When he had finished his novitiate and taken on him the obligations of the full Buddhist orders, his earnest courage, clear intelligence, and strict regulation of his demeanor, were conspicuous; and soon after, he undertook his journey to India in search of complete copies of the Vinaya-pitaka. What follows this is merely an account of his travels in India and return to China by sea, condensed from his own narrative, with the addition of some marvellous incidents that happened to him, on his visit to the Vulture Peak near R‚jagriha.
It is said in the end that after his return to China, he went to the capital (evidently Nanking), and there, along with the Indian Sramana Buddha-bhadra, executed translations of some of the works which he had obtained in India; and that before he had done all that he wished to do in this way, he removed to King-chow (in the present Hoo-pih), and died in the monastery of Sin, at the age of eighty-eight, to the great sorrow of all who knew him. It is added that there is another larger work giving an account of his travels in various countries.
Such is all the information given about our author, beyond what he has himself told us. F‚-hien was his clerical name, and means "Illustrious in the Law," or "Illustrious master of the Law." The Shih which often precedes it is an abbreviation of the name of Buddha as S‚kyamuni, "the S‚kya, mighty in Love, dwelling in Seclusion and Silence," and may be taken as equivalent to Buddhist. He is sometimes said to have belonged to "the eastern Tsin dynasty" (A.D. 317-419), and sometimes to "the Sung," that is, the Sung dynasty of the House of LiŻ (A.D. 420-478). If he became a full monk at the age of twenty, and went to India when he was twenty-five, his long life may have been divided pretty equally between the two dynasties.
If there were ever another and larger account of F‚-hien's travels than the narrative of which a translation is now given, it has long ceased to be in existence.
In the catalogue of the imperial library of the Suy dynasty (A.D. 589-618), the name F‚-hien occurs four times. Towards the end of the last section of it, after a reference to his travels, his labors in translation at Kin-ling (another name for Nanking), in conjunction with Buddha-bhadra, are described. In the second section we find "A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms"—with a note, saying that it was the work of "the Sramana, F‚-hien"; and again, we have "Narrative of F‚-hien in two Books," and "Narrative of F‚-hien's Travels in one Book." But all these three entries may possibly belong to different copies of the same work, the first and the other two being in separate subdivisions of the catalogue.
In the two Chinese copies of the narrative in my possession the title is "Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms." In the Japanese or Corean recension the title is twofold; first, "Narrative of the Distinguished Monk, F‚-hien"; and then, more at large, "Incidents of Travels in India, by the Sramana of the Eastern TsÓn, F‚-hien, recorded by himself."
There is still earlier attestation of the existence of our little work than the Suy catalogue. The "Catalogue Raisonnť" of the imperial library of the present dynasty mentions two quotations from it by Le T‚o-yŁen, a geographical writer of the dynasty of the Northern Wei (A.D. 386-584), one of them containing eighty-nine characters, and the other two hundred and seventy-six; both of them given as from the "Narrative of F‚-hien."
In all catalogues subsequent to that of Suy our work appears. The evidence for its authenticity and genuineness is all that could be required. It is clear to myself that the "Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms" and the "Narrative of his Travels by F‚-hien" were designations of one and the same work, and that it is doubtful whether any larger work on the same subject was ever current. With regard to the text subjoined to my translation, it was published in Japan in 1779. The editor had before him four recensions of the narrative; those of the Sung and Ming dynasties, with appendices on the names of certain characters in them; that of Japan; and that of Corea. He wisely adopted the Corean text, published in accordance with a royal rescript in 1726, so far as I can make out; but the different readings of the other texts are all given in top-notes, instead of foot-notes as with us, this being one of the points in which customs in the East and West go by contraries. Very occasionally, the editor indicates by a single character, equivalent to "right" or "wrong," which reading in his opinion is to be preferred.
The editors of the "Catalogue Raisonnť" intimate their doubts of the good taste and reliability of all F‚-hien's statements. It offends them that he should call central India the "Middle Kingdom," and China, which to them was the true and only Middle Kingdom, but "a Border-land"—it offends them as the vaunting language of a Buddhist writer, whereas the reader will see in the expressions only an instance of what F‚-hien calls his "simple straightforwardness."
As an instance of his unreliability they refer to his account of the Buddhism of Khoten, whereas it is well-known, they say, that the Khoteners from ancient times till now have been Mohammedans;—as if they could have been so one hundred and seventy years before Mohammed was born, and two hundred twenty-two years before the year of the Hegira! And this is criticism in China. The catalogue was ordered by the K'ien-lung emperor in 1722. Between three and four hundred of the "Great Scholars" of the empire were engaged on it in various departments, and thus egregiously ignorant did they show themselves of all beyond the limits of their own country, and even of the literature of that country itself.