Dàtáng Sānzàng Qǔjīng Shīhuà 大唐三藏取經詩話
Prosimetric Narrative of Tripitaka’s Journey to Fetch the Scriptures
About the work
An anonymous prosimetric narrative (shīhuà 詩話) in 17 short chapters, combining prose narrative with verse at chapter closings, recounting the monk Xuánzàng’s 玄奘 (Tripitaka) pilgrimage to India to obtain Buddhist scriptures. The text is the earliest surviving extended narrative of the Xuanzang pilgrimage story and the foundational document for understanding the genesis of the Journey to the West (Xīyóu jì 西遊記) narrative cycle. The text was lost in China and is known only from two Japanese manuscript and woodblock copies; it was re-introduced to modern Chinese scholarship in the 1920s.
Tiyao
No tiyao found in source.
Abstract
The Dàtáng Sānzàng qǔjīng shīhuà presents the essential cast of the later Xīyóu jì in significantly earlier forms. The Monkey pilgrim appears as “Hóu xíngzhě” 猴行者 (“Monkey Journeyman”), already serving as Tripitaka’s supernatural assistant but lacking the elaborate celestial backstory of the later Sūn Wùkōng 孫悟空. The “Deep-sand spirit” (Shēnshā shen 深沙神) appears as a monstrous cannibal figure — the precursor to Sha Monk 沙和尚. The White Horse appears as well. The narrative arc involves Tripitaka and Monkey overcoming demonic adversaries at each stage of the journey westward to India.
Glen Dudbridge’s 1970 monograph established the shīhuà as the primary surviving witness to the pre-Ming pilgrim-narrative tradition, arguing that it reflects Song-period storytelling conventions rather than Tang ones despite the “Tang” in the title. Some Japanese scholars, notably Isobe Akira (1993), have argued for a late Five Dynasties or early Song origin on linguistic grounds; the consensus places the text in the 11th–12th century.
The text is known from two Japanese copies: a Kōzanji 高山寺 fragment discovered in the 1920s and a Nanatsudera 七寺 copy. The complete text has 17 chapters, making it one of the longest surviving specimens of the shīhuà genre.
Translations and research
- Dudbridge, Glen. 1970. The Hsi-yu chi: A Study of Antecedents to the Sixteenth-Century Chinese Novel. Cambridge UP. The definitive English study and primary point of reference.
- Isobe Akira 磯部彰. 1993. Taishō Sanzō torikyō shīwa no kenkyū 大唐三藏取経詩話の研究. Sōbunsha. Comprehensive Japanese monograph.
- Mair, Victor H. 1989. “Oral and written aspects of Chinese sutra lectures.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 49.2: 311–361. Genre background.
Other points of interest
The shīhuà preserves the “Flower-Fruit Mountain” 花果山 as the Monkey’s home — a detail that persists in the later Xīyóu jì tradition. The text’s Japan-transmitted transmission history parallels that of the Yóuxiān kū KR4k0016 and the Wǔdàishǐ pínghùa — showing the importance of Japan in preserving Tang-Song Chinese popular texts lost in China itself.
Links
- Wikidata: Dà Tang sānzàng qǔjīng shīhuà