The ‘Dharma’ echo: adapting Xuanzang’s pilgrimage in Da Tang Xuanzang (2016) and the cultural afterlife of Buddhist hagiography

Adaptations of Buddhist hagiography offer a distinctive vantage point for exploring how sacred narratives are reframed across media and geopolitical contexts. This article examines the 2016 historical drama film Da Tang Xuanzang as an adaptation of seventh-century accounts of the monk Xuanzang (600–664), most notably Great Tang Records on the Western Regions (Da Tang Xiyu ji) and Biography of the Tripiṭaka Master of the Great Ci’en Monastery (Da Tang Da Ci’en si sanzang fashi zhuan). Drawing on the theory of adaptation and the concept of intersemiotic translation, I analyse how the film reworks textual hagiography into a cinematic narrative that highlights Xuanzang’s spiritual resolve and cross-cultural encounters. The production situates the pilgrimage within Silk Road landscapes, translating a religious journey into a spectacle of cultural diplomacy aligned with contemporary heritage politics. I propose the concept of the ‘Dharma’ echo to describe the reverberation of Xuanzang’s story across time and media—an iterative dialogue between past and present, sacred and political, China and India—through which Buddhist cultural heritage is continually renewed.