A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms: Being An Account By the Chinese Monk Fa-Hsien of Travels in India And Ceylon (A.D. 399-414) in Search of the Buddhist Books of Discipline
Fa Xian, a Chinese Buddhist monk described his journey to Nepal, India, and Sri Lanka between 399 and 412. This important travelogue, along with the main religious content, offers brief but picturesque deiscription of about thirty kingdoms of central Asia and India. Fa Xian reported the information of great value on history, geography and ethnography of these countries. The scientific significance of the work is that the information, presented here, appears today the only source for understanding the situation in countries. Fa Xian did not just presented facts; he also pointed out the source of the information each time whether he saw the described by himself or heard about it. Mentioning places, he reported their exact location and distance between them – in days spent on the way from one to another, in Chinese li, or at least in steps. Owing to this feature of the work the location of numerous cities and countries, known heretofore only by names, was ascertained.
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