zan's ramblings

i_am_zan (i_am_zan) wrote,
2005-06-07 17:20:00

Current mood: curious
Current music: sounds of Thomas the the Tank running on track

just stuff

i just found out whilst trawling for info. According to "Xuan Zang: A Buddhist on the Silk Road" (by Sally Hovey Wriggins)...that the journey to the west took 17 years to complete (although from the excerpt i found i wasn't sure if that was the round trip or just one way...of course he didn't have a jeep to take him and he didn't have a retinue- servants, friends, or companions whatever you wanna call them.

And he went to some really interesting places. He left China out of the gates of Lumen and via Liangzhou and Qinghai, travelled across the Gobi desert to Hami following the Tian Shan westward...Turfan--->Kucha...crossed the Tian Shan to Beda Pass...into what is now modernday Krygystan skirted Issk Kul and visited Tokmak and continued west to Tashken(modern day Uzbekistan) crossed yet more desert and morewestward ho into Samarkan and the famous Iron Gates. through to Balkh(which is today Afghanistan) crossing the Shibar Pass, into Kapisi (60km north of Kabul) and arriving in Jalalabad in AD630.

Changan (Perpetual peace) - also called Xian at the eastern end of the Silk Road.
Kinzan - is Ching Shan.

Incidentally there is amounted silk scroll at Kinzan-ji attributed to a monk there which reads

"The Dragon Comes Out of the Cave Accompanied by a Rain Cloud-
the 32nd descendant of Lin Chi at Kinzan-ji "