• Uses and Misuses of the Image of Xuanzang: Education and Transnational Identity in a Contemporary Indian Mural

Across the world, the Buddhist pilgrim-monk Xuanzang is remembered and revered for his sixteen-year-long, ten-thousand-mile overland journey from Chang’an (modern Xi’an), China to the university at Nalanda in India in the early seventh century. This journey, which has been transformed from travelogue into fictional literature and mythology over the centuries, enabled the translation of key Buddhist sutras from Sanskrit into Chinese and the contributed to dissemination of Buddhism across the continent. Even outside his native China, Xuanzang is venerated for these remarkable accomplishments: as far away as [XXX], he is commemorated in a mural in [XXX]’s Indian Nationality Classroom.

Close analysis of this contemporary painting, which ostensibly deploys Xuanzang’s likeness to represent education as a timeless and universal value, reveals both appropriate and misguided uses of Xuanzang’s image and legacy. Relying upon close visual analysis of the Nationality Classroom’s mural, archival records charting the mural’s creation, and study of the contemporary relationship between India and China, this paper examines the modern connotations of Xuanzang embodied in this particular mural, ultimately analyzing the ways in which Xuanzang is still remembered centuries after his own lifetime, and the implications of this legacy on modern expressions of national identity.