BěiWèi sēng Huìshēng shǐ xīyù jì 北魏僧惠生使西域記
Travel Record of the Northern-Wèi Monk Huì-shēng’s Embassy to the Western Regions
(anonymous compilation; 6th c.)
About the work
A 1-juan brief 6th-century Chinese travel record of a Buddhist embassy from Northern Wèi 北魏 to the Western Regions in search of Buddhist scriptures. The text describes the journey, undertaken in Wèi Shénguī 神龜 1 / 11 = November 518 – December 518, by the monk Huìshēng 惠生 of Chónglìsì 崇立寺 (the bǐqiū dispatched by the Empress-Dowager Hú 太后) accompanied by the Dūnhuáng 敦煌 layman Sòng Yún 宋雲. They returned in Zhèngguāng 正光 2 = 521 with 170 Mahāyāna texts.
The text preserved in Taishō 51 (No. 2086) is a brief summary; the fuller version of the same expedition is preserved in juan 5 of KR6r0127 Yáng Xuànzhī’s 楊衒之 Luòyáng qiélán jì (composed in 547), which is the principal source. The present compilation is therefore best understood as a derivative compendium drawing on the materials in Luòyáng qiélán jì j. 5; the dating bracket is therefore 521 – 547 (between the return of the embassy and its incorporation into the Luòyáng qiélán jì).
Abstract
The text begins with the empress-dowager’s imperial commission to Huìshēng (and Sòng Yún) to obtain Mahāyāna scriptures from the Western Regions. The travel-route is then described compactly:
- From the capital, west for 40 days to Chìlǐng 赤嶺 (“Red Ridge”), the western frontier of the Wèi state.
- Through Tùyùhún 吐谷渾 territory (Qaidam region), Shànshàn 鄯善, Khotan 于闐, the Pamirs (described as 葱嶺 “Onion Ridge”), and on to Wūcháng 烏場 (Uddiyāna / Swat valley).
- The famous detailed description of the Kaniṣka stūpa (the Què-lí-fú-tú 雀離浮圖) at Gandhāra, “twelve stories tall, 700 feet from the ground, base 300 paces wide, all of patterned-stone steps. Inside, the ten-thousand transformations of the Buddha’s deeds, the gold disc gleaming, the jewelled bells ringing in chord — among the fú-tú of the Western Regions, this is the foremost.” This description preserves an important documentary witness to the great Kaniṣka stūpa as it stood in the early 6th century, before its destruction.
- From Gandhāra, on to Nāgarahāra (那迦邏 — modern Jalalabad area) — the location of the famous uṣṇīṣa relic of the Buddha and the inscribed-stone-stūpa with the Buddha’s own hand-written script.
- Two-year stay in Wūcháng; return in Zhèngguāng 2 (521).
The work is documentary rather than literary, and is one of the principal sources for the religious geography of the Pamir / Tarim / Gandhāra trans-mountain route in the early 6th century — the period between Fǎxiǎn’s pilgrimage (399–413) and Xuánzàng’s (627–645).
Translations and research
- Samuel Beal, Travels of Fah-hian and Sung-yun (London: Trübner, 1869) — the principal early English translation, with the Sòng Yún materials.
- Édouard Chavannes, “Voyage de Song Yun dans l’Udyāna et le Gandhāra,” Bulletin de l’École française d’Extrême-Orient 3 (1903): 379–441.
- The Sòng Yún / Huì-shēng materials are also treated extensively in standard works on the Northern-Wèi Buddhism (Tsukamoto Zenryū 塚本善隆, Pèi-Wèi fó-jiào shǐ 北魏佛教史; Kenneth Ch’en, Buddhism in China; Erik Zürcher, The Buddhist Conquest of China).
- 楊衒之 KR6r0127 Luò-yáng qié-lán jì j. 5 — the principal Chinese source, which the present compilation epitomises.
Other points of interest
The Sòng-Yún / Huì-shēng embassy is the principal documented Buddhist contact between Northern-Wèi China and the Hephthalite state then ruling Tokharistan — and the principal Chinese witness to the Hephthalite Buddhist culture of Gandhāra-Bactria in the brief window before the Hephthalite collapse in the mid-6th century. The embassy’s account of the great Kaniṣka stūpa at Pèshawar is one of the principal pre-modern Chinese witnesses to that monument and one of the most important sources for its reconstruction by modern archaeology.
Links
- CBETA: T51n2086