Xuanzang

Xuanzang (c. 602-664) was a Chinese Buddhist monk, scholar, traveller and translator during the Tang dynasty. He is best known for his journey to India and for translating a large body of Sanskrit Buddhist texts into Chinese. Born near Luoyang, into a family of Confucian scholars, he embodies the effort of medieval China to understand Buddhism from its original sources. That effort matters because his work set a standard for studying and translating Buddhist texts that shaped East Asian Buddhism for centuries.

As a boy he was drawn to Buddhism, although his conservative Confucian father had trained him in the classics. After his father died in 611, he lived with his elder brother at Jingtu monastery in Luoyang. When the Sui dynasty fell in 618, the two brothers fled south to Chengdu. He was ordained in 622. The Chinese translations available to him seemed contradictory and incomplete, and this led him to seek the texts in their original language.

In 629, despite an imperial ban on leaving the country, he set out for India. He crossed Central Asia through Turfan, Kucha, Samarkand and Balkh, and reached India around 630. He visited monasteries across the north, from Kashmir to Kanyakubja, where he met King Harsha, and spent long periods studying with masters of different schools. He returned to Chang'an in 645 carrying numerous Sanskrit manuscripts. Emperor Taizong encouraged him to write an account of his travels, the Records of the Western Regions, which remains a valuable source on seventh-century India and Central Asia.

Back in China, he directed a major translation centre in Xi'an that gathered collaborators from across East Asia. He is credited with translating some 1,330 fascicles. His thought moved within the Yogacara tradition, which analyses perception, consciousness and karma. Under his influence the Faxiang school developed; it was short-lived, but its ideas passed into more enduring Chinese traditions. His disciple Kuiji, regarded as the school's first patriarch, was the most brilliant of his followers.

His influence also reached literature. His account inspired the novel Journey to the West, written by Wu Cheng'en during the Ming dynasty, nearly nine centuries after his death.