Husan Tsang’s Impression of India
Husan Tsang
The Chinese traveler, Husan Tsang traveled throughout India during the early to mid-600 CE and has documented his observations and experiences. He traveled India just a few decades before the first invasion of India and his journal is the best indication of what India was like during that time.
During Husan Tsang’s time, India included all of Pakistan, Bangladesh, and the eastern part of Afghanistan.
India was comprised of 5 main regions, North, East, West, South, and Central India. The northern region (Punjab) also included Kashmir and the eastern part of Afghanistan that included Jalalabad, Peshawar, and Ghazni. The name Peshawar has distinctive Sanskrit roots (Purushapura) and it was once the capital of Ghandhara (Khandhahar) which is widely discussed in the Hindu epic Mahabharatha.
Eastern Afghanistan was ruled by the Kapisa dynasty, Punjab by the Kashmiri king, and the plains of Punjab were ruled by the Taki dynasty. Husan Tsang has written in his journal that he saw a huge Buddhist population in Afghanistan (this is a well-documented fact – the Buddhist temples in Afghanistan were present until 2000 and were destroyed by the Taliban under the direction of Mullah Muhammad Omar in 2001).
Hsuan Tsang returned to China in 645 CE and at that time India, Pakistan, and eastern Afghanistan were predominantly Hindu states with other religious monitories such as Jains and Buddhists and few Christians, Jews, and Muslims. There were a sizeable number of Christians, Muslims, and Jews in the western part of India. Islam was introduced to India right after the time of Prophet Muhammad (570 to 632 AD). The Indian state of Kerala has always been the spice capital of India and the people from Kerala have been engaged in the spice trade via nautical routes with the Europeans and the Arabians for centuries. Unlike Northern India which was subjected to strife from the invaders, Kerala and the other areas in coastal western India traded freely with the people from Arabia and eventually, quite a few people from Kerala would embrace Islam more due to their free will and less due to forcible conversion.
