In the Tang Dynasty of China,
the monk Xuanzang set out west
in 629 to find the original
Sanskrit sutras, his life's one quest.
He was unhappy with the Chinese translations.
He felt the dharma had been transmitted poorly.
He applied for permission to leave China.
It was denied. He went illegally, surely.
For seventeen years he traveled through
Central Asia, Afghanistan, India,
studying at Nalanda the great university,
debating with scholars in every region.
Nalanda was the greatest Buddhist university
in history at that time, ten thousand monks,
thousands of professors, vast libraries,
teaching logic, philosophy, medicine, thunks.
Xuanzang mastered Sanskrit, the six Buddhist schools,
debated the Mahayana against the Theravada,
was offered leadership of Nalanda itself,
but chose to return home to his own data.
He returned in 645 with 657 Sanskrit texts
loaded on twenty-two horses across the passes.
The emperor Taizong welcomed him back
despite the illegal departure from the masses.
He spent the rest of his life translating.
He translated 1,330 scrolls of sutras.
He introduced Yogacara philosophy,
consciousness-only school, into Chinese rostra.
He wrote the Great Tang Records on the Western Regions,
a travelogue of the kingdoms he had visited,
which became a precious source for historians
when those kingdoms vanished, undocumented otherwise.
Bamiyan's giant Buddha statues — he saw them
when they stood complete, fifty and thirty-five meters,
cut into the cliff face of Afghanistan.
Destroyed by Taliban in 2001, their lintels.
But we know what they looked like from Xuanzang.
We know the kingdoms, the cities, the sages,
the quality of rice at particular places,
the customs of pilgrims on various pages.
Nine hundred years later, in the Ming dynasty,
Wu Cheng'en wrote Journey to the West,
the great fantasy novel based on Xuanzang's trip,
with supernatural companions along for the test.
Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, born from stone,
a trickster mastering Daoist and Buddhist arts,
who ate the peaches of immortality,
caused havoc in heaven, was imprisoned with hard arts.
He was freed to accompany Xuanzang
(called Tripitaka in the novel, the monk)
with the golden headband that could constrict
if the monk chanted the spell's Sanskrit funk.
Pigsy (Zhu Bajie), the lazy glutton pig-man,
Sandy (Sha Wujing), the stoic river demon,
and the dragon prince who became the horse —
four disciples of the monk, the protection demon.
They encountered eighty-one trials on the road,
demons in disguise, kingdoms of women,
volcanoes of flaming mountains, rivers of sand.
They reached India, collected sutras, were even
granted enlightenment upon their return.
The novel is comedy, satire, theology,
one of the Four Classical Novels of China,
beloved for centuries across geography.
It has been adapted as opera, film, television,
anime, video game, manga without count.
Son Goku of Dragon Ball is a direct
descendant of Sun Wukong in amount.
Xuanzang himself is historical.
Sun Wukong is fictional. But both together
represent the deep Chinese relationship
with Buddhism — Chinese adaptation of weather.
The novel's implicit theology: enlightenment
requires the journey, the trials, the companions.
The demons are inner obstacles externalized.
The goal is to carry the teaching back to one's nation.
Chinese Buddhism had become by the Tang
fully domesticated. Chan (Zen) was emerging
under Huineng the Sixth Patriarch, whose
sudden enlightenment school was surging.
Pure Land Buddhism was expanding too,
the devotional school of Amitabha,
the Buddha of the Western Paradise,
saving all who called his name in awe.
Tang China was the world-civilization of its time.
Chang'an was the world's largest city.
Persians, Arabs, Sogdians, Japanese, Koreans
came to study, trade, and live in the pretty.
The Tang would be the golden age
that all subsequent Chinese dynasties measured themselves against.
The model to emulate. The high water mark.
The era that even now is most well-fenced.
Stand.