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label of “Xiongnu” upon these earrings. In fact, even if that grasp is to some degree deceptive in after twenty-one pages of detailed discussion of the end. This is ironic, for, more than any other an- steppe and sedentary interactions, dragon motifs, alytical approach, Whitfield’s focus on material the ubiquity of belt plaques, and gender roles, the objects would appear on the surface to be rooted in only firm conclusion she is willing to offer her more “tangible” interpretive prisms than any other. readers is that these earrings were “an indication And yet rarely does the reader emerge from any of wealth and status.” chapter with the ability to say much of anything Such candor is refreshing. But it can also be quite definite about the object on display beyond what jarring for readers accustomed to Silk Road narra- might be stated in a simple two or three sentence tives that take refuge in more definite and familiar caption. In that sense, we might characterize this interpretive prisms, such as politics and religion. book as offering its readers more a rich and event- Anchoring one’s narrative in the history of the ful journey than a destination. Each chapter can Kushan or Tang dynasties or the spread of Bud- stand more or less on its own, without reference to dhism and Manichaeism may not represent a very the other chapters. And there is no conclusion— novel approach, but readers of such narratives are after ten chapters and ten objects, the journey sim- likely to come away with a more definite grasp of ply ends. key concepts, events, and peoples of the Silk Road, ‐ Justin M. Jacobs, American University ——— Donald S. Lopez, Jr. Hyecho’s Journey: The Road never really existed. For a course focused on World of Buddhism. Chicago: University of the modern era, the narrative glue would have to Chicago Press, 2017. be the Japanese, who played the leading role in co- n Fall 2018, I was asked to teach an “Introduction opting, revising, and substantiating the Western Ito Asia” course at my university for the first time. idea of “Asia” in an indigenous guise. The modern After taking a look at previous iterations of the “Asian experience,” then, could be the study of the course, I decided to eschew their reliance on the awareness of, resistance to, and support for the canonical texts that are often used to introduce the Japanese order in the late nineteenth and twenti- “great traditions” of Asia to undergraduate stu- eth centuries. dents. I did not want my students to leave the As I was wrestling with the problem of how I could classroom with the idea that what Confucius said cobble together a single course on both the ancient in The Analects or what an ancient Indo-Aryan Silk Road and the modern Japanese empire, I composer said in the Rigveda was somehow repre- stumbled upon Donald S. Lopez Jr.’s new book. sentative of a timeless, enduring cultural trait of And “stumbled” is definitely the correct word: I today’s China or India. But if an “Introduction to very nearly bumped into Hyecho’s Journey: The Asia” course is not structured around the classic World of Buddhism and knocked it off its book- philosophical and religious texts of India, China, stand while attempting to navigate the narrow and Japan, among others, how is one to organize aisles of the Freer and Sackler Galleries gift shop in the material? Washington, D.C., just one week before the begin- As a historian of modern East Asia who continually ning of the semester. I am glad that I did. Upon reminds his students that the concept of “Asia” it- further review, Hyecho’s Journey turned out to be self is a Western invention, I could only think of the perfect thematic companion to the Silk Road two alternative paradigms capable of linking East, for an introductory course on Asia. In this hand- South, Southeast, and Central Asia in a respectably somely illustrated book, Lopez does not place the organic thread. For a course focused on the pre- textual productions of Indian, Chinese, Japanese, modern era, “the Silk Road” could serve as a suit- or Korean political and religious elites on center ably flexible and inclusive framework, even if, as stage. Instead, the reader is introduced to the vi- several scholars now regularly remind us, the Silk sual and oral traditions that Buddhist pilgrims dis- 102 seminated throughout the lands now included view of the structure he will adopt for each of the within our present-day definitions of “Asia.” other eleven chapters in his book. First, he pro- As the title of the book suggests, Lopez’s pilgrim is vides an intriguing story—in this case, the discov- Hyecho, an eighth-century Buddhist monk who ery of the secret “cave library” at Dunhuang in 1900 left his native kingdom of Silla in 724 CE to under- and the subsequent dispersal of its contents over take an arduous pilgrimage that would eventually the ensuing decades, with Pelliot’s procurement span three years. During this time, Hyecho trav- and study of the fragment of Hyecho’s journal con- eled overland across Tang China, by sea to present- stituting much of the narrative focus. Then comes day Indonesia, and thence by land across northern the “Commentary,” several pages in which Lopez and northwestern India, Central Asia, and likely provides an accessible scholarly analysis of one or even Arabia, before returning to China and taking more intriguing details narrated in the preceding up permanent residence in Chang’an. This remark- story—in this case, how Pelliot managed to iden- able journey, the longest of tify Hyecho’s journal and any known Buddhist pil- extrapolate its contents. grim at the time, has Finally, the reader is yielded very little in the treated to a section titled way of concrete historical simply “The Art.” This sec- documentation. As Lopez tion includes two full- notes in his Introduction, page color reproductions Hyecho “was not the first of Buddhist artwork asso- monk to make the journey ciated in some way with from China to India. He the preceding story and was not the last. He was commentary. In this case, not the most famous. In the first reproduction is a Great Dis‐ fact, he was among the page from a course on Final Nirvana most obscure of those whose names are known” sutra found in Cave 17, (4). which Lopez uses to illus- trate the central tenets of Details of Hyecho’s journey the Mahayana interpreta- are known only from a sin- tion of Buddhist scripture. gle fragment of a manu- On the next page is a script from Cave 17 in painting of the bod- Dunhuang. The French si- hisattva Kṣitigarbha, likely nologist Paul Pelliot was commissioned by a mem- the first to study this frag- ber of the Dunhuang rul- ment, which appears to in- ing elite in the late tenth clude a copy of a lost draft to early eleventh cen- of Hyecho’s journal that was deposited in Dun- turies. Lopez uses this painting to highlight the huang upon the latter’s return to Chang’an from way in which the identity of a pious Korean monk Central Asia in 727 CE. With the aid of a Chinese named Jijang could be merged into the identity of pronunciation glossary, Pronunciation and Mean‐ a “Chinese” bodhisattva—a transcultural phenom- ings of All the Scriptures (Yiqiejing yinyi 一切經音 enon likely unfamiliar to students raised in a world 義), Pelliot was able to identify key words and saturated with the discourse of nationalism and phrases in this fragment of Hyecho’s journal, and nation-states. thus reconstruct the general parameters of Hye- Subsequent chapters reproduce this three-tiered cho’s pilgrimage throughout the world of Bud- approach to Hyecho’s world of Buddhism. Chapter dhism. 2 narrates popular Buddhist stories in Hyecho’s na- Lopez’s treatment of this episode provides a pre- tive kingdom of Silla and analyzes two works of 103 from the Buddha’s pre- vious lives—local syn- cretic lore, and mythologized stories about the birth, life, and death of the his- torical Buddha. It is not a coincidence that I stumbled upon Hyecho’s Journey in the gift shop of the Freer and Sackler Gal- leries. In fact, the en- tire book is structured around an ongoing ex- hibit, “Encountering the Buddha: Art and Practice across Asia,” which will remain on display until late 2020. Each of the twenty- four works of art ana- The Birth of the Buddha, Kushan Dynasty, 2nd‐3rd CE. This stone relief, one of a set of four panels lyzed in this book is narrating the life of the historical Buddha on display at the Freer and Sackler Galleries, is exam‐ ined in Chapter 7 of Lopez’s new book to highlight the pilgrimage site of Lumbini, Gandharan art, owned by the mu- and the mythological stories surrounding the birth of the Buddha. Photo by Daderot, Wikimedia seum, with many of Commons. them currently on dis- play. For someone like Buddhist art in Korea. Chapter 3 utilizes Hyecho’s me, based in the D.C. area, Lopez’s book presents a sea journey to Southeast Asia to expound on the wonderful opportunity to integrate text and visuals world of “maritime Buddhism” and the develop- both within the classroom and without. In fact, I ment of tales of salvation by Guanyin. Two Bud- require my students to visit the galleries in person, dhist sculptures from eighth- to ninth-century and many do so with Hyecho’s Journey in hand.

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