Xuanzang: A Buddhist Pilgrim on the Silk Road

Review by Edward H. Kaplan

The Historian

Vol.60 No.3

Pp.658-659

Spring 1998

COPYRIGHT 1998 Phi Alpha Theta

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            Xuanzang: A Buddhist Pilgrim on the Silk Road. By Sally Hovey 
            Wriggins. (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996. Pp. xxiv, 263. $32.50.) 
            Ancient and medieval China produced at least three great explorers 
            who are comparable to Ibn Batuta and Marco Polo: Zhang Qian (second 
            century B.C.), and the Buddhist monks Fa Man (fifth century A.D.) 
            and Xuanzang (seventh century A.D.). Of the five, perhaps the 
            greatest, and certainly the one with the deepest influence on his 
            own and related civilizations, was Xuanzang. 
            Xuanzang (Hsuan Tsang in the Wade-Giles transliteration) traveled 
            through Central and South Asia (ca. 629-645 A.D.) collecting copies 
            of the most important Buddhist theological works and studying with 
            the most important authorities on the major Buddhist schools of 
            thought. He became a recognized authority on Mahayana Buddhist 
            idealist philosophy both In India and in China after his return. 
            Once back in China he also wrote a book for the Chinese emperor 
            describing the secular aspects--cultural and political--of the 
            places that he had visited. This aided the Tang Dynasty in 
            maintaining the dominant position in Central Asia that it had 
            recently carved out. 
            The book that was written for the emperor and a biography of 
            Xuanzang, written by a colleague during his lifetime, are still 
            extant, as are many of the holy texts translated by Xuanzang. They 
            still provide information on the history and culture of India, 
            Afghanistan, and Central Asia to historians, anthropologists, and 
            even archaeologists (who carry Xuanzang to their digs much as 
            Schliemann carried Homer, and to even greater effect). 
            Throughout the millennium and a third since Xuanzang and his 
            colleague laid down their writing brushes, writers, both religious 
            and secular, have repeatedly translated or retold their complex tale 
            of salvation and earthly history. So intrinsically vivid is the 
            material that Xuanzang has provided, that the best of such works 
            inevitably combine high popularization with synthesis of the most 
            important works of technical scholarship. 
            Sally Hovey Wriggins's Xuanzang: A Buddhist Pilgrim on the Silk Road 
            will fulfill the role of the standard high popularization, which has 
            been played for readers of English since the translation in 1971 of 
            Rene Grousset's In the Footsteps of the Buddha, which first appeared 
            in French in 1929. Like Grousset, Wriggins approaches both Buddhism 
            and its several Asian homelands as a sympathetic, but non-Buddhist, 
            outsider. Her account is in some ways superior to that of Grousset, 
            because it synthesizes the scholarly works on both the historical 
            and anthropological-archaeological sides that have appeared since 
            that time. Wriggins also provides detailed, but unobtrusive, 
            endnotes, a bibliography, glossary, index, and a rich supply of 
            illustrations. Like Grousset, Wriggins places her illustrations 
            (except, because of technical reasons, the color plates, which are 
            grouped together) within a page of the narratives that each 
            illustrates. 
            All college and university libraries, and many public libraries, 
            will want to obtain this work, which is destined largely to replace 
            Grousset's earlier study.