Xuanzang  was a Chinese Buddhist monk, scholar, traveler, and translator who traveled to India in the seventh century and described the interaction betweenChinese Buddhism and Indian Buddhism during the early Tang dynasty.

During the journey he visited many sacred Buddhist sites in what are now Pakistan, India, Nepal, and Bangladesh. He was born in what is now Henan province on 6 April 602, and from boyhood he took to reading religious books, including the Chinese classics and the writings of ancient sages.

While residing in the city of Luoyang (in Henan in Central China), Xuanzang was ordained as a  novice monk at the age of thirteen. Due to the political and social unrest caused by the fall of the Sui dynasty, he went to Chengdu in Sichuan, where he was ordained as monk at the age of twenty. He later traveled throughout China in search of sacred books of Buddhism. At length, he came to Chang'an, then under the peaceful rule of Emperor Taizong of Tang, where Xuanzang developed the desire to visit India. He knew about Faxian's visit to India and, like him, was concerned about the incomplete and misinterpreted nature of the Buddhist texts that had reached China.

He became famous for his seventeen-year overland journey to India (including Nalanda), which is recorded in detail in the classic Chinese text Great Tang Records on the Western Regions, which in turn provided the inspiration for the novel Journey to the West written by Wu Cheng'en during the Ming dynasty, around nine centuries after Xuanzang's death.