In the 7th century, the Chinese Buddhist monk Xuanzang describes the concurrent existence of the Mahavihara and the Abhayagiri Vihara in Sri Lanka.

* Xuanzang, famous Chinese Buddhist monk

* Xuanzang, Chinese Buddhist monk

* Journey to the West by Wu Cheng ' en, published in the 1590s ; a fictionalized account of the pilgrimage of Xuanzang to India to obtain Buddhist religious texts in which the main character encounters ghosts, monsters, and demons, as well as the Flaming Mountains

Xuanzang ( Sanskrit: ह ् व े नस ां ग ) ( c. 596 or 602 – 664 ), born Chen Hui () or Chen Yi (), was a Chinese Buddhist monk, scholar, traveler, and translator who described the interaction between China and India in the early Tang Dynasty.

While residing in the city of Luoyang, Xuanzang entered Buddhist monkhood at the age of thirteen.

Xuanzang also returned with relics, statues, and Buddhist paraphernalia loaded onto twenty-two horses.

After rebelling against heaven and being imprisoned under a mountain by the Buddha, he later accompanies the monk Xuanzang on a journey to retrieve Buddhist sutras from India.

The novel is a fictionalized account of the legendary pilgrimage to India of the Buddhist monk Xuanzang, and loosely based its source from the historic text Great Tang Records on the Western Regions and traditional folk tales.

The third and longest section of the work is chapters 13 – 99, an episodic adventure story in which Xuanzang sets out to bring back Buddhist scriptures from Leiyin Temple on Vulture Peak in India, but encounters various evils along the way.

Motivated by the poor quality of Chinese translations of Buddhist scripture at the time, Xuanzang left Chang ' an in 629, despite the border being closed at the time due to war with the Göktürks.

Xuanzang travelled throughout the Indian subcontinent for the next thirteen years, visiting important Buddhist pilgrimage sites and studying at the ancient university at Nalanda.

The monk Xuanzang ( also referred to in the story as Tang Sanzang, meaning " Tang Tripitaka Master ", with Tang referring to the Tang Dynasty and Sanzang referring to the Tripitaka, the main categories of texts in the Buddhist canon which is also used as an honorific for some Buddhist monks ) is a Buddhist monk who had renounced his family to become a monk from childhood.

Sha eventually becomes an arhat at the end of the journey, giving him a higher level of exaltation than Zhu Bajie, who is relegated to cleaning every altar at every Buddhist temple for eternity, but is still lower spiritually than Sun Wukong or Xuanzang, who are granted Buddhahood.

The character is based on the historical Buddhist monk Xuanzang.

In the novel, Xuanzang is a Chinese Buddhist monk who had renounced his family to join the Sangha from childhood.

Xuanzang is modeled after the historical Tang Dynasty Buddhist monk of the same name, whose life was the book's inspiration ; the real Xuanzang made a perilous journey on foot from China to India ( and back ) to obtain Buddhist sutras.

Ksitigarbha, a highly-revered bodhisattva in East Asian Buddhism, is occasionally mistaken for Xuanzang because the former is often portrayed like Xuanzang-dressed in a similarly-patterned kasaya, wearing a Buddhist crown, and wielding a khakkhara.

Xuanzang gave him the nickname Bājiè which means " eight restraints, or eight commandments " to remind him of his Buddhist diet.

Xuanzang also discovered that the intellectual context in which Buddhists disputed and interpreted texts was much vaster and more varied than the Chinese materials had indicated: Buddhist positions were forged in earnest debate with a range of Buddhist and non-Buddhist doctrines unknown in China, and the terminology of these debates drew their significance and connotations from this rich context.

According to the Chinese Pilgrim Xuanzang, who visited his kingdom in 636, Harsha built numerous stupas in the name of Buddha.

The Chinese Pilgrim Xuanzang found the old city in ruins, but recorded the sites of various buildings.

Guanyin understood that the monkey would be hard to control, and therefore gave Xuanzang a gift from the Buddha: a magical headband which, once Sun Wukong was tricked into putting it on, could never be removed.

Throughout the epic novel Journey to the West, Sun Wukong faithfully helped Xuanzang on his journey to India.

The four protagonists of the story, from left to right: Sun Wukong, Xuanzang ( fictional character ) | Tang Sanzang ( riding on the White Dragon Horse ), Zhu Bajie, and Sha Wujing.

Part of the story here also relates to how Xuanzang becomes a monk ( as well as revealing his past life as a disciple of the Buddha named " Golden Cicada " ( 金蟬子 ) and comes about being sent on this pilgrimage by Emperor Taizong, who previously escaped death with the help of an official in the Underworld ).

He appears first in chapter 15, but has almost no speaking role, as throughout the story he mainly appears as a horse that Xuanzang rides on.

Throughout the journey, the four brave disciples have to fend off attacks on their master and teacher Xuanzang from various monsters and calamities.

Xuanzang died on March 7, 664.

The bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara ( Guanyin ) helps Xuanzang find three powerful supernatural beings-Sun Wukong, Zhu Bajie and Sha Wujing-to aid and protect him on his journey.

As an important contribution to East Asian Yogācāra, Xuanzang composed the treatise Cheng Weishi Lun, or " Discourse on the Establishment of Consciousness Only.

" Xuanzang upheld Dharmapāla's commentary on this work as being the correct one, and provided his own explanations of these as well as other views in the Cheng Weishi Lun.

Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Xuanzang visited the site on 30 April 630 CE, and described Bamiyan in the Da Tang Xiyu Ji as a flourishing Buddhist center " with more than ten monasteries and more than a thousand monks ".

When Xuanzang was studying Buddhism in India at Nālandā University, he discovered ten commentaries on Vasubandhu's Triṃśikā-vijñaptimātratā.

After several days without liquid, Xuanzang had a dream where a tall spirit wielding a halberd chastised him for sleeping on such an important journey to get scriptures from India.

Its name is recorded in the holy Ramayana and later on followed in the records of the tour of Xuanzang.

While the Monkey King story is a work of fiction, Xuanzang the monk who he accompanies on the journey of the novel, was based on a historical person.

Xuanzang and Yijing both recorded that the Dharmaguptakas were located in Oḍḍiyāna and Central Asia, but not on the mainland of India.

The Buddhist pilgrim Xuanzang, who passed through this region in 644 on his return from India to China, wrote, " A fortress exists, but not a trace of man ".

* The Silk Road Journey with Xuanzang, Sally Hovey Wriggins, Westview Press, 2004, ISBN 0-8133-6599-6

It was initially thought that the Chinese mis-transliterated the word Avalokiteśvara as Avalokitasvara which explained why Xuanzang translated it as Guānzìzài instead of Guānyīn.

* Xuanzang is fully ordained as a monk at the age of 20.

It is not clear when the name changed, but by the time of the visit of the Chinese pilgrim monk, Xuanzang, c. 636 CE, it was known as Ayodhya.

In the 7th century CE, Xuanzang ( Hiuen Tsang ), the Chinese monk, recorded spotting many Hindu temples in Ayodhya.

In the record of his journeys through the kingdoms of India, Xuanzang wrote that Asaṅga was initially a Mahīśāsaka monk, but soon turned toward the Mahāyāna teachings.

Because of this, his renderings of seminal Mahayana texts have often remained more popular than later, more exact translations, e. g. those of Xuanzang.

Kumarajiva has sometimes been regarded by both the Chinese and by western scholars as abbreviating his translations, with later translators such as Xuanzang being regarded as being more " precise.

Here Xuanzang developed the desire to visit India.

Foremost among these are the accounts of the Chinese pilgrims Faxian in the 5th century and Xuanzang in the 7th century.

The ruins of Nalanda University in India where Xuanzang studied.

Statue of Xuanzang at the Great Wild Goose Pagoda in Xi ' an.

During the early Tang dynasty, between 629 and 645, the monk Xuanzang journeyed to India and visited over one hundred kingdoms, and wrote extensive and detailed reports of his findings, which have subsequently become important for the study of India during this period.

That monastery was called by Xuanzang as the Mahabodhi Sangharama.

In hearing this, Sun Wukong offered to serve this pilgrim, Xuanzang, a monk of the Tang Dynasty, in exchange for his freedom.