Yijing (635–713 CE), formerly romanized as I-ching or I-tsing,[1] born Zhang Wenming, was a Tang-era Chinese Buddhist monk famed as a traveller and translator.

His account of his travels are an important source for the history of the medieval kingdoms along the sea route between China and India, especially Srivijaya in Indonesia.

Provided funding by an otherwise unknown benefactor named Fong, he decided to visit the renowned Buddhist university of Nālandā, in Bihar, India, to further study Buddhism.

Traveling by a boat out of Guangzhou, he arrived in Srivijaya (today's Palembang in Sumatra) after 22 days, where he spent the next six months learning Sanskrit grammar and the Malay language.

At that time, Palembang was a centre of Buddhism where foreign scholars gathered, and Yijing stayed there for two years to translate original Sanskrit Buddhist scriptures into Chinese.

[citation needed] In 695, he completed all translation works and finally returned to China at Luoyang and received a grand welcome back by Empress Wu Zetian.

[12] Yijing praised the high level of Buddhist scholarship in Srivijaya (modern-day Sumatra) and advised Chinese monks to study there prior to making the journey to Nalanda in India.

If a Chinese priest wishes to go to the West in order to hear and read the original scriptures, he had better stay here one or two years and practice the proper rules....Yijing's visits to Srivijaya gave him the opportunity to meet with others who had come from other neighboring islands.

"Many of the kings and chieftains in the islands of the Southern Sea admire and believe in Buddhism, and their hearts are set on accumulating good actions."