Bodhi-dharma, Zen, and traveling monks

I’ve been reading a lot of historic travel accounts of India for my WIP. They are all foreign accounts--by Chinese, Arab, Greek or Italian travelers who went to India for pilgrimage, or trade, or employment in its royal courts. They are fascinating!

Then I started thinking about Indian travelers who left India to see the world. I knew they had to exist, but there are hardly any surviving accounts that tell of them. Still, I decided to make a list …

The ones I found easily were Buddhist monks who went to the Far East to spread their teachings. The most famous of these was the monk Bodhidharma who went to China in the 5th century AD. He was the founder of Zen Buddhism (Sanskrit - Dhyana, Chinese – Chan, Japanese – Zen) and said to be the father of Shaolin Kung-Fu (!) as well as having discovered tea. He is known as Daruma in Japan. Those Daruma dolls they have are based on him! And look at this clip I found of a Chinese movie about his life (Master of Zen). Chinese actors playing Indian roles and talking in Cantonese! How amazing is that!!



And there are more. China, Tibet, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia and even Japan all had visitors from India.

Sona and Uttara – Cambodia 274 BC
Malananda – Korea 384 AD
Bodhidharma – China 5th century (Founded Chan/Zen)
Kwang Yoo – Korea 7th century (Founded Golgulsa monastery)
Bodhisena – Japan 736 AD
Nagasena – 7th century AD went to China from Cambodia
Padmasambhava – Tibet 747 AD
Prajna – 804 AD China
Atisha - Tibet 10th-11th century
Vinitaruci – Vietnam

There were also the seafaring Chola Kings of Southern India, Rajaraja and Rajendra, who had a formidable Navy and colonized Java, Malacca etc. And there were traders who plied the monsoon winds of the Indian Ocean and traveled regularly to the East.

So, what about the West? Did no Indians travel to Persia, Arabia, Egypt or Greece? The evidence is they did. The Bamiayan Buddhas were a product of the Indo-Greeks that ruled Afghanistan (Gandhara/Bactria) after Alexander’s conquests. Emperor Ashoka erected stone tablets etched in Greek and sent Buddhist missionaries to the Yonas (Ions or Greeks).

The Mahavamasa (Chronicles of Lanka) says -
The wise Maharakkhita who went to the country of the Yona (Greece) delivered in the midst of the people the Kalakarama suttanta. A hundred and seventy thousand living beings attained, to the reward of the path (of salvation); ten thousand received the pabbajja.

So someone went West, but what became of them, no one knows! There had also always been trading links over sea and land. But until someone unearths an account from the Indian POV we have only Megesthanes and Marco Polo before the colonial period to shed light on these links.

* Pictures from Flickr creative commons - Bodhidharma by unforth, Daruma by KO-ROCK