Ten Thousand Miles Without a Cloud. Sun Shuyun

      SUN SHUYUN

       Ten Thousand Miles Without a Cloud

COPYRIGHT

      HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2003

      Copyright © Sun Shuyun 2003

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

      Source ISBN: 9780007129744

      Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2012 ISBN 9780007380923 Version: 2016-03-17

      Sun Shuyun asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      Map by John Gilkes

      HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

       DEDICATION

       For Robert, and my Chinese family

      CONTENTS

       COVER

       TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT

       DEDICATION

       MAP

PREFACE

ONE: Bringing Back the Truth

TWO: Three Monks at the Big Wild Goose Pagoda

THREE: Fiction and Reality

      FOUR: Exile and Exotica

      FIVE: Land of Heavenly Mountains

      SIX: Imagining the Buddha

      SEVEN: Light from the Moon

      EIGHT: Not a Man?

      NINE: Nirvana

      TEN: Battleground of the Faiths

      ELEVEN: Lost Treasures, Lost Souls

      TWELVE: Journey’s End

       KEEP READING

       SELECTED READINGS

       INDEX

       AUTHOR’S NOTE

       ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

       MAP

PREFACE

      Xuanzang, the subject of this book, could not have completed his epic journey without the help he received from kings, emperors and princes. I too have to thank a large number of people who made my journey possible; they helped me practically and intellectually. They include R. C. Agrawal, Daub Ali, Swati Barathe, Vasanta Bharucha, Bodhisen, Peter Coleridge, Joe Cribb, Mick Csaky, G. P. Deshpande, Toby Eady, Elizabeth Errington, Katie Espiner, Anthony Fitzherbert, Madhu Ghose, Richard Gombrich, Ruchira Gupta, Sue Hamilton, Hu Ji, Prem Jha, M. C. Joshi, Shah Nazar Khan, Robert Knox, Luo Feng, Philip Lutgendorf, Ma Shichang, Manidhamma, Robert Mason, Jean McNeil, Venerable Miaohua, Yumiko and Paul Mitchell, Vivek Nanda, Lolita Nehru, John Pell, M. C. Ranganathan, Harapasad Ray, Gowher Rizvi, Virginia Shapiro, Sarah Shaw, Romila Thapar, Judy and John Thompson, Uma Waide, Wang Qihan, Roderick Whitfield, Sally Wriggins, Zhang Jianhua, and many other friends and experts in China and elsewhere too numerous to list. I must single out Sally Wriggins, whose academic study of Xuanzang has been invaluable.

      I owe an especially large debt to five people:

      to Susan Watt, my editor at HarperCollins, who saw I had a book to write before I did, who had confidence in me before I acquired it myself and who led me through the new experience of writing with insight and assurance;

      to Fang Xichen, who has been nothing less than an inspiration on the history and culture of my own people, a man of real wisdom and generosity;

      to Venerable Dr Jingyin, who has been my guide and teacher in the vast