Modern scholars in the field of Buddhist studies have often regarded Jambudvīpa/ Jambūdvīpa, the semi-triangular continent located to the south of Mount Sumeru in Indian Buddhist cosmography, as representing nothing but India. Although this interpretation would be certainly correct within the context of Indian Buddhism, it might not be necessarily so outside this context. East Asian Buddhists, for example, are known to have traditionally included China in Jambūdvīpa. In this paper, I examine the usage of the name Jambūdvīpa in the writings of Chinese Buddhist monks who traveled to India, especially Xuanzang 玄奘 and Yijing 義淨 , and people close to the former. Through this examination, I would like to clarify how they related their geographical knowledge to the Indian Buddhist view of Jambūdvīpa. In his Datang xiyu ji 大唐西域記 Xuanzang provides a brief description of the world based on Abhidharma treatises, but he includes China in Jambūdvīpa, mentioning four kings who were said to reign in the four quarters of the continent. Moreover, deviating from the worldview of the Abhidharmakośabhāṣya he translated, he refers to Lake Anavatapta as the center of Jambūdvīpa, aligning the Indian notion of the continent with the reality that China and India are connected by land. Yijing’s Nanhai jigui neifa zhuan 南海寄歸内法傳 provides several examples where the author refers to land consisting of India, Indochina, China and several other regions by the name Jambūdvīpa. These accounts have been mistranslated by some modern scholars, who interpreted Jambūdvīpa as referring to only India. In the Datang daci’ensi sanzang fashi zhuan 大唐大慈恩寺三藏法師傳 , a biography of Xuanzang written by his disciples, there is a conversation between Xuanzang and monks of Nālandā in which Jambūdvīpa is mentioned twice. The four modern translations I was able to consult significantly differ from each other in their interpretations of this part of the text, and at least two of them seem to regard Jambūdvīpa as India contrasted with China. I offer an understanding different from these translations, pointing out quotations from the Vimalakīrtinirdeśa made in the conversation in question and suggesting that the biographer who wrote this part considered Jambūdvīpa to include both India and China.
