India, with its rich cultural heritage, vast geography, and ancient civilizations, has long captivated the imagination of foreign travellers and explorers. From ancient Greek scholars to mediaeval Arab merchants and early modern Europeans, these voyagers travelled the vast subcontinent, leaving behind a wealth of accounts that provided invaluable insights into the country’s past.
- Traveller narratives offer a glimpse into the rich cultural traditions, the complex socio-economic structure, and the magnificence of powerful empires. Penned by pioneering figures like Megasthenes, Al-Beruni, Marco Polo, and Bernier, their seminal works have become invaluable repositories, preserving insights into India’s history while enhancing India’s reputation internationally
Chinese- Foreign Accounts of ancient travellers
- There were some Chinese visitors who journeyed to India in pursuit of Buddhist writings and scriptures and maybe pilgrimage.
- Some of them had a significant impact on China and the east.
- This tendency began with the establishment of the Silk Road, which connected China to the West via northern India.
- India and China, are two of the world’s oldest and most enduring civilizations. Because they are neighbours, India and China have had trade and cultural relations since time immemorial.
- According to both Indian and Chinese historical sources, India-China engagement was two-way, with two components of this trade being material and spiritual or cultural ties.
- Xuanzang also served as a link between India and China in order to develop diplomatic ties between the two countries.
- The Indian King, Harshavardhana, was so taken with his stories about China that he dispatched an embassy to the Chinese city Chang’an in 641 AD.
- In 399 AD, Faxian left Chang’an for India. He travelled across Central Asia, visiting northern, central, western, eastern, and southern India before returning to China by sea in 412 AD.
- In 414, he finished his magnum opus, Accounts of a Buddhist Country.
| Fa Hien | Fifth century, | In the early fifth century, under the reign of Chandragupta II, he came to Pataliputra from the northwest.He discovered a copy of the Vinaya Pitaka, which includes the Mahasanghika regulations written in Sanskrit, in a Mahayana monastery.As a result, he spent nearly three years in Patliputra learning Sanskrit and writing down the Vinaya regulations.He visited and wrote about Sravasti, Sarnath, Bodh Gaya, Vaishali, Rajgir, and Taxila in Central India, as well as Pataliputra, Mathura, and Kannauj. |
| Hiuen Tsang | 629 CE | He travelled across Swat Valley to Uddayana, where he saw 1,400-year-old monasteries that formerly housed 18,000 monks.He arrived at Taxila after crossing the Indus River on his way to Burner Valley and Shahbaz Garhi.Hiuen Tsang saw most of Taxila’s Sangharamas (temples and monasteries) damaged and deserted as a result of local royal conflict.When Xuanzang/Hiuen Tsang arrived in Kashmir in AD 631, he discovered over 100 monasteries and over 5,000 monks. |
| Sungyun | 518CE | He arrived in India in 518 CE with the monks ‘Hui Zheng, Fa Li, and Zheng Fouze’ under the reign of Buddhist Empress Hu of the ‘Northern Wei Dynasty.Sung Yun, who was born in the Chinese city of Dunhuang.They left the Wei capital of Luoyang in 518 and returned in the winter of 522 with 117 Mahayana Buddhist scriptures.Fortunately, numerous important details of their expedition have been preserved in Yang Xianzhi’s Loyang Jielanji and other works.He visited the Swat region in northeastern India and authored the Gandhara dynasty narrative. |
| I-Tsing | 673 CE | I-tsing sailed from Canton to India in 671 and arrived in India in 673.After touring the sacred Buddhist places in Magadha, he spent 10 years (676-685) at the renowned Nalanda monastery, dedicating himself to the study of the Vinya.In 685, he left India for the city of Shri Bhoja (or Sri Boja, also known as Shri Vijaya, i.e. Palembang in Sumatra), which was heavily influenced by Indian culture at the time.He committed himself to the translation of Buddhist Sanskrit writings while there. |
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