xian (c. 337 – c. 422), a famous monk of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, was an outstanding traveler and translator of Buddhist scriptures. Commonly known as Gong, he was a native of Wuyang (present-day Xiangyuan County), Pingyang County, Shanxi. He had three older brothers, all of whom died in childhood, and his parents feared that he would die too, so when he was only 3 years old, they made him Shami (that is, sent him to a Buddhist temple to become a young monk). 3-year-old children, everything needs to be taken care of, naturally can not live in the temple, fortunately, Shami is not yet an official monk, and it does not matter if he does not live in the temple for the time being. But a few years later, he suddenly fell seriously ill, and his family was terrified. From then on, he often lived in the temple and did not return home.

At the age of 10, his father died. His uncle, considering that his mother was widowed and difficult to live, asked him to return to the world. At this time, Dharma Xian's belief in Buddhism was very devout, so he said to his uncle, "Now that my father is dead, I want to return to the world, and I didn't become a monk because I had a father!" "Insist on not going back. His uncle didn't force him either. Soon after, his mother also died, and he returned to the monastery after the funeral.

The Dharma manifests a pure temperament. Once, he and Tsang Shami were cutting rice in the field and encountered some poor people who came to rob them of their grain. All the Shami were so frightened that they rushed to flee, and only Fa Xian stood still. He said to the grain grabbers, "If you need grain, feel free to take it!" It's just that you are so poor now because you didn't give in the past. If you rob people of food, I am afraid that the next life will be even poorer. I'm so worried about you!" After saying this, he calmly returned to the temple, and those who snatched the grain were persuaded by him to abandon the grain. This incident impressed hundreds of monks in the temple. At the age of 20, Dharmakaya received the Great Ordination (a ritual performed by monks as they enter adulthood to prevent physical and mental transgressions). Since then, his buddhist faith has become more faithful and his behavior has become more rigorous, and he is known as "clear and sensitive in his deeds and cleansing up his rituals".

Fa Xian entered the monastery from an early age, received a Buddhist education, and when he became an adult, he decided to dive into meditation and study the classics, so he had a wealth of Buddhist knowledge. In the course of his study of Buddhism, he found that most of the popular translations at that time were difficult to understand and incomplete. Fa Xian understood that there was no way to remedy this defect in China at that time. If you want to master Buddhism, have great achievements, and become excellent Buddhist scholars, there is no second good way unless you go to India, the birthplace of Buddhism. But to study in India, in that era, it was necessary to go through a lot of hardships to achieve the goal, which was not a simple thing.

After a period of ideological struggle, Faxian decided to travel to India. In the spring of 399, Fa Xian, who was over 60 years old, and Hui Jing, Dao Zhen, Hui Ying, Hui Wei and four other people set out from Chang'an and personally went along the northern route of the Silk Road to Tianzhu (present-day India) to learn the scriptures and visit the Buddhist relics.

At that time, in the Hexi Corridor, there were many ethnic groups that divided and established the country, independently, and traveled very much. In the summer of 400, Faxian and others met another group of westbound monks Zhiyan, Huijian, Shengshao, Baoyun, and Monk Jing in Zhangye, Gansu, an important town in Hexi, and arrived in Dunhuang in the autumn, with the support of Taishou Li Hao. Fa Xian and Hui Jing and five other people set off first and began to enter the vast Gobi. Desert travel is very hard and lonely, the scene is really a piece of yellow sand, no grass, no birds on the top, no animals below. The dead bones of the dead people on the side of the road have become the only sign that passengers know the road. And at that time, it was said that there was a terrible hot wind in the desert, and it was difficult to save his life when he encountered it. They walked for a total of 17 days and nights, traveling about 1500 miles, before reaching The Kingdom of Bushan (present-day Shanshan County, Xinjiang). After a short rest, he walked for another 15 days to reach Wuyi Prefecture (present-day Yanqi County, Xinjiang), and then marched southwest with Baoyun and seven other people (at this time Zhiyan, Huijian, and Huiwei returned to Gaochang). There are no inhabitants in the desert, and the hardships can be imagined. It took a month and five days to reach Khotan (present-day Hotan County, Xinjiang). Counting from the time of departure, it has been two years on the road. After arriving in Khotan, Huijing, Daoquan, and Daoyuan first set out for the kingdom of Qiqi (around the Onion Ridge), while Faxian and others stopped for more than three months because of the king of Khotan's retention to participate in the grand meeting, and then traveled south through Kashmir and the Zihe Kingdom (Hargarik) into the Onion Ridge. Rendezvous with Hui Jing and others in the Fork of the Fork Country, where he participated in the Five-Year Grand Charity Meeting held by the King.

In 402, Faxian and others began to march toward northern India, and in January, they crossed the Green Ridge and entered a small country called the Torah on the northwestern border of India. He also traveled southwest along the Onion Ridge and crossed the Xintou River (Su Po River), which had never been to the Western Regions of the Han Dynasty when Zhang Qian and Gan Yingtong passed through the western region, and arrived at the Wu Kingdom in the north of Tianzhu. Then it passed through the kingdoms of Suhe, Gandhara, Zhucha, Fulousha, Naru, Yi, Bhana, Bicha, and Motora. In the meantime, Baoyun and The Monk Jing set off to return to China after arriving in the Fulou Sha Kingdom; Hui Da went back with them after offering Buddha statues from that country, and Hui Ying died of illness in the Buddha Bowl Temple in the Fu Lou Sha Kingdom.

In 403, Faxian joined Huijing and Daozheng, and together they went south to Xiaoxue Mountain (present-day Mount Sunaman in Afghanistan). The mountain was covered with snow in winter and summer, and the three climbed to the north yin of the mountain, and suddenly encountered a cold wind, and Hui Jing could not withstand the attack of the cold current and was frozen to death. Fa Xian caressed Hui Jing's corpse and cried with infinite emotion, "The wish to learn the scriptures has not yet been fulfilled, but you have already died, and your fate is also helpless!" Then he and Dao Zheng marched forward, over the small snowy mountains, and reached the Luo Yi Kingdom. Then through the kingdom of Bhagavatam, then cross the Xintou River and reach the country of Bicha.

In 404, Fa Xian entered Zhongtianzhu via the Puna River, and he and Dao spent more than 4 years traveling around Zhongtianzhu to visit the relics of Buddhism. They first went to the Sangha Shi kingdom, then crossed the Ganges River to the great country of Shaqi, and then traveled south to the acropolis of the kingdom of Tsusara, traveled through Buddhist attractions, and reached the birthplace of Shakyamuni Buddha, 50 miles east of the Acropolis of Gavira. The matter was later confirmed. It was January 1898, and the European archaeologist Peby had excavated a stone cabinet in the southern part of the Baltic Region. Zhongzang stone vases, stone letters and other objects, including a stone bottle, placed in the iron crystal stone letter. A leaf made of gold is used to house shakyamuni's relics (cremation bones), and the inscription on it indicates that it is the remains of the Buddha, which were provided by the Shakya people. The location of the stone cabinet is 50 miles east of the Acropolis of Gavilla referred to in the travels of Master Fa Xian. Therefore, historians have determined that this is where the Buddha was born.

Fa Xian went to India with the intention of visiting the scriptures, not specifically for excursions, he successively went through more than 10 countries such as the land of Rame, the kingdom of Vishnu, the country of Gyalpo and the kingdom of Jimi, which were developed in Buddhist culture at that time, until he returned to China in 413, and he was always observing and studying with his heart. He received 6 Buddhist texts, including the Mahabharata Sutra, at the Ashoka Tanan Tenno-Eda Monastery in Balanthuyi in the Kingdom of Maharati. In order to understand these classics, he lived there for 3 years, studied Sanskrit, and copied the scriptures and laws by hand, improving his ability to read the original texts, laying a good foundation for returning to China to translate the scriptures.

After completing the basic study, Faxian decided to return to China. At that time, the only companions who remained in India were Daozhen, but Daozhen admired the shamen law and the prestige of the monks in Balenfuyi, lamented the mutilation of the monks in his hometown, and vowed to stay there and not return to China. So Fa Xian had to leave for China alone. In 408, he traveled east along the Ganges to the Kingdom of Zhanbo, and then to the TamaLi Empire south of the mouth of the Ganges, where he wrote scriptures and portraits for two years before taking another 14 days and nights to the Lion Country. The Lion Country, also known as Sinhalese, is now the island of Ceylon, which is also a famous place in ancient Buddhism. Fa Xian lived in the Fearless Mountain Elite House in the Lion Country and obtained 4 classics such as "Chang Ashe".

In the autumn of 411, he carried a large merchant ship with more than 200 passengers across the sea to return to China, unfortunately encountered strong winds, the ship leaked into the water, the whole ship barely survived for 13 days, only to anchor on the side of an island, to fill the leaky ship, and then drifted at sea for another 90 days, to Yebati (Sumatra).

Fa Xian lived in the kingdom of Yebati for 5 months, and on April 16, 412, he again boarded a large merchant ship and was expected to arrive in Guangzhou in 50 days. The ship was quite stable at first, but unexpectedly, after more than a month, it suddenly encountered a hurricane, and the black air was filled with black air, fierce storms, and the hull was bumpy and overturned, and it was in an extremely tense and critical state. The foreign merchants who often came to China were quite superstitious, and they regarded the monk as an ominous person, and decided to exile him alone to the seashore, and then went on, thanks to a great benefactor who tried his best to defend the fa xian, so that the fa xian survived. The ship drifted in the sea for more than 70 days, reaching Laoshan Mountain in Shandong On July 14. The monk, who has traveled to more than 30 countries and spent 14 years, has finally returned to his homeland. In 2003, in order to commemorate the 1590th anniversary of Fa Xian's return to China via Laoshan Landing in India, a 4-meter-high bronze statue of Fa Xian was erected at the site of Fa Xian's landing that year.

In 413, Faxian returned to Jiankang (present-day Nanjing), the capital of the Eastern Jin Dynasty.

Starting from Chang'an in 399 and returning from Laoshan in Shandong in 412, Fa Xian, after 14 years and a journey of more than 40,000 miles, was the first person in China's history to reach Central India, Sri Lanka and Indonesia through the Silk Road, and was also the first famous monk to arrive in India to visit the Buddhist relics and seek the sutras. He translated more than one million words of Buddhist scriptures and precepts in Jiankang, such as the Mahabharata Sutra and the Great Mud Sutra, filling the gap in the lack of precepts in the translation of the scriptures and making great contributions to the translation of Buddhist classics. At the same time, he also wrote the "Fa Xian Biography" (also known as "The Book of the Buddha", which has English, French and Japanese translations abroad), which records the geography, customs, local customs, human feelings and history of Central Asia, India and the South China Sea, providing rich information for the study of the history of Central Asia and South Asian countries at that time and the traffic between China and foreign countries.

Known as the first chinese master to go overseas to learn the scriptures and seek the Dharma, Fa Xian was not only praised in the Buddhist circles, but also highly praised by Chinese and foreign scholars. The famous tang Dynasty monk Yijing said: "Since the land of ancient Shenzhou, the guest of the martyrdom of the Fa, the (Fa) Xianshi Master has cleared the way, and the (Xuan) Zang Master is the right way in the middle." The modern scholar Liang Qichao said: "The Fa Xian crossed the snowy mountains and entered the Tianzhu, and the Buddhist scriptures were various, and the "Records of the Buddha's Kingdom" was written, and the Chinese people to India were the first." Sri Lankan historian Nicholas Shar said: "People know that the first name of Chinese who has visited Indonesia is Fa Xian. He also referred to the description of Yebhati in the Book of the Buddha as "the first relatively detailed account of Indonesia in China." The Japanese scholar Adachi Kiroku hails the Book of Buddhahood as a guide for western explorers and Indian Buddhist surveyors. The Indian scholar Enk Sinha and others also praised: "Chinese travelers, such as Faxian and Xuanzang, have left us valuable records about India. ”

Faxian lived in Jiankang for about 5 years before moving to Jingzhou (present-day Jiangling, Hubei) and died at the age of about 86.

Although it has been more than 1,500 years since Fa Xian left us, although it is still doubtful whether he set foot on the American continent, his feat of crossing the Asian continent and returning to China through the Nanyang Sea Route at an advanced age, as well as his unswerving spirit of struggle, is always worthy of our study and admiration!