Venerable Xuan Zang
Venerable Xuan Zang-The great Buddhist pilgrim
Xuan Zang was a Chinese Buddhist monk who traveled overland and mainly following the Silk Road to
obtain Buddhist scriptures in 629 CE. He brought the precious manuscripts with
him returned to China for translating to Chinese in 645 CE. During his travels,
he visited places that today are known as Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and India. Xuan Zang absents
in-depth accounts of his travels and also wrote about the relations between
Chinese Buddhism and Indian Buddhism amongst the first Tang dynasty.
His
manuscript “Great Tang Records on the Western Regions” is a classic in Chinese
literature, and contains much first-hand information about the lands, people,
and Buddhism found along this stretch of the Silk Road in the 7th century
CE. Xuan Zang grew considered about the incomplete and misinterpreted the
nature of many Buddhist texts in China. In 629 CE, he established forth to search for “the sacred traces of the Buddha” and to find the real Buddhist
scriptures in the land of its birth.
Therefore, he
desired to travel to India to take back original Indian Buddhist texts and
translate them by him (Tadusz Skorupski, 1990). He was aware of the Buddhist
Monk Faxian’s journey from China to India and back in 399-412 CE, and wanted
to do something similar. Xuan Zang was already a somewhat experienced
traveller at this point, as he had travelled around in China looking for
Buddhist texts. In his manuscript, he describes the desert as "so wild
that no sign of life could found there. There is not a bird and four-legged animals,
even water or pasture", he closes death in the desert. However, finally, the
horse took them both to a place where there were water and pasture, saving them
from dying of thirst.
Xuan Zang made a
historic pilgrimage to India along the Silk Road, one of the longest and oldest
trade routes known to humanity. Xuan Zang continued for some time in Turpan
where he became to know the king who was involved by the Monk's knowledge of
sacred Buddhist texts. Regrettably, the king became so mesmerized that the king
banned Xuan Zang from leaving Turpan, and the Monk had to threaten a
famine strike to make the sovereign purify his mind.
Helping, the
Monk on his continued travelling, the king delivered him with letters of
introduction that he could express other rulers along the way. Samarkand, Xuan
Zang passed through on his journey to India where is a major trading hub
along the Silk Road. In his manuscript, he describes Samarkand as a great
imperial city, surrounded by a wall, a powerful governing municipal. “This is a
wealthy land, where the treasures of distant countries gather, where there are
powerful horses and skilled handicrafts worker, and the climate is most
pleasant.”After Samarkand, Xuan Zang continued south through the
prominent Iron Gate among Samarkand and Balkh.
Ultimately,
he has gotten Amu Darya and Termez and found a community comprising of further
than thousand Buddhist monks. In Kunduz city located in the Tokharistan region
of Bactria, he hangs around a while to notice the funeral rites of Prince Tardu
who had died from poisoning. While in Kunduz, Xuan Zang chanced a
Buddhist monk who guided him to travel to Balkh, although it was not the south since
there would be many interesting Buddhist sites, relics, and scriptures for him
to see there.
Balkh has homes
over 3,000 Buddhist monks of the non-Mahayana kind, and Xuan Zang attained
the manuscript Mahavibhasa which he later translated into Chinese. One
of the monks living in Balkh was a man named Prajnakara with whom Xuan
Zang studied early Buddhist scriptures. When it was time for Xuan Zang to
continue his trip to India, Prajnakara accompanied him. In Bamiyan, the
two monks visited the two giant Buddhas of Bamiyan; enormous statue carved into
the rock face. Buddha
completed out of stone 140 or 150 feet high, of beautiful golden color and
magnificent with ornamentation of precious substances.
After Bamiyan,
the two monks travelled east, crossing the Shibar Pass and reaching the
regional capital of Kapisi. Xuan Zang reports that there were over a
hundred Buddhist monasteries there and around 6,000 monks. It was also the place
where Xuan Zang for the first time in his life met Jains and Hindu.
The journey
continued from Kapisi to Adinapur and Laghman. In the year 630 CE, Xuan
Zang considered himself to have reached India. His a full 16 years journey (629
to 645 CE) gives us a unique view of the Silk Road in a time of profound
changes throughout Asia. Xuan Zang travelled an incredible 16,000
kilometres over the entire mountain range on the Silk roads and through
regions that are now Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
Xuan Zang had been
travelling in northern India for five years before he finally arrived at
Nalanda where the most famous monastery- university in India in 634 CE was.
Xuan Zang remained a total of 2 years for staying in Nalanda. He was also
particularly interested in the lectures on Yogachara Buddhism, and the
mystic philosophy. Also, he had trips outside “Nalanda” to visit famous sites
of the Buddha where the Buddha preached at “Vulture Peak” and the Buddha's
miracle at Rajagriha before back home to China. Xuan Zang's arrival in
Chang'an greeted with an imperial audience and an offer of official position
(which Xuan Zang declined). He tracked by an assembly of the Buddhist
monks who accepted the manuscripts, relics, and sculptures carried back by the
pilgrim and deposited them in the Temple of Great Happiness. It was in this
Temple that Xuan Zang devoted the rest of his life to the translation of
the Sanskrit words that he had brought back out of the full west, supported by
a supervise of more than twenty translators, all well-versed in the knowledge
of Chinese, Sanskrit, and Buddhism itself.
Xuan Zang saw his task as
introducing Indian Buddhist texts to Chinese audiences in all their integrity.
According to Thomas Watters, the total number of texts brought by Xuan Zang
from India to China is six hundred and fifty-seven, enumerated as follows:
·
The
Development of Yogacara.
·
Metaphysics
of Mere-Consciousness.
·
Some
Objections Answered.
·
The Vijnaptimatratasiddhi-sastra.
His translations may be divided into
three phases
by and large, as follows;
1.
The first six
years during 645-650 CE, we are focusing on the Yogacarabhumi-sastra.
2.
The middle
ten years during 651-660 CE, we are focusing on the Abhidharmakosa-sastra.
3.
The last four
years during 661-664 CE, we are concentrating upon the Maha-prajnaparamita-sutra.
Currently, Ven. Bhikkhu
Jagadish Kashyap, the originator Director of Nava Nalanda Mahavihara first projected
the establishment of a Memorial Hall dedicated to the great Monk, scholar Ven.
Xuan Zang to pay homage to his spirit of freedom and quest for knowledge. The Xuan
Zang Memorial Hall is an Indo-Chinese undertaking to honour the famed
Buddhist Monk. A relic, a skull bone of the Chinese Monk, is on display in the
memorial hall. (Pranava K Chaudhary, 27 December 2006).
The Government of India established the
relics of Ven. Xuan Zang along with an endowment for the construction of the
Xuan Zang Memorial Hall and some Chinese Buddhist manuscripts, from the Chinese
Government at a function at Nava Nalanda Mahavihara, Nalanda. Ven. Bhikkhu
Jagadish Kashyap with the supporting of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, India is first
Prime Minister and Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai work for the founding of the
Xuan Zang Memorial Hall initiated in January 1957. The construction of Xuan Zang
Memorial Hall completed in 1984. In the year 2001, the Memorial Hall handed
over to the Nava Nalanda Mahavihara, Nalanda for its renovation, restoration
and creative development.
Particularly appreciative to Nava
Nalanda Mahavihara, Nalanda is the Ministry of Culture, Government of India,
the Government and the people of China, and several Buddhist organizations for supporting
this great project. The Xuan Zang Memorial represents the long-standing
ties between the two great nations of India and China and is an appropriate
acknowledgement to Indo-China friendship.
Bibliography
Chaudhary, Pranava K, 27 December 2006. “Nalanda
gets set for relic". Times
of India. Archived from the original on 6 November 2015. Retrieved 10 September 2014.
Tadusz Skorupski. School of African and Asian
Studies. 1990. p.99-110.
T.H. Barrett “Exploratory Observations on Some
Weeping Chinese pilgrims”.
London, The Buddhist
Studies Forum, Vol. 1. Seminar Papers (1987-88)
Thomas Watters, trans.,On Yuan Chwang's Travels in
India, two vols. London
1904-5, rpt. Delhi,
Munshiram Manoharlal, 1961. p.118.
[1]"Chi (traces) was a vital term in the thought of medieval
China and its wider meaning it involved the phenomenal world." For an argument of the word "traces" and what it means in a Chinese
framework (T.H. Barrett, 1987-88)
[2] Xuanzang also mentions the Valley of Bamiyan Kabul, Afghan
Tourist Organization 1963.
[3] Nowadays, this land is a part of eastern Afghanistan, near the
border to Pakistan.
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