XUANZANG (596?–664), religious name of the Chinese pilgrim-monk who became a leading cleric of the early Tang dynasty after returning from an eighteen-year journey to the homeland of Buddhism in India. Famous in his own day as a Buddhist scholar and adviser to the emperor, Xuanzang eventually came to be best known as the historical prototype for the legendary Tripiṭaka, Master of the Three Collections of the Buddhist Dharma, whose mythical adventures with his companion, the supernatural monkey king Sun Wukong, are elaborated in the great sixteenth-century Chinese folk epic, the Xiyou ji (Journey to the West).

Born into a family of relatively important government officials and court scholars under the Sui dynasty (581–618), Xuanzang grew up during a period of great turmoil and transition, a time that saw the reunification of the Chinese empire after almost three centuries of division. With the encouragement perhaps of his father, he...