Wang ocheonchukguk jeon
Tibetan Buddhist Encyclopedia is now 14 years old
Our Encyclopedia recently received a wonderful opportunity for a major renewal on its 14th birthday . After many years of growing our Encyclopedia had become bit slow and sometimes even decided not to answer when people knocked on the door.
A very big thank you and blessings to Dmytro Rudiy (rudiy.nl) for his great work in upgrading the server, website and all of the infrastructure and helping make TBE fast and reliable again for everyone!
We kindly ask our readers to help us cover the cost of this important upgrade and also help with the ongoing costs of keeping the Encyclopedia alive and freely available.
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OM AH HUM VAJRA GURU PADMA SIDDHI HUM 🙏🙏🙏
May blessings shower down on all of yous 🙏🙏🙏
Wang ocheonchukguk jeon (Korean pronunciation: [waːŋotɕʰʌntɕʰukk͈uktɕ͈ʌn]; pinyin: wǎng wǔ tiānzhú guó chuán; "An account of travel to the five Indian kingdoms") is a travelogue by Buddhist monk Hyecho, who traveled from Korea to India, in the years 723 - 727/728 CE.
Written in Classical Chinese, the lingua franca of East Asia at the time, the work was long thought to be lost. However, a manuscript turned up among the Dunhuang manuscripts during the early 20th century. It was bought by French explorer and archaeologist Paul Pelliot in 1908, and is now owned by the National Library of France (Pelliot chinois 3532).
The manuscript scroll contains 5,893 classical Chinese characters in 227 lines. It originally consisted of three volumes, however volume one and later section of volume three are lost. It is 28.5 centimeters in width and 358.6 centimeters in length, is the first known overseas travelogue written by a Korean and contains information about the political, cultural and economic customs of India and central Asia at that time. The five Indian kingdoms in the work's title refer to West, East, North, South and Central India, but it also contains information about the Byzantine Empire (Greater Fu-lin), the Arabs, Persia and several Central Asian states.
It was loaned to the National Museum of Korea and went on display there from Dec. 18, 2010 to April 3, 2011, 1283 years after the document was first written.