On Yuan Chwang's Travels in India, 629–645 A.D. v1.c4.s2.18

v1.c4.s2.18

In personal appearance Yuan-chuang, like his father, was a tall handsome man with beautiful eyes and a good complexion. He had a serious but benevolent expression and a sedate and rather stately manner. His character as revealed to us in his Life and other books is interesting and attractive. He had a rare combination of moral and intellectual qualities and traits common to Chinese set off by a strongly marked individuality. We find him tender and affectionate to his parents and brothers, clinging to them in his youth and lovingly mindful of them in his old age. He was zealous and enthusiastic, painstaking and persevering, but without any sense of humour and without any inventive genius. His capacity for work was very great and his craving for knowledge and love of learning were an absorbing passion. Too prone at times to follow authority and accept ready-made conclusions he was yet self possessed and independent. A Confucianist by inheritance and early training, far seen in native lore and possessing good abilities, he became an uncompromising Buddhist. Yet he never broke wholly with the native system which he learned from his father and early teachers. The splendours of India and the glories of its religion did not weaken or shake his love for China and his admiration for its old ways of domestic, social, and political life. When he was more than sixty years of age he wished to pay the duty of filial piety at his parents' tombs. Unable to discover these he sought out his married sister Mrs Chang, and by her help he found them. Then, distressed at the bad state in which the tombs were at the time, he obtained leave from the Emperor to have the remains of his parents transferred to a happy ground and reinterred with honourable burial. Though the man had long ago become a devoted son of Sākyamuni he still owned a loving duty to his earthly parents.