‘Show Me the Land Where the Buddha Dwelled…’ Xuanzang’s 玄奘 ‘Record of the Western Regions’ (Xiyu ji 西域記 ): A Misunderstood Text?

This article first traces the reception history of Xuanzang’s ‘Record of the Western Regions’ (Xiyu ji) . It shows how the text was translated and used by Western scholars in the nineteenth century and used as a source for the positivist discovery of India’s Buddhist past, how it became romanticised and ‘spiritualised’, as it were, through popularisation. This seems to have parallels in East Asian history and in the modern reception in Asia. The problem with all these attempts of interpretation lies in a decontextualisation of the text, and the last part of the article attempts to show on the basis of three case studies how the Xiyu ji should be read in a broader and—I would claim—deeper contextualising way.