Xuan Zang and the Silk Road

Xuanzang, a seventh century Buddhist pilgrim, made a historic pilgrimage to India along the Silk Road, one of the longest and oldest trade routes known to mankind. Along with silk and less glamorous articles of trade, the great trans-Asian roads carried ideas and religions which were to prove far more significant than silk. The gentle creed of Buddhism was to revolutionize art and thought not only in China but in Japan and Korea as well. The Lord Buddha had been born in India in BCE 656. Not until 60 or 70 CE were the first Chinese Buddhist communities reported at Loyang. Centuries later, there were so many schools of Buddhism and so many conflicting texts, Xuanzang was clear that he had to go to the source. In 629 CE he set forth to seek “the sacred traces of the Buddha” and to find the true Buddhist scriptures in the land of its birth.

His journey from 629 to 645 CE, a full 16 years, gives us a unique view of the Silk Road in a time of vast changes throughout Asia. A year after his departure, the Khanate of the Eastern Turks fell, removing China’s greatest threat to its northwest borders. Only a few years after Xuanzang witnessed the grand gathering of the Western Turks near Lake Issik Kul, the Great Khan of the Western Turks was assassinated, bringing about the breakdown of the once powerful Western Turkish empire. As these Turkish empires weakened or were destroyed, the Tang emperor Taizong was able to begin establishing suzerainty over the oases kingdoms of the Taklamakan desert. And in India, only 4 years after his Great Debate before the mighty King Harsha, the king died and with his death, the whole of north India descended into chaos while Buddhism declined ever more sharply after his passing.

Xuanzang traveled an astonishing 10,000 miles over three of the highest mountain ranges in Asia, on both the northern and southern Silk roads and through regions that are now Kyrgizstan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan on his way to India and back home to China. In the years when Xuanzang had just returned to China, and the Emperor Taizong was consolidating his power in the East, the first three successors of the Prophet Muhammad had overrun Syria, Iran, Palestine, Egypt and the entire Persian empire. India at first lay beyond the wave of 7th century Islamic conquests. However, Sind, the lower half of the Indus valley, was conquered by Arab forces primarily as a rival trade base.