Hiuen Tsang's (Xuanzang) Pilgrimage Route from China to India and return.

Source: Murshidabad.net

Travels in India:

Xuanzang left Adinapur, which had few Buddhist monks, but many stupas and monasteries. His travels included, passing through Hunza and the Khyber Pass to the east, reaching the former capital of Gandhara, Purushapura (Peshawar), on the other side. Peshawar was nothing compared to its former glory, and Buddhism was declining in the region. Xuanzang visited a number of stupas around Peshawar, notably the Kanishka Stupa. This stupa was built just southeast of Peshawar, by a former king of the city. In 1908, it was rediscovered by D.B. Spooner with the help of Xuanzang's account.

Xuanzang left Peshawar and travelled northeast to the Swat Valley (the location of Oḍḍiyāna is disputed between Swat valley and Orissa). Reaching Oḍḍiyāna, he found 1,400 old monasteries, that had previously supported 18,000 monks. The remnant monks were of the Mahayana school. Xuanzang continued northward and into the Buner Valley, before doubling back via Shabaz Gharni to cross the Indus river at Hund. Thereafter he headed to Taxila (呾叉始羅), a Mahayana Buddhist kingdom that was a vassal of Kashmir, which is precisely where he headed next. Here he found 5,000 more Buddhist monks in 100 monasteries. He went to Kashmir in 631, met a talented monk Samghayasas (僧伽耶舍), and studied there. Between 632 and early 633, he studied with various monks, including 14 months with Vinītaprabha (毘膩多缽臘婆 or 調伏光), 4 months with Candravarman (旃達羅伐摩 or 月胃), and "a winter and half a spring" with Jayagupta (闍耶毱多). During this time, Xuanzang writes about the Fourth Buddhist council that took place nearby, ca. 100 AD, under the order of King Kanishka of Kushana. He visited Chiniot and Lahore as well and provided the earliest writings available on the ancient cities. In 634, Xuanzang arrived in Matipura (秣底補羅), nowadays known as Mandawar.[4]

In 634, he went east to Jalandhar in eastern Punjab, before climbing up to visit predominantly non-Mahayana monasteries in the Kulu valley and turning southward again to Bairat and then Mathura, on the Yamuna river. Mathura had 2,000 monks of both major Buddhist branches, despite being Hindu-dominated. Xuanzang travelled up the river to Srughna before crossing eastward to Matipura, where he arrived in 635, having crossed the river Ganges. At Matipura Monastery, Xuanzang studied under Mitrasena.[6] From here, he headed south to Sankasya (Kapitha), said to be where Buddha descended from heaven, then onward to the northern Indian emperor Harsha's grand capital of Kanyakubja (Kannauj). It is believed he also visited Govishan present day Kashipur in the Harsha era, in 636, Xuanzang encountered 100 monasteries of 10,000 monks (both Mahayana and non-Mahayana), and was impressed by the king's patronage of both scholarship and Buddhism. Xuanzang spent time in the city studying early Buddhist scriptures, before setting off eastward again for Ayodhya (Saketa), homeland of the Yogacara school. Xuanzang now moved south to Kausambi (Kosam), where he had a copy made from an important local image of the Buddha.

Xuanzang now returned northward to Sravasti, travelled through Terai in the southern part of modern Nepal (here he found deserted Buddhist monasteries) and thence to Kapilavastu, his last stop before Lumbini, the birthplace of Buddha.

In 637, Xuanzang set out from Lumbini to Kusinagara, the site of Buddha's death, before heading southwest to the deer park at Sarnath where Buddha gave his first sermon, and where Xuanzang found 1,500 resident monks. Travelling eastward, at first via Varanasi, Xuanzang reached Vaisali, Pataliputra (Patna) and Bodh Gaya. He was then accompanied by local monks to Nalanda, the great Buddhist university of Indian state of Bihar, where he spent at least the next two years. He was in the company of several thousand scholar-monks, whom he praised. Xuanzang studied logic, grammar, Sanskrit, and the Yogacara school of Buddhism during his time at Nalanda. René Grousset notes that it was at Nalanda (where an "azure pool winds around the monasteries, adorned with the full-blown cups of the blue lotus; the dazzling red flowers of the lovely kanaka hang here and there, and outside groves of mango trees offer the inhabitants their dense and protective shade") that Xuanzang met the venerable Silabhadra, the monastery's superior.[7] Silabhadra had dreamt of Xuanzang's arrival and that it would help spread far and wide the Holy Law.[8] Grousset writes: "The Chinese pilgrim had finally found the omniscient master, the incomparable metaphysician who was to make known to him the ultimate secrets of the idealist systems...The founders of Mahayana idealism, Asanga and Vasubandhu...Dignaga...Dharmapala had in turn trained Silabhadra. Siladhadra was thus in a position to make available to the Sino-Japanese world the entire heritage of Buddhist idealism, and the Siddhi Hiuan Tsang's great philosophical treatise...is none other than the Summa of this doctrine, the fruit of seven centuries of Indian [Buddhist] thought."[9]

From Nalanda, Xuanzang travelled through several countries, including Campā, to the capital of Pundravardhana, identified with modern Mahasthangarh, in Bangladesh. There Xuanzang found 20 monasteries with over 3,000 monks studying both the Hinayana and the Mahayana. One of them was the Vāśibhã Monastery (Po Shi Po), where he found over 700 Mahayana monks from all over East India.[10][11] He also visited a stupa originally built by Ashoka Somapura Mahavihara at Paharpur in the district of Naogaon,Bangladesh.[citation needed]

After crossing the Karatoya, he went east to the ancient city of Pragjyotishpur (modern Guwahati) in the kingdom of Kamarupa (modern Assam) at the invitation of its Buddhist king Kumar Bhaskaravarman. Later, the king escorted Xuanzang back to the Kannauj at the request of king Harshavardhana, who was an ally of Kumar Bhaskaravarman, to attend a great Buddhist council there which was attended by both the kings.

Xuanzang turned southward and travelled to Andhradesa to visit the famous Viharas at Amaravati and Nagarjunakonda. He stayed at Amaravati and studied 'Abhidhammapitakam'. He observed that there were many Viharas at Amaravati and some of them were deserted. He later proceeded to Kanchi, the imperial capital of Pallavas and a strong centre of Buddhism.

Traveling through the Khyber Pass of the Hindu Kush, Xuanzang passed through Kashgar, Khotan, and Dunhuang on his way back to China. He arrived in the capital, Chang'an, on the seventh day of the first month of 645, and a great procession celebrated his return.

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