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06 The Search for the Scripture Pilgrim

She bowed to heaven in prayer, laid the child on the plank and bound him fast with a cord, tied the blood-letter at his breast, and set him afloat to drift with the current; then she went back to the yamen in tears. The child drifted on the plank all the way to the foot of Jinshan Temple. The abbot of the temple, the monk Faming, was sitting in meditation when he heard an infant crying. He hurried to the bank and, seeing a baby afloat on the water, leaned down and drew it out. Reading the blood-letter, the abbot learned the child's history. He gave him the milk name Jiangliu and placed him with a family to be raised. Time flew, and in what seemed a moment Jiangliu was eighteen. The abbot had him shave his head and take the Dharma name Xuanzang, and he lived in the temple as a monk. One day Xuanzang was discoursing on the scriptures beneath a pine tree when a monk who ate meat and drank wine was worsted by him, and in his shame and anger cursed him: "You wretched creature — you do not even know your own name or who your parents are, and yet you prate here!" Xuanzang was stricken. He went into the temple, knelt before his master in tears, and begged him again and again to tell him his parents' names. The abbot sighed deeply, took a small box down from the roof beam, and gave Xuanzang the blood-letter and the garment inside it. Reading the letter, Xuanzang learned at last who he was and fell to the ground weeping. "For eighteen years I have not known the parents who gave me life. Today I learn that my mother lives. Master, let me go and seek her." The abbot said, "Go to the private quarters of the Jiangzhou yamen; there you may meet her." Xuanzang did as his master said, disguised himself as a begging monk, and set out for Jiangzhou. It happened that Liu Hong was away on business, and Xuanzang came to the yamen gate to beg. Lady Yin had dreamed in the night of a waning moon grown full again, and was pondering it when she heard someone chanting outside. She went out and found a young monk there. She invited him in, and found his bearing and his speech so like her husband's that it seemed he had come back to life. She sent the maids away and asked, "What is your name, young master? Who are your parents?" And Xuanzang told her his story. "I am Wenjiao," said the lady. "You claim to be my son — what proof have you?" Xuanzang knelt at once and handed her the blood-letter and the garment. She saw at once that they were the very things of those years, and had him take off his shoes and stockings; and finding the little toe indeed missing from his left foot, mother and son knew each other and wept in each other's arms. When they had wept a while Lady Yin said, "My son, take this incense ring. Go to the Liu family inn northwest of Hongzhou and find your grandmother, née Zhang. I shall write a letter for you to carry to the capital, to your grandfather the Prime Minister Yin Kaishan, that he may seize and slay the villain Liu." Xuanzang took leave of his mother in tears and went to the Liu family inn in Hongzhou, where he asked the innkeeper Liu Xiao'er after his grandmother. "She used to lodge here," Liu said, "but she could not pay her rent and moved to a broken-down potters' kiln outside the south gate, where she lives by begging."

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