Chinese Buddhist monk, scholar, traveler, and translator
602 CE
to 664 CE
Xuanzang (c. 602–664), born Chen Hui or Chen Yi, is a Chinese Buddhist monk, scholar, traveler, and translator who described the interaction between China and India in the early Tang Dynasty.
Born in what is now Henan province in 602, from boyhood he takes to reading religious books, including the Chinese classics and the writings of ancient sages.
While residing in the city of Luoyang, Xuanzang enters Buddhist monkhood at the age of thirteen.
Due to the political and social unrest caused by the fall of the Sui Dynasty, he goes to Chengdu in Sichuan (Szechuan), where he is ordained at the age of twenty.
He later travela\s throughout China in search of sacred books of Buddhism.
At length, he came to Chang'an, then under the peaceful rule of Emperor Taizong of Tang.
Here Xuanzang develops the desire to visit India.
He knows about Faxian's visit to India and, like him, is concerned about the incomplete and misinterpreted nature of the Buddhist scriptures that had reached China.
He becomes famous for his seventeen-year overland journey to India, which is recorded in detail in the classic Chinese text Great Tang Records on the Western Regions, which in turn provides the inspiration for the classical novel Journey to the West, written by Wu Cheng'en during the Ming Dynasty, around nine centuries after Xuanzang's death.
