The earliest accounts come from Chinese Buddhist pilgrims' travel records, particularly Faxian and Xuanzang, dating from the 5th-7th centuries.
Buddhism recognizes eight major pilgrimage sites associated with key events in the Buddha's life: Lumbini (birthplace), Bodh Gaya (enlightenment), Sarnath (first teaching), Kushinagar (death), Vaishali (announcement of parinirvana), Rajgir (teaching site), Nalanda (monastic university), and Shravasti (miracles). These sites became systematized as pilgrimage destinations over centuries, but our earliest documentary evidence of visits comes from foreign travelers rather than local records.
The most valuable early accounts come from Chinese Buddhist monks who journeyed to India. Faxian (法顯), traveling around 399-412 CE, wrote the Record of Buddhist Kingdoms (Foguoji), which documented his visits to several major sites and described the devotional practices he witnessed. Xuanzang (玄奘), who traveled 629-645 CE, left an even more detailed account in his Record of Western Regions (Xiyu ji), providing precise descriptions of monasteries, reliquaries, and the state of pilgrimage practices at multiple sacred sites.
These Chinese accounts are exceptionally valuable because they were written relatively soon after the journeys and survive in manuscript form. They describe actual conditions the pilgrims observed, including architectural features, local traditions, and the numbers of monks residing at major centers.
Within Buddhist literature itself, earlier textual references exist but are more problematic for historical reconstruction. The Pali Canon, compiled centuries after the Buddha's life, contains narratives about his travels and death but reflects later theological interests rather than historical documentation of pilgrimage practice. Sanskrit Buddhist texts, including the Mahayana sutras and later Sanskrit chronicles, mention these locations but were composed over many centuries with unclear dates of composition and transmission.
The Ashokavadana, a Sanskrit text about Emperor Ashoka (who patronized Buddhism around 260 BCE), describes his donations to shrines at major sites, but this text itself dates to several centuries after Ashoka's reign and contains legendary material mixed with possible historical information.
Supporting the textual accounts are inscriptions and archaeological remains. Ashoka's edicts, carved on stone pillars around the 3rd century BCE, mention some pilgrimage sites and indicate royal patronage. At Sarnath and Bodh Gaya, inscriptions from various periods document donations by monks and lay supporters, showing sustained pilgrimage activity over centuries. However, these archaeological sources typically don't provide systematic accounts of pilgrimage practices themselves—they confirm site importance and visitation but offer less narrative detail than the Chinese travelers' accounts.
Sanskrit Buddhist chronicles like the Mahavamsa (Pali, from Sri Lanka, composed around 5th-6th century CE) and the Divyavadana contain narratives about the Buddha and Ashoka's pilgrimage activities. These texts are important for understanding how pilgrimage was conceptualized in Buddhist tradition, but they blend legend with possible history and postdate the events by centuries. The Tibetan Buddhist historical tradition, preserved in texts like Taranatha's History of Buddhism, drew on earlier Sanskrit sources and provides additional perspectives on pilgrimage history, though these also come from much later compositions.
Scholars generally treat the Chinese pilgrim accounts as the most reliable early documentation because they come from eyewitnesses writing within decades of their journeys, with contemporary Chinese historical records sometimes corroborating their activities. Faxian and Xuanzang's accounts can be cross-checked against each other and against later descriptions. Earlier Sanskrit and Pali texts are valuable for understanding Buddhist theology about pilgrimage but remain uncertain sources for historical reconstruction of actual pilgrimage practices before the Common Era. The systematic pilgrimage to all eight sites as a unified religious practice likely developed gradually, with the Chinese pilgrim accounts representing a relatively mature stage of this tradition rather than its beginning.