Hyecho's Journey: The World of Buddhism by Donald S. Lopez Jr., et al. (review)

Hyecho's Journey: The World of Buddhism is an attractive, experimental book created by a team of scholars working under the direction of Donald S. Lopez Jr. On the one hand, it tells the story of the monk-pilgrim Hyech'o 惠超 (or 慧超, fl. eighth century; which Lopez romanizes as "Hyecho" following the Korean Revised Romanization system), who hailed from the Korean kingdom of Silla (ca. 300–935) and left a fragmentary account of his travels in the kingdoms of India in the early eighth century. On the other hand, the book is not intended as either a critical or annotated translation of Hyech'o's diary or a scholarly study of Hyech'o's contribution to East Asian Buddhism. Instead, the book is crafted with the intent to flesh out or examine the imagined world of Buddhism that Hyech'o would have known and perhaps experienced through the memories, stories, legends, and myths of different cities and locations associated with his life, his journey to Tang China in search of Buddhist teaching, and his pilgrimage route in India. After the introduction (pp. 1–43), each of the twelve chapters consists of four distinct parts: "The Story," "The Commentary," "The Art," and "Further Reading." Each chapter discusses a location probably either visited or traversed by Hyech'o, beginning with Hyech'o's birthplace, Silla Korea (pp. 59–69), and including such places as Kushinagar, the place where the Buddha entered nirvana (pp. 85–99); Vulture Peak, the site where two buddhas preached the Lotus Sutra side by side (pp. 101–15); Bodh Gaya, where Buddha attained enlightenment; Lumbini, the Buddha's birthplace (pp. 117–29); Sravasti, a city where the Buddha performed many miracles (pp. 145–59); Gandhara, one of the flourishing centers of Mahayana Buddhism during Hyech'o's lifetime (pp. 175–89); and Wutaishan 五臺山, the mythical abode of the bodhisattva Mañjuśrī, where Hyech'o passed away probably sometime in the 780s (pp. 205–17).

Who is this book's audience? As Lopez describes in prefatory material, although this work is certainly a "freestanding study," it also complements a groundbreaking three-year exhibition of Buddhist art at the Freer and Sackler Galleries, the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art: each of the twenty-four works of art presented in the book comes from the collections of these two galleries (pp. xvii–xviii). The book is semischolarly to the extent that it draws on much excellent secondary scholarship. It is primarily descriptive and illustrative in purpose, and it does not attempt to advance a novel theory on Hyech'o's life and experiences.

Hyecho's Journey could be put to good use as either a primary or supplementary textbook for introductory or survey courses on Buddhism, depending on the instructor's approach. For instance, if the instructor seeks to approach Buddhism as a cultural phenomenon or as a story of the religion as understood by an ordinary monk or lay Buddhist, Hyecho's Journey could be the primary textbook. The chapters of the book, with the exception of the introduction, are typically between ten and fifteen pages in length and thus are well within the feasible range for the average undergraduate reader. Furthermore, the book does not have to be read in order because each chapter is designed as a stand-alone unit. So, instructors can freely arrange the order of readings and have rich material in terms of stories, objects, and images to discuss with students. If the instructor prefers to teach a survey course in a more traditional manner—a doctrinal or philosophical orientation—the book would be an excellent source for complementary or auxiliary material, fleshing out the lived aspect of the religion or, as Gregory Schopen says, "Buddhism on the ground."¹

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