Xuanzang
Chinese Buddhism (influence)

During Xuanzang's travels, he studied with many famous Buddhist masters, especially at the famous center of Buddhist learning at Nalanda. When he returned, he brought with him some 657 Sanskrit texts. With the emperor's support, he set up a large translation bureau in Chang'an (present-day Xi'an), drawing students and collaborators from all over East Asia. He is credited with the translation of some 1,330 fascicles of scriptures into Chinese. His strongest personal interest in Buddhism was in the field of Yogācāra (瑜伽行派), or Consciousness-only (唯識), and he founded a school taking after that tradition in China. His 7th-century scholarship on Yogacara has a major influence on Chinese Buddhism, and then on East Asian Buddhism.

The force of his own study, translation, and commentary of the texts of these traditions initiated the development of the Faxiang school (法相宗) in East Asia. Some of Xuanzang's students, such as Kuiji (窺基, 632–682) and Wŏnch'ŭk (613–696), become influential authors in their own right. Although the Faxiang school itself did not thrive for a long time, its theories regarding perception, consciousness, Karma, rebirth, etc. found their way into the doctrines of other more successful schools. Xuanzang's closest and most eminent student was Kuiji (窺基) who became recognized as the first patriarch of the Faxiang school. Xuanzang's logic, as described by Kuiji, was often misunderstood by scholars of Chinese Buddhism because they lacked the necessary background in Indian logic.

Xuanzang was known for his extensive but careful translations of Indian Buddhist texts to Chinese, which have enabled subsequent recoveries of lost Indian Buddhist texts from the translated Chinese copies. He is credited with writing or compiling the Cheng Weishi Lun as a commentary on these texts. His translation of the Heart Sutra became and remains an important milestone in all East Asian Buddhist sects.
combination:two_responses, keywords:existence, punctuation:no_comma