Song Yunor Songyun | |
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| Personal life | |
| Born | late 5th or early 6th cent. |
| Died | 6th cent. |
| Religious life | |
| Religion | Buddhism |
| School | Mahayana |
| Senior posting | |
| Based in | Northern Wei Dynasty |
| Period in office | fl. 510s & 520s |
| Song Yun | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Traditional Chinese | 宋雲 | ||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 宋云 | ||||||||
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Song Yun orSongyun (fl. 510s & 520s) was aChineseBuddhistmonk who travelled tomedieval India from theTuobaNorthern Wei kingdom duringChina'sNorthern and Southern dynastic period at the behest of theEmpress Hu. He and his companionsHuisheng, Fali, and Zheng or Wang Fouze left the Wei capitalLuoyang on foot in 518 and returned in the winter of 522 with 170Buddhist scriptures.[1] Song and Hui's accounts of their journey are now lost but much of their information was preserved in other texts.
Knowledge of Song Yun's bibliography is known primarily from sources derived from the accounts of the journey written by Song and his companionHuisheng or analysis of those sources. He was originally fromDunhuang. Surviving accounts of his journey to India vary in various details. According to the reconstruction of the trip byÉdouard Chavannes,[3]
Song Yun took theQinghai Route viaXining, pastQinghai Lake and through theQaidam depression, probably joining the main Southern Silk Route nearShanshan/Loulan. The route at the time was under the control of theTuyuhun (Tibetan: 'Azha) people.[5]
They seem to have travelled to India along the difficult southern branch of theSilk Routes from Dunhuang toYutian (Khotan) along the edge of theTaklamakan Desert, to the north of theCongling Mountains, and then crossed the mountains asFaxian had done before them. After passing through Wakhan, they met with the king of theHephthalites, who had taken over the lands previously controlled by theYuezhi and had recently conquered Gandhara.[6] He was apparently on tour at the time near the entrance to theWakhan Corridor and not at his capital city Badiyan (Bâdhaghìs) which was near modernHerat 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 throughChitral and met the kings of theSwat Valley or Udyana.[9]
Song and one of his companions,Huisheng, both wrote accounts of their journey, but they have since disappeared. His work is known as theItinerary,Travels, orTravel 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 theLoyang Jielanji ofYang Xuanzhi 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.
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