Xuanzang

Xuanzang
Xuanzang, world-famous for his sixteen-year pilgrimage to India and career as a

translator of Buddhist scriptures, is one of the most illustrious figures in the history
of scholastic Chinese Buddhism. Born into a scholarly family at the outset of the
Tang (T’ang) Dynasty, he enjoyed a classical Confucian education. Under the
influence of his elder brother, a Buddhist monk, however, he developed a keen
interest in Buddhist subjects and soon became a monk himself at the age of
thirteen. Upon his return to Chang’an in 645, Xuanzang brought back with him a
great number of Sanskrit texts, of which he was able to translate only a small
portion during the remainder of his lifetime. In addition to his translations of the
most essential Mahayana scriptures, Xuanzang authored the Da tang xi yu ji (Ta-
T’ang Hsi-yu-chi or Records of the Western Regions of the Great T’ang Dynasty)
with the aid of Bianji (Bian-chi). It is through Xuanzang and his chief disciple Kuiji
(K’uei-chi) (632-682) that the Faxiang (Fa-hsiang or Yogacara/Consciousness-
only) School was initiated in China. In order to honor the famous Buddhist scholar,
the Tang Emperor Gaozong (Gao-tsung) cancelled all audiences for three days after
Xuanzang’s death. (See Romanization systems for Chinese terms.)
Born of a family possessing erudition for generations in Yanshi prefecture of Henan

province, Xuanzang, whose lay name was Chenhui, was the youngest of four
children. His great-grandfather was an official serving as a prefect, his grand-father
was appointed as Professor in the National College at the capital, and his father was
a Confucianist of the rigid conservative type who gave up office and withdrew into
seclusion to escape the political turmoil that gripped China at that time. According
to traditional biographies, Xuanzang displayed a precocious intelligence and
seriousness, amazing his father by his careful observance of the Confucian rituals at
the age of eight. Along with his brothers and sister, he received an early education
from his father, who instructed him in classical works on filial piety and several other
canonical treatises of orthodox Confucianism.
After the death of Xuanzang’s father in 611, his older brother Chensu, later known as
Changjie, became the primary influence on his life. As a result, he commenced
visiting the monastery of Jingtu at Luoyang where his brother dwelled as a Buddhist
monk, and studying sacred texts of the faith with all the ardor of a young convert.
When Xuanzang requested to take Buddhist orders at the age of thirteen, the abbot
Zheng Shanguo made an exception in his case because of his precocious sapience.
In 618, due to the civil war breaking out in Henan, Xuanzang and his brother sought
refuge in the mountains of Sichuan, where he spent three years or so in the
monastery of Kong Hui plunging into the study of various Buddhist texts, such as
the Abhidharmakosa-sastra (Abhidharma Storehouse Treatise. In 622, he was fully
ordained as a monk. Deeply confused by myriad contradictions and discrepancies in
the texts, and not receiving any solutions from his Chinese masters, Xuanzang
decided to go to India and study in the cradle of Buddhism.
An imperial decree by the Emperor Taizong (T’ai-tsung) forbade Xuanzang’s
proposed visit to India on the grounds on preserving national security. Instead of
feeling deterred from his long-standing dream, Xuanzang is said to have experienced
a vision that strengthened resolve. In 629, defying imperial proscription, he secretly
set out on his epochal journey to the land of the Buddha from Chang’an.
Xuanzang reports that he travelled by night, hiding during the day, enduring many
dangers, and bereft of a guide after being abandoned by his companions. After some
time in the Gobi Desert, he arrived in Liangzhou in modern Gansu province, the
westernmost extent of the Chinese frontier at that time and the southern terminus
of the Silk Road trade route connecting China with Central Asia. Here he spent
approximately a month preaching the Buddhist message before being invited to
Hami by King Qu Wentai (Ch’u Wen-tai) of Turfan, a pious Buddhist of Chinese
extraction.
It soon became apparent to Xuanzang that Qu Wentai, although most hospitable and
respectful, planned to detain him for life in his Court as its ecclesiastical head. In
response, Xuanzang undertook a hunger strike until the king relented, extracting
from Xuanzang a promise to return and spend three years in the kingdom upon his
return. After remaining there for a month more for the sake of the dharma, Xuanzang
resumed his journey in 630, well provided with introductions to all the kings on his
itinerary, including the formidable Turkish Khan whose power extended to the very
gates of India. Having initially left China against the will of the Emperor, he was no
longer an unknown fugitive fleeing in secret, but an accredited pilgrim with official
standing.
At long last, Xuanzang reached his ultimate destination, where his strongest
personal interest in Buddhism was located and the principal portion of his time
abroad was spent: the Nalanda monastery, located southwest of the modern city of
Bihar in northern Bihar state. As a far-famed metropolis of Buddhist monastic
education, Nalanda was a veritable monastic city consisting of some ten huge
temples with spaces between divided into eight compounds, surrounded by a high
wall. There were over ten thousand Mahayana monks there engaged in the study of
the orthodox Buddhist canon as well as the Vedas, arithmetic, and medicine.
According to legend, Silabhadra (529-645), abbot of Nalanda, was considering
suicide after years of wasting illness when he received instructions from deities in a
dream, commanding him to endure and await the arrival of a Chinese monk in order
to guarantee the preservation of the Mahayana tradition abroad. Indeed, Xuanzang
became Silabhadra’s disciple in 636 and was initiated into the Yogacara lineage of
Mahayana learning by the venerable abbot. While at Nalanda, Xuanzang also studied
Sanskrit and Brahmana philosophy. Subsequent studies in India included hetu-
vidya (logic), the exegesis of Mahayana texts such as the Mahayana-
sutralamkara (Treatise on the Scripture of Adorning the Great Vehicle),
and Madhyamika (“Middle-ist”) doctrines.
The name of the Madhyamika School, founded by Nagarjuna (2nd century CE),
derives from its having sought a middle position between the realism of
the Sarvastivada (Doctrine That All Is Real) School and the idealism of
the Yogacara (Mind Only) School. Xuanzang appears to have combined these two
systems into each other in a more eclectic and comprehensive Mahayanism. With
the approval of his Nalanda mentors, Xuanzang composed a treatise, Hui zong
lun (Hui-tsüng-lun or On the Harmony of the Principles), which articulates his
synthesis.
At Nalanda, Xuanzang became a critic of two major philosophical systems of
Hinduism opposed to Buddhism: the Samkhya and the Vaiseshika. The former was
based upon a dualism of Nature and Spirit. The latter was a realist system,
immediate and direct in its realism, resting upon the acceptance of the data of
consciousness and experience as such: in brief, it was a melding of monism and
atomism. Such beliefs were in absolute contradiction to the acosmic idealism of the
Buddhist Yogacara, which evenly repelled the substantial entity of the ego and the
objective existence of matter. Xuanzang also critiqued the atheistic monism of the
Jains, especially inveighing against what he saw as their caricature of Buddhism in
terms of Jain monastic garb and iconography.
Xuanzang’s success in religious and philosophical disputes evidently aroused the

attention of some Indian potentates, including the King of Assam and the poet-cum-
dramatist king Harsha (r. 606-647), who was regarded as a Buddhist patron saint
upon the throne like Ashoka and Kanishka of old. An eighteen-day religious
assembly was convoked in Harsha’s capital of Kanauj during the first week of the
year 643, during which Xuanzang allegedly defeated five hundred Brahmins, Jains,
and heterodox Buddhists in spirited debate.
Following these public successes in India, Xuanzang resolved to return to China by

way of Central Asia. He followed the caravan-track that led across the Pamirs to
Dunhuang. In the spring of 644, he reached Khotan and awaited a reply to his
request for return addressed to the Emperor Taizong. In the month of November,
Xuanzang left for Dunhuang by a decree of the Emperor, and arrived in the Chinese
capital Chang’an the first month of the Chinese Lunar Year 645.
Traditional sources report that Xuanzang’s arrival in Chang’an was greeted with an
imperial audience and an offer of official position (which Xuanzang declined),
followed by an assembly of all the Buddhist monks of the capital city, who accepted
the manuscripts, relics, and statues brought back by the pilgrim and deposited them
in the Temple of Great Happiness. It was in this Temple that Xuanzang devoted the
rest of his life to the translation of the Sanskrit works that he had brought back out
of the wide west, assisted by a staff of more than twenty translators, all well-versed
in the knowledge of Chinese, Sanskrit, and Buddhism itself. Besides translating
Buddhist texts and dictating the Da tang xi yu ji in 646, Xuanzang also translated
the Dao de jing (Tao-te Ching) of Laozi (Lao-tzu) into Sanskrit and sent it to India in
647.
His translations may, by and large, be divided into three phases: the first six years
(645-650), focusing on the Yogacarabhumi-sastra; the middle ten years (651-660),
centering on the Abhidharmakosa-sastra; and the last four years (661-664),
concentrating upon the Maha-prajnaparamita-sutra. In each phase of his career as a
translator, Xuanzang saw his task as introducing Indian Buddhist texts to Chinese
audiences in all their integrity. According to Thomas Watters, the total number of
texts brought by Xuanzang from India to China is six hundred and fifty seven,
enumerated as follows:
Mahayanist sutras: 224 items
Mahayanist sastras: 192
Sthavira sutras, sastras and Vinaya: 14
Mahasangika sutras, sastras and Vinaya: 15
Mahisasaka sutras, sastras and Vinaya: 22
Sammitiya sutras, sastras and Vinaya: 15
Kasyapiya sutras, sastra and Vinaya: 17
Dharmagupta sutras, Vinaya, sastras: 42
Sarvastivadin sutras, Vinaya, sastras: 67
Yin-lun (Treatises on the science of Inference): 36
Sheng-lun (Etymological treatises): 13

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Who was Xuanzang and what was his journey to India about?

What did Xuanzang study in India and what were some of his accomplishments there?

Xuanzang

Xuanzang, world-famous for his sixteen-year pilgrimage to India and career as a

Born of a family possessing erudition for generations in Yanshi prefecture of Henan

Xuanzang’s success in religious and philosophical disputes evidently aroused the

Following these public successes in India, Xuanzang resolved to return to China by

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