Part 2 (1/2)

Stein bid farewell to his Abdal guides, Old Mullah and Tokhta Akhun, whose sc.r.a.p of paper had led to such spectacular finds. Stein admired how the hardy pair, like their fellow Lopliks, seemed impervious to the extreme climate in which they lived-the icy gales in winter, the mosquitoes and dust storms in summer. Such resilience had no doubt contributed to the long lifespan of so many of Abdal's inhabitants. Tokhta Akhun had an elderly mother to care for. Even Old Mullah-himself long past middle age-still had his elderly parents, which was why, to Stein's regret, Old Mullah could not accompany him along the route he had rediscovered. Instead, Stein's guides on his final leg to Dunhuang would be the voices from the past, including the pilgrim monk Xuanzang and Marco Polo. The Venetian traveler had described the route by which he crossed and estimated it took twenty-eight days. It was still reckoned to do so.

Having spent so long at Miran, as it yielded such rich rewards, once again Stein needed to hurry. But this time the rush was prompted by the seasons rather than the advance of his rivals. His chosen path was northeast following the old caravan route. Stein knew the route was pa.s.sable for only a few weeks more. Soon the pure chunks of ice that could be hacked from the frozen salt springs would thaw. Spring would render the heat unbearable and the water undrinkable. With his winter diggings over and the laborers paid off, Stein was looking forward to the crossing since it afforded a rest from the burden of overseeing so many men and excavations. It is a mark of how difficult the winter dig had been-and of Stein's stamina-that he would approach a 350-mile trek across a frozen desert as a respite.

He set out for Dunhuang on a morning in late February. Relying on Marco Polo's estimate, he left with a month's supplies for his thirteen men, eleven ponies, eight camels, and nearly forty donkeys. The extra donkeys he had hired to carry provisions would be dispatched back to their owners at intervals along the way when no longer needed. But within a couple of days of departing, three died. Soon six donkeys were dead. Stein feared the loss of more would make it hard to transport the supplies. The fates of men and beast were intertwined in the desert. As one after another died, Stein suspected foul play-that the donkey drivers were deliberately underfeeding their charges so their owners could get compensation. He put the entire donkey train under the command of one of his own men, Ibrahim Beg, and he promised the donkey drivers extra money for each animal that survived the journey. The strategy worked.

The first week pa.s.sed in exhausting marches of up to twenty-six miles a day along the edge of dried-up salt marshes, clay terraces, and gravel slopes devoid of vegetation. They were ”a drearier sight than any dunes,” Stein told Allen.

Stein was cheered by Chiang's good humor and the pair chatted together, Stein in his halting Chinese. ”My unmusical ear fails to remember or distinguish the varying tones of the identical syllable & I fear it will take long before others will be as clever as [Chiang] to catch the meaning of my conversation . . . Often we have talked of Marco Polo who had described this old route so truthfully,” he wrote.

As they camped one night, Stein pulled from his bags Marco Polo's account of the route and read it to Chiang. It was hardly cheerful reading: When travellers are on the move by night, and one of them chances to lag behind or to fall asleep or the like, when he tries to gain his company again he will hear spirits talking, and will suppose them to be his comrades. Sometimes the spirits will call him by name; and thus shall a traveller ofttimes be led astray so that he never finds his party. And in this way many have perished. Sometimes the stray travellers will hear, as it were, the tramp and hum of a great cavalcade of people away from the real line of road, and taking this to be their own company will follow the sound; and when day breaks they find that a cheat has been put on them and that they are in an ill plight. Even in the daytime one hears those spirits talking. And sometimes you shall hear the sound of a variety of musical instruments, and still more commonly the sound of drums. Hence in making this journey 'tis common for travellers to keep close together.

The supernatural account evoked awe in Chiang. If the desert could cast such a spell over the otherwise skeptical Chiang, a scholarly, erudite man, its effect was felt even more keenly among the more superst.i.tious members of Stein's party. Little wonder they were getting restive. So all were relieved when midway through their journey they spotted five toghrak trees. It signaled they had arrived at the place where they would rest for a day-the only one on the entire crossing. The windswept trees, bravely clinging to life in the desert, were rare enough in this wasteland to give their name to the site, Besh-toghrak, meaning simply five toghrak trees. Saddles were repaired and the camels and ponies were watered at two nearby wells and treated for sore backs. Stein planned to leave eight of the weakest donkeys no longer needed at this lonely spot. A young Abdal donkey man was left to care for them. The man was given a twenty-eight day supply of rations and a box of matches. Until the caravan collected him on the way back, he would ”have to make the best of his solitude-or the visits of goblins,” Stein commented dryly.

A fierce cold wind was blowing a few days later when, through the dust-filled haze, the party caught sight of an abandoned fort. They made their way toward it in a thin line to s.h.i.+eld against the headwinds. Six times the height of the tallest man among them, the fort was entered via an archway carved into walls fifteen feet thick. Centuries ago, this would have seemed an impregnable stronghold for a ruler's army. Now, nothing hinted at human habitation, save for the debris of a recent caravan that had attempted the perilous crossing.

Stein climbed a staircase hewn perhaps 2,000 years ago into a corner of the ma.s.sive clay fortress. Thirty feet up, he held his ground as he was buffeted by the gale. He reached for his binoculars and surveyed the forbidding expanse: beyond the beds of reeds near the fort, tamarisk scrub and bare gravel stretched to the barren foothills of a distant mountain range. He turned into the wind and focused his gaze on four distant mounds that stood out against the hazy grey horizon: watchtowers. His excitement rose. These were more evidence of a long-forgotten military frontier. He had spotted traces of a ruined wall and other watchtowers in recent days. As he stood on the immense clay walls, he imagined an ancient military chief surveying the line of watchtowers under his command, eager for signals-fire by night, smoke by day-that pa.s.sed along them. Beacons that once signaled the approach, or retreat, of armed enemies. Could this fort and the watchtowers be part of that forgotten frontier? In the empty isolation of the desert, such answers seemed unknowable. And yet he would soon find an answer.

Stein descended the fort's staircase and rejoined his party. This was not the time to explore further, no matter how much curiosity the watchtowers provoked. The food and water were almost gone. The animals were hungry and his men were irritable and exhausted. They had not seen another soul since leaving Abdal nearly three weeks ago. They had crossed quickly, in a week less than Marco Polo estimated. But all now needed rest. They must get to Dunhuang as quickly as possible.

A distant line of bare trees and cultivated fields on the edge of Dunhuang were heartening sights for Aurel Stein and his caravan on March 12, 1907. While a persistent wind howled its numbing welcome as they approached the town, at least the weary men and beasts were not enduring its blasts in the desert. Warmth and shelter would soon be at hand. Not that Stein wanted to linger in Dunhuang; he was eager to return to the ruined wall, fort, and the string of watchtowers he had seen as he crossed from Abdal.

Dunhuang was the Silk Road's gateway between China and Central Asia, which was why he planned to use it as a base for six months of archaeological work and exploration in the surrounding desert and mountains. He planned a short halt, just long enough for his men and animals to rest and for him to visit the painted meditation grottoes-the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas-about fifteen miles to the southeast. He had longed to see these remote, sacred caves, and he was determined to realize this dream. But his real work lay elsewhere. Or so he thought.

His approach to his first oasis within China was unsettling after the hospitality he had enjoyed in Turkestan and where he felt at home. He knew its ways, its language and its daily rhythms, punctuated by the sound of the Muslim call to prayer. But now he was on foreign ground. In Turkestan, local headmen invariably rode out to meet his party as he approached an oasis. So too did the rapacious Hindu money-lenders, no doubt eager for business. But this time there was not so much as a single merchant to acknowledge his arrival. As always, Stein had attempted to smooth the path, sending word of his approach, his intended business and requesting accommodation. But unusually, no response had come. Was he being deliberately neglected? Was this how things were done on Chinese soil? What did it mean? Most immediately, it meant no quarters had been prepared for him or his party.

First impressions of Dunhuang, the once-vibrant oasis on the edge of the vast Gobi Desert, were hardly encouraging. Few people were outside on this bitterly cold and dust-filled day as he pa.s.sed down the narrow main street. The few locals who could be found directed him to the caravanserai, the main stopping place for travelers needing accommodation, but it was so filthy and cramped he looked elsewhere for a more suitable camp. About a half a mile from the walled town's southern gate he found a large orchard with a dilapidated house. It was inhabited by a widow, her mother and several children, who agreed to house them in their unoccupied rooms.

Other differences from Turkestan soon became apparent. Stein was accustomed to-and approved of-the way Muslim women promptly removed themselves from the company of strangers. But purdah was not practiced in Dunhuang. Instead, Chinese women with bound feet teetered around as his dusty, travel-weary party settled in the unused rooms built around a courtyard. Stein erected his tent in the orchard, preferring its peace and relative comfort to the cavernous hall he had been offered as quarters.

Fuel, fodder, and food were his next concerns. But how to pay for them? Once again he was reminded that things were done differently in China, even in the far-flung western province of Gansu. As expected, no one would accept the coins of neighboring Turkestan, and the only silver bullion he had was in the form of horseshoes. Finding a blacksmith who could cut some silver into small change didn't occur to him the first day. Meanwhile, the daily market had closed and it took hours for supplies to arrive. The mood of his men darkened, frustrated by the delays in finding shelter and then food. Already apprehensive of venturing onto foreign soil, it seemed their worst fears of China's strange customs had been realized. All except Chiang, who instantly made friends with the widow's children, were on unfamiliar turf. Frustrating as his arrival in Dunhuang was, Stein later saw its absurdity, writing: ”It amused me to think what our experiences would have been, had our caravan suddenly pitched camp in Hyde Park, and expected to raise supplies promptly in the neighbourhood without producing coin of the realm!” He quickly grew alert to the tricks of the money-exchange trade-silver pieces loaded with lead, and the way merchants used different scales depending on whether the customer was buying, selling or exchanging silver.

His men could at last rest the next day, fed and sheltered. Wrapped in their furs, they dozed in front of their fires. But, typically, Stein was not about to rest. He sent his last piece of yellow Liberty brocade to the local yamen as a gift for the magistrate. By midday he had swapped his travel-stained furs for his best European clothes-black coat, pith helmet, and patent leather boots-to pay his official visit. There the reason for the absence of a welcome became apparent. A new magistrate, w.a.n.g Ta-lao-ye, had himself only just arrived in Dunhuang-so recently that a fire had not been lit nor furniture installed in the bare reception hall. Stein felt the day's chill in his spiffy but all-too-thin clothes. The new magistrate had only just found his predecessor's doc.u.ments about the impending arrival of this important visitor, and he was suitably impressed, even over-awed, by what he discovered in the papers. Whether through bureaucratic incompetence or clever mistranslation, Stein's travel doc.u.ment had elevated him to Prime Minister of Education of Great Britain.

Protocol required a return visit, and it came more quickly than Stein expected. No sooner had he arrived back at his tent and swapped his thin footwear for fur boots than the magistrate arrived. Seated on a thick felt rug and with a charcoal fire to warm them, Stein showed off some of the ancient Chinese records he had uncovered in recent months, and he found an appreciative audience in the learned man. ”I instinctively felt that a kindly official providence had brought to Tun-huang [Dunhuang] just the right man to help me,” Stein wrote. He soon called on the influential local military commander, the bluff and burly Lin Ta-jen, who provided a camp guard.

But it was a meeting with a group of Turkestan traders in the oasis that would prove most fortuitous. Unlike the magistrate, the traders knew the area well from living many years in the province. Among them was Zahid Beg, who, like many of the traders in town, was on the run from his Turkestan creditors. Zahid Beg told Stein of various half-buried ruins he claimed to have seen north of Dunhuang. His information was vague, rumors perhaps, but at least he was more forthcoming than the local Chinese, who greeted Stein's inquiries about ancient ruins in the area with steely silence. And Zahid Beg conveyed a tantalizing snippet, one that could not fail to ignite Stein's imagination. A huge cache of ma.n.u.scripts was said to have been discovered a few years earlier, hidden in one of the painted grottoes at the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas. And, so the rumor went, the ma.n.u.scripts were still there.

6.

City of Sands On the edge of the Gobi Desert near Dunhuang, a cliff about a mile long rises from a river valley. Beyond the cliff, sand dunes roll like ocean waves. In certain winds, these dunes were said to emit eerie music that inspired their name: the Ming Sha, or Singing Sands. But it was a vision, not a sound, that shaped history here, and it occurred more than 1,500 years before Stein's caravan arrived.

Legend has it that in AD 366, a wandering Buddhist monk named Lezun sat on the valley floor to rest from his travels across forests and plains. As he admired the sunset on Sanwei Mountain, he beheld a vision of a thousand Buddhas. Celestial nymphs danced in the rays of golden light, and Lezun watched the glorious scene until the dusk turned to dark. The monk, described as resolute, calm, and of pure conduct, was so inspired that the next day he set down his pilgrim's staff and abandoned plans to cross the Gobi. Instead, he chiseled a meditation cave into the cliff. The following day he mixed mud and smoothed the walls of his tiny shelter. And on his third day, he painted a mural on the wall to record the wondrous vision he had witnessed.

Lezun then visited Dunhuang to share his discovery, and the news quickly spread to the surrounding provinces, according to one folk tale. Similarly inspired, others joined him and honeycombed the conglomerate cliff with an estimated 1,000 hand-carved caves. The first caves were small, spartan cells, just big enough for a solitary monk. But as the religious community grew, elaborate grottoes were carved as chapels and shrines. Some were large enough for a hundred wors.h.i.+ppers to gather. Murals in lapis, turquoise, and malachite covered the walls and ceilings in many of the caves. Nearly half a million square feet of magnificent murals were created. The wall paintings give an unparalleled picture of a thousand years of life along the Silk Road.

The location would eventually become known in China and beyond as a place of unrivalled beauty, sanct.i.ty, and knowledge. Although the monk Lezun is credited with founding the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas, or Mogao Caves as they are known today, he is but one of four men who have shaped their history through the centuries. The story of the Silk Road's most sacred site is inextricably bound with clandestine journeys, wandering monks, and intrepid travelers.

Why a sacred center flourished in such a remote place is simple. The reason is geography. Near Dunhuang, the Silk Road split in two to skirt the rim of the Taklamakan Desert. The roads met again 1,400 miles west at Kashgar. But between these two oases lay the Silk Road's most dangerous terrain. Among the threats were starvation, thirst, bandits, and ferocious sandstorms that were known to bury entire caravans. For those traveling west, Dunhuang was the last stop for caravans to rest and stock up before they faced the desert. For those heading east, it was the first oasis on Chinese soil. Any traveler would want to express grat.i.tude for surviving such a journey or pray for safe deliverance before embarking, so it is little wonder that as long as the Silk Road thrived, the caves did too. Wealthy merchants and other patrons paid for the grottoes to be created and decorated as acts of thanksgiving. Dunhuang-the name means Blazing Beacon and refers to the nearby line of military watchtowers that guarded the area-might have begun as a dusty military garrison town, but it became a prosperous, cosmopolitan center, the Silk Road's great beacon of spiritual illumination.

The Silk Road, or roads really, was a network of trade routes that linked China with the West. From its eastern end in the ancient Chinese capital of Chang'an, now Xian, the route pa.s.sed through Dunhuang before branching south to India, present-day Afghanistan and Pakistan, or west to Samarkand, Bokhara, Persia, and the eastern Mediterranean. For about a thousand years, caravans of camels loaded with silk, rubies, jade, amber, musk, and far more halted at Dunhuang.

But despite all its ancient connotations, the name Silk Road is relatively new, coined only in the nineteenth century by a German geographer and explorer, Baron Ferdinand von Richthofen. It conjures exotic images of heavily laden camels plodding through rolling dunes, bells tinkling. The name is far more romantic than if it had been named after another desirable commodity traded along the way, which might have seen it dubbed the Rhubarb Road.

Silk, which originated in China, was the best known and among the most prized of the route's merchandise. Few caravans traveled the entire route. Rather, the goods would change hands-as well as camels and donkeys-many times along the way, and inhabitants at one end of the Silk Road knew little about those at the other. Consequently, the Romans, who had an insatiable hunger for the exquisite fabric (despite a Senate ban on men wearing it), had only vague ideas about the land or people who produced it. But rumors abounded. Some talked of Seres, the Kingdom of Silk, as a land inhabited by giants with red hair and blue eyes. Others thought it home to people who lived for 200 years. For centuries, the Romans thought the gossamer thread grew on trees and was combed from leaves. This suited the middlemen through whose lands the goods pa.s.sed and who lived off the profits. Even when a Greek traveler a.s.serted that it came from insects-giant beetles, he claimed-the West lacked the means to make the luxurious fabric. But in the sixth century, two Nestorian monks returning from China are said to have reached the court of the Byzantine emperor Justinian with silkworm eggs concealed in their bamboo staffs.

Coveted as it was, silk was not the only treasure to travel the ancient trade route. Ideas, too, made their way along the Silk Road, the original information superhighway. The most influential of these was Buddhism, whose story began around 400 BC, when Prince Siddhartha was born into the ruling Shakya clan in the Himalayan foothills of present-day Nepal. He grew up in luxurious seclusion, sheltered from life's sufferings and harsh realities, according to Buddhist tales. At twenty-nine, he ventured beyond the palace and encountered the sufferings from which he had been s.h.i.+elded. He saw an old man, a sick man, a corpse, and an ascetic. Troubled by this confrontation with ageing, sickness, and death, he resolved to find a way to overcome suffering and mortality.

He rejected his privileged life and secretly slipped away from the palace to become an ascetic himself. He wandered for years, studying under various teachers but, unsatisfied, continually moved on. He sought answers through extremes of spiritual renunciation and physical deprivation, including near starvation. At the age of thirty-five, he sat beneath a fig tree near present-day Bodhgaya and vowed not to rise until he attained enlightenment. He realized what Buddhists call the Four n.o.ble Truths: suffering exists; desires cause suffering; it is possible to end suffering; and a path exists to achieve this. Freed from the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, he arose as Buddha Shakyamuni, the Awakened One and the sage of the Shakya clan. He spent the rest of his life-the next forty-five years-traveling around northern India and teaching what he had learned. His teachings were later written in the form of thousands of sutras. Buddha Shakyamuni is sometimes referred to as the historical Buddha. There are said to be countless Buddhas; many have existed in the past, others will appear in the future.

Buddha Shakyamuni delivered the teaching known as the Diamond Sutra in a garden near the ancient Indian city of Sravasti. According to Buddhist lore, a wealthy merchant named Sudatta, or Anathapindika, who was known for his generosity to orphans and the dest.i.tute, heard the Buddha teaching. The merchant was so impressed he invited the Buddha to Sravasti to teach. However, the only suitable place to build a temple to house the Buddha and his disciples was in a forest south of the city, and it belonged to the Crown Prince Jeta, who had no interest in selling his pristine real estate. ”If you can cover the ground with gold pieces, I'll sell it,” the prince allegedly joked. Undeterred, the philanthropic merchant went home, opened his treasury and brought back enough gold to carpet the 200-acre site. For twenty-five rainy seasons the Buddha gave some of his most important teachings in a park once covered in gold.

More than 200 years after the Buddha Shakyamuni left his palace, another clandestine journey began, one that would ultimately result in the establishment of the Silk Road. It was a trip designed to prevent what China's Great Wall could not-raids by a marauding tribe of Central Asian hors.e.m.e.n called the Xiongnu. Some say the Xiongnu were related to the Huns who would later cut a swath through Europe. Whatever the case, the Han emperor Wudi wanted them stopped. The emperor knew his people were not the only ones being terrorized by these fierce fighters. A nomadic group had been driven from their lands on China's far western fringe, their king executed and his skull turned into a drinking cup. The Yuezhi, as the routed nomads were called, wanted revenge.

The emperor decided to seek an alliance with the Yuezhi-”the enemy of my enemy is my friend” is hardly a new diplomatic strategy. He dispatched an envoy from the ancient capital of Chang'an on a secret mission about a hundred years before the birth of Christ. The man who volunteered for the dangerous a.s.signment was a court official called Zhang Qian. He was about thirty years old and considered bold and trustworthy. He was given an escort of a hundred men, a yak-hair tail atop a bamboo pole-a symbol of imperial power-and effectively told to ”go west, young man” and forge the alliance. That was easier said than done. To travel west meant venturing into unknown lands and crossing enemy territory. There was also a fearsome desert along the way and no known route around or across it.

As a diplomatic mission it was a disaster. All but one of his men perished during the journey. Zhang Qian himself was captured and spent a decade as a prisoner of the Xiongnu. When the envoy eventually escaped, he tracked the Yuezhi to present-day Afghanistan but life had utterly changed for them. The Yuezhi had settled down to a peaceful, prosperous existence and weren't terribly interested in taking revenge on their one-time foe. The envoy turned around and trekked back to China. Although he returned from his thirteen-year journey without an alliance, he did not return home empty-handed. Aside from his remarkably resilient yak-hair tail, he brought something far more significant: knowledge. He had not only found a way around the Taklamakan Desert, he brought news of mysterious lands and great civilizations, places where dazzling goods and unknown foods such as grapes, carrots, walnuts, and alfalfa were traded. He also brought word of powerful blood-sweating horses from Ferghana, in present-day Uzbekistan, said to be descended from celestial steeds. (The blood is now thought to be the result of a parasite that causes lesions.) The strength of these horses made them ideal for battle, and the appeal of such superior steeds to the emperor was obvious. The Heavenly Horses have long inspired Chinese paintings, poems, and statues.

News of such horses and other desirable goods prompted moves to establish the trade routes that became the Silk Road and fostered exchanges between these distant lands. Over time, missions were sent and garrisons established, including at Dunhuang, to protect the growing commerce. Zhang Qian is pictured in a mural at the Mogao Caves taking leave of Emperor Wudi. His groundbreaking journey helped forge an overland route between China and the West-and laid the path for Buddhism's arrival from India. The path from the Himalayan foothills through Central Asia and into China was circuitous, but the vast mountain ranges between China and India posed formidable obstacles to a more direct route. As Buddhism meandered into China, a unique form of art developed as the religion b.u.mped up against different cultures along the way. The art was a tangible expression of the Buddhist desire to be freed from the cycle of rebirth and suffering.

Buddhism split into two branches as it traveled. Theravada Buddhism, which emphasizes individual enlightenment, took hold in Thailand, Burma, and Sri Lanka. Mahayana Buddhism, which a.s.serts everyone can become a Buddha and seeks to free all beings from suffering, became dominant in north Asia, including Tibet, Korea, j.a.pan, and China. The Mahayana pract.i.tioner strives over many lifetimes to become first a bodhisattva, a wise, compa.s.sionate being who leads others to enlightenment, and ultimately a fully awakened Buddha.

Central to Buddhism is the idea of karma, a cosmic chain of cause and effect whereby everything a person thinks, says or does leaves a ”seed” that will ripen in the future. Negative seeds ripen as suffering and virtuous seeds as happiness and, ultimately, enlightenment. Therefore performing virtuous, or meritorious, actions is imperative for a Buddhist. A virtuous act includes the making-or sponsoring the making-of holy images and objects. And the more that are created, the greater the merit. This is a key reason behind the creation of the Silk Road's numerous painted grottoes, of which the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas are the most splendid example.

For about 400 years, the Buddha's words were memorized and transmitted orally. They were not written down until the first century AD. But once they were, the Diamond Sutra and other teachings could propagate easily across the great trade routes, in particular the Silk Road. The written scriptures were exactly what a young Chinese monk was after when, in 629, he too embarked on a clandestine journey. His name was Xuanzang (Hsuan Tsang), and he was destined to become one of the world's greatest travelers. From beyond the grave he would play a pivotal role at the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas.

Xuanzang was on a quest for spiritual enlightenment rather than a sensitive diplomatic mission when, like the envoy with his yak tail, he traveled west along the Silk Road-by then a well-worn path-from Chang'an. He left behind the capital's floating pavilions and secluded gardens and slipped through the outer gates of the city's triple walls to embark on a sixteen-year journey that would take him across the desert and over the jagged Pamir Mountains to India and back to China. He would prove himself an intrepid traveler, a brilliant translator, and a remarkable eyewitness: one part Christopher Columbus, one part St. Jerome, one part Samuel Pepys.

His life has inspired numerous folk tales and legends, such as the cla.s.sic Chinese novel known in English as Monkey, in which he is overshadowed by his companions, including a greedy pig and a trickster monkey. j.a.panese cartoons and a 1970s cult television series have also drawn on Xuanzang's adventures. The tale has even inspired an opera performed at London's Covent Garden in 2008, composed by Damon Albarn, the songwriter and vocalist for the rock band Gorillaz. Folk tales aside, the monk left a written account of the places he visited which has proved so accurate that geographers and archaeologists still consult it today. Like Stein, Xuanzang was fastidious, whether recording the distances between places and the heights of individual stupas or recording the myths, ma.s.sacres, and monarchs he encountered along his way. But he reveals little of himself and his own life, leaving that for a devoted disciple, Huili, who wrote his biography. Xuanzang's account is written with philosophic detachment, his disciple's filled with vivid anecdotes. Together the two works give a unique account of a vanished world and one of the greatest journeys of all time.

Xuanzang began studying Buddhist scriptures when he was about thirteen and was ordained as a monk at twenty. After years spent immersed in Chinese translations, he found the teachings contradictory and incomplete. Likewise, he found the religion's various schools conflicting. What was true? He resolved to seek clarity from the great masters in distant India. More importantly, he wanted to bring back the original Buddhist texts for translation. Unfortunately, foreign travel was banned and as the young monk, then about twenty-six years old, did not have imperial permission to leave, he departed the capital in secret, traveling by night and hiding during the day. His journey was nearly a short one. His guide tried to murder him near the Jade Gate, the landmark near Dunhuang that marked the western edge of China, through which many Silk Road caravans pa.s.sed. Amid the desert's demons and hot winds, he became lost and almost died of thirst. At Gaochang, near Turfan, the oasis city's king was so impressed by Xuanzang's knowledge that he forcibly detained him, prompting the monk to begin a hunger strike. The king relented, provided the monk with an escort, supplies, gold, and letters of introduction, and extracted a promise that Xuanzang would remain in Gaochang for three years on his return from India. The monk's chances of surviving such a trip may have seemed slim, but the G.o.ds were clearly on Xuanzang's side. He lived through a range of death-defying adventures which saw him attacked by bandits, captured by pirates and almost offered as a human sacrifice to the bloodthirsty Hindu G.o.ddess Durga.

Apocryphal as the stories sound, the descriptions of the terrain he covered have attracted the attention of explorers, historians, and archaeologists, not least Aurel Stein, who was the same age as Xuanzang when he, too, first departed for India. (Stein suggested there was some truth and wisdom in one of the odder, seemingly more fanciful stories in which the monk is persuaded to swap his good horse for a scrawny nag ahead of a hazardous desert crossing because the old horse had made the trip many times before. Stein knew all too well how horses and camels could not only detect water and food in the desert from a great distance but also remember their locations from previous visits.) Xuanzang crossed the Pamir Mountains and journeyed through the Buddhist kingdom of Gandhara. Along the way he gave one of the first accounts of the then sparkling new Bamiyan Buddhas of central Afghanistan. They glinted in the sun with their gold paint and jeweled ornaments. They had been carved into a cliff about a hundred years before the monk arrived. The figures-one stood 180 feet tall, the other 125 feet-rose above a valley that was home to a flouris.h.i.+ng Buddhist community with thousands of monks. And there they remained for 1,600 years-long after the Buddhist culture that created them had vanished from the valley-until the Afghan Taliban blew them to pieces in March 2001. Curiously, Xuanzang describes a third, much larger Bamiyan Buddha, a sleeping figure 900 feet long said to be within a monastery nearby. His description has prompted a search for its elusive remains in recent years, although a smaller reclining Buddha was found in 2008.

Xuanzang made his way along the Himalayan foothills to the Buddhist ”holy land” in northeast India. He arrived at the great center of Buddhist learning, Nalanda, one of the world's first universities. The center had about 10,000 students and was in its heyday when Xuanzang first saw its pointed turrets, sparkling roof tiles, lotus ponds, and flowering groves. It drew scholars from other lands-j.a.pan, China, Persia, and Tibet-to study not just Buddhism but medicine, mathematics, and astronomy. Its three libraries were so extensive that when they were razed by Muslim invaders in the twelfth century-about the time the University of Oxford was established-they were said to have burned for months. The ruins of what was once an architectural masterpiece remain today in Bihar state. A memorial hall to Xuanzang was opened at Nalanda in 2007, with a statue of the pilgrim carrying scrolls on his back.