Character Description
In the novel, Xuanzang is a Chinese Buddhist monk who had renounced his family to join the Sangha from childhood. He is actually a reincarnation of Golden Cicada (simplified Chinese: 金蝉子; traditional Chinese: 金蟬子; pinyin: Jīn Chánzǐ), a disciple of the Buddha. He is sent on a mission to Tianzhu (an ancient Chinese name for India) to fetch a set of Buddhist scriptures back to China for the purpose of spreading Buddhism in his native land. He becomes sworn brothers with Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty, and the emperor sees him off from the capital Chang'an and orders two escorts to accompany him.
Xuanzang is helpless in defending himself and his two escorts are killed during his first encounter with demons after his departure from Chang'an. 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. The three become Xuanzang's disciples and will receive enlightenment and redemption for their past sins once the pilgrimage is complete. Along the journey, Xuanzang is constantly terrorised by monsters and demons because of a legend which says that one can attain immortality by consuming his flesh because he is a reincarnation of a holy being.
Read more about this topic: Xuanzang (fictional Character)
Famous quotes containing the words character and/or description:
“Science asks no questions about the ontological pedigree or a priori character of a theory, but is content to judge it by its performance; and it is thus that a knowledge of nature, having all the certainty which the senses are competent to inspire, has been attained—a knowledge which maintains a strict neutrality toward all philosophical systems and concerns itself not with the genesis or a priori grounds of ideas.”
—Chauncey Wright (1830–1875)
“The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)