The Silk Road Journey With 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".

In The Silk Road Journey with Xuanzang, Sally Wriggins gives a detailed account of a seventh-century Chinese Buddhist monk--Xuanzang--on his sixteen year journey to India. Her book provides a very approachable narrative account of Xuanzang's journey that is as thorough as it is easy to read. Still, her project is nevertheless beset by theoretical problems concerning her portrayal of Indian religions. Wriggins' comparison between Buddhism and Christianity is done in a haphazard and problematic way that naturalizes Christianity as human religion par excellence. The way the book proceeds seems to assume that Christianity is the benchmark against which all other religions should be measured. While Wriggins no doubt intended these comparisons to make her readers more comfortable, they often do little to improve the reader's understanding and function only as a way of setting up Christianity as 'natural' religion. Furthermore, Wriggins romanticizes Indian religion (and perhaps even the Indian subcontinent as a whole) as ahistorical spirituality. Wriggins clumsily claims that "spiritual realities, as so often happens in India, tend to overwhelm the particularity of historical details" (p.99). Her characterization of India as eschewing historical detail in favor of "spiritual realities" risks portraying India as a romanticized, super-historical, spiritual land; to do so is to essentialize and de-legitimize Indian history, pigeonholing the entire subcontinent's heritage as primarily 'spiritual.'Though she has produced a laudably thorough and accessible account of Xuanzang's journey, Wriggins would do well to nuance her discussion of Indian religion to avoid these problems.

This was the first book I read in preparation for a trip to parts of the Silk Road. I knew nothing about Xuanzang before this and after reading it didn't think much of him, or his story. It was only after reading other books that referred back to his journey and the impact his history had on China and the image of the silk road that I became more interested.Unfortunately Wiggin's apparent passion for Xuanzang's story does not translate into a narrative that reflects on the journey, analyses the realities of it against the legend, or gives any more than the most basic supplemental details about the regions he traveled through. It's not a book that provides insights about the silk road, buddhism in China and Central Asia, or for that matter India in the period in which Xuanzang travelled. Nor is it a book that takes a critical look at the historical realities of what Xuanzang describes. Instead, similar to what I have read of Marco Polo's recounting of his own trip, it gives random facts and musings that to those with little knowledge of Xuanzang seem disjointed and without context, leaving more questions than answers.Xuanzang really is a fascinating individual and an extremely important cultural figure in Chinese history, and I would have to recommend looking elsewhere for real insight into who and what he was.

I enjoyed following Xuan Zang's travels, re-told with such insightful attention to detail.Xuan Zang is an important figure in the history of the spread of the Dharma to lands outside India, in that he made his epic pilgrimage both to verify already received texts as well as to augment the store of knowledge available in China so many centuries ago.It's a tale of determination and courage, but overall, one of Faith in the Dharma.

While there are often quotes from Xuan Zang's journals, I wished for more of them. However I did enjoy the commentary of comtemporaries and scholars which made the whole more understandable.

The book was everything I expected it to be: a readable and believable account of the legendary Hsuan Tsang's journey from China to India, minus all the fantasy in Wu Cheng-en's novel, Journey to the West. The pictures were bonuses.

I visited recently the ancient ruins of Nalanda and visited the Xuanzang Memorial Museum in Nalanda and thus my interest in him grew and I landed to this book.The book is nicely written, I will say scholarly written, not boring at all. It took me few weeks to read this very informative book. My kudos to Sally for doing justice to this great traveler monk. Please try to visit his memorial in Nalanda which nicely portrays this great personality. Only regret is Kindle is so bad in capturing pictures, otherwise Sally had given a lot of them in this book.

Good Book

A fascinating story not well known in the West.