A banned Tang monk walked to Nalanda for better sutras
Xuanzang (602–664), born Chen Hui, was a Tang Buddhist monk who defied a ban on foreign travel to reach India, returning in 645. He studied at Nalanda under Śīlabhadra, hauled Sanskrit texts home on twenty packhorses, and left a travelogue that still documents seventh-century Central Asia and India.
The youngest of four children in a family long known for learning, he was born near Luoyang; one ancestor had been an Eastern Han minister and his father served as a county magistrate under the Sui. After his father died in 611 he spent five years with his elder brother, already a monk, at Luoyang’s state-backed Jingtu Monastery. When the Sui collapsed in 618 the brothers fled to Chang’an and then some 300 miles south to Chengdu, where an abbot let the young man tackle advanced Abhidharma texts.
Fully ordained at twenty in 622, he was troubled by clashing, garbled Chinese translations and resolved, like the earlier pilgrim Faxian, to fetch originals from India. Sources disagree on whether he left in 627 or 629. He never wrote his own life story; he recited it to fellow monks, and three collaborators produced differing biographies. One mentions a meeting with the Turkic ruler Yabghu Qaghan, who died in 628, which would favour the earlier date.
In 630 the Buddhist king of Agni near Turpan begged him to stay and teach, then sent him on with letters and funds; Xuanzang noted that its two thousand monks ate meat. Farther west some two thousand mounted robbers fell to fighting over the spoils and scattered. Kucha, he reported, had over a hundred monasteries and five thousand monks. He crossed the Tian Shan, feasted with the great Khagan of the Göktürks, passed through Tashkent and battled the bitter winds of the Pamirs, recording along the way tales of dragons that turned into horses.
At Nalanda in Bihar he studied with Śīlabhadra. Emperor Taizong welcomed him home and urged him to write, and he brought back at least 657 Indian texts, though he translated only 75 sections. His mix of eyewitness report, hearsay and marvel later inspired the Ming novel Journey to the West.
Source: Xuanzang
