Empire: World History - 132. Journey to Nalanda and the Library of Jewels

Episode Date: March 19, 2024

In late autumn, 629 AD, Xuanzang set out for the great university of Nalanda from Chang’an. Across the desert, over the Pamirs, and through multiple robberies, it was an epic journey. As he neared the Buddhist heartlands, he saw Buddhism in decline with its monasteries increasingly dilapidated, and he feared disappointment. However, after 6 years on the road he arrived at Nalanda and was awestruck by its splendour. In particular, he was blown away by the library. Nine storeys high, split into the Sea of Jewels, the Ocean of Jewels, and the Jewel-Adorned. It was a haven of scholarship. Through years more of work, he would transcribe the ancient scripts to be taken back to China and lay the groundwork for a moment of great civilisational collaboration. Listen to William and Anita in the final instalment of this miniseries as they discuss Xuanzang and the mark he left on history. For bonus episodes, ad-free listening, reading lists, book discounts, a weekly newsletter, and a chat community. Sign up at https://empirepod.supportingcast.fm/ Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: [e-mail] Goalhangerpodcasts.com Assistant Producer: Anouska Lewis Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcasts, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpowerpoduk.com. Lectures at Nalanda were given in a hundred different halls each day, wrote Jean-Zang, and the students studied diligently without wasting a single moment. He described the lecture halls, stupas, five temples and 300 individual apartments which house the 10,000 monks and international scholars who gathered there. Between them, they studied the texts of different schools of Buddhism, as well as the Vedas, logic, Sanskrit, grammar, philosophy, medicine, medicine, metaphysics, divination, mathematics, astronomy, literature and magic. The priests of Nolanda, to the number of several thousands, are men of the highest ability and talent.

he wrote. Their distinction is very great at the present time. The day is not sufficient for asking and answering profound questions. From morning until night, they engage in discussions, the old and the young mutually help each other. Above all, Shantang described the glories of Nalanda's library, which he regarded as the greatest repository of knowledge in the world. It was nine stories high and contained three divisions, the Ratnaudaddi, the Sea of Jewels, the Ratna Saga the ocean of jewels, and the Rutna Ranjaka, the jewel adorned. Any manuscript could be borrowed, though Nalanda's regulations held that it must be stored in the niche in the monk's cell next to the square central courtyard.

Here it was, the Zhang Zhang studied for five industrious years, copying out by hand the Sanskrit manuscripts he wished to take back home to China with him. Later in China, these manuscripts would be translated and recopied many. more times and carried on to monasteries around the Middle Kingdom and those in Korea and Japan. It's a little sneak peek there. Hello. Welcome to Empire. I hope I didn't do that a huge disservice because your beautiful writing deserves a beautiful reading and I'm not sure I did that. I'm very, very pleased to hear it read. Well, thank you. I do love that moment in the book. And it's one of the most exciting moments because Nalanda just sounds such an extraordinary place. I went there,

last year for the first time having written that passage, I thought, I can't actually go there without seeing it. And it turns out it's just an hour's flight from Delhi. You get out at Gaia and you drive a couple of hours and there is these ruins. They just go on and on and on. And it is like wandering around the centre of Oxford. You've got all these different buildings with court yards and quads and libraries rising up. And what survives in ruins in the Lundah is not even one-tenth of what originally was, because the rest of it hasn't been excavated. It's all waiting there for the archaeologist. And this was the Oxbridge, the Ivy League, the NASA of its day. It was the most extraordinary institution, and it was recognized as such throughout the whole

of Asia. It wasn't just Suanzan coming from China, but we have whole colleges set up by kings from what's now Sumatra, endowed by these kings so that expats could go and join in too. Wow. And what's extraordinary is the way that a few people in India know this stuff very well, and it's part of every Indian's education now. But outside India, really, no. I mean, it's not a name that rings. You said that even you didn't get to Essex.

Let me tell you. I was surprised by that. I shouldn't be surprised because so much knowledge of what was so extraordinary by national India simply doesn't register, even in diaspora Indian households, never mind in the main curriculums of other people elsewhere in the world. And one of the great excitements about researching this is to just read the astonishing learning and knowledge and sophistication that existed in this country for thousands of years. We ought to remind people why we are talking about Nalanda, this amazing, extraordinary, magical place where you can indeed take books out on magic and so many other things. I mean, I love that description of just the categorisation of books. books that existed there. But we're talking about Nalanda because in the last episode of Empire,

we were talking about this extraordinary man, Zhang Zhang, who is trying to make a pilgrimage back to India to find the purest form of Buddhism. Because in the last couple of episodes, we've talked about how China adopts Buddhism, but starts to mould it in its own image. And Shang Zang wants to get back to the essence of the teachings. And that's why he has to make, I mean, you left us on a cliffhanger where he has to get back, but this is a time of barbarism, of bandits in the country, of terrible difficulty crossing borders. So can we talk about that, that journey, which I very excitedly thought, oh, sounds a little bit like monkey magic, which I went on about, banged on about apologies for that in the last episode. But would you then tell me it's sort of based on his, you know, written a thousand years later, but based a little bit on this journey? Exactly. Journey to the West is the most famous novel in Asia and was written in the 16th century during the Ming period, but it's a sort of Marvel comics version, if you like, of the entirely factual travels of Suan Seng. And even to read the bit without the magic, without the amazing companions cast down from the heavens, even the very straightforward account and very factual account that Shwang gives of his journey, is extraordinary.

as we'll hear, because there could have been no more difficult moment for Shuan Zang to make this journey. In Chinese history, you have these periods of unification when everything is going at the civil service exams of taking place each year and people are rising up through the ranks and the place is well-ordered. And then you have these moments between dynasties, when often the whole thing sort of collapses and has to be put back together again from scratch. And this is one of those moments. The Sui dynasty, we talked about the general who reunited China with those amazing draft wagon boats, sailing up the Anxie. He becomes the emperor Wen of the Sui dynasty. But the Sui dynasty is one of the shortest lived, although it's a remarkable period of Chinese history.

It only lasts two generations. And eventually, it's replaced with the tongue, which is in many ways regarded as one of the climaxes of Chinese civilization. But it's in the rut between the two, if you like, that Shwan Zhang sets off. And not only does he set off at this difficult time, he sets off into the desert where the bandits are gathering ready to descend on the cities. So he's not only avoiding the bandits who are going to kill him and avoiding starving to death in the desert or dying of thirst, he's also avoiding the government who's trying to stop him leave the country because at that point to stop people joining the bandits, people are forbidden from travelling. So everyone is against him.

And the odds of him making it even to the edge of the Gobi Desert are very slim. And yet he is so determined that he sets off saying his prayers to the Bodhisattva Abla Kitteshvara. And he crazily heads off into the desert. On foot. On foot. You know, Shanks Pony, 500 miles is the distance that he's got to cover. And he's doing this just by putting one sandalled foot in front of the other. And he's spotted leaving one.

one town and the governor puts out an alert saying watch out for this monk, stop him. And when he reaches the edge of the desert, there stretches ahead of him 400,000 square miles of the goby. And water's a big problem now. And every water pool is guarded by a watchtower. All the springs are being watched over. And so finding his way to the pool, following what he described, as a trail of skeletons and horse dung. He arrives at the first spring. And fearing that he might be seen by the watchman, he hides himself in the rushes until nightfall. And he comes out to the west of the tower and he sees the water and he goes down there to have a drink. And he's kneeling down, about to refill his water bag when there's a sudden thud and an arrow whizzes through the air and

nearly hits his knee. A moment later, another arrow is shot and lands just beside him. And realizing that he's been seen, he stands up and says aloud, I'm a monk from the capital, do not shoot me. And the captain in charge of the watchtower turns out, as fate would have it, to be a pious Buddhist. And although he's received orders to arrest Ranzang, he decides to help the pilgrim. And he feeds him, he fills his water bag, gives him weak cakes and tells him where he can find springs, and he gives him a pony. And so they set off together. To be stopped by anybody, be stopped by that man. It could have been a really short journey.

It could be very short. A really short little trip. Okay, so he now has the help of this man? I mean, how much? Yeah, the man sort of fills him up, gives him weak cakes, gives him water, and gives him a pony. And after he's travelled for more than a hundred lee, he loses his way, and he can't find the Wild Horse Spring, which the friend in the Watchtower has given him directions toward. I have a question, sir.

What is a Lee? What is a Lee? A hundred Lee? he travels. He, I think, is around the same as a kilometer. Okay, thank you very much. Okay. There, there you go.

And when he takes his water bag to have a drink, it's so heavy that it slips from his hand and the water drops and spills on the dunes. And for four days and five nights, he has not a drop of water to moisten his throat. And his mouth and his stomach becomes dried up. and in the end it's the horse that saves it. It suddenly changes course and will not move back the way that Transzegg wants him to move, although he pulls very hard at the reins. And after only a few lee further, he captures sight of pasture and beyond that,

a pond of sweet and clean water. And this is the wild horse spring that he's been looking for. Well, now look here, William Dorempour. Now, this is like the magical horses we came across in Persia, You know, the horses that had extraordinary superpowers to save the people who were on their backs. But we get this account from where, because this is a real journey of a real man making it across a real desert. So what's so wonderful is that this entire period of history is covered by very fragmentary sources. And both in India and in China, there's very little biographical material.

In China, there's good administrative documents and so on. and you can do PhDs on tax gathering and civil service examinations and this sort of stuff. But to actually capture a living character in the middle of a narrative story like this is very difficult in pre-modern Chinese history. And yet, here we have not one source but two. We have Shwan Zhang's own account written for the emperor on his return. So, spoiler, he gets back. And then we have his biographer, Hulie, who is his companion and his second.

secretary and who writes it or completes it, I think shortly after his death. And that one is slightly more uncritically hagiographical and contains more sort of miracle stories than his own version. What's so extraordinary about Shanzang's own version is it is very rigorous. And he's always says, I put in nothing that I can't verify and nothing marvelous that I haven't seen with my own eyes. And it has that immediate ring of truth. You read it through and it's very straightforwardly factual, but also because the story is so extraordinary, it does carry it. Yeah. So after sort of almost dying of first and just being saved by his horse who takes him to this oasis that, you know, he wasn't able to find himself, does the going get a bit easier? The going does get easier because he now

enters this string of Buddhist oasis kingdoms, which I pass through as a student when I was doing my Zanadoo trip. I passed along this path. And you have the succession of oases lining both sides of the Takma Makam Desert. And he, in his journey, is passing along the northern route. And he's basically passed from one Buddhist community to the next. And they write letters. Each one, there's a monastery and the monks write letters to the king and to the other monks. And so he's welcomed. And one of his biggest problems is that as a minor celebrity, the king sometimes want to keep him and chat. And he's saying, no, no, no, I've got to get on to the Lundra. And there's these little quotes, the king, surrounded by his intendants in front and rear, bearing lighted torches, came forth

in person to meet me and ushered me to sit beside him in a precious curtain, in a storied pavilion, in the inner court, and the king worshipped me and asked me about my journey in a very cordial manner. So he has this sort of very kind of luxie time. And then, again, I mean, I didn't know whether you ever read Padilly-Firmal's Time of Gifts when he's, you know, one day he's in a chateau and the next is in a haystack. That's very much sort of Swan Zung's rhythm too. And so sometimes he's the VIP guest of some Buddhist king who wants him to stay and never leave. The next day, he's in a cave in the desert or starving.

But beyond this succession of Buddhist kingdoms, he passes from China into the what's now, I suppose, Pakistan and the Pamirs. He goes over close to the Kunjurab Pass, which is still a journey you can make, and I have made, from the Pamirs into Xinjiang. And in his case, of course, he's not used to the ice and the snow. and this is not an often frequented path. There is amazingly little traffic between China and India at this point. And so he describes glaciers that have never melted and rock sides and avalanches lying across the road, rugged mountain paths, difficult to climb.

And his lovely quote, he says, one would tremble in the flurry of snowflakes, even if one had put on a double shoes and fur coats. At the time of sleeping or eating, there was no dry place to stop. One could only hang the pot to cook food and sleep on the ice. The path among the mountains was long and dangerous and possible only by one person at a time. Yeah. Now, this, I mean, it sounds so difficult and so, I mean, it sounds almost impossible, but there is this spiritual pull that he has because he has to find the truth,

which is also in itself quite a wonderful Buddhist metaphor. If you are a Buddhist, you know, you have to go through all these mortifications of the flesh to get to your enlightenment. And so he carries on putting one foot in front of the other. That's right. And then he has one of his first disappointments because he imagines that he is going to the great holy land of Buddhism and that everything is going to be very grand and wonderful for him. And as he crosses what is now southern Afghanistan and Pakistan, he comes to the valleys of Gandhara around modern Peshawar. And he comes across more and more. wrecked monasteries, ancient foundations that have been there since the second or third century,

if not longer. But he writes, many have fallen into decay, overgrown with weeds. And what he's finding is, of course, that already Buddhism is giving way within India to Hinduism. And he's heading towards the situation that we have today where there are very few Buddhists in India and many, many more Hindus. And he is witnessing the decline of Buddhism, even as he's heading towards Nalanda. And he talks particularly about one white Hun ruler called Mihira Kula, who he says destroyed 1,600 monasteries in Gandhara alone. Now, it's not entirely clear whether this is actually true, because there are also records of the same ruler actually endowing monasteries. So we don't know what this is true. But what is clear is that it's already the high point of Indian Buddhism has

past. Okay, and do we know, I mean, apart from this man who may or may not have killed or enslaved or the monks in the 1,600 monasteries that he supposedly destroyed. But what is the relationship between Hinduism and Buddhism just generally among the general populace? Well, that's a very contentious question. There are those who maintain that they are almost the same religion and there's almost no distinction between them and that the Buddha is an avatar of Vishnu, and that's a popular view in India today. There are other Buddhists who regard, Buddhism as having been driven out of India by Hindus. That is a view. There are cases that you can point to in history where definitely Hindu temples have come up where Buddhist ones were

existing before. Quite famous modern Hindu Shines and Badrinat, for example. I think most scholars believe that it was the decline of Buddhism that gave Hinduism its opportunity rather than a violent suppression of Buddhism. You do occasionally get examples, particularly where Jains are persecuted by Shavite kings in South India. And there are stories of mass impaling of Jains. But it's a contentious issue. And you will find those who say that it was a violent suppression. It's more, I think, that it was a gentle competition and that Hinduism won and was beginning to win very clearly at this period. So when Svran Zang is arriving in India, he's a arriving at a period when there are still rages that are endowing Buddhist monasteries, such as

King Hasha, who endows Nalanda where he's heading, although he is a Hindu king. But definitely now Buddhism is beginning to be a minority religion in India, which was not the case two or three hundred years earlier. Does he say, I mean, I'm sort of assuming you make a trek like this, that might be quite a heartbreaking realisation. Does he give it any kind of, or is there any remnants or scrap of an emotional response to this disappointment. Yes, I mean, he's disappointed. And there are some holy places of Buddhism when he gets closer to the Buddhist heartlands where he finds just ruination with no monks at all in places like Kapalavastu, which are

some of the holiest Buddhist shrines. On the other hand, he gets more and more excited the closer he gets. But he has a difficult passage. And when he first enters what he regards as India, and he talks about India as a land of, I think is it, 70 kingdoms. So he's aware that there is a geographical, cultural and spiritual area called India, but that it's not, unlike China at its centralized best, it's not one country, it's 70 different rulers. And when he crosses into India near Hadda, for the first time, they encounter robbers and bandits. And the merchants who he's traveling with are all robbed

and ambushed. And it's Swan Zhang, who managed to escape in the darkness and raise the alarm. And as result, he loses his possessions. And all the merchants are heartbroken because they've lost their trading goods. And he remains upbeat and tells his fellow travelers that whilst they retain their life, their most valuable possession, they should be happy. But then he has an even more close run encounter when he is sailing down the Ganges on a boat a month later. And he writes, when they'd sailed for about a hundred lee, they came to a place where there was dense and exuberant woods of Ashoka trees on both banks of the river. Then, from woods on each side of the river, more than ten boatloads of pirates suddenly appeared at the same time and rode against the currents

towards them. The people in the boat were terrified, and in their confusion, several men jumped into the river. The pirates compelled the boat to sail to the bank and order the people to take off all their clothes in order to search them for gems and jewels. And then he says it was the season of Drogapuja, and these were worshippers of the goddess. Durga, and it was their custom to find a handsome man of good quality each autumn season to be killed as a sacrifice to the deity. So they're looking for a good-looking man. Now, our young monk, I'm presuming, is a pretty good-looking man. Does he fit the bill? Well, it's funny. You should say that, because yes, indeed. He's grand and handsome, according to his biographer.

All right. Okay, well, look, the light is on him. They're about to make a sacrifice. Join us after the break and find out how our travelling monk gets out of that one. Welcome back. So just before the break, we had Sean Zang, our very intrepid monk who's going to India to find the source of Buddhism, who has conquered deserts, who has managed to get through the gauntlet of bandits and make friends along the way. He's gone through ice. He's gone through heat. And now he's pulled over, if you can pull somebody over in a boat and taken by pirates who are looking for a sacrifice and guess what he fits the bill. This is not an easy journey. What happens next? So the pirates begin to construct a sacrificial altar in a flower-strewn

glade in a wood. And Zanzang, according to his biographer, showing no signs of fear, prepares himself for death and asks for permission to say his last prayers. Then he begins to meditate and he gets so deeply locked into a trance that he's completely unaware. of what's happening. And what's happening is that by pure good fortune for him, a autumn squall breaks out. And there's a gale of black wind arises from the four quarters, says his biographer, breaking down the trees and blowing sand high in the air. Waves rode in the river and the boats were overturned. The pirates greatly frightened, inquired at the travellers, where does this monk come from? And what is his name? They replied, he is a monk from China seeking Dharma. If you gentlemen kill him,

you will commit a deadly sin. In view of the storm, we know the deity had been enraged. It befits you to make quick recompense. So the pirates were fearful and begged for pardon with remorse one after another, and they prostrated themselves before the master. But he was wholly unconscious of them. Only when the pirates touched him with their hands did he open his eyes and unaware of what had happened, asked them,

is it the time now? I mean, this is so completely Tripitaka, the young monk from the series that I know very well, But it just actually makes me think of a question, which maybe you know the answer. He's from China, so he does not speak Hindi, I guess, or prakrati or, you know, the lingua franca of India. So how, I mean, does he have translators? How do they talk to each other? Well, he's learned Sanskrit.

Good looking and smart. Ticking boxes here. There are kind of movie versions of this, which are wonderful, which has this scene in it. And he's a very handsome young man in the movie. Right. which I recommend actually. It's very good. It's very good look up, Swan Zhang. I shall look it out. Okay, so he gets out of the hands of the pirates. And so, I mean, we're talking about, we said it was 500 miles. How long is he on his feet traveling? So it took him six years to get all the way from Loyang to Nolanda. But now he's on the verge of arriving at his destination. And he's passing through all the holy places of Buddhism. He goes to Boghaya, where the Buddha achieved his enlightenment under the tree, although he's a pull to discover that the tree has been cut down and was no longer there

as, quote, wicked kings have cut it down and destroyed it. So poor old Sri Lanka has no tree to see at this point, although I think it's replanted from the sprig that goes to Sri Lanka as a story like that. Anyway, it is regrown. And as he arrives at Bodh Geyer, a delegation of four monks arrived to see him and they're from Nalanda. They've heard that this great scholar has arrived and they escort him to the great university monastery. And 200 monks and 1,000 lay supporters come out to greet him holding banners, canopies, flowers and incense. And this is not usual because we know from other sources that Nalanda is as picky as any Oxbridge or Ivy League college. and the institution refuses to admit casual passes by, unless they go through a thorough examination.

And as Rutherang himself writes about this later in his book, he says, many are denied entrance. And he says it's with a touch of pride. Most of people from different regions and countries who desire to enter this monastery to hold discussions are barred from entering the establishment after a preliminary examination by the gatekeeper. Only brilliant scholars who possess wide knowledge of things ancient and modern are permitted to enter. Good for our monk. I mean, I think that's absolutely fine. You know, all these monks turning up after a gap year. Nobody's bothered about them. This is a man who has talked the talk and literally walked the wall. All those things. And then there's this wonderful moment when he has been waiting to meet the great scholar of the yoga charadex that he wants to read, whose name is the venerable Siliabandra. But it turns out the venerable Siliabandra has had a vision and is waiting for him. He's been told that a monk is coming to see him from China, at least in the slightly souped up version of the story told by Hu Lee, his biographer. And the venerable Siliabandra, who allegedly is 106 years old,

describes this extraordinary institution, Nalanda, where successive kings have established successive colleges. And it is very much on the modern Oxbridge model, just like in you go to Oxford or Cambridge today, there's separate colleges, each with their own courtyard. with cells around that court chart, you go to Nalanda in the middle of Bihar today and you see that. And there are scholars, and this is a controversial question, but there are scholars who think that that idea of a courtyard planned college passes from Buddhism via, there's one particular Nolanda-like institution in Afghanistan called Nau-Baha, which is now near Balk. And that is where many centuries later, the first Islamic madrasas appear.

And they have the same courtyard plan. Hang on a minute. Are you saying the courtyards of Oxbridge are based on Nalanda and beyond? Wow, that's interesting. There are scholars who say that. And so it comes via the Islamic world. And so you find this court child plan coming from Afghanistan, finding its way to Egypt, where the great college in Cairo is one of the grandest in the Islamic world.

It then passes along North Africa into Islamic Spain. And where do we get universities first in Europe? It's on the edge of Islamic Spain. How interesting. It's Paris, Bologna, then Oxford and Cambridge. I love that so much. Let it be. Let it be so.

I like that very much. Well, it may or may not be the case. There's also other arguments, incidentally, that the Buddhist argument method of putting forward a proposition and then other monks refuting it, again passes along the same route through Ibn Sina and Avedcena, and becomes the argument method used by scholars in the West, you know, Tim Thomas Aquinas. This is all controversial stuff, and there are plenty of people that don't believe this to be true. But certainly there is an argument and there are, yeah, there are some very respectable scholars

who believe both parts that the Buddhist colleges inspire the madrasas and also that the madrasas inspire Western universities. So yes, you can argue that. Well, I'll tell you why, I won't let my mind be blown, but it's been breezed a lot by that. because if that's true, I kind of love it. Anyway, so look, he must then as soon as, you know, he's reached, he wants to devour Nalanda, I betcha. So, I mean, what is that meeting like? So the venerable Silibadra, who's been waiting for him,

although he's 106, shows him around. And he's just, his mind is blown. He says, because the entire complex was constructed by kings as excessive dynasties, the buildings were erected by the most exquisitely skilled carpenters, employing rare tools, such as curved chisels, making the complex a really magnificent sight. He says six kings built as many monasteries around the site, one after another, and an enclosure was made with bricks to merge them all into one monastery with a common entrance.

There were separate courtchards divided in eight departments. Precious terraces ranged like stars in the sky, and jade-storied pavilions spired like lofty peaks. The temples stood high in the mist and the shrines hovered over rosy cloud, breeze and fog rose from the doors and windows and the sun and moon shone alternatively on the eaves of the building. Anyway, these sort of very marvellous descriptions go on. And clearly he's completely dazzled by it. There's no other institution in the world at the time like this. And he goes around the great monastery and he sees the sutra library, the super-like structure at the center of the complex. Then there's the lecture halls, the temples, the individual apartments of the scholars, the 10,000 months. who gather there, and he discusses the curriculum. And he doesn't just have to study Buddhism,

although, of course, is why he's come there. He says that there's also secular subjects, such as logic, Sanskrit grammar, philosophy, medicine, metaphysics, astronomy, literature, and magic. So it's quite a spot. And we are so lucky that we have this amazing spotlight cast on it by wonderful Schwerin. So, I mean, the reason that Nalanda is able to, to thrive because this is under the reign of King Harsha, who I know a little bit about, he's one of the ancient Indian kings. And they were, I mean, historically there were some worshippers, but Harsha is different. Harsha does like this Buddhist theology that has come to his land. Some people describe him as a devout Buddhist. I mean, what is he? Is Harsha? What is Harsha?

So I think people get very sort of surprised by the fact that it's quite possible in ancient India to patronise both Jain and Hindu and Buddhist institutions at the same time. And we've seen that with Ashoka, we've seen it with Kanishka, and this is true of Harsha too. And I don't think that the firm boundaries that we erect between different religious systems were understood to be firm boundaries at this period, that people see these as different ways at trying to understand the divine, trying to understand the world. And King Harsha is very happy to be proud of Nalanda, although he technically is closer to the Hindu way. So just to give you an idea of King Harsha's realm, it was massive, massive,

covered much of northern India, northwestern India. It was the Namada River. If you've heard of the Namadadam, you'll know the Namada River. It was one of the natural boundaries to it. Runs through Gujarat, through Madhya Pradesh, through Central India. Right. So this is a man who has wealth and power. And if you have his patronage, that matters a great deal. And I've seen imagery of him doing some kind of supplication to Buddhism. There's King Harsha paying homage to Buddha. It's a later imagining of it. But they certainly do celebrate the fact that he's interested in the Buddhism and Israel. Absolutely. And he gives an endowment. He says to the headmen of 200 villages around Lundra that they're responsible for providing provision for these scholar monks.

So they're tasked with providing cartloads every day of rice, milk and butter for the students and the teachers. And Suan Sang records this is an honoured guest. He was daily provided without charge with 20 beetle nuts, arica nuts and nutmegs, over an ounce of fine insects, half a litre of rice, unlimited supply of butter of milk. He's also provided with two servants and eventually Harsher even gives him an elephant to help him get around. Well, everyone needs an elephant. It's been a long trip. You don't want to go back without an elephant. So, I mean, life is looking dandy, I suppose, for sure. Is he happy? Is he fulfilled?

So he's very happy. He sits in with Silibadra's lectures. He attends Sibadra's classes. And for five years, he studies during the day and the evening he copies out these Sanskrit texts that he's come for. Obviously, there's no printing or photocopying or anything. So everything that he wants, these enormous, very complicated, very complex Mahayana, a yoga carotex that he's after, have to be copied out by him by hand.

And he's translating as he goes, I guess. I mean, or is he copying, do we know? I don't think so. I think the translation takes place later. He copies it out in Lundra and he takes the copies that he does back with him eventually. Right.

And he describes his routine. Again, we have this extraordinary spotlight shone on this great institution. He talks about water clocks, keeping track of the time, and gongs being beaten to announce the hours of prayer and study. He says how every morning all the monks are woken were a great drum and a 10 foot by 10 foot cell around the central cloister,

which you can still see. The floor plan of all these different colleges still survive one after another. Six, I think, have been excavated one next to each other, like separate colleges in Oxford or Cambridge today. There are pools outside for his ablutions. He attends lectures. Other times he gives lectures himself. And every evening, after a service of chanting, he sits up late copying these manuscripts that he wants to take back.

And at the end of five years, he's got most of the manuscripts that he's come for after five hard years. And he does a little loop around India. He has a plan to go to Sri Lanka, but that doesn't come off because there's a civil war. He gets as far as Kanthipuram, which is in South India, near inland from Chennai, from Madras. And today it's a major Hindu center at the time of Shwai. Van Zang, it's both a Buddhist and the Hindu center. And he studies there. He goes to visit Ajanta, which is the great cave monastery that we talked about. And then having come back to Nalanda and done a sort of great public debate under the auspices of King Harsha, he announces to the horror

of everybody. He's going back to China. And they say, why would you do that? You're in the Holy Land. You're in the suspicious place. Stay. But he says, no, he needs to go back. And so he is given by King Harsha, 100 porters, guards, 72 horses, his elephant, further pack animals to carry his relics and manuscripts. And off he goes in very different style to the solitary lone monk who set off. One foot in front of the other go, yes. So, I mean, one presumes this was a pretty easy way back. Was there any sort of anything eventful that happens to him on the way back to China? So it's much easier, but there's one terrible disaster. And that is when he's crossing the Indus at Attuck. And even today, it's quite a journey. The bridge there is at the

narrowest place in the Indus, but it's still incredibly turbulent. And as he is halfway across a monsoon storm breaks, and a gale springs up, he himself is fine, but several boats full of manuscripts are sunk. And also he, which is very interesting, because we think of this as being such a sort of Enlightenment European thing, he's been collecting seeds to take back to China with him. Yeah. And a lot of the seeds are lost too. Did you say that King Harsha also gave him a sapling from the Bodhisattva tree? I mean, is that something that?

That sounds right. I can't remember that. Yeah, no, I think there's one of the parting gifts along with the elephant. So, I mean, hopefully that wasn't on the sunken boat. So he's devastated by this because, you know, if you've spent months, even years, copying these manuscripts out, you don't want them sinking in the Indus. Anyway, most of his manuscripts survive. Most of his seeds survive.

And in 644, he sets off again over the mountains. And when he reaches the borders of the Tang Empire at Hothan, southeast of Kashgar, on the southern edge of the Taklamakan Desert, he writes to the emperor Taizong. And this is a tricky letter to write because he's left the country illegally. He was specifically given instructions not to leave. He defied the emperor and ran the gauntlet of his watchtowers. And now he has to somehow fess up and make up with the emperor. So he writes a letter saying that he's left illegally,

but that he's brought back immense knowledge, and he throws himself on the emperor's mercy. And after eight months, a reply comes saying, we are extremely happy to hear that the master is coming back after seeking the way in foreign lands. And by the time that he arrives at Loyang, on the 8th of February 6.45, his fame has gone before him, and thousands of people are waiting to greet him back. Monks and nuns are lining the streets, and he's escorted to what will become his new monastery, the Hongfu Monastery,

and three weeks later, on the 23rd of February, he is granted an audience by the Tang Emperor Taizong in his palace. And this is an important moment because in his absence there's been a very strong anti-Buddhist push by some of the Taoist and Confucian competitors at court. And luckily, the Emperor Taizong has been partly brought to power with the aid of the famous Buddhist Shailin fighter monks. Do you remember them? The Shaolin's. Yeah, the Shaolin monks. Yes, we used to watch them every Christmas doing things. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Little boys doing the splits in mid-eastern. All that. So none of the ancient Indian martial arts traditions have survived. There are martial arts traditions in Kerala, but they are relatively modern. But we know that they existed and we know that the legendary monk Bodhidama brought some of these martial arts traditions, which were originally aimed, I think, at protecting monks from wild animals. That's the origin. Certainly Bodhi Dama uses this pointed staff, which is his sort of bespoke weapon, against the bears and wolves that try to stop him meditating in Shaolin when he first goes there. Anyway, thanks to the Shaolin monks, Taizong has been installed. So he's quite pro-Buddhist. And he's also a man of enormous

intellectual inquiry. And he's open-minded. And he greet Shwan Zhang like a returning hero. So the first thing he asked him to do is to write the account of his journey, which is the account that we have of this record. And it's called the record of the Western world. And a whole load of real consequences, actual serious consequences of this journey begin to unfold. First of all, Taizong builds something called the Great Wild Goose Pagoda, which is a 210-foot-tall, spectacular library, the manuscripts which Shuan Zang has brought back from Nalanda and Kanchipuram, and he gives instructions that Shran Zang should be provided with whatever financial assistance he requires to translate all these from Sanskrit into Chinese.

So Shwan Zang, who leaves so furtively, who, as this sole figure, braves the desert at the mountains, now becomes the centre, like Kumara Jiva before him, of a major translation Bureau. And you begin to see this translation of all these important texts from Sanskrit into Chinese. And this is in many ways, I think a forgotten moment of so civilizational passage. Today, we think of these two great civilizations in Asia, Indic civilization and Chinese civilization. But we forget how much Chinese civilizations owes to that of India. Yeah. I mean, we ought to mention somebody, he's at the beating heart now, and now Buddhism is at the beating heart of courtly life, but it does get a little bit of a help from an unexpected

quarter. A concubine. Now, tell us that quickly. How is the monk helped by the concubine? I have been specifically forbidden by my publishers from revealing more of this book than beyond Schwanza-Zang, because they thought that the chapter which follows about this concubine, who becomes the only empress in Chinese history and who adopts Buddhism. But I cannot tell you more. You have to wait until the book comes out in September. Do not send out your hitmen. I did not realise Bloomsbury.

Stand off. Okay, well look, that is a corker of a story as well. But you will have to get the book, which let me remind you, is on pre-order right now. And if you are a member of the Empire Club, you can get all sorts of exciting, luscious discount codes for that. William, it's been just spectacular. Thank you very much. Well, I hope I haven't talked too much.

You'd be very sweet, Anita, allowing me to just, what's the word? To enlighten us. Whatever you're thinking, I would choose enlighten it. Blagg my way for four episodes or five episodes. It's a part of history that I know so little about, but really, really interesting and exciting. I think this is, I mean, one of the reasons to do it, I think, is that people know bits of this. You know, some people know a little bit about anchor. core, some people know a little about Nalanda, some people know the other extraordinary story about

how Indian numbers go from India through the Arab world to the west and become the numbers that we today in Europe call Arabic numbers. But none of these stories have been linked, I feel, into one great narrative of this Indosphere, this area of Indian influence. And that's the story I've tried to tell. And, well, we'll see how it all goes. But it's been, I've had a wonderful five years researching it. And as somebody who has had a sneak peek, let me tell you, it is a marvellous thing and it fills in so many gaps and so many things that I thought I knew or I partially knew, you know, just blasted apart and a light shone on them. But will you promise, in a future episode, William Delrow and Paul, put your hand on your heart that you will come back and tell us the rest of the book that you haven't been allowed to tell us on pain of death? I will definitely do that come September because the wonderful story of how this one fifth-ranking concubine aged, I think only 15 at this point in the story.

story when Shwanzan comes back from India. Hashi is the woman that sees Buddhism brought center stage to become the one court religion in China, if only for a brief period. But it's kind of high watermark of both Buddhist and Indian influence in China. Stop teasing us. My God, you're a tease. Anyway, look, that is all we have time for on Empire. Do join us again for the next episode.

Till then, it is goodbye from me, Anita Arnon. And goodbye for me, William Drupal.