HSUAN TSANG
THE PILGRIM & THE SCHOLAR
By
Bhikshu Thích Minh Châu of Việt-Nam, M.A.PH.D.
Nava Nalanda Mahavihara
Dedicated to
The memory of Hsuan Tsang
And his ALMA MATER, NALANDA MAHAVIHARA
INTRODUCTION
I write this work as a dedication to the memory of Hsuan-tsang, whose life and works offer a constant source of inspiration to those who come to India for pilgrimage, studies or for any missionary work.
This work is else a dedication to Hsuan-tsang’s Alam Mater, the Nalanda Mahavihara, the imposing ruins of which can be see even today. This Nalanda Buddhist University of old serves as an inspiration to the establishment of the Nava nalanda Mahavihara, the objectives of which aim at a revival of the Buddhist traditions of the old Nalanda University. Now not far from the old and the new Nalanda Mahavihara, the Government of India has started the construction of a “Hsuan Tsang memorial”, so as to perpetuate the life and the work of this great pilgrim and scholar of the past.
My work “Hsuan Tsang, the pilgrim and scholar”, is another step in this direction to pay homage to this outstanding religious traveller, who had achieved the impossible to serve and spread the message of the Buddha.
With the chapter Hsuan Tsang, the pilgrim, we retrace the steps of his itinerary, from the moment he left Chang-on till he returned to his motherland, sharing with him the emtions, the excitement, the dangers and the hardships.he had felt and encountered throughout this momentous and ponderful pilgrimage ever undertaken by my pilgrim.
The places where he had studied and preached the Dharma, the Sanskrit texts he had learned and expounded, the teachers, and the audience whom he approached and addressed are collated, so that one way have a concrete picture of his thirst for Buddhist knowledge and his endeavour to impart it to others
CONTENTS
I) Hsuan Tsang’s features and personality
1). Features and deportment
2). Nobility of character
3). Adherence to the Vinaya
4). Charity
5). Hsuan-tsang’s confucean civism
6) Hsuan-tsang’s iron will
7). Placidity and equanimity before dangers and death
8). Yearning for the Dharma; quest for knowledge and scriptures
II) Hsuan Tsang, the pilgrim
III Hsuan Tsang,the learner
IV) Hsuan Tsang,the preacher
V) Hsuan Tsang,the debater
VI) Hsuan Tsang, the translator
VII) Hsuan Tsang,the writer
VIII) Hsuan Tsang, the mystic
1) His devotion
2) His reliance upon prayers
3) Interplay of divinations and miracles
4) Dreams in Hsuan-tsang’s life
IX) Hsuan Tsang’s last days and death