The novel:
It was a long and tough journey for a monk like XuanZang(602-664), on a horse back from China to India, and back to China then, it requires 3 talents i.e. a Monkey King who could not be captured by the Sky army, a great general each from the sea and sky, plus the dragon Prince who became his horse to carry him on his back. The four of them, have to overcome lots of greed and temptations, fight the demons who wanted to kill them, in order to complete their journey. The essense of the tale is, the world was full of such obstacles.
This tale was probably a record of China journey from Han Dynasty until Ming Dynasty, in order to establish the teaching of Buddhism in China, when Buddhism was new and alien then.
The travel of Xuanzang(extracted from Wikipedia):
Xuanzang left Chang'an in 629, in defiance of Emperor Taizong of Tang's ban on travel. Helped by sympathetic Buddhists, he traveled via Gansu and Qinghai to Kumul (Hami), thence following the Tian Shan mountains to Turpan. He then crossed what are today Kyrgyzstan,Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan, into Gandhara, reaching India in 630. Xuanzang traveled throughout the Indian subcontinent for the next thirteen years, visiting important Buddhist pilgrimage sites, studying at the ancient university at Nalanda, and debating the rivals of Buddhism.
Xuanzang left India in 643 and arrived back in Chang'an in 646. Although he had defied the imperial travel ban when he left, Xuanzang received a warm welcome from Emperor Taizong upon his return.
To know more about Journey to the West:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_to_the_West
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