''Wang ocheonchukguk jeon''往 means ''go to''. 五 means ''five''. 天竺 means ''India'', originally come of Sindhu or Hindu. 國 means ''lands'' or ''countries''. 傳 means ''diary''. (;

pinyin Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally written in Chinese fo ...

: ''wǎng wǔ tiānzhú guó zhuàn''; "An account of travel to the five Indian kingdoms") is a travelogue by

Buddhist Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...

monk A monk (, from el, μοναχός, ''monachos'', "single, solitary" via Latin ) is a person who practices religious asceticism by monastic living, either alone or with any number of other monks. A monk may be a person who decides to dedic ...

Hyecho, who traveled from

Korea Korea ( ko, 한국, or , ) is a peninsular region in East Asia. Since 1945, it has been divided at or near the 38th parallel, with North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) comprising its northern half and South Korea (Republic ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area, the List of countries and dependencies by population, second-most populous ...

, in the years 723 - 727/728 CE.

Overview

Written in

Classical Chinese Classical Chinese, also known as Literary Chinese (古文 ''gǔwén'' "ancient text", or 文言 ''wényán'' "text speak", meaning "literary language/speech"; modern vernacular: 文言文 ''wényánwén'' "text speak text", meaning "literar ...

, the lingua franca of

East Asia East Asia is the eastern region of Asia, which is defined in both geographical and ethno-cultural terms. The modern states of East Asia include China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan. China, North Korea, South Korea ...

at the time, the work was long thought to be lost. However, a manuscript turned up among the

Dunhuang manuscripts Dunhuang manuscripts refer to a wide variety of religious and secular documents (mostly manuscripts, but also including some woodblock-printed texts) in Chinese and other languages that were discovered at the Mogao Caves of Dunhuang, China, dur ...

during the early 20th century. It was bought by French explorer and archaeologist

Paul Pelliot Paul Eugène Pelliot (28 May 187826 October 1945) was a French Sinologist and Orientalist best known for his explorations of Central Asia and his discovery of many important Chinese texts such as the Dunhuang manuscripts. Early life and career ...

in 1908, and is now owned by the National Library of France (). The manuscript scroll contains 5,893 classical Chinese characters in 227 lines. It originally consisted of three volumes, however volume one and later section of volume three are lost. It is 28.5 centimeters in width and 358.6 centimeters in length, is the first known overseas travelogue written in Chinese by a Korean and contains information about the political, cultural and economic customs of India and central Asia at that time. The five Indian kingdoms in the work's title refer to

West West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth. Etymology The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some ...

East East or Orient is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth. Etymology As in other languages, the word is formed from the fac ...

North North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography. Etymology The word ''north ...

South South is one of the cardinal directions or compass points. The direction is the opposite of north and is perpendicular to both east and west. Etymology The word ''south'' comes from Old English ''sūþ'', from earlier Proto-Germanic ''*sunþa ...

and

Central India Central India is a loosely defined geographical region of India. There is no clear official definition and various ones may be used. One common definition consists of the states of Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, which are included in al ...

, This scroll is estimated as the first East Asian travelogue to the Hindu world. Jeong and other scholars states his westernmost destination was

Nishapur Nishapur or officially Romanized as Neyshabur ( fa, ;Or also "نیشاپور" which is closer to its original and historic meaning though it is less commonly used by modern native Persian speakers. In Persian poetry, the name of this city is wri ...

, which was a city But it also contains information about the Byzantine Empire (Greater Fu-lin), and several Central Asian states. It was loaned to the

National Museum of Korea The National Museum of Korea is the flagship museum of Korean history and art in South Korea and is the cultural organization that represents Korea. Since its establishment in 1945, the museum has been committed to various studies and research ...

and went on display there from Dec. 18, 2010 to April 3, 2011, 1283 years after the document was first written.

Excerpt: Hyecho on Kapiśa/Jibin (paragraph 22)

One of the important excerpts from Hyecho's work relates to his visit Jibin ( Kapisa) in 726 CE: for example, he reports that the country was ruled by a Turk King, thought to be one of the

Turk Shahis The Turk Shahis or Kabul Shahis were a dynasty of Western Turk, or mixed Turko-Hephthalite, origin, that ruled from Kabul and Kapisa to Gandhara in the 7th to 9th centuries AD. They may have been of Khalaj ethnicity."The new rulers of Kabul ...

, and that his Queen and dignitaries practice Buddhism ( 三寶, "

Triratna The Triratna ( pi, or ; sa, or ) is a Buddhist symbol, thought to visually represent the Three Jewels of Buddhism (the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Sangha). Symbol The Triratna symbol is composed of: * A lotus flower within a circle. * A di ...

"):

Excerpt: Hyecho on Gandhara (paragraph 18)

References

Notes Bibliography * *Yang, Han-sung ''et al.'' (1984). ''The Hye Cho's Diary: Memoir of the Pilgrimage to the Five Regions of India'' (1984). Translation, text and editing by Yang, Han-sung et al. Religions of Asia series (Berkeley, Calif.); no. 2. UNESCO Collection of Representative Works. Berkeley, Calif.: Asian Humanities Press; Seoul: Po Chin Chai. .

External resources

Fully digitized "Wang ocheonchukguk jeon"
on

International Dunhuang Project The International Dunhuang Project (IDP) is an international collaborative effort to conserve, catalogue and digitise manuscripts, printed texts, paintings, textiles and artefacts from the Mogao caves at the Western Chinese city of Dunhuang and v ...

website {{UNESCO Collection Korean Buddhist texts Travel books Pilgrimage accounts 8th-century texts Dunhuang manuscripts Bibliothèque nationale de France collections Chinese-language literature of Korea