Srivijaya's Buddhist Pilgrim I-Tsing

Long before Marco Polo, a Chinese monk named I-Tsing spent over a decade in Srivijaya, leaving behind a detailed account of its Buddhist monasteries, maritime routes, and scholarly life. This episode follows I-Tsing's journey from Canton to Palembang, his studies at the Srivijayan capital, and his pilgrimage to Nalanda in India. We explore what his writings reveal about 7th-century Southeast Asia: the scale of Buddhist learning, the multilingual port cities, and the networks that connected the Malay world to Tang China and India. I-Tsing's memoir, the 'Record of Buddhist Practices Sent Home from the Southern Sea,' is one of the earliest eyewitness accounts of Srivijaya, describing a cosmopolitan empire at its peak—before the Chola raids, before the shift to Jambi. We'll also touch on the controversies around I-Tsing's route and the identification of ancient place names. A rare window into a lost world, through the eyes of a devoted pilgrim. #Srivijaya #ITsing #BuddhistPilgrim #Palembang #Nalanda #TangDynasty #SeventhCentury #BuddhistMonasteries #MaritimeSilkRoad #ChineseMonk #RecordOfBuddhistPractices #MalayWorld #StraitOfMalacca #Sanfoqi #KunlunPo #Vajrayana #History #FexingoHistory Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo