Xuanzang: A Buddhist Pilgrim on the Silk Road. By Sally Hovey
　　　　  Wriggins. (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996. Pp. xxiv, 263. $32.50.)
　　　　  Ancient and medieval China produced at least three great explorers
　　　　  who are comparable to Ibn Batuta and Marco Polo: Zhang Qian (second
　　　　  century B.C.), and the Buddhist monks Fa Man (fifth century A.D.)
　　　　  and Xuanzang (seventh century A.D.). Of the five, perhaps the
　　　　  greatest, and certainly the one with the deepest influence on his
　　　　  own and related civilizations, was Xuanzang.
　　　　  Xuanzang (Hsuan Tsang in the Wade-Giles transliteration) traveled
　　　　  through Central and South Asia (ca. 629-645 A.D.) collecting copies
　　　　  of the most important Buddhist theological works and studying with
　　　　  the most important authorities on the major Buddhist schools of
　　　　  thought. He became a recognized authority on Mahayana Buddhist
　　　　  idealist philosophy both In India and in China after his return.
　　　　  Once back in China he also wrote a book for the Chinese emperor
　　　　  describing the secular aspects--cultural and political--of the
　　　　  places that he had visited. This aided the Tang Dynasty in
　　　　  maintaining the dominant position in Central Asia that it had
　　　　  recently carved out.
　　　　  The book that was written for the emperor and a biography of
　　　　  Xuanzang, written by a colleague during his lifetime, are still
　　　　  extant, as are many of the holy texts translated by Xuanzang. They
　　　　  still provide information on the history and culture of India,
　　　　  Afghanistan, and Central Asia to historians, anthropologists, and
　　　　  even archaeologists (who carry Xuanzang to their digs much as
　　　　  Schliemann carried Homer, and to even greater effect).
　　　　  Throughout the millennium and a third since Xuanzang and his
　　　　  colleague laid down their writing brushes, writers, both religious
　　　　  and secular, have repeatedly translated or retold their complex tale
　　　　  of salvation and earthly history. So intrinsically vivid is the
　　　　  material that Xuanzang has provided, that the best of such works
　　　　  inevitably combine high popularization with synthesis of the most
　　　　  important works of technical scholarship.
　　　　  Sally Hovey Wriggins's Xuanzang: A Buddhist Pilgrim on the Silk Road
　　　　  will fulfill the role of the standard high popularization, which has
　　　　  been played for readers of English since the translation in 1971 of
　　　　  Rene Grousset's In the Footsteps of the Buddha, which first appeared
　　　　  in French in 1929. Like Grousset, Wriggins approaches both Buddhism
　　　　  and its several Asian homelands as a sympathetic, but non-Buddhist,