When he was ten years old, his father died; and an uncle, considering the widowed solitariness and helplessness of the mother, urged him to renounce the monastic life, and return to her, but the boy replied, “I did not quit the family in compliance with my father’s wishes, but because I wished to be far from the dust and vulgar ways of life.  This is why I chose monkhood.”  The uncle approved of his words and gave over urging him.  When his mother also died, it appeared how great had been the affection for her of his fine nature; but after her burial he returned to the monastery.

On one occasion he was cutting rice with a score or two of his fellow-disciples, when some hungry thieves came upon them to take away their grain by force.  The other Sramaneras all fled, but our young hero stood his ground, and said to the thieves, “If you must have the grain, take what you please.  But, Sirs, it was your former neglect of charity which brought you to your present state of destitution; and now, again, you wish to rob others.  I am afraid that in the coming ages you will have still greater poverty and distress;—­I am sorry for you beforehand.”  With these words he followed his companions into the monastery, while the thieves left the grain and went away, all the monks, of whom there were several hundred, doing homage to his conduct and courage.

When he had finished his noviciate and taken on him the obligations of the full Buddhist orders, his earnest courage, clear intelligence, and strict regulation of his demeanour were conspicuous; and soon after, he undertook his journey to India in search of complete copies of the Vinaya-pitaka.  What follows this is merely an account of his travels in India and return to China by sea, condensed from his own narrative, with the addition of some marvellous incidents that happened to him, on his visit to the Vulture Peak near Rajagriha.

It is said in the end that after his return to China, he went to the capital (evidently Nanking), and there, along with the Indian Sramana Buddha-bhadra, executed translations of some of the works which he had obtained in India; and that before he had done all that he wished to do in this way, he removed to King-chow (in the present Hoo-pih), and died in the monastery of Sin, at the age of eighty-eight, to the great sorrow of all who knew him.  It is added that there is another larger work giving an account of his travels in various countries.

Such is all the information given about our author, beyond what he himself has told us.  Fa-hien was his clerical name, and means “Illustrious in the Law,” or “Illustrious master of the Law.”  The Shih which often precedes it is an abbreviation of the name of Buddha as Sakyamuni, “the Sakya, mighty in Love, dwelling in Seclusion and Silence,” and may be taken as equivalent to Buddhist.  It is sometimes said to have belonged to “the eastern Tsin dynasty” (A.D. 317-419), and sometimes to “the Sung,” that is, the Sung dynasty of the House of Liu (A.D. 420-478).  If he became a full monk at the age of twenty, and went to India when he was twenty-five, his long life may have been divided pretty equally between the two dynasties.