Who knows who went to the West to learn Buddhist scriptures before the Tang Priest?

Faxian The Journey to the West's True Classics

Fa Xian, whose common name is Gong, was born in Wuyang, Pingyang County (now Linfen, Shanxi Province). There are four brothers in Fa Xian's family, three of whom died young. His parents were worried that he would die, too, so he was sent to a Buddhist temple as a novice monk at the age of 3. History books say that he is "ambitious and clean-minded", brilliant and admired by the world.

Buddhism originated in India, and after it was introduced to China from the Western Regions in Han Dynasty, it gradually merged with the Central Plains culture based on farming civilization. Because Indian Buddhist scriptures are basically passed down by word of mouth, there is no writing. After they spread from India to the Western Regions and then from the Western Regions to the Central Plains, they were different from the Indian Buddhism when they were introduced. In 399 AD (the third year of Long 'an in the Eastern Jin Dynasty), the 65-year-old Fa Xian lamented that Buddhism was not complete after it was introduced into Middle-earth, and "wanted to spread the precepts in the Han Dynasty", so he set off from Chang 'an with Hui Jing, Daozheng, Huiying and Wei Hui, and went to Tianzhu (now India) along the northern line of the Silk Road to learn from the tributes and relics. In the summer of the following year, Faxian and others met another group of westbound monks Baoyun and Zhiyan in Zhangye, an important town in Hexi, and arrived in Dunhuang in autumn, which was supplied by Li Hao, governor of Dunhuang.

After crossing the vast Gobi Desert, Fa Xian and his party stopped in Shanshan, Khotan and other small countries in the western regions, crossed the Green Ridge and entered the territory of North India in 402 AD. During his time in India, Fa Xian obtained the manuscripts of the Scriptures such as Sapoduo Chinese Banknotes Law, Za A Da Mo Xin, Deng Fang Prajna Sutra, etc.

Wan Li has returned to the motherland.

In the winter of 409 A.D., Fa Xian left the South Asian subcontinent and crossed the sea to reach the lion country (now Sri Lanka). He lived here for two years, copied four law books, and decided to leave here and go home. At the end of August in the 4th/10th/2nd year of the lunar calendar, Fa Xian boarded two China merchant ships returning from Daqin (Eastern Roman Empire) and returned with more than 400 passengers in the same boat. Their destination for returning home is Guangzhou, a famous port in China. The ship carried 50 days' rations and fresh water from Sri Lanka to Guangzhou via the Straits of Malacca.

Two days later, the ship encountered a strong wind and lost its course.

Drifting at sea for 105 days, all I saw was "Catfish Monster", "The sea is vast, I don't know anything, I just hope the sun, the moon and the stars will enter", and I arrived at "Yeti Poguo" in the South China Sea. After living here for five months, Faxian and his party left for the west. A month after the ship set sail, it was hit by a "black storm". Merchant ship owners believe that many reasons for this trip are that they boarded a monk and insisted on pushing Faxian into the sea. Many passengers stepped forward, and Faxian survived.

After more than two months of drifting, the ship ran out of food and fresh water and sailed northwest 12 days. On May 4, Kloc-0/3, it arrived at the south bank of Laoshan Mountain (now Jimo County, Shandong Province) in Changguang County, Qingzhou. There were ten people who used to go west with Faxian to seek the Dharma. During this time, they either turned back halfway, died in another country or stayed in a foreign country for a long time. Only Faxian finally returned to the motherland. After returning to China, Fa Xian was invited by Hui Yuan, the founder of Pure Land Sect of Buddhism and a monk of Tolin Temple in Lushan Mountain, to work in the translation of Buddhist scriptures in Jiankang (now Nanjing), the capital of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, until his death. Regarding the story of Buddhist scriptures, Fa Xian wrote Jin Fa Xian's Journey to Tianzhu after returning to China, which was simplified to Fa Xian Zhuan or Buddha Ji Guo by later generations.

The mysterious kingdom of Yetipa

Fa Xian left a mystery: Where is this "Ye Roland Country" that has been drifting for one hundred days?

176 1 year, the French historian Jean-Denis published a paper entitled "China people sailing and living on the American coast" in the French Institute of Literature and History. Taking this as a starting point, in the following 100 years, historians in western countries published more than 30 works to study whether China people arrived in America before Columbus, but the focus of discussion was whether Hui Shen, a monk of Liang who was later than Faxian, had been to America. Due to the long-term behind closed doors, this great discussion in western historians has not caused any repercussions in China.

1863, the French version of Fa Xian Zhuan translated by the French scholar Abel Remsutt was published in France. From 65438 to 0869, Samuel Beale, a British scholar, translated Fa Xian Zhuan into English and published it in London. 1886, another English version of The Legend of Fa Xian was translated and published by James Leach. The west therefore knows the name of Faxian.

Since the end of19th century, researchers have put forward more than 50 opinions about where Fa Xian arrived in "Yeti Poguo". Samuel Bill, the translator of the English version of Fa Xian Zhuan, found a place name "Yawadapa" in Indian Sanskrit with a similar pronunciation to "Yetipa", then used "Yawadapa" to find out where Fa Xian might pass, and decided that "Yetipa Country" should be Java in Indonesia today. Bill's research methods and viewpoints were recognized by later scholars. However, if the "Yeti Poguo" is confirmed as Java, there is a problem that is difficult to explain: it only takes ten days to drift from Sri Lanka to Java or Kalimantan, which is more than 1000 nautical miles away, while the "Yeti Poguo" recorded by Faxian Buddhism, which is thousands of miles away, sailed eastward for three and a half months.

According to Fa Xian's records, the belief in "Yeboti Kingdom" is "insufficient Buddhism", while Buddhism has been popular in Indonesia for nearly 700 years, which is inconsistent with historical facts and should be used as circumstantial evidence for Fa Xian's landing in Java.

Around 1900, French historians with active academic atmosphere first put forward the view that Fa Xian arrived in America before Columbus. Shortly thereafter, Zhang Taiyan, a master of Chinese studies, noticed this new progress in French academic circles, wrote the article Fa Xian Discovered the Western Hemisphere, and made a corresponding exposition. At the end of the article, Zhang Taiyan couldn't help but sigh: "Columbus got this for India for nothing, and the law shows that it is a pity that he returned from India and got this for nothing."

Fa Xian drifted to the United States in the 1960s and 1980s, and Taiwanese historian Da Jian San and Juxian Wei published Fa Xian's First Discovery of America and China's Discovery of America, arguing that Fa Xian's "wild country" is actually today's American continent. 1992 after more than 30 years of research, Mr. Lian Yunshan, a senior reporter of People's Daily, published the book Who Arrived in the United States First, which scientifically demonstrated the view that Fa Xian had arrived in the United States.

Lian Yunshan believes that the current world chart shows that the voyage from Sri Lanka to Guangzhou is 3070 kilometers. In the Faxian era, under the normal sailing conditions of the third wind, the daily voyage was about 100 nautical mile, and the one-way voyage from Sri Lanka to Guangzhou was about 30 days. Even if there is an accident, it can reach Guangzhou in 50 days at most, which can be proved by Faxian's ship carrying 50 days' rations. The distance from Sri Lanka to Java is 1800 nautical miles, which is usually about 15 days' voyage. Faxian went to sea in August of the lunar calendar, when the monsoon peak was in the Bay of Bengal, the Straits of Malacca and the South China Sea. Thunderstorms often occur, and the average wind force can reach five or six. Faxian and his party suffered a strong wind for "13 consecutive days". If Faxian saw Java, it should have arrived around 10, but it actually drifted for more than a hundred days. Therefore, "Java theory" is untenable in terms of mileage.

According to common sense, in case of heavy rain, the helmsman (pilot) on the ship will definitely follow the familiar channel. Therefore, even in the event of a storm, Faxian's ship should follow the traditional sailing route of Chinese businessmen: cross the Straits of Malacca and turn northeast on Singapore Island. However, if such a voyage encounters a strong storm, when entering the route from the South China Sea to the Balintang Strait, the ship may drift into the Pacific Ocean under the action of strong winds and channel currents from west to east.

According to Faxian, the ship stopped at an island for maintenance after 15 days, and then sailed in the sea of Wang Yang for more than 100 days. According to the chart sand table calculation, Mr. Lian Yunshan calculated that the island where Faxian and others repaired the ship should be in the east of Nansha Islands, between Sulu Island in the Philippines and Caroline Islands in the Pacific Ocean, or in Babuyan Islands. From then on, the navigation of merchant ships is likely to follow the ocean current into the vast Pacific Ocean. Especially in Faxian's records, there are words like "The night is dark, but the big waves come and the fire is swaying", which is a luminous phenomenon inspired by the big wave fighting in the deep sea of the Pacific Ocean, and the "strange genus of giant salamander" mentioned above is probably that tourists have seen rare whales, sharks, dolphins and hawksbill in the offshore shallows. The "black wind and heavy rain" and "cloudy sky" encountered by Faxian on his westward voyage were the big storms in the North Pacific from east to west at the turn of spring and summer. The symbol of "cloudy day" is a rainy and foggy area from 35 degrees to 70 degrees north latitude and from 135 degrees to 165 degrees east longitude, so 10 to 15 degrees south latitude is also a rainy area. If we combine the influence of Pacific ocean current and other factors, we will find that the final destination of Faxian merchant ship can only be the American continent.

After drifting at sea for more than 100 days, Faxian and others finally reached the land. The end of the North Pacific Warm Current is Guadeloupe, Mexico. Faxian will land around November of the lunar calendar. At this time, the northwest wind prevailed on the west coast of the United States, and he wanted to blow the ship to the southeast. At the big bend on the west coast of the United States from Guatemala to Panama, a northwest current and a shareholder, the South China Sea current, meet here. Therefore, Faxian is most likely to land here. In fact, after 1000 years, China Ming and Qing merchant ships from the Philippines landed here. There is only a narrow isthmus of Panama between here and the landing place of Columbus on the American continent more than ten centuries later.

In A.D. 1492, the Italian Christopher Columbus led his fleet to an island on the east coast of America. 10 years later, Columbus accidentally landed on the American continent. Before him 1000, a monk from China once set foot hundreds of kilometers away from his landing site.