Professor Ben Brose on Embodying Xuanzang: The Postmortem Travels of a Buddhist Pilgrim (University of Hawai’i Press, forthcoming 2024)

Interviewed by Ziwei Ye

From Philosopher to Phantom

When did you first start becoming interested in Xuanzang (600/602–664) and the Journey to the West (conventionally attributed to Wu Cheng’en, 1368–1644)? What was the occasion that prompted you to focus your research interests on the process of turning the historical figure of Xuanzang into a fictional one?

Anyone who studies Buddhism eventually learns about Xuanzang and his epic pilgrimage through Central Asia and India. In the same way, anyone even vaguely familiar with Chinese culture will have some familiarity with the great novel the Journey to the West. These two subjects are in fact so well known that it never occurred to me to make them objects of study. What more was there to say? But that changed when I became interested in the circulation of Buddhist relics in the modern era. Relics are the remains of Buddhist masters; they are believed to preserve the life force of long-dead monks and nuns. Xuanzang’s relics—fragments of his parietal bone—were rediscovered in China in the 1940s. Monks and political officials broke and divided the relics soon afterward and these are now distributed throughout China, Japan, India, and Taiwan. I had seen Xuanzang’s relics enshrined in China and Japan and grew curious about their histories. In tracking the modern movements of Xuanzang’s skull and the controversies it generated, I was initially surprised to observe people treating the historical Xuanzang as the “Tang Monk” character from the Journey to the West novel. Were people conflating history with fiction? This led me to look more closely at the relationship between the Xuanzang who flourished in the sixth century and the more mythical figure that continues to live in the rituals, stories, songs, shows, and plays of the modern world. In the end, I wouldn’t say that the historical Xuanzang was transformed into a fictional character. It seems instead that Xuanzang, in true Buddhist fashion, continues to reincarnate through time and in various realms. His great pilgrimage, in other words, is still ongoing. This book was my attempt to retrace some of his subsequent journeys. 

What is the most exciting finding in this research for you? How do you think that sorting out the reincarnations of Xuanzang will improve understanding in this field?

One of the most intriguing things for me to explore was the power of narrative to conjure worlds. Or, to put it another way, the way fiction transmutes into fact and vice versa. We see this happening repeatedly in legends surrounding Xuanzang. His historical pilgrimage—itself inspired by his own fantasies about India—is reconceived by later devotees as a fantastic, otherworldly journey. These embellished accounts became so vivid and persuasive that they shaped later generations’ perceptions of who Xuanzang was and what he accomplished. Xuanzang and his companions came to be venerated as deities. They sometimes possess the bodies of devotees and ritual specialists to perform funerals, to carry out exorcisms, or, in the most extreme examples, to wage war against the court. These are some of the very real consequences of ostensibly fictional narratives. There are larger processes at play here that are at the heart of most faith-based traditions. Think of how biblical stories influence people’s perceptions and actions, or how members of opposing political parties increasingly seem to inhabit starkly different realities bolstered by narratives that strike outsiders as fictional. In this way, a study of a sixth-century Chinese monk and his many afterlives opens a window onto the fascinating and complex interplay between myth, ritual, and everyday experience.  

You mention that Xuanzang’s mythic pilgrimage has a place in modern popular religious and funerary rituals. Have you been on the field, for example in Jiangsu (China) or Taiwan, to witness these rituals? Were there any interesting or impressive details that stood out to you?

Most of my field work for this project was done in Taiwan. An extended research trip to mainland China scheduled for 2020 had to be cancelled because of the pandemic and it has not yet been possible to return. In addition to what I have been able to observe myself, several scholars and devotees have generously shared videos, photos, and descriptions of contemporary rituals. Every aspect of these rites is fascinating, but I might single out elements of embodiment and enactment that are so often at the center of these ceremonies. Xuanzang is not just invoked and honoured, he is made manifest in the ritual arena. The story of his pilgrimage is not just recounted, it is recreated in real time with real consequences for those who summon him and his companions. These processes are common to many Buddhist and Daoist rituals in the Sinosphere and thus are not particularly novel. It is nonetheless remarkable to witness Xuanzang reappear in human form and embark on his famous pilgrimage on the streets of twenty-first century Taipei.

Xuanzang as pilgrim. 14th century, Japan. Tokyo National Museum.

In the ‘western’ literary tradition, there are also descriptions of the arduous journeys of heroic figures like Odysseus. And at the same time as the Journey to the West was created, the so-called ‘Picaresque novel’ was also formed and developed in the ‘west.’ How do you see the similarities and differences between these two literary traditions?

I delve into this in the book’s introduction. There do seem to be remarkable structural and thematic similarities among tales of epic adventurers told in different cultural contexts. Stories of heroic individuals embarking on dangerous journeys encapsulate fundamental human experiences, anxieties, and desires. The transformation of historic figures and events into idealized character types and narrative arcs makes them immediately accessible to diverse communities and cultures. Everyone has the experience of moving through space and time, navigating difficult passages, lured forward by the prospect of some reward. This basic human experience is surely one of reasons why various accounts of fantastic pilgrimages have always resonated with people whether they live in the premodern, rural villages, modern megacities, or anywhere in-between. These stories both reflect and shape the experiences of their audiences.

Regarding the appearance of the Journey to the West novel around the same time as Spanish picaresque novels like Lazarillo de Tormes (1554) and Don Quixote  (1605 & 1615), that is partly related to the rise of vernacular literature, increased literacy, and advances in the publishing industries in China and Europe during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. It is important to remember, however, that narratives of Xuanzang’s otherworldly travels informed ritual traditions in China centuries before they were adapted into the now famous hundred-chapter novel. Long before the publication of the Journey to the West, various versions of the story—as text, as image, as performance, as ritual—were already well known in both China and Korea. In that sense, the novel is just the best-known iteration of a much older and more amorphous story. 

To what extent do you think the transformation and portrayal of the Tang Monk in the novel is related to the ‘on-call monks’ (yingfu seng 應赴僧) who were active in folk religious activities in late imperial China? And is the appearance of Xuanzang’s pilgrimage in modern funerary rituals also related to the Buddhist funeral ritual tradition?

The reconception of the historical Xuanzang as the mythical or deified Tang Monk dates to around the twelfth century, long before the so-called ‘on-call monks’ became such a visible presence in China. Nevertheless, the popular association of Buddhism with death and the afterlife, and the pervasive belief that Buddhist priests serve as intermediaries between the human and spirit realms, has remained constant throughout the long history of Buddhism in China. Xuanzang, who famously travelled between China and India (often rendered in Chinese as “Western Heaven”) and transmitted many of the texts that came to be used in Buddhist mortuary rites, was a perfect personification of Buddhist funerary traditions. This is one of the reasons he is often depicted as transiting between the human and the spirit realms, guiding the souls of the dead to a heavenly paradise in the west, and conveying the Buddha’s teachings for safeguarding the living and liberating the dead to the people of China in the east. 

What are your future research plans? Apart from Xuanzang, are there any other Buddhists you are particularly interested in?

I am currently working on several projects related to Buddhism in modern China, particularly from the late Qing dynasty through the Republican period. Two edited collections are in the works and a long-term study of the history and practice of modern Chinese monastics and lay Buddhists should keep me busy for the foreseeable future. 

Exorcistic ritual dance with Xuanzang and other masked figures from the Journey to the West narrative performed inJiangsu province. Xue et al., Zhongguo wunuo mianju yishu, 66.