After a week of rain and with the roads flooded, it seems like a good notion to undertake a spot of armchair adventure and appreciate how much trouble a good person can take to serve his faith positively. Accordingly, the life of Fa-hien or Faxian invites a look. He was born with the surname Kung in 337 CE in Linfen, Shanxi province, in northern China. His three elder brothers died young. His father, fearing that he would die too, had him ordained as a Buddhist novice at the tender age of three. One cannot imagine what such a little child felt about that, but he seems to have developed a sturdy spirit and a mind of his own.
So much so that when he was ten years old, and his father died, and an uncle urged him to renounce the monastic life to return to his widowed mother, he said, “I did not quit the family in compliance with my father’s wishes, but because I wished to be far from the dust and vulgar ways of life. This is why I chose monkhood.” The uncle approved of his resolve and his mother, too, honoured his decision. He later took the name Faxian, meaning the “splendour of dharma”.
Once, when he was cutting rice with his fellow-disciples, some hungry thieves swooped in to rob their grain. The other novices fled, but Faxian stood his ground, and said, “If you must have the grain, take what you please. But it was your neglect of charity which brought you to your present poverty; and now, again, you wish to rob others. I am afraid that in the coming years you will have still greater poverty and distress. I am sorry for you.” He then followed his companions into the monastery. The thieves left the grain and went away. All the monks praised Faxian’s courage.
As a sincere monk, Faxian was troubled by the indiscipline among the members of the Sangha in China. So, he decided to travel to India to collect original copies of the Vinaya Pitaka, the text on monastic discipline set forth by the Buddha.
He left for India in 399 CE, at the age of sixty-two, when most people would have stayed snug at home. He covered the entire, daunting distance from North China to India on foot, travelling through the Gobi Desert, the heights of the Hindukush mountain range, some of the highest passes in the Himalayas and journeying across North India to Bengal, from where he sailed to Sri Lanka and back to China in 414 CE. His book Foguoji, or A Record of Buddhist Kingdoms, tells us interesting tidbits about India 1600 years ago.
Faxian spent 10 years in India. He visited important Buddhist sites like Bodhgaya, Vaishali, Sarnath, Pataliputra, Kapilavastu, Nalanda and Rajgriha. As a pilgrim, not a travel diarist, he was driven by the finest seeker impulses—“desire to do good (kushala-chanda), mind (chitta), effort (viriya) and discernment (vimansa)”. He did not easily find a written text of the Vinaya Pitaka, which was preserved through oral recitations. In Sravasti, though, he obtained a copy according to the text accepted at the First Great Assembly and practised by priests while the Buddha was still alive. He stayed at Nalanda, learning Sanskrit, and collected original Sanskrit texts. He carried them back to China where he translated them, dying in 422 CE at Xin monastery in Hubei, central China, aged 85.
Faxian described Pataliputra as the “city of flowers”, discovering that Ashoka had built and endowed many viharas. He marvelled at the royal palace, at the “spirits which he employed, which piled up the stones, reared the walls and gates and executed the elegant carvings and inlaid sculpture work in a way in which no human hands in this world could accomplish”. This was interesting for I had learnt in school that ancient Pataliputra was built of wood and had burned down; Huien Tsang found only a village in the seventh century.
At Vulture Peak near Rajgriha, Faxian wept that he was born too late to see the Buddha. He undertook a solitary vigil at night, offering oil lamps and flowers. Two lions appeared and crouched, drooling before him to test his courage. Seeing Faxian remain completely calm and unafraid, the lions drooped their heads and peacefully departed.
Faxian noted that it was possible to travel from one end of the country to another without molestation or requiring passports. He further said that Indians were remarkably law-abiding and that crime was very rare. He also recorded that the death penalty was not imposed in North India. Crimes were punished by fines and only serious revolt was punished by the amputation of one hand.
In 410 CE, when Fa-Hien visited Nalanda, which he called Na-lo, it was a normal Buddhist monastery. But when Huien Tsang went to Nalanda two centuries later, it had grown into the greatest education centre of Mahayana Buddhism.
According to Faxian, teachers were shown great reverence. On monks’ manners in a vihara, he said, “At the sound of the gong, 3000 priests assemble to eat. When they enter the refectory, their demeanor is grave and ceremonious. They sit down in regular orders; they all keep silence; they make no clatter with their bowls and they do not call out to the attendants to serve more food, but only make signs with their hands.”
We cannot but applaud Faxian for his venturesome spirit that also gave us this fascinating peep into our past.
Renuka Narayanan | FAITHLINE | Senior journalist
(Views are personal)
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