Song Yun
Encyclopedia
Song Yun was a Chinese Buddhist monk who was sent by the devout Buddhist Empress Hu 胡 (?-528 CE) of the Northern Wei Dynasty
with some companions including the monk
Hui Zheng, Fa Li and Zheng (or Wang) Fouze, to northwestern India to search for Buddhist texts. They left the Wei capital Luoyang
, on foot in 518 and returned in the winter of 522 with 170 Mahayana
Buddhist texts.
, and one of his companions, Hui Zheng, both wrote accounts of their journey, but they have since disappeared. Song Yun took the Qinghai
Route via Xining
, past Koko Nur and through the Qaidam
depression, probably joining the main Southern Silk Route near Shanshan
/Loulan
. The route at the time was under the control of the Tuyuhun
(Tibetan: 'Azha) people.
Fortunately, much valuable information about their journey has been preserved in the Loyang Jielanji of Yang Xianzhi and other texts. There are some minor discrepancies among the surviving sources as to the exact dates of the journey and the names of the people who made the trip together, but Édouard Chavannes
believes it is possible to work out the itinerary with some confidence.
They seem to have travelled to India along the difficult southern branch of the Silk Routes from Dunhuang to Khotan
along the edge of the Taklamakan
Desert, to the north of the Congling Mountains, and then, like Fa Xian had done previously, crossed the mountains. After passing through Wakhan, they met with the King of the Hephthalites, who had taken over the lands previously controlled by the Yuezhi
and had recently conquered Gandhara. He was apparently on tour at the time near the entrance to the Wakhan Corridor
and not at his capital city Badiyan (Bâdhaghìs) which was near modern Herat
in western Afghanistan. The king, who had control over more than forty kingdoms, prostrated twice and received an Imperial edict from the Northern Wei Dynasty on his knees.
Song Yun and his companions then travelled through Chitral
and met the kings of the Swat Valley or Udyana.
Northern Wei
The Northern Wei Dynasty , also known as the Tuoba Wei , Later Wei , or Yuan Wei , was a dynasty which ruled northern China from 386 to 534 . It has been described as "part of an era of political turbulence and intense social and cultural change"...
with some companions including the monk
Bhikkhu
A Bhikkhu or Bhikṣu is an ordained male Buddhist monastic. A female monastic is called a Bhikkhuni Nepali: ). The life of Bhikkhus and Bhikkhunis is governed by a set of rules called the patimokkha within the vinaya's framework of monastic discipline...
Hui Zheng, Fa Li and Zheng (or Wang) Fouze, to northwestern India to search for Buddhist texts. They left the Wei capital Luoyang
Luoyang
Luoyang is a prefecture-level city in western Henan province of Central China. It borders the provincial capital of Zhengzhou to the east, Pingdingshan to the southeast, Nanyang to the south, Sanmenxia to the west, Jiyuan to the north, and Jiaozuo to the northeast.Situated on the central plain of...
, on foot in 518 and returned in the winter of 522 with 170 Mahayana
Mahayana
Mahāyāna is one of the two main existing branches of Buddhism and a term for classification of Buddhist philosophies and practice...
Buddhist texts.
The Voyage
Song Yun, who was originally from DunhuangDunhuang
Dunhuang is a city in northwestern Gansu province, Western China. It was a major stop on the ancient Silk Road. It was also known at times as Shāzhōu , or 'City of Sands', a name still used today...
, and one of his companions, Hui Zheng, both wrote accounts of their journey, but they have since disappeared. Song Yun took the Qinghai
Qinghai
Qinghai ; Oirat Mongolian: ; ; Salar:) is a province of the People's Republic of China, named after Qinghai Lake...
Route via Xining
Xining
Xining is the capital of Qinghai province, People's Republic of China, and the largest city on the Tibetan Plateau. It has 2,208,708 inhabitants at the 2010 census whom 1,198,304 live in the built up area made of 4 urban districts.-History:...
, past Koko Nur and through the Qaidam
Qaidam
Qaidam Basin, also spelled Tsaidam is an hyperarid basin that occupies a large part of the Haixi Mongol and Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Qinghai Province, western China...
depression, probably joining the main Southern Silk Route near Shanshan
Shanshan
Shanshan is the Chinese name for a kingdom that existed roughly from 200 BCE-1000 CE at the north-eastern end of the Taklamakan Desert including the great, but now mostly dry, salt lake known as Lop Nur....
/Loulan
Loulan
Loulan or Kroran was an ancient kingdom based around an important oasis city already known in the 2nd century BCE on the north-eastern edge of the Lop Desert. Loulan, known to Russian archaeologists as Krorayina, was an ancient kingdom along the Silk Road. In 108 BCE, the Han Dynasty forces...
. The route at the time was under the control of the Tuyuhun
Tuyuhun
The Tuyuhun Kingdom was a powerful kingdom established by nomadic tribes related to the Xianbei in the Qilian Mountains and upper Yellow River valley....
(Tibetan: 'Azha) people.
Fortunately, much valuable information about their journey has been preserved in the Loyang Jielanji of Yang Xianzhi and other texts. There are some minor discrepancies among the surviving sources as to the exact dates of the journey and the names of the people who made the trip together, but Édouard Chavannes
Édouard Chavannes
Édouard Chavannes was a French sinologist.He is best known for his translations from Sima Qian's Shiji , sections of the Hou Hanshu relating to the 'Western Regions', the Weilüe, his studies of Han dynasty stone carvings Édouard Chavannes (Chinese: ) (1865–1918) was a French sinologist.He is best...
believes it is possible to work out the itinerary with some confidence.
- "Hui Zheng [and the others] were sent in the 11th day of the second month of the second Zhengui year (518); he and his companions arrived in Karghalik on the 29th day of the 7th month of the 2nd Zhengui year (519); in the second ten days of the ninth month, they met the king of the Hephthalites; at the beginning of the 11th month, they arrived in Bosi or Boji (southwest of WakhanWakhanWakhan or "the Wakhan" is a very mountainous and rugged part of the Pamir and Karakoram regions of Afghanistan. Wakhan District is a district in Badakshan Province.-Geography:...
); in the second ten days of this same month, they entered ChitralChitralChitral or Chetrar , translated as field in the native language Khowar, is the capital of the Chitral District, situated on the western bank of the Kunar River , in Pakistan. The town is at the foot of Tirich Mir, the highest peak of the Hindu Kush, high...
and at the beginning of the 12th month they entered Udyana. Then, during the second ten days of the fourth month of the first Chengkuang year (520), they arrived in GandharaGandharaGandhāra , is the name of an ancient kingdom , located in northern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan. Gandhara was located mainly in the vale of Peshawar, the Potohar plateau and on the Kabul River...
. They stayed two years in Udyana and Gandhara until returning at the beginning of the third Chengkuang year (522), (and not the second year as one reads in the Account)." According to legend, they returned through the Congling (or "Onion") Mountains where Song Yun met the celebrated Damo or BodhidharmaBodhidharmaBodhidharma was a Buddhist monk who lived during the 5th/6th century AD. He is traditionally credited as the transmitter of Ch'an to China, and regarded as the first Chinese patriarch...
who had died recently at LuoyangLuoyangLuoyang is a prefecture-level city in western Henan province of Central China. It borders the provincial capital of Zhengzhou to the east, Pingdingshan to the southeast, Nanyang to the south, Sanmenxia to the west, Jiyuan to the north, and Jiaozuo to the northeast.Situated on the central plain of...
.
They seem to have travelled to India along the difficult southern branch of the Silk Routes from Dunhuang to Khotan
Khotan
Hotan , or Hetian , also spelled Khotan, is the seat of the Hotan Prefecture in Xinjiang, China. It was previously known in Chinese as 于窴/於窴 and to 19th-century European explorers as Ilchi....
along the edge of the Taklamakan
Taklamakan
The Taklamakan Desert , also known as Taklimakan and Teklimakan, is a desert in Central Asia, in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China...
Desert, to the north of the Congling Mountains, and then, like Fa Xian had done previously, crossed the mountains. After passing through Wakhan, they met with the King of the Hephthalites, who had taken over the lands previously controlled by the Yuezhi
Yuezhi
The Yuezhi, or Rouzhi , also known as the Da Yuezhi or Da Rouzhi , were an ancient Central Asian people....
and had recently conquered Gandhara. He was apparently on tour at the time near the entrance to the Wakhan Corridor
Wakhan Corridor
Wakhan Corridor is commonly used as a synonym for Wakhan, an area of far north-eastern Afghanistan which forms a land link or "corridor" between Afghanistan and China. The Corridor is a long and slender panhandle or salient, roughly long and between wide. It separates Tajikistan in the north...
and not at his capital city Badiyan (Bâdhaghìs) which was near modern Herat
Herat
Herāt is the capital of Herat province in Afghanistan. It is the third largest city of Afghanistan, with a population of about 397,456 as of 2006. It is situated in the valley of the Hari River, which flows from the mountains of central Afghanistan to the Karakum Desert in Turkmenistan...
in western Afghanistan. The king, who had control over more than forty kingdoms, prostrated twice and received an Imperial edict from the Northern Wei Dynasty on his knees.
Song Yun and his companions then travelled through Chitral
Chitral
Chitral or Chetrar , translated as field in the native language Khowar, is the capital of the Chitral District, situated on the western bank of the Kunar River , in Pakistan. The town is at the foot of Tirich Mir, the highest peak of the Hindu Kush, high...
and met the kings of the Swat Valley or Udyana.
See also
- Buddhism in ChinaBuddhism in ChinaChinese Buddhism refers collectively to the various schools of Buddhism that have flourished in China since ancient times. Buddhism has played an enormous role in shaping the mindset of the Chinese people, affecting their aesthetics, politics, literature, philosophy and medicine.At the peak of the...
- Silk Road transmission of BuddhismSilk Road transmission of BuddhismThe Silk Road transmission of Buddhism to China is most commonly thought to have started in the late 2nd or the 1st century CE.The first documented translation efforts by Buddhist monks in China were in the 2nd century CE, possibly as a consequence of the expansion of the Kushan Empire into the...
- Zhang QianZhang QianZhang Qian was an imperial envoy to the world outside of China in the 2nd century BCE, during the time of the Han Dynasty...
- XuanzangXuanzangXuanzang was a famous Chinese Buddhist monk, scholar, traveler, and translator who described the interaction between China and India in the early Tang period...
- Zheng HeZheng HeZheng He , also known as Ma Sanbao and Hajji Mahmud Shamsuddin was a Hui-Chinese mariner, explorer, diplomat and fleet admiral, who commanded voyages to Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and East Africa, collectively referred to as the Voyages of Zheng He or Voyages of Cheng Ho from...
- Fa Hien CaveFa Hien CaveFa Hien Cave is a cave in the district of Kalutara, Western Province, Sri Lanka, named after the Buddhist monk Faxian . The cave is important for the Late Pleistocene human skeletal remains discovered there in the 1960s and 1980s....
- HyechoHyechoHyecho , Sanskrit: Prajñāvikram; Hui Chao in Chinese Pinyin, was a Korean Buddhist monk from Silla, one the three Korean kingdoms of the period."You complain of the long way home to the west,and I sigh at the endless road to the east."...
- Yi Jing (monk)
- Fa Xian
External links
- "A Lesser Known Route: the Qinghai Route." http://dsr.nii.ac.jp/rarebook/07/