7 December 1999, Islamabad, overnight in Ma

Iott Guesthouse

There is a more specific reason why I am so excited to find the footprints of Fa Xian and Xuanzang in the hometown of Gandhara in Taxila: this is the first time that our expedition has been a reverse encounter in a cultural sense.

I have said before that there were four kinds of people who went far in ancient China: one was a merchant, the second was a soldier, the third was a monk, and the fourth was a poet.

Merchants make profits, soldiers follow their fate, and although their travels will also bring cultural results, cultural intentions in the strict sense belong to monks and poets who travel far away.

These four types of people also walk at different distances. The merchants on the Silk Road went a little farther, but the soldiers did not go too far, because the Chinese emperors, although they were also pretentious, rarely invaded others over long distances like the monarchs of Greece, Egypt, Babylon, and Persia. Genghis Khan's westward march was long, but his dynasty had not yet ruled China at that time. Compared with some ancient civilizations, China is indeed the most "peaceful" country, and I think this is one of the reasons why Chinese civilization can survive and continue for a long time.

What about monks and poets? Poets, first of all, those Biansai poets, including great poets like Li Bai, who have a particularly loose foot, have indeed walked a lot in their lives, but it is unlikely that they will seriously cross the Taklamakan Desert and the Pamirs, and even if they have such a desire, they do not have enough will, perseverance and physical strength. Good poets are sentimental, and when they encounter a desperate situation in life, they are likely to break down spiritually. As for the other seemingly wild literati, no matter how many rivers and mountains they talk about on weekdays, most of them run away when they encounter real hardships and dangers, and then turn around and point behind the backs of the travelers. The common disease of literati is the same in ancient and modern times.

Monks are different, religious ideas bring them great energy, their mission is to pass through the desperate situation of life, to obtain spiritual scriptures, so there is a possibility of earth-shattering, weeping ghosts and gods.

As a result, only merchants and monks were left who could go the long way, and only monks had clear cultural intentions.

Along the way, we have imagined the limits of what ancient Chinese traders could reach on the Red Sea in Egypt, and on the Babylonian and Persian Roads, we can already judge their unmistakable footprints, even if they were old journeys thousands of years ago.

There will be some in modern times, but this time we will focus on the distant antiquity in the millennium. In ancient times, especially thousands of years ago, when other ancient civilizations were using horseshoe swords as the first guide to sway thousands of miles away, Chinese culture was still very inward-looking. Finally, two monks came out, indeed with the purpose of cultural exchange, to use Chinese characters to absorb the wisdom of foreign countries. How can we not be thrilled to find out where they are in the homeland of Gandhara?

We had a reverse encounter with them, but then, instead of going backwards, we were going to follow them to India, what they called Tianzhu, the holy land of Buddhism.

On the slopes of Taxila, I have been pinching my fingers to estimate that Fa Xian and Xuanzang came here after a lot of hardships, and they actually stepped into the history of a foreign country, so which part of the history of others did they step into?

Fa Xian arrived at the beginning of the fifth century, 900 years after Shakyamuni founded Buddhism, and more than 600 years after Ashoka protected the Dharma, and had entered the middle of the Mahayana Buddhist period. The collation and exposition of the Mahayana Buddhist scriptures more than 300 years ago and Nagarjuna more than 100 years ago have become a grand view in theory and flourish in society. Not far west of where I am now standing, Fa Xian was amazed by the magnificent "Gasserga Pagoda" at the place called Frusa (present-day Peshawar), which was everywhere at that time. That said, he had come at the right time.

Xuanzang arrived more than 200 years later than Faxian, which was the late stage of Mahayana Buddhism. But he was fortunate to meet the last great monarch in the history of ancient India, King Ring. King Jieri is reviving Mahayana Buddhism, which is in decline, with high political prestige and cultural talent, and is also very courteous to Xuanzang. Then, Xuanzang came at the right time. After the Ring of the Sun, Buddhism declined, and then entered the Esoteric era.

That is to say, they are entering some important fragments of the religious and cultural history of the Indus and Ganges Valleys, but once they enter, their gaze will not stop at these fragments. They retrieved some of the most important scriptures, but they brought with them a great deal of insight beyond the scriptures. They arrive in the glorious period of history, and their agile searching eyes cannot but pay attention to the source and place of glory. So what they actually got was much more than what they brought back.

When they study Buddhism, they cannot but trace the background culture of Buddhism, such as the Vedic texts and the Upanishads, as well as the epics Ramayana and Mahabharata. This time, religion has collided with the source of an ancient civilization, which is both independent and profound, and the quality is inexhaustible. I myself have studied the Fifty Upanishads translated by Mr. Xu Fancheng for a while, and I have read the Dance Theory of Bharata Muni in order to explore the history of ancient Oriental art, and I have deeply felt the grandeur and difficulty of this civilization. Therefore, in the face of an ancient civilization, it is like facing an unfathomable sea, and it is not enough to read the description of the sea from books, but at least to stand on the shore and smell the smell of the sea. Fa Xian and Xuanzang understood this, so they were willing to go through hardships and became the first messengers of deep communication between East Asian civilizations and Central Asian civilizations. All in-depth communication cannot rely only on written materials, but must be based on footsteps, eyes, and even the whole flesh and blood as a raft.

Life is too short, and there is not enough time to fully understand one civilization, let alone two or even more civilizations. As a result, everyone became in a hurry, and in the hurry, they were the most easily deceived, believing some misinformation as the basis for judgment, which hurt both themselves and civilization. Therefore, we should seize the time to walk more and get out of the trap of being deceived with the hard work of our steps. Fa Xian and Xuanzang are in front, which is an eternal candlelight.

We, don't look at the rolling wheels, in fact, we are just chasing them.