Page:History of India Vol 9.djvu/155

AN OLD BUDDHIST SCULPTURE FROM THE BHARAHAT STUPA. CHAPTER III A DESCRIPTION OF INDIA IN GENERAL BY THE CHINESE BUDDHIST PILGRIM H1UAN TSANG About 650 A. D. A LARGE amount of information regarding the history and conditions of early India has been contributed by the Chinese travellers who visited Hin- dustan during the first millennium of the Christian era. Most of these travellers were Buddhist pilgrims bent on their pious mission of visiting the scenes which had been made holy by the presence of the Blessed One. Among the most valuable records written by one of these pilgrims from the Celestial Kingdom, as has al- ready been pointed out in the second volume, was Hiuan Tsang, the contemporary of the Indian king Harsha, in the seventh century A. D. This devoted Buddhist left China in 629 A. D. and s$ent more than ten years in wandering throughout India. On his re- turn to his native country he recorded his observations in a work entitled " Si-yu-ki," and the well-known chapter here reproduced from it gives a good account of Indian life as he saw it. 121