The Anonymous Monk, believed to have been named Daozhao, embarked on a pilgrimage from Mount Wutai in China to the Nälandä Monastery in what is now India. The suggestion that his name was Daozhao arises from the fact that the final copy of the manuscript documenting his journey was produced by a monk of this name in 968 CE. This journey was a common spiritual path for Buddhist monks, who traveled from temple to temple to deepen their practice, expand their knowledge, seek enlightenment by connecting with the teachings of Sakyamuni Buddha in the Holy Land.
The monk began his pilgrimage in the year 940, although the exact end date of his journey remains unknown.Along the way, he prayed and strengthened his knowledge at the Wu Wei, Longxing, and Dayun temples. His route suggests that he started in China, entered Tibetan territory, returned briefly to China, and then continued to India. This is corroborated by his fourth letter, in which the monk requests an escort from the Longxing Temple in Dunhuang to the Dayun Temple and then returns on the same route back to Dunhuang after visiting the temple. However, the route that the monk took after leaving Dunhuang is an estimation based upon his and the manuscripts of similar travelers on that route around the same time period.
Unfortunately, much of what we know about the latter stages of the monk’s journey is pieced together from fragmented manuscripts. His letters have been combined within the main manuscript, which is divided into three parts. The third section contains annotations and notes by monastic officials rather than the monk himself, making it difficult to trace the precise details of his movements. Despite this, the manuscript remains a valuable resource for understanding the cultural and religious dynamics of the time.
Today, the manuscript is used for study of linguistic as well as cultural interactions between the Chinese and Tibetans. We can conclude that the Anonymous Monk’s (or possibly the monk named Daozhao) journey continued the spread of Buddhist teachings and wisdom from China, through Tibet, and into India. For our map and information on this journey, we used the 2011 Van, Schamick Sam, et al. book Manuscripts and Travellers: The Sino-Tibetan Documents of a Tenth-Century Buddhist Pilgrim.
Van, Schaik, Sam, et al. Manuscripts and Travellers: The Sino-Tibetan Documents of a Tenth-Century Buddhist Pilgrim, De Gruyter, Inc., 2011.