Hyecho (; 704–787),
Sanskrit: Prajñāvikrama;
pinyin: Hui Chao, was a
Buddhist monk from
Silla, one of the
Three Kingdoms of Korea.
Hyecho studied esoteric Buddhism in
Tang China, initially under
Śubhakarasiṃha and then under the famous Indian monk
Vajrabodhi who praised Hyecho as "one of six living persons who were well-trained in the five sections of the Buddhist
canon."
On the advice of his Indian teachers in China, he set out for India in 723 to acquaint himself with the language and culture of the land of the
Buddha.
Memoir of the pilgrimage to the five kingdoms of India
During his journey of India, Hyecho wrote a travelogue in Chinese named "
Memoir of the pilgrimage to the five kingdoms of India" (, in Korean ''Wang ocheonchukguk jeon'').
The travelogue reveals that Hyecho, after arriving by sea in India headed to the Indian Kingdom of
Magadha (present-day
Bihar), then moved on to visit
Kushinagar and
Varanasi. However Hyecho's journey did not end there and he continued north, where he visited
Lumbini (present-day
Nepal),
Kashmir
Kashmir () is the northernmost geographical region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term "Kashmir" denoted only the Kashmir Valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal Range. Today, the term encompas ...
, the Arabs. Hyecho left India following the
Silk Road
The Silk Road () was a network of Eurasian trade routes active from the second century BCE until the mid-15th century. Spanning over 6,400 kilometers (4,000 miles), it played a central role in facilitating economic, cultural, political, and reli ...
towards the west, via Agni or
Karasahr, to China where the account ends in 729 CE.
He referred to three kingdoms lying to the northeast of Kashmir which were "under the suzerainty of the Tibetans…. The country is narrow and small, and the mountains and valleys very rugged. There are monasteries and monks, and the people faithfully venerate the
Three Jewels. As to the kingdom of Tibet to the East, there are no monasteries at all and the Buddha's teaching is unknown; but in
hese above-mentionedcountries the population consists of Hu, therefore they are believers."
Rizvi goes on to point out that this passage not only confirms that in the early eighth century the region of modern
Ladakh was under Tibetan suzerainty, but that the people were of non-Tibetan stock.
It took Hyecho approximately four years to complete his journey. The travelogue contains much information on local diet, languages, climate, cultures, and political situations.
It is mentioned that Hyecho witnessed the decline of Buddhism in India. He also found it quite interesting to see the cattle roaming freely around cities and villages.
The travelogue was lost for many years until a fragment of it was rediscovered by
Paul Pelliot in the
Mogao Caves in China in 1908 and was subsequently translated into different languages over the years; the original version of ''
Wang ocheonchukguk jeon''. The original fragment is now in France.
Excerpt: Hyecho on Jibin
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, and that his Queen and dignitaries practice Buddhism (
三寶, "
Triratna"):
See also
*
Korean Buddhism
Korean Buddhism is distinguished from other forms of Buddhism by its attempt to resolve what its early practitioners saw as inconsistencies within the Mahayana Buddhist traditions that they received from foreign countries. To address this, the ...
*
Silk Road transmission of Buddhism
Buddhism entered Han China via the Silk Road, beginning in the 1st or 2nd century CE. The first documented translation efforts by Buddhist monks in China were in the 2nd century CE via the Kushan Empire into the Chinese territory bordering the ...
*
Xuanzang
*
Faxian
*
Yijing
*
Song Yun
*''
Wang ocheonchukguk jeon''
*''
Great Tang Records on the Western Regions''
*''
A Record of Buddhist Practices Sent Home from the Southern Sea
''A Record of Buddhist Practices Sent Home from the Southern Sea'', also known as the ''Nanhai Jigui Neifa Zhuan'' and by other translations, is a Buddhist travelogue by the Tang Chinese monk Yijing detailing his twenty five-year stay in India ...
''
Notes
References
* Sen, Surendranath (1956). ''India Through Chinese Eyes: Sir William Meyer Endowment Lectures 1952–53''. University of Madras.
Fully digitized "Wang ocheonchukguk jeon" on International Dunhuang Project website*W. Fuchs (ed. and transl.), "Huei-ch'ao's Pilgerreise durch Nordwest-Indien und Zentral-Asien um 726," ''Sitzungberichten der Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil-hist. Klasse,'' XXX, (Berlin, 1939): 426-469.
External links
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{{Authority control
704 births
787 deaths
Buddhist monks
Korean Buddhist monks
Korean Buddhists
8th-century Buddhist monks
8th-century Buddhists
Explorers of Asia
Silla Buddhist monks
Vajrayana
Pilgrimage accounts
Explorers of India
Explorers of Nepal