A practice with an early textual root
Buddhist pilgrimage is usually traced to a passage in the Mahaparinibbana Sutta, a text of the Pali Canon that describes the last months of the Buddha’s life. In it, the Buddha is said to tell his attendant Ananda that there are four places a faithful person may see and be moved by: where the Tathagata was born, where he attained awakening, where he set the wheel of the Dharma in motion, and where he passed into final nirvana. Those correspond to Lumbini, Bodh Gaya, Sarnath and Kushinagar.
The text also says that monks, nuns and lay followers will visit these places, and that those who die with a devout mind while on such a journey may be reborn in a good destination. Scholars discuss when this passage reached its present form, and it is safest to say that it reflects an early tradition rather than a precisely dated event. Many Buddhists regard it as the Buddha’s own endorsement of pilgrimage.
Before the monuments: relics and stupas
After the Buddha’s death, according to tradition, his remains were divided and enshrined in stupas. The practice of venerating relics and the places that held them gave early pilgrims something to visit. For a period, Buddhism in the earliest centuries often marked the Buddha by symbols such as a tree, a footprint, an empty seat or a wheel rather than by images, and shrines focused on these. As the spread of Buddhism carried the faith beyond the Ganges plain, the number of places worth a visit multiplied.
Ashoka and the marking of sites
The most important early evidence that is not purely textual comes from the Mauryan ruler Emperor Ashoka, who reigned in the third century BCE (the exact dates are debated). Ashoka’s inscriptions, carved on rocks and pillars, record his support for the Dharma. A later Buddhist tradition says that he visited sacred places and set up monuments.
At Lumbini a pillar bears an inscription, written in the early Brahmi script, stating that the ruler came there in person to pay homage because the Buddha was born there, and that he reduced the local tax. Many scholars accept this as strong evidence both of Ashoka’s visit and of the early identification of the birthplace. Other pillars and stupas associated with him survive at or near sites such as Sarnath and Sanchi, though how much of each structure is truly from his reign is a matter of ongoing study.
Pilgrimage in the centuries after
By the first centuries CE, monasteries, stupas and carved railings at sites such as Sanchi and Bodh Gaya show that lay donors were funding monuments, and inscriptions record many names of such donors. Pilgrims were not only from the Ganges region: traders, monks and royal missions moved along the same networks that carried the faith across Asia. Sri Lankan Buddhist records, for example, describe contact with Bodh Gaya, including a famous story of a cutting from the Bodhi tree being taken to the island. Those accounts are part of tradition, and details vary between sources.
The Chinese pilgrim monks
For historians, the richest written descriptions come from Chinese Buddhists who travelled to India to find texts and visit holy places.
Faxian left China around the end of the fourth century CE and travelled for more than a decade, in the early fifth century by most reckonings. His record describes monasteries and sacred places in northern India and beyond, and the state of Buddhism in each region. His account is relatively brief but valuable.
Xuanzang set out in the early seventh century, traditionally dated to 629 CE, and returned to China in 645 CE after many years of travel and study, including at Nalanda. His long account, usually called the Records of the Western Regions, describes cities, ruins, legends and the state of the Buddhist community in many places. Modern archaeologists have often used it to identify sites, although distances and details sometimes need careful checking. A later writer, Yijing, travelled by sea in the late seventh century and also left a valuable record.
The point here is that these Chinese pilgrim monks show that pilgrimage was already a long, organised and sometimes dangerous undertaking more than a thousand years ago.
What the sources can and cannot tell us
It helps to keep three kinds of evidence apart:
- Texts, such as the Mahaparinibbana Sutta, which express a tradition but are hard to date exactly.
- Inscriptions and monuments, such as the Lumbini pillar, which can be dated more firmly but are limited in what they say.
- Traveller accounts, such as Faxian’s and Xuanzang’s, which are detailed but written from one viewpoint and sometimes by relying on hearsay.
Some details, including exact dates and the identification of certain ruins, remain debated. After the decline of Buddhism in much of India, in the centuries before the arrival of European archaeologists, many of these sites faded from memory; many were only identified again in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
A route rather than a single road
It is also worth noting that “the Buddhist pilgrimage route” was never one road with a single set of rules. Early pilgrims visited what they could reach, and the tradition grew to include many local routes. The route of the four sites, the later Tibetan and East Asian circuits, and the pilgrimage to relics in Sri Lanka all developed on their own terms. Anyone planning to visit these places today should check current official guidance on access and conditions.