Song Yun

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Song Yun or Songyun
Personal
Bornlate 5th or early 6th cent.
Dunhuang
Died6th cent.
ReligionBuddhism
SchoolMahayana
Senior posting
Based inNorthern Wei Dynasty
Period in officefl. 510s & 520s
Song Yun
Traditional Chinese宋雲
Simplified Chinese宋云

Song Yun or Songyun (fl. 510s & 520s) was a Chinese Buddhist monk who travelled to medieval India from the Tuoba Northern Wei kingdom during China's Northern and Southern dynastic period at the behest of the Empress Hu. He and his companions Hui Zheng, Fa Li, and Zheng or Wang Fouze left the Wei capital Luoyang on foot in 518 and returned in the winter of 522 with 170 Buddhist scriptures.[1] Song and Hui's accounts of their journey are now lost but much of their information was preserved in other texts.

Life[edit]

Song Yun met with Mihirakula, the King of the Alchon Huns.[2]

Song Yun is known primarily from the accounts of the journey written by him and his companion Hui Zheng and from sources derived from them. He was originally from Dunhuang. Surviving accounts of his journey to India vary in various details. According to the reconstruction of the trip by Édouard Chavannes,[3]

Hui Zheng [and the others] were sent in the 11th day of the second month of the second Zhengui year (518); he and his companions arrived in Karghalik on the 29th day of the 7th month of the 2nd Zhengui year (519); in the second ten days of the ninth month, they met the king of the Hephthalites; at the beginning of the 11th month, they arrived in Bosi or Boji (southwest of Wakhan); in the second ten days of this same month, they entered Chitral and at the beginning of the 12th month they entered Udyana. Then, during the second ten days of the fourth month of the first Chengkuang year (520), they arrived in Gandhara. They stayed two years in Udyana and Gandhara until returning at the beginning of the third Chengkuang year (522), (and not the second year as one reads in the Account)." According to legend, they returned through the Congling (or "Onion") Mountains where Song Yun met the celebrated Damo or Bodhidharma who had died recently at Luoyang.[4]

Song Yun took the Qinghai Route via Xining, past Qinghai Lake and through the Qaidam depression, probably joining the main Southern Silk Route near Shanshan/Loulan. The route at the time was under the control of the Tuyuhun (Tibetan: 'Azha) people.[5]

They seem to have travelled to India along the difficult southern branch of the Silk Routes from Dunhuang to Yutian (Khotan) along the edge of the Taklamakan Desert, to the north of the Congling Mountains, and then crossed the mountains as Faxian had done before them. After passing through Wakhan, they met with the king of the Hephthalites, who had taken over the lands previously controlled by the Yuezhi and had recently conquered Gandhara.[6] He was apparently on tour at the time near the entrance to the Wakhan Corridor and not at his capital city Badiyan (Bâdhaghìs) which was near modern Herat in western Afghanistan.[7] The king, who had control over more than forty kingdoms, prostrated twice and received an Imperial edict from the Northern Wei Dynasty on his knees.[8]

Song Yun and his companions then travelled through Chitral and met the kings of the Swat Valley or Udyana.[9]

Works[edit]

Song and one of his companions, Hui Zheng, both wrote accounts of their journey, but they have since disappeared. His work is known as the Itinerary, Travels, or Travel Record of Songyun (t 《宋雲行記》, s 《宋云行记》, Sòngyún Xíngjì). Fortunately, much valuable information about their journey has been preserved in the Loyang Jielanji of Yang Xianzhi and other texts. There are some minor discrepancies among the surviving sources as to the exact dates of the journey and the names of the people who made the trip together.

See also[edit]

References[edit]

Citations[edit]

  1. ^ Chavannes 1903, pp. 379–380
  2. ^ Hans Bakker 24th Gonda lecture
  3. ^ Chavannes 1903, p. 381
  4. ^ Chavannes 1903, pp. pp. 381–382, 386. (Adapted from the French and including pinyin romanisations)
  5. ^ "A Lesser Known Route: The Qinghai Route | Silk Road in Rare Books".
  6. ^ Beal 1884, p. xv
  7. ^ Chavannes 1903, pp. 402, n. 3, 404, n. 1.
  8. ^ Chavannes 1903, p. 404
  9. ^ Chavannes 1903, pp. 407, n. 2.

Bibliography[edit]

  • Beal, Samuel;Translated by Samuel Beal. London. 1884. (1884). Si-Yu-Ki: Buddhist Records of the Western World, by Hiuen Tsiang (1884 ed.). Reprint: Delhi. Oriental Books Reprint Corporation. 1969. (Also contains an account of Song Yun's travels on pp. xv-xviii).{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  • Chavannes, Édouard (1903). Voyage de Song Yun dans l'Udyāna et le Gandhāra (in French) (1903 ed.). Bulletin de l'École française d'Extrême-Orient Volume 3, Numéro 3. - Total pages: 379-441 (Read on JStor).

External links[edit]

  • "A Lesser Known Route: the Qinghai Route." [1]
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