Xuanzang

Assembled from 46 blocks · 1 evidence · 45 related

1. Story
2. Chinese Buddhist monk, 602 to 664, who left Chang'an in 629 in defiance of an imperial travel ban, travelled through the Tarim oases and Central Asia to India, studied at Nalanda, and returned in 645 with 657 Sanskrit texts. The Big Wild Goose Pagoda was built at Chang'an in 652 to house them, and he spent the rest of his life directing the translation of what he had brought. His account of the journey, the Great Tang Records on the Western Regions, compiled in 646, is the most detailed surviving description of the Tarim kingdoms, the Pamir crossing and seventh-century India, and has been used to locate archaeological sites. His journey was later fictionalised as Journey to the West. A person, not a place.
3. Knowledge
4. Pamir Mountains
5. Buddhism
6. Xuanzang
7. Silk Road religious corridor
8. Connections
9. Buddhism
10. Silk Road religious corridor
11. Pamir Mountains
12. Xuanzang travels to India and back
13. Xuanzang's overland journey to India and return
14. Sogdian merchant networks
15. Silk Road religious corridor
16. Xuanzang
17. Mogao Caves
18. First cave cut at Mogao (traditional date)
19. Xuanzang travels to India and back
20. The Dunhuang Diamond Sutra is printed
21. Gandhara
22. Ashoka (Ashoka Maurya)
23. Ashoka's bilingual Greek-Aramaic inscription at Kandahar
24. Council at Pataliputra and the despatch of Buddhist missions (traditional account)
25. Buddhism attested in Han China
26. Anthropomorphic Buddha images appear in Gandhara and Mathura
27. Traditional founding of the first cave at Mogao
28. Xuanzang's overland journey to India and return
29. Construction of Borobudur under Shailendra patronage
30. Buddhism
31. Church of the East (Nestorian Christianity)
32. Xuanzang
33. Dunhuang
34. Indian Ocean maritime trade network
35. Ashoka's bilingual Greek-Aramaic inscription at Kandahar
36. Buddhism attested in Han China
37. Traditional founding of the first cave at Mogao
38. Xuanzang's overland journey to India and return
39. Alopen received at the Tang court
40. The Xi'an stele is erected
41. Kashgar
42. Samarkand
43. Xuanzang
44. Xuanzang travels to India and back
45. Evidence
46. Eyewitness description of the Tarim oasis kingdoms, the Pamir crossing, Central Asia and seventh-century India, compiled the year after Xuanzang's return. It records the state of Buddhist communities city by city and has been used by archaeologists to identify and locate sites.