The Silk Road Journey With Xuanzang | Sally Wriggins | All you need and want to know on Xuanzang

The Silk Road Journey With Xuanzang | Sally Wriggins | A charming introduction to Xuanzang

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The Silk Road Jour...

	The Silk Road Journey With Xuanzang Sally Wriggins Basic Books, 2003 - 344 pages average customer review:based on 3 reviews view larger image
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The Silk Road Journey with Xuanzang tells the saga of the seventh-century Chinese monk Xuanzang, one of China?s great heroes, who completed an epic sixteen-year-long journey to discover the heart of Buddhism at its source in India. Eight centuries before Columbus, this intrepid pilgrim traveled 10,000 miles on the Silk Road, meeting most of Asia?s important leaders at that time. In this revised and updated edition, Sally Hovey Wriggins, the first Westerner to walk in Xuanzang?s footsteps, brings to life a courageous explorer and devoutly religious man. Through Wriggins?s telling of Xuanzang?s fascinating and extensive journey, the reader comes to know the contours of the Silk Road, Buddhist art and archaeology, the principles of Buddhism, as well as the geography and history of China, Central Asia, and India. The Silk Road Journey with Xuanzang is an inspiring story of human struggle and triumph, and a touchstone for understanding the religions, art, and culture of Asia.

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All you need and want to know on Xuanzang

This is the revised edition of the Author's previous "Xuanzang: a Buddhist Pilgrim on the Silk Road" of 1996. The book received excellent reviews but a few flaws were picked up. Wriggins has corrected most of these drawbacks in this 2004 edition that has slightly changed name: "The Silk Road Journey with Xuanzang" pointing the index more on the travel route than on the character. This change of title was probably an editorial choice since the Silk Road is presently an appealing subject.

Fortunately, this book is really about Xuanzang, the 7th century Buddhist monk, that traveled for 16 years and 10,000 miles from China to India and back to quench his spiritual search for the perfect form of Buddhism (he himself later on founded a rationalist chinese sect that lasted a few years), to acquire and bring back the original buddhist texts to undertake a meticulous and truthful translation of what was to become the principal Chinese religion for years to come.

Xuanzang's journey and adventures are retold and condensed from his original "The Great Tang Dynasty Record of the Western Regions" that he wrote for the Emperor Taizong and his biography written by his disciple Hui-li and integrated by the Author's travels and studies, that however are never mentioned as such.
Xuanzang's journey started from Chang-an (Xian) and through the Silk Road carried him to Tashkent, Samarkand, Balk to the Southern deviation to India. Here he stayed for many years visiting Buddha's sacred sites and practically all the Buddhist monasteries then existing. He also traveled down to Southern India, without however reaching Sri Lanka and after 13 years he started back loaded with manuscripts, artifacts and also a white elephant, gift of King Harasha. On the way he met kings and scholars, he entertained courts and monks, he saw all the important monuments and historical and religious sites of medieval India ed he thoroughly explored the various buddhist schools and sects until he gained spiritual and mental satisfaction of his curiosity.
Describing Xuanzang's progress the book takes the leisure of inserting images (beautiful photographs and art reproductions), maps, legends and connections to other cultural contexts so that every page is a new discovery. Much of the pleasure I experienced reading this book was due to the beautiful figures appropriately inserted in the text and the precise and explicative notes. More than 80 pages are composed of notes, legends of figures, glossary and bibliography.

Another word must be spent for Xuanzang's legacy that is magistrally explained. His adventurous journey gave way to a series of popular tales and legends that were successively written down during the sixteenth century in the "Journey to the West", translated into English by Waverly and known as "Monkey" and one of the best known Chinese novels of all times. The precise description he made of all his sightseeing has represented the scientific basis for archeological exploration in Central Asia and Northern India. His translations of Buddhist texts are still utilized today. He is a part of the collective memory of one nation and in this era of globalization of the whole world.

I read this book right after Schafer's "The Golden Peaches of Samarkand" and it helped me to immagine the Tang times in a wider context. As noted by other reviewers the Author takes for granted a knowledge of Buddhist thought during that period. If you get confused, a good help if you don't have other texts available is "The Religions of the Silk Road" by Foltz that gives a summary excursion of religious thought of those times.
This book posesses a rare quality and that is the capacity of stimulating curiosity for further reading on the subject. When finished reading we have a complete knowledge of Xuanzang as a man, and we can't but admire his integrity, intelligence and culture but at the same time the small excerpta of his original writing inserted in the book are not enough to really satisfy our curiosity, so further reading is ahead!

P.S. If you like books that narrate old travelers journeys without having to read the whole ancient texts read "The Adventures of Ibn Battuta" by Dunn, that in many ways remembers "The Silk Road Journey with Xuanzang".

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A charming introduction to Xuanzang

A criticism of the book (that is relevant to most general readership books today), is that the title does not exactly reflect the content.

This work is primarily about Xuanzang (Hsuan-tsang) the man -- what we know about his character from the extant sources, what his motivations were in leaving China, the content of his itinerary, important people he met, his hardships, triumphs, and the intellectual, spiritual, and cultural legacy he left behind. The book is next about Buddhism: it explores Xuanzang's exploration through the various scriptures of the different schools of Buddhist thought, his impressions on the "best" ideas of each, and then comments on the regional forms of Buddhism practiced and the various Buddhist monuments and sites of pilgrimage he visits along his journey.

The sequence of events in Xuanzang's sojourn is of course narrated according to his progress along the Silk Road, but this is not a book about the Silk Road proper or its history; however, within its central, biographical framework, the book offers a brief discussion of the historical geography and regional political history of Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent.

Aurel Stein described Xuanzang as a "Buddhist Pausanias" for the depth, accuracy and quality of his geographical narrative. The primary motivation of this work seems to have been to make an argument for Xuanzang as a scholar and translator (and to show the impact this had on Chinese Buddhism and philosophy), not just as a geographer or a politico-cultural historian, as he is usually remembered. However the book spends only a short time discussing this toward the end, as an epilogue.

Following on the previous review, the author's voice is indeed rarely extant in the text until this epilogue, as she prefers to narrate the substance of Xuanzang's experiences rather than discuss her own. In this sense I would call the writing skillful, engaging, and easy to read, not dry and dull.

The intended audience seems to be those that know something about Buddhism, but are not familiar with Xuanzang or his immense importance to Chinese thought. The work serves as a charming introduction to the man, but it assumes a general knowledge of Silk Road and Buddhist history. The book does a good job of providing brief, but interesting details to the informed reader, but also will not overwhelm a general reader who is unfamiliar with the more important Buddhist sutra or the differences between Buddhist schools.

Copious footnotes to the text, and endnotes that discuss the plates, are accompanied by a topical, selected bibliography that invites the reader to expand into the specialist material. The text does not suffer from undue editorial or grammatical flaws, which is nice to see.

A very tight and thorough manuscript; four stars given for a fine introduction to the history of Xuanzang.

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Excellent biographical travel narrative...

I picked up Wriggins' book mainly out of interest of the Silk Road itself. The book recounts the journeys of a Chinese Buddhist monk named Xuanzang in the 600's that travels a fantastic distance from China to the deepest corners of India in search of answers to his metaphysical questions.

I would have preferred a little more engaging of an account (such as perhaps Undaunted Courage by Ambrose), as Wriggins tends to describe each location and circumstance only briefly and then moves on with the narrative. On occasion, a few of the accounts are descriptive and moving, but on the whole, it reads more like a lecture in a history course.

This is a detailed book that will help readers interested particularly in the impact Xuanzang made on Imperial China and the world of Chinese Buddhism because of his travels and experiences. For an engaging travel narrative or for a more vivid picture of the Silk Road itself, you'll need to look elsewhere.

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