Traveller: Fa Xian
In the year 399 AD, when already in his sixties, the zealous monk Faxian (Fa-hsien) set out from Chang'an (Ch'ang-an) in China on an overland pilgrimage to India in quest of scriptures. At that time, before the invention of printing, Chinese Buddhists had a desperate need for scriptures. Sacred texts could only be obtained by copying out manuscripts by hand and such manuscripts were in short supply in China. Faxian's particular interest was in obtaining a complete text of the Vinaya, or monastic rules, in the original Sanskrit, to bring it back to China, and translate it into Chinese.
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