Faxian "("Splendor of Religious Law")—the name taken by Sehi, a Chinese Buddhist monk and scribe—stirred by a profound faith to go to India, the "Holy Land" of Buddhism, had departed China in 399 to lead a pilgrimage (the first of several) through India and Central Asia to gather and copy sacred Sanskrit texts of the various Buddhist schools, aiming to compile a complete canon of Buddhist scriptures.

His journey is described in his important travelogue, A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms, Being an Account by the Chinese Monk Fa-Hien of his Travels in India and Ceylon in Search of the Buddhist Books of Discipline, a trove of information on early fifth-century India.

He is most known for his pilgrimage to Lumbini, the birthplace of Lord Buddha.

On Fa Xian's return to China in 412, after a two-year stay in Ceylon, a violent storm had driven his ship onto an island that was probably Java.

Faxian had eventually landed at Laoshan in what is now Shandong province, thirty kilometers east of the city of Qingdao and had gone to Shandong's capital, where he has remained for a year translating and editing the scriptures he has collected.

His work is a travel book, filled with accounts of early Buddhism, and the geography and history of numerous countries along the Silk Roads at the turn of the fifth century CE.