ABOUT THE BOOK

Through Wriggins’s telling of Xuanzang’s fascinating journey, the reader connects the contours of the Silk Road, medieval Buddhist art, and the underlying principles of Buddhism. This guided tour of the geography of China, Central Asia, and India, gives the reader a deep understanding of the many faces of Asia. Xuanzang’s personal struggle and triumph, brings a forgotten era in a little-known place to shining life.

Icon Editions Westview Press, 2003
344 pages
Revised Edition of Xuanzang: A Buddhist Pilgrim on the Silk Road
Trade Paperback
ISBN-10: 0813365996
ISBN-13: 978-0813365992

WHAT THE REVIEWERS SAY

Sally Wriggins has brought to life one of the greatest religious personalities of all time. This book not only makes real and accessible to us a Buddhist priest, scholar, traveler, linguist and translator … it shows what it feels like to undertake a pilgrimage of sixteen years of more than 10,000 miles.

Since the destruction of the famous Buddhas at Bamiyan, Afghanistan in March 2001, the importance of this book has rocketted from its original publication. Xuanzang wrote some eyewitness accounts of these gigantic statues around 630AD, and this book is an important starting point to finding out more about these monuments and what they originally looked like. This is not an academic book but more a detailed compilation of events connected with a personage with whom the author has obviously felt a close connection. The text is well sectioned with good maps and useful information, notes and an extensive bibliography that makes the work substantive (e.g., it highlights the wider territory of ostriches in the past). Xuanzang becomes a portal through which we view the art and history of a predominantly Buddhist India before she entered a chaotic phase to re-emerge as a Mughal and Hindu civilisation later. There is staggering insight into the mentality of the Chinese and Kings at the time and the art they bestowed on the world. The importance of the Chinese civilisation is highlighted at a time when Europe was in the grip of the dark ages. … A book worth treasuring as written by a professional, well travelled and strong minded author (and she found the time).

A readable and well-organized account of Xuanzang’s travels.

The story of Xuanzang’s life and travels is a gripping one, and well told indeed in this readable and informative book. A contribution to art history and an absorbing introduction to Asian history and civilization.

A charming and worthwhile book, one that should appeal to a wide audience.

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. …

… 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 and 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. …

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.