KJ
Reviews
Chasing
the Monk’s Shadow: A Journey in the Footsteps of Xuanzang
By Mishi Saran, Penguin Viking, New Delhi, India, 2005, hardcover 454
pp.
Reviewed by Rasoul Sorkhabi
(KJ #65)
In 627 a Chinese Buddhist monk “Shwenzang” (variously spelled
in English as Xuanzang, Husan Tsang and Hiuen Tsang) set out on a 10,000-mile
pilgrimage to India in search of Buddhist texts. He began from the ancient
Chinese capital Xian (Chang-an) and traveled through mountainous regions
to the north and west of Tibet down to India. Xuanzang visited many
historical places in India and finally returned to Xian after 18 years
in 645. Xuanzang’s travelogue, The Great Tang Chronicles of
the Western World (Ta Tang Xi You Yi) was completed in
648 by order of Emperor Taizong of the T'ang Dynasty, who was then ruling
China. This book, first translated into English by the Reverend Samuel
Beal in 1884, provides much information about the history of Buddhism.
Some 14 centuries after Xuanzang, Mishi Saran, an India-born American
journalist working in Hong Kong, follows in the monk’s footsteps
to understand the people, land, and culture of China, Central Asia,
and India. Xuanzang was a Chinese monk with an Indian obsession; Saran
is an Indian woman with a Chinese craze. Saran writes, “We had
the same schizophrenia, the monk and I. It seemed logical to take the
same road.” The outcome is a marvelous book. Saran’s journey
was taken in fragments. She started in May 2000 from Hong Kong, traveling
across China by a train that took her to Bishkek (Kyrgyzstan’s
capital). She then flew to Tashkent (Uzbekistan’s capital). After
an unsuccessful attempt to enter Afghanistan overland, she flew to New
Delhi and spent November 2000-June 2001 retracing Xuanzang’s journeys
in India. Next she went to Pakistan and Afghanistan (then under Taliban
rule), ending her journey in Kabul, just a month before 9/11.
In writing her book, Saran refers to the important literature about
Xuanzang and his journey, including the monk’s biography penned
by his contemporary Hwui Li (The Life of Hiuen-Tsiang, translated
by Samuel Beal, 1911) and the 16th century popular Chinese work,
Monkey or Journey to the West by Wu Chengen (translated
by Arthur Waley, 1943) in which Xuanzang is accompanied by a monkey
king with magical powers on his heroic journey through a fanciful India,
Thomas Watters’ work On Yuan Chwang’s Travels to India
(two volumes, 1904-1905), the French Orientalist Rene Grousset’s
scholarly exposition of Xuanzang, In the Footsteps of the Buddha
(1929 in French and 1932 in English), and the more recent work,
Xuangzang: Buddhist Pilgrim on the Silk Road by Sally Hovey
Wriggins (1996). Regrettably, Saran does not refer to Richard Bernstein’s
Ultimate Journey (2001) in her bibliography. Bernstein, Time
magazine’s bureau chief in Beijing, also retraced Xuanzang’s
Silk Road path to India and produced an equally fascinating account.
Xuanzang was born in 600 in a rural family; his birth name was Chen
Yi. As a child he entered a Buddhist monastery; his head was shaved
and he was given a new name, Xuanzang, Master of Law. When he visited
India, King Harshavardhana was ruling most of the country. The king
was a patron of Buddhism but in India this religion was by then in decline.
Indeed, the history of Buddha and Buddhism was much forgotten in India
in the following centuries, and only rediscovered by British scholars
in the 19th century. Xuanzang spent ten years in India (studying for
some time at Nalanda University in Bihar) and took 657 sutras back to
China.
Saran’s chasing of the monk’s shadow is also a journey through
the history and geography of a vast part of Asia. The book is filled
with vivid conversations with people and descriptions of places, both
of the present and ages bygone. Saran offers insights into the minds,
problems and hopes of people living in this part of the world, and attempts
to find solutions to the people’s sufferings and conflicts in
the teachings of the Buddha: understanding, kindness, tolerance, and
deliverance from ignorance, greed, and big ego (of individuals and groups).
These were the very teachings of the Buddha that Xuanzang sought, and
Saran’s travelogue on the Silk Road brings back that wisdom into
our modern world and life. She writes, “The Monk and his quest
were the background against which I struggled to understand the incomprehensible.”
And she wrote this book because, “I wanted to bask in the things
I had learnt; I was afraid of the knowledge flying away, like a web
of spider-spit torn loose from its moorings, floating into the blues
of skies.”
Mishi Saran, now married, lives in Seoul and is working on her next
book.
Copyright
held by the author
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