Faxian

Faxian, also written Fa-hsien, was a Chinese Buddhist monk who traveled overland from China to India around 399 to 414 in search of complete texts of the monastic rules. Already in his sixties when he set out, he crossed the deserts of Central Asia and the passes of the Hindu Kush, visited the holy places of the Buddha's life in northern India, studied and copied scriptures at Pataliputra, spent two years in Sri Lanka and returned home by a perilous sea voyage. His account of the journey is one of the earliest firsthand descriptions of India and of Buddhism there.