Faxian 法顯 (c. 338 – c. 422/423; lay surname Gōng 龔) was the first Chinese Buddhist pilgrim known to have reached India and returned, and one of the most influential single figures in the formation of medieval Chinese Buddhism. A native of Wǔyáng 武陽 in Píngyáng commandery 平陽郡 (modern Línfén 臨汾, Shānxī), he was ordained at three and fully ordained at twenty. The standard biographical sources — the Chū sānzàng jì jí 出三藏記集 (T2145, 111c–112b) and the Gāosēng zhuàn 高僧傳 (T2059, 337c–338c) — record that, conscious of the deficiencies and lacunae in the Chinese Vinaya literature of his day, he set out from Cháng’ān in Lóng’ān 隆安 3 (399), aged about sixty, with the monks Huìjǐng 慧景, Dàozhěng 道整 and others, travelled overland through Central Asia to north India, reached central India in c. 405, remained there six years acquiring manuscripts, then returned by sea via Siṃhala (Sri Lanka), making landfall at Qīngzhōu 青州 (modern Shāndōng) in Yìxī 義熙 9 (413).
He then proceeded to the southern capital Jiànkāng 建康, where he settled at the Daochang Monastery (Dàochǎng-sì 道場寺) and, in collaboration with the Indian master Buddhabhadra 佛馱跋陀羅 and others, produced over the following years a series of translations from the manuscripts he had brought back: the [[KR6a0007|Dà bānnièpán jīng 大般涅槃經]] (T7, the “small” Mahāparinirvāṇa in 3 fascicles), the Mahāyāna Fó shuō dà bān nìhuán jīng 佛說大般泥洹經 (T376, in 6 fasc.), the Mahāsāṃghika Vinaya (Móhē sēngqí lǜ 摩訶僧祇律, T1425, with Buddhabhadra), the Mahāsāṃghika nuns’ Pratimokṣa (T1427), the Záxíng zàng jīng 雜行藏經 (T745) and others. He died at Xīn-sì 辛寺 in Jīngzhōu 荊州, the year of his death uncertain — variously given in the sources as Yìxī 義熙 14 (418), or as Jǐngpíng 景平 1 (423), at the age of either 86 or 82 (the DILA authority gives 86 as cyclically most consistent).
His travel-memoir, the Fóguó jì 佛國記 (also titled Gāosēng Fǎxiǎn zhuàn 高僧法顯傳; T2085) survives intact and is one of the most important early-medieval sources for the religious geography of Central Asia, north India and Sri Lanka. DILA Buddhist Person Authority A000750.