Born 634
Died c. 712

I-Ching was one of a large number of Chinese Buddhist monks who traveled to India—the birthplace of Buddhism— to visit holy sites and study original religious texts there. One early Buddhist traveler was the Chinese priest Fa-Hsien (399–414), who began his journey in 399. Traveling by land and sea, he showed future Chinese pilgrims how to make their way to and from India. Beginning in 629, another Chinese monk, Hsüan-Tsang (602–664), made an epic sixteen-year journey through much of central Asia and the Indian subcontinent. He recorded all he saw and brought back many Buddhist relics and texts. This inspired I-Ching to undertake his own religious journey to India.

I-Ching set out in 671. Unlike most pilgrims before him, he could not take the usual land route to India across central Asia and the Himalayas. There was political turmoil in Tibet and Afghanistan...