Stories Written and Rewritten: The Story of Faxian's Search For The Dharma in its Historical, Anecdotal, and Biographical Contexts

In many ways, the core of traditional historical narrative is the story (gushi 故事), which originally referred to anecdotes about past matters, but could broadly include oral tales, legends, and anecdotal materials. One notable category of traditional historical narrative that relied heavily on gushi is the “heterogenous account” (zazhuan 雜傳), which mixed historical fact with oral hearsay and other miscellaneous tibdits. Religious hagiographies would be classified as zazhuan, and one important example of this is the story of the Buddhist monk Faxian 法顯, who traveled to India at the end of the fourth century ce to bring Buddhist scriptures back to China. This essay will discuss Faxian's own account, known as the Foguo ji 佛國記 (A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms), and compare it to the account related by Huijiao 慧皎 in his Gaoseng zhuan 高僧傳 (Biographies of Eminent Monks). At the heart of this discussion is the question of how stories are told and retold, and how changes of detail and plot demonstrate the differing interests of the writers. The essay will also seek to shed light on the historical circumstances underlying Faxian's journey to India and his return to China.