“EVER SINCE WE HUMANS FIRST BEGAN to walk, we have worn paths to our neighbor's house and to the next village and beyond. And ever since we discovered the wheel and learned to tame four-footed beasts, some of our trails have become roads. Among the more monumental examples are the hewn rock ramparts of ancient Rome's Appian Way and the poured concrete cloverleafs of the LA freeways. A much older, much longer, and at the same time less tangible example of our peripatetic nature is the Silk Road.”
So begins Bill Porter’s The Silk Road (2016).
I've much admired Porter's travel books from China, and his translations under the name Red Pine.
Today I'm thinking about Kukai, it's his birthday, and his great travels into China to bring back Vajrayana to Japan, and his heroic journeys.
Xi'an was also home to the famous Buddhist traveler Hsuan-tang (602-664) (Wikipedia). "His travelogue is a mix of the implausible, the hearsay and a firsthand account."
P. 20: "As for Huo's own grave mound, its most noteworthy feature was the series of fourteen stone carvings at the base. They were ancient, but they looked almost modern in design. Among the most famous was one of a horse trampling a bearded foreigner, which made us feel a bit uneasy. Finn and I weren't Huns, but we do get a little rowdy from time to time. Fortunately we have so far survived our Hunnish lapses."
P. 24 Famen Temple. Supposedly there's a Buddha finger there. Ashoka supposedly sent it in the 3rd century, but it took till the 6th century for the Buddhists of China to realize what they had. “ For a nominal fee, Finn and I even got a certificate proving that we did, indeed, pay our respects to the same finger that pointed to the Middle Path 2,500 years ago.”
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