Xuanzang (born 602, Goushi, Luozhou, now Yanshi, Henan province, China—died 664, Chang’an, now Xi’an, China) was a Buddhist monk and Chinese pilgrim to India who translated the sacred scriptures of Buddhism from Sanskrit into Chinese and founded in …
Xuanzang (born 602, Goushi, Luozhou, now Yanshi, Henan province, China—died 664, Chang’an, now Xi’an, China) was a Buddhist monk and Chinese pilgrim to India who translated the sacred scriptures of Buddhism from Sanskrit into Chinese and founded in China the Buddhist Consciousness Only school. His fame rests mainly on the volume and diversity of his translations of the Buddhist sutras and on the record of his travels in Central Asia and India, which, with its wealth of detailed and precise data, has been of inestimable value to historians and archaeologists.
Born into a family in which there had been scholars for generations, Xuanzang received a classical Confucian education in his youth, but under the influence of an older brother he became interested in the Buddhist scriptures and was soon converted to Buddhism. With his brother he traveled to Chang’an and then to Sichuan to escape the political turmoil that gripped China at that time. While in Sichuan, Xuanzang began studying Buddhist philosophy but was soon troubled by numerous discrepancies and contradictions in the texts. Not finding any solution from his Chinese masters, he decided to go to India to study at the fountainhead of Buddhism. Being unable to obtain a travel permit, he left Chang’an by stealth in 629. On his journey he traveled north of the Takla Makan Desert, passing through such oasis centres as Turfan, Karashar, Kucha, Tashkent, and Samarkand, then beyond the Iron Gates into Bactria, across the Hindu Kush (mountains) into Kapisha, Gandhara, and Kashmir in northwest India. From there he sailed down the Ganges River to Mathura, then on to the holy land of Buddhism in the eastern reaches of the Ganges, where he arrived in 633.
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