Embodying Xuanzang: The Postmortem Travels of a Buddhist Pilgrim

Xuanzang (600/602–664) was one of the most accomplished and consequential monks in the history of East Asian Buddhism. Celebrated for his sixteen-year pilgrimage from China to India, his transmission and translation of hundreds of Buddhist texts, and his training of a generation of masters in China, Korea, and Japan, Xuanzang’s life and legacy are the stuff of legend. In the centuries after his death, stories of his epic adventures and extraordinary accomplishments circulated in texts, images, songs, and plays. These mythic accounts recast the erudite pilgrim, translator, and court cleric as a magical monk who traveled not between China and India but between heaven and earth. Beset by bloodthirsty demons, this deified version of Xuanzang navigates the perilous paths of the netherworld to reach a pure land in the west. His purpose is to acquire a cache of sacred scriptures with the power to safeguard the living and deliver the dead. Along the way, he is guided and protected by a mischievous monkey, a lazy pig, a demonic monk, and a dragon horse. This imaginative and compelling tale received its fullest and most influential treatment in the famous sixteenth-century novel

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