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玄奘 Xuanzang (602-664 AD), “The Great Tang Dynasty Record of the Western Regions”.

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Rusticello of Pisa, “The Travels of Marco Polo“, 1298 was the topic of an earlier blog post.  “The Travels of Marco Polo”, 1298 was a significant Far East “medieval” travelogue.   玄奘 Xuanzang (602-664 AD), “The Great Tang Dynasty Record of the Western Regions” is earlier Far East “medieval” 
travelogue of significance.
Huo Jianqi (director), “Xuanzang 大唐玄奘”, 2016 film was a “biography” of the famous Chinese monk  玄奘 Xuanzang. “The Great Tang Dynasty Record of the Western Regions” was the biography on which the 2016 film was based.  The film 大唐玄奘 was the Chinese entry for an “Academy Award” for the “Best Foreign Language Film” in 2016.
Xuanzang’s  travelogue to study at the Nalanda  University of ancient Bihar, India was historic.  Buddhism is in decline in Bihar  and only the Buddhist, monastic University of Nalanda ( नालंदा ) keeps it alive in “Sanskrit”
scriptures.   The table above shows the foundation date and location of major medieval universities worldwide.  Nalanda University was the very, first residential university anywhere.  All medieval universities had only “theological debate” as the single, subject of study.  However, a monastic, Buddhist, a monastic Muslim & monastic Christian university functioned as a monastery.   “Reality” versus “divinity”; and “god” versus “nature” are of theological concern.   The Chinese during the Tang dynasty are the first to produce “book” of paper made on the printing press.  Xuanzang  translated Sanskrit into Chinese and manually, printed Buddhist textbooks
Johannes Regiomontanus {Georg von Peurbach}, “Theoricae Novae Plantarum“, 1472 was the topic of an earlier blog post.   Johannes Regiomontanus was a pupil of Georg von Peurbach; and Johannes Regiomontanus with Bernhard Walther in 1471 founded in Nuremberg, GERMANY the world’s first scientific printing press.  Georg von Peurbach, “Theoricae Novae Plantarum”, was the first printed astronomical textbook.  The printing of books now being mechanical allows for things  other than religion to be books.
 
 
 
 

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