The History of China - #90 - Special: Monkey Business

Episode Date: February 19, 2016

In celebration of the Year of the Monkey, this week we take a look at China's most famous demonic simian, Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, and his Journey to the West guarding the Buddhist monk Xuanzang. Then we'll look at the historical 15 year long westward journey of Xuanzang as he seeks sutras from India to bring enlightenment to China. Time Period Covered: 602-664 CE Major Historical Figures: San Zang Master Xuanzang (Chen Hui) [602-664] Major Fictional Figures: Sun Wukong (The Handsome Monkey King, Mei Hou Wang) Zhu Bajie (Pig of the Eight Commandments) Sha Wujing (The Sandy Friar) Bodhisattva Guanyin (Goddess of Mercy and Compassion) Major Works Cited: Wu, Chang'en, The Journey to the West (1592). Xuanzang, Da Tang Xiyu Ji (Great Tang Records of the Western Regions) (646). "The History of Xuan Zang." http://www.vbtutor.net/Xiyouji/history.htmInternet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. "Xuanzang (Hsüan-tsang) (602—664 C.E.)" https://web.archive.org/web/20130116083307/http://www.iep.utm.edu/xuanzang/#H1 Cao, Shibang. "Fact vs. Fiction" in Dust in the Wind: Retracing Dharma Master Xuanzang's Western Pilgrimage Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. Hi everyone, this is Scott. If you want to learn about the world's oldest civilizations, find out how they were rediscovered, follow the story of Mark Antony and Cleopatra's descendants over ten generations, or take a deep dive into the Iron Age or the Hellenistic era, then check out the Ancient World Podcast. Available on all podcasting platforms or go to ancientworldpodcast.com. That's the Ancient World Podcast. Hello and welcome to the History of China.

Episode 90, Monkey Business Let me begin by wishing each and every one of you a happy Spring Festival and Chinese New Year. As I mentioned at the end of last episode, as of this recording, it will now freshly be the Year of the Monkey. So break out your bananas, climb up a tree, and get ready for some fun. Because today, we are taking a break from Empress Wu, Emperor Gaozong, and the Tang Dynasty altogether to bring you something completely different. And if, before we launch in, you either just got started listening after the last Chinese New Year show I put out, or just plain forgot. I'll direct you all the way back to episode 11 for the ins and outs of the Chinese Lunar

Solar Calendar and the Heavenly Stems and all that. Go ahead. I'll wait. Okay. All caught up? Great. So now that you know all about exactly how and why it is the year of the monkey, today we are going to focus on the most famous monkey in Chinese history,

Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, and his adventures with his master, the Buddhist monk Xuanzang, on their holy quest to the far west. Following that, we will take a look at the actual journey of the historical Xuanzang, and see how 16th century author Wu Chang'an really didn't need to go adding in fantastical creatures and mythical beasts to make the story compelling at all. First things first, though, a correction for episode 89, brought to you by none other than Nate Ledbetter of the Samurai Archives podcast. Nate pointed out to me that my analysis of the reasons for Tang China thrashing the Japanese military in 688 was critically wrong in one key respect, namely that me saying that it had

anything to do with Daimyo, which was off by about 700 years. In the words of former Governor Rick Perry, whoops. Nate then gave me a great analogy for the conflict. Yamato, Japan was much like Iraq right before the Gulf War. On the heels of its victory over its neighbor, in Iraq's case it was Iran, and in Japan's case it was the Emishi tribe, it was feeling high and mighty and capable of taking on anyone and delivering the mother of all wars to all contenders, only to find itself completely and utterly crushed by the regional hegemon, with Tang China very much playing the role of the United States when it started punching above its weight. So thank you very much, Nate, for letting me know just how wrong I was in that and setting me straight.

And for any of you who have not checked his show out, but might be interested in that tiny chain of pirate islands to the east, I suggest you give the Samurai Diaries podcast a listen. Alright, on with the show. First off, the book itself. The author Wu Cheng'en's masterwork was entitled Shi You Ji, meaning literally Journey to the West, though it has most famously been translated into English under the name of simply Monkey, thanks to its most famous character.

It was published in the year 1592, and as such, one of the earliest works of Chinese fiction to which authorship can be officially documented, even though Wu published the work anonymously at the time. And I should note that definitive authorship of the work is occasionally disputed, as is its date of publication. But for simplicity's sake, I'm just going to go with Wu and 1592, so there. In terms of genre, it is and only ever was a work of high fantasy and never held any pretenses of being historical. It falls under the Chinese genre heading of shen mo xiao shuo, meaning gods and demons fiction, which is pretty illustrative

of the kind of work we're in for, and are virtually all attributable to far older folk legends and, essentially, fairy tales. The novel is 100 chapters long and can be divided into four definite, but unequal, sections. So let's first give a very brief overview to the first two sections, which are, in my humble opinion, by far the most entertaining of the whole work. The story begins well before the main narrative, with the supernatural birth of a monkey from a giant stone on the mystical Fruit Flower Mountain sometime around the dawn of time. Born of a confluence of heaven and earth, and given life and nourishment from the five elements themselves. Quickly enlisting a troop of his own sapient monkeys, the Monkey of Stone establishes

his supremacy by finding his people a safe haven in a cave behind a waterfall, wherein he names himself the Handsome Monkey King, or Mei Hou Wang, and rules over all monkey kind. Later on, he endeavors to find one of the world's ever-elusive Taoist immortals and learn his secrets of living forever, journeying across the world and learning the mannerisms of humanity before at last finding the Great Master. After being accepted into the Immortal's tutelage, he is given the spiritual name Sun Wukong, meaning awakened to emptiness, and in short order, learns how to transform himself into 72 different ways, although he

would never be able to hide his tail, as well as cloud hop, or more simply, fly, a distance more than 54,000 kilometers in a single somersault. He likewise comes into possession of the ruyi jingbang, meaning the compliant golden-ringed staff. Though when he first comes upon it in the dwelling of a sea dragon, it is a massive eight-ton pillar stretching up to the sky, Monkey is able to easily lift it. And when he suggests aloud that its size might render it a little unwieldy in battle, in accordance with its name,

it complies and shrinks to the size of a normal longstaff, though maintaining its tremendous mass. Thereafter, Sun Wukong discovers that the staff will grow or shrink and even fight on its own exactly as he wishes it. And when not in combat, he typically keeps it the size of a pin and tucked behind his ear. In the same dragon's lair, he likewise manages to talk and or fight his way into possession of the resident dragon's golden chainmail armor, phoenix feather cap, and cloud-hopping boots, which is, I'm sure you'll agree, quite the haul. Inevitably, though, his cheeky arrogance begins to irk the greater gods of heaven, coming to a head when he rejects the title

offered by the heavenly bureaucracy, which he belatedly realized was the lowest possible position within heaven, as keeper of the horses, and unilaterally infights himself as the Qitian Dasheng, which is translated as Great Sage, Equal of Heaven, a title so profane that even the Jade Emperor of Heaven takes offense. Under his celestial command, jailers are dispatched to take the blasphemous handsome Monkey King into custody for punishment, but none are able to subdue the amazingly powerful monkey.

It is here that we get our first real taste at the Monkey King's vast arsenal of magical powers, which include the ability to transform himself at will into anyone or anything, although again, with the exception of his tail, as well as to change any or all of the hairs on his body into whatever he wishes, even exact fighting duplicates of himself. He also has the ability to transform other objects into people by spitting blood on them and reciting a chant, and even infusing them with limited autonomous movement and speech. In combat, he has the ability to multiply his head and arms threefold,

and even duplicate his staff so that all three sets can wield one, all the more useful for fighting off veritable armies of enemies at once. One of his most powerful abilities, though, is that he can freeze anyone immobile, at least up to a point, as it doesn't seem to work on major gods or demons. His staff can likewise break any lock, he is immune to fire and water, although he cannot fight in water, and his breath can produce massive gales of hurricane-force winds. He can also summon the local gods of any place, and his eyes can see for thousands of miles, and through any disguise, both mundane or magical. And, oh yeah, he is completely immortal and invincible, to the point that he would, simply for laughs, cut off his own head and then regrow it,

or pull his guts out and then stuff them back in, with no pain or scarring. Sun Wukong is basically if you gave your 11-year-old brother a D&D character creation sheet, but then forgot to tell him that he could only have a limited amount of ability points or skills, which is to say, ridiculously overpowered. Resigned, the Jade Emperor relents and appoints him the guardian of the Heavenly Peach Orchard, whose golden fruits blossom only once every three thousand years. When they do, Monkey promptly gorges himself on the celestial fruit and unknowingly grants himself true immortality and even more power, because of course it does.

When he causes further trouble after not being invited to a party, he single-handedly defeats 100,000 of heaven's finest warriors, before at last being subdued only by the Buddha himself. Buddha wagers with the monkey that he cannot escape his grasp, to which monkey scoffs and immediately flies to the very edge of the world, which is marked by a vast pillar deeming it as such. In a display of arrogance, he proves he was there by urinating on the world's end pillar, only to turn and discover that it was in fact only one of the Buddha's fingers, and as far as he'd gone, he had never even left the deity's palm. Sufficiently annoyed at the monkey's impudence, Buddha imprisons him within unbreakable locks

underneath a mountain sealed with the mystical Buddhist mantra, where he would be forced to remain in penance for 500 years. Flash forward, oh, wouldn't you know it, 500 years, and boom, we are in the year 629, smack dab in the middle of Emperor Taizong of Tang's reign. The monk Xuanzang, also known by the title he would ultimately earn, Tripitaka, had been selected by one of the subordinates of the great Buddha, the Bodhisattva Guan Yin, who, if you happen to be a big Sanskrit fan, you might know better as Avalokitesvara, but I'm going to stick with Guan Yin. Guan Yin will make repeated appearances across the course of the book, to inevitably pull the forming party out of whatever hopeless situation it might have gotten itself into. More than little deus ex machina,

yes, but in a book literally about gods and demons, perhaps that can be forgiven. As the goddess of mercy and compassion, she was instructed to find someone who might make the journey to India and bring the sutras of transcendence and goodwill back to his homeland, which the Buddha had found to be rife with hedonism, promiscuity, and sin. And as it would turn out, monk Xuanzang fit the bill to a tee. Duly appointed by heaven, the monk sets off on his own into the wild unknowns of the western expanses atop a white horse, who he did not know was actually a banished water dragon in disguise and sent to aid him by heaven. But since the horse never says anything, nor does anything but serve as basically a trusty steed, that's all there really is to say about him.

Xuanzang knows only that heaven will guide and protect him on this dangerous quest, because hey, Guan Yin told him so. To that end, the Bodhisattva journeyed to the Monkey King Sun Wukong's mountain prison and offered him terms. Agree to serve and protect the monk on his quest, and he would be released from his bonds. Monkey, of course, agrees readily, but Guan Yin is no fool. Knowing that a being as smart and dangerous and just plain tricky as Sun Wukong would be all but impossible for a mortal to control or bend, she secretly gives Monk Xuanzang a golden headband and instructs him that if he can trick his unruly monkey guardian into putting it

on his head, he will be able to exert control over his actions through a special Buddhist chant. Sun Wukong quickly discovers the not-well-hidden-at-all band and, as expected, is enthralled by its shiny golden luster. Against Xuanzong's light protestations, a nice little reverse psychology there, Monkey tries the band on anyway and admires how well it suits him, but when he tries to take it off, he finds that it has been magically sealed to his head permanently. Turning on Xuanzong in anger, Monkey begins to grow violent, accusing his master of tricking him into wearing the band. And at this, Xuanzong begins reciting the mantra taught by Guan Yin, causing the band to begin constricting about the

Monkey's head and causing him unbearable pain. Control over Sun at last established, he swears to do as his master commands, and Xuanzang ceases his mantra, thus easing his guardian's torment. Early on in their journey together, the pair came upon a village under duress by a voracious demonic monster. This being, half-man, half-pig, was also tremendously strong, and is not only eating the farmers out of house and home, but demanding marriage to one of the most beautiful girls in town. Appealing to the monk and his guardian for aid, Sun Wukong quickly discovers the lair of the pig monster

and engages it in combat with his mighty staff. To both his and Xuanzang's amazement, though, the pig creature proves to be Sun Wukong's equal in combat, and is armed with a weapon of unassuming appearance but lethal force, a nine-pointed rake. As the monkey and pig clash yet again, Wukong lets it slip that his master is Xuanzang, the Tang monk, on a holy mission to the west. At this, the pig immediately ceases the fight and proclaims that he, too, has been recruited to serve and protect the monkey by the Bodhisattva of Mercy. As it turns out, he too was cast down from heaven, possibly as a direct result of Sun Wukong's failed uprising against it 500 years earlier. But before his downfall, he had served as the Marshal of the Heavenly Canopy and commanded a

force of 80,000 heavenly soldiers. However, at a banquet, he had drunkenly made a pass at the goddess of the moon, Chang'e, and his sexual harassment of the high goddess had resulted in him being sentenced to a thousand lifetimes of tragic loves. Through a mishap, however, his essence had fallen into a pigsty, where he had been reborn as the man-eating pig creature he lived as now. Like Wukong, he too had accepted Guan Yin's offer of clemency and atonement in exchange for service to Xuanzang. To this, Xuanzang accepted him as his second disciple and guardian, but made the pig promise to reform his gluttonous eating and sexual habits in compliance with the Buddhist dietary and moral codes, to which pig agreed. At this,

Xuanzang gave him the nickname Zu Bajie, meaning the pig of the Eight Commandments, to remind him of his restrictions and not to succumb once again to physical excess. The final member of the party to be found would appear in chapter 22, when the trio hear tell of a demonic ogre made of sand and laying claim to the Liao Sha River, or the River of Flowing Sands, and devouring any who would dare to cross it. As before, Sun Wukong rushes off to crush this enemy, and what he finds is a grisly sight to behold indeed. A terrible ogre, bald in the head but with a blood-red beard, and bedecked about his neck with a necklace of nine human skulls, those of nine previous religious

pilgrims who he had already devoured. But when their bones floated on the river rather than sink, since they were sanctified, he grew delighted and strung them together to play with them when he was bored. The terrible ogre wielded a fearsome weapon, a monk's spade, which is a long staff tipped on one end with a sharpened flat blade, hence the name spade, and on the other end a crescent blade like a moon. When Wukong engaged the ogre in battle, once again he proved surprisingly powerful, and was able to stave off the monkey's assault long enough to dive beneath the river where he lived and hide, since again Wukong could not fight underwater. And once again, upon learning that this particular monk was Xuanzang, he reveals that he, too,

has pledged himself to the Bodhisattva to serve as the monk's guardian, as penance for the grave crime he committed while in heaven centuries ago, in his case breaking the vase of a queen mother of the west, for which he was banished and rendered this terrible creature. Once again taking the demon as his disciple, Guanyin dubs him Sha Wujing, though he is most commonly referred to as Sha Sheng, meaning the Sandy Monk. With the party at last complete,

after all we've now got a rogue, a tank, a monk, a priest, and a mount, after all, the story then launches into its third, longest, and by far most skippable section, chapters 23 through 99, which detail the episodic adventures of the party thus formed, which inevitably consists of 81 instances of Xuanzang getting himself captured or otherwise into trouble and his guardians' attempts to rescue him, all ultimately spectacularly successful.

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podcasting platforms, apps, and websites. Come, visit denouement of the final chapter, which very briefly describes the return journey upon its successful completion and the divine rewards meted out to the party for their efforts. Xuanzang and Sun Wukong are enshrined as newly enlightened Buddhas in their own right, Xuanzang as the Buddha of Sandalwood Merit, and Wukong as the Buddha of Victorious Battles. Zhao Wujing is rewarded by being transformed into the golden-bodied Arhat, which is essentially a saint who has achieved nirvana, and Zhu Bajie, though greatly improved, is still too much of a slave to his baser urges to have achieved enlightenment, so he receives the lesser reward of becoming the cleaner of the altars, meaning that he could eat all the excess offerings

left. Oh yeah, and the horse, who again was actually a banished dragon. For his service, he was allowed to reclaim his position in heaven in his true serpentine form. And so ends the Journey to the West as a book, though it has gone on to be told in television series, major motion pictures, and yes, even Japanese anime, most famously inspiring the Dragon Ball Z series,

what with its main character's name, Son Goku, being the word-for-word translation of Son Wukong. Monkey Demon King, Super Saiyan, who'd have thunk? But this is a history show, and so let's launch past the legendary novel and delve into the grains of truth from which this yarn was spun. The Meng Xuanzang was, as we've noted a few times already, a historical figure of the early Tang dynasty, and he did indeed make an arduous pilgrimage to the west and back again. He was born in the year 602 in a town called Goushi,

near the empire's then capitalcapital Luoyang, as the youngest of four sons. For generations prior, his family, the Chen family, had been renowned for its scholarship, high education, and official positions stretching back as far as the court of the Eastern Han dynasty. And Yang Xuanzang, whose birth name was either Chen Yi or Chen Hui, was no exception. In spite of his Confucian upbringing and his apparently natural aptitude for its strictures, Xuanzang, even from an early age, expressed interest in following the path of one of his elder brothers into Buddhist monastic life within the temple at Luoyang. When his father,

an ardent and conservative Confucianist himself, died in 611, he was at last able to make good on his desire and journey to Luoyang, where he lived with his elder brother at the Jingtu Monastery for some five years, studying the various schools of Buddhist thought before ultimately favoring that of the Mahayana. By the year 615, Xuanzang felt ready to take up his monastic vows and formally enter the Buddhist order. Typically, this kind of request would have been declined, since he, still just a child of 13, was too young. Nevertheless, because of the boy's deep aptitude and breadth of scriptural knowledge, he was apparently something of a wunderkind and able to instantly memorize any scripture put

before him. The abbot of Jingtu Monastery, Zeng Shangguo, made an exception and admitted him into the Holy Order. He and his brothers' continued studies, however, would be catastrophically interrupted by the collapse of the Sui Dynasty only three years later in 618, prompting their flight from Luoyang entirely. At first they made their way to Chang'an,

seeking refuge within the newly proclaimed Tang capital, but soon thereafter left it and the north behind entirely, entering down to the southern stronghold of Chengdu in Sichuan. Within the monastery there, the two Chen brothers studied for a further three years, whereupon in 622, Yang Xuanzang was at last fully ordained as a monk at age 20. Yet as he continued his studies, he began to grow increasingly dissatisfied and, well, distraught over the seeming contradictions between the multiple translations of even the same sutras. Obviously, something critical had been lost along the Silk Road, as the Buddha's messages had made their way to China from India.

From the history of Xuanzang, quote, there was no single standard version of the scriptures. This was because the translations of that period were mostly done by foreign monks from India and elsewhere. Language barriers hindered accurate translation, compounded by the fact that each translator had different understandings of the original scriptures themselves, which were inherently hard to understand. End quote. This growing frustration and realization that neither his teachers nor the scriptures available to him could solve this puzzle led Xuanzang to one inescapable conclusion, that to solve the contradictions of his faith, he must seek it out at its source, the Indian kingdoms of the West.

There were just two little problems. The first was that Shenzong couldn't understand Sanskrit. But hey, that would be easy enough to solve. Leaving his brother in Chengdu, he returned to Chang'an to begin studying the Western language. It took him years, but he was in time able to read the foreign script passably enough, and by 629 was prepared to leave China behind and journey to the cradle of Buddhist thought. That left the other little issue, which was the fact that travel out of China had been strictly forbidden by Emperor Taizong in the name of national security. As you may recall, the western borders of Tang China were beset with enemies, not the least of which was the Gukturk Khanate. Rather than let this set him back though, Xuanzang, after receiving a vision showing him climbing the summit of the holy Mount

Sumeru where the gods lived, resolved that imperial order or not, it was to the west that he must go if answers were to be had. Thus, in 629, at 26 years old, Xuanzang set out in defiance of imperial orders from the city of Suzhou, whose pious governor conspired to help him in spite of an arrest warrant placed against the monk once his intentions had become known. When his guide deserted him shortly into the journey, he was forced to travel on alone. Until he came to his first great obstacle, Yuman Pass, the Great Jade Gate to the west. Constructed by Emperor Wu of Han in the 2nd century BCE, it had for centuries stood as the final bastion of Chinese military authority to the wild western regions. Though it had fallen out of use in favor of a more northern route by the 6th century. Nevertheless, it did remain staffed by a contingent of guardsmen, who, like everyone else, stood with orders not to let anyone in or out of China proper unless they had a proper passport.

Xuanzang's sheer determination and piety, however, convinced the guards to at last let him go, and several even provided him with some supplies and advice as to the best routes to take through the wasteland beyond. Still, if Xuanzang thought that the Jade Gate was going to be the greatest of his travails, he was shortly in for a very rude awakening indeed. Because on its far side, he now faced the arduous trek to the city of Hami, with 500 kilometers of the Gobi Desert between him and it. Again, from the history of Xuanzang, quote, death lay along the road to the west, literally. As Xuanzang rode his horse into the desert, a lonely, desolate figure in the shifting sands, he saw human bones, evidently the remains of travelers that, like him,

had the courage to take on the challenges of the dangerous Gobi Desert without permission from the government. Some of them, Xuanzang knew, were pilgrims to the west, like him. Nor were the elements his only enemy. In spite of convincing the guards of the Jade Gate to turn a blind eye to his passing, the route to Hami was lined with five great guard towers, whose soldiers within had been ordered to shoot on sight anyone without a passport. During his attempts to sneak past the looming guard towers under cover of night, Xuanzang wound up getting himself hopelessly lost in the desert, and also losing his water supply in the process. For the subsequent five days, he wandered through the parched wasteland, supposedly reciting to himself the Heart Sutra when he felt like losing hope.

In the biography of Master Tripitaka of the Great Xi'an Monastery of the Great Tang Dynasty, the author states that on the fifth night as the monk lay in the sands overcome with thirst, a shadowy figure of a man, supposedly many times larger than a regular man, came to him in his dreams and commanded him to arise at once and press onward. He did as he was instructed and wandered until his horse became excited and rushed towards what proved to be an oasis, saving both's lives. He would at last reach Hamin, and from there, with the dangerous border regions of China now in his rearview mirror, he sent word to the king of Turfan, to the west, himself a devout Buddhist.

The western king welcomed the Chinese monk into his palace and afforded him every comfort. But before long, it began to become clear that the king had little intention of allowing Xuanzang to pass on to his intended destination, and instead planned to add him to his very own personal collection of religious literati. In response, Xuanzang went on a hunger strike campaign, to which the king of Turfan at last relented and allowed him to leave, though only after extracting the monk's solemn oath that once he reached his destination, he should return to Turfan and agree to stay in its court for no less than three years. Xuanzang agreed and was thereafter afforded a new cache of supplies, as well as a letter of passage and introduction to the neighboring kings further along Xuanzang's intended route westward,

including, most importantly, the Turkish Khan, whose realm extended to the very borders of India. In addition, he was also given a party of four novice monks and 25 others to make the journey with him. Shrengzong was now no longer a lone fugitive hiding from Chinese patrols by day and daring only to travel at night, but now an eminent and accredited pilgrim with official royal passage. It would seem that things were indeed looking up for the migrant monk. But nature would once again step in to provide more than adequate danger. His next obstacle would be the ice-covered Victory Peak, or rendered in Chinese,

Tuomu'er Feng. As his party traversed its glacier-covered slopes, a full third of the 30-man group would meet their frigid end. Some of the luckier ones were killed instantly by falling ice shards, while others, less fortunate, were buried alive by avalanches, took a wrong step into a snow-covered glacial crevasse, or simply succumbed to the bitter cold and froze. Nevertheless, the remaining party pressed on undeterred. From Prasani Wirawadarni, in his article Journey to the West, Dusty Roads, Stormy Seas, and Transcendence, quote, Xuanzang's journey took him to Turfan in the Turin Basin, as well as Yanqi and Kucha, kingdoms in northern Xinjiang.

Crossing the Oxus River, he then made his way to Bactria in Afghanistan. He described Balkh, the capital, as having about 3,000 Buddhist monks of the Theravada school and many sacred relics of the Buddha. It was also during his time in Balkh that he would come into possession of the Buddhist scripture Mahavibhasa, a work traditionally attributed to Buddha himself, and one of the great works Xuanzong would ultimately bring back to China to translate. Further on, at Bamiyan, he saw the two famous standing colossi of the Buddha, and a 1,000 feet long reclining statue. When Xuanzang visited it, Bamiyan was an outstanding center of the Gandharan school of Buddhist art.

End quote. As an aside, the Bamiyan Buddhas, already world-famous cultural artifacts for a millennia and a half, were tragically made all the more famous when they were destroyed in 2001 by the Taliban. In modern Uzbekistan, Xuanzang's party met the great Khan of the Turks at Tokmak, who held a great feast with the Chinese monk and commended his efforts. Further southwest, he passed to the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, and west as far as Samarkand, then controlled by the Persians, before turning southeast toward India itself. His path would take him through Kapisi, about 60

kilometers north of modern Kabul, and onward toward Adinapur, which is modern Jalalabad, Pakistan, where he considered himself to have at last reached India proper in the year 630. Though he had reached his destination, he pushed onward, intent on finding the seat of Buddhism in this faraway land. But first, he would have to journey through the bandit-held Khyber Pass, a journey that would almost kill him. The records tell of several of these close shaves in the area, though there is one particularly

enthralling tale. This time, a group of river outlaws was intent not only on robbing them, but of offering up a human sacrifice to their gods. Xuanzang, as a young, fit, and handsome specimen, fit the bill perfectly, and they made ready their sacrificial altar. To this, Xuanzang only closed his eyes and meditated while awaiting his fate, and began quietly and peacefully chanting the name of the Bodhisattvas. Seemingly out of nowhere, a great wind whipped up,

breaking tree trunks along the riverbanks and overturning several of the bandits' boats. As lightning and thunder whipped overhead, the bandits cowered, and one of the monks' disciples took As lightning and thunder whipped overhead, the bandits cowered, and one of the monks' disciples took the opportunity to entreat them. This man you are planning on sacrificing is the great master Xuanzang of Great Tong. If you kill him, you risk the wrath of the Buddha. Look, don't you even know you have already angered your own gods? The overwhelmed bandits immediately prostrated themselves before the altar, pleading with Xuanzang to forgive them.

Xuanzang, however, had already reached a meditative state on the altar. His eyes were closed and nothing, not even the wind or the rain, could break him from his concentration. Only when the head of the bandits went to the altar and touched him gently, calling his name, did Xuanzang start and look up. Even then, all he said was, is it time for the sacrifice yet? His first stop within India would be the former capital, Purushapura, or Peshawar. But he would leave disappointed in noting that the area had been greatly diminished by war and famine, and that Buddhism seemed to be declining throughout the region, as he could only find a few monks. Next, he would make his way across the Indus River and

make his way to Kashmir, where he would at last meet a sizable Indian monk community of more than 5,000. He would stay in Kashmir and study with the resident monks between 632 and 633, learning from them further philosophy, as well as transcribing their sutras and texts to be taken back with him for later translation. In all, Xuanzang would spend a further 15 years traveling throughout India, though the highlight of this decade and a half there was surely at Nalanda, the famous Buddhist university at Bihar. There, under the guidance and approval of his mentors,

he would ultimately pen the Huizong Lun, or the Treatise on the Harmony of the Principles, which sought to synthesize the realistic doctrine of the real and the idealistic doctrine of the mind only. Ultimately, he would go on to become only the tenth member of the Nalanda University to have ever mastered more than fifty sutras, earning himself the title of Tripitaka, or in Chinese, San Zhang, both of of which mean the three containers of universal knowledge. His time in India would be capped off by a great debate. His successes in religious and philosophical disputes having traveled far and wide across the Indian subcontinent, Xuanzang was summoned by the king of Assam, Harsha, who was something of a Buddhist patron saint. At the Assam capital in 643, an 18-day-long religious debate was scheduled,

with philosophers of all stripes invited, Buddhists of all flavors, Jains, and even Brahmins. And allegedly, Shanzang's passionate debate carried the day, defeating some 500 opponents and earning him even wider respect and admiration among the religious scholars of the day. But at last, in 645, in spite of protestations and exhortations by the monks of Nalanda University that he should remain among them, Xuanzang resolved that the time had come to complete his mission and return to China with all of the scriptures and knowledge his journey to the west

had gained him. His route would be similar to that which bore him to India in the first place, back through Khyber Pass and across the Paramir Mountains to Duanhang, and once again over the treacherous Tianshan Range. By the time he had returned to Xinjiang, of the thirty who had set out with him from Turfan, only seven remained. Supposedly, Xuanzang himself had only narrowly avoided being consumed by an avalanche during the return trip. But safely back in Khotan once more, the now-eminent monk sent a missive to Emperor Taizong, informing him of his rogue mission's success and requesting imperial permission to re-enter the Tang Empire, that he might bring back the fruit of his holy labor.

That November, he received an official pardon from Chang'an, and he set off eastward to the imperial capital for the first time in some 19 years. When he arrived, his return was celebrated by the citizens and officials of the capital lining the streets and cheering his great success. He was invited to a personal audience with Emperor Taizong, where he recounted the details of his momentous journey and the philosophies and doctrines he had studied, and possibly most of interest to the Tang monarch, monastery all of the artifacts and priceless holy relics he had amassed over the course of his trek, totaling some 657 Mahayana and Hinayana scriptures and sutras, packed into more than 500 boxes, along with four statues of the Buddha, and some hundred-plus holy Sarira relics. Though he was offered numerous official positions by the emperor, he declined them all, and instead voiced his interest in now translating

the treasure trove of holy manuscripts he had brought back with him, a venture to which he would devote the rest of his life. Still, Taizong had one further request, that he take the time to write a detailed account of all the politics, economies, cultures, and geography he had encountered on his odyssey to the vast unknown west, a work that would ultimately become one of Xuanzang's greatest works, the Datang Xiyuji, or the Great Tang Records on the Western Region, a 12-volume work spanning more than 120,000 characters and detailing some 110 contemporary countries and kingdoms. Xuanzang's vast journey was of a primarily religious nature,

and to be sure, his recovery and transport of the more than 600 Buddhist sutras allowed a blossoming of Chinese Buddhism as never before, all while its influence in the Indian homeland continued to wane. However, his legacy went far beyond the holy. His journey gave China its first comprehensive view of its westward neighbors virtually for the first time in some six centuries since the journey of Ganjing to the Persian Gulf in the year 97 CE. Moreover, his records preserved the cultures and political systems of numerous societies that would have otherwise been lost to time.

His work translating the sutras he carried back with him would last until his death in 664 at the age of 63, and he remains one of the most important translators for early Chinese Buddhism, though to be fair, the earlier translator Kumara Jiva is still typically thought of as the better and less cumbersome author, when the two have overlapped. His own studies and teachings, and commentaries, would go on to found the Fa Xiang school of Buddhism, which, though relatively short-lived in its own right, would percolate into its more successful sister schools of Chinese Buddhist thought, especially in terms of karma, rebirth, perception, and consciousness. And all of that without a monkey demon god or a flesh-eating pig monster. And so, as with the Songzang master, Xuanzang, we too have come to our journey's end today.

Next time though, we will be delving right back into the main narrative, with Taizong's grandson nominally coming to power as the Emperor of the Tang, but the Empress Dowager Wu will have plans of her own to fundamentally upend the social and political order of the Middle Kingdom and place herself on its throne. So, until then, once again, happy Year of the Monkey, and thank you for listening. To be continued... or through the Agora Network site, agorapodcastnetwork.com. History isn't black and white, yet too often it's presented as such. Grey History, The French Revolution is a long-form history podcast dedicated to exploring the ambiguities and nuances of the past.

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