No cultural or historic sight in China links the great Indian and Chinese civilisations more than the White Horse Temple Complex in Luoyang in the country’s Henan province. In 68 CE, during the reign of Emperor Ming of Han or Mingdi, this temple became the first Buddhist house of worship in China. It was also from here that Buddhism spread further to Vietnam, Japan and Korea.
A reminder of the temple complex’s kinship with India is an Indian-style Buddhist temple inaugurated by Indian President Pratibha Patil in 2010. “Historically, it has the unique distinction of symbolising an inter-mingling of Indian and Chinese cultures,” Patil said.
As per a widely believed legend, the temple’s construction as well as the arrival of Buddhism in China began with a dream. In this story, Mingdi, the emperor of the Later Han or Eastern Han Dynasty, dreamt that a golden figure flew over his palace, with the sun and moon behind its head. The next morning, he discussed his dream with his ministers, who suggested it could have been the Buddha.
At that time, it was only the learned men of China who knew of Buddhism – since the message of the Buddha arrived with traders and travellers – while the dominant religion of the country was Confucianism.
“While Gotama was preaching in the Ganges Valley, Confucius and Lao-tse were grafting upon the ancient Chinese stock of Animism, or ‘Universism,’ their own distinctive teachings,” American Buddhist scholar Kenneth Saunders wrote in the University of California, Berkeley’s Journal of Religion in 1923. “And while in India and the adjoining countries the exclusive Theravada Buddhism was being transmuted into the universalist Mahayana, this great parent-stem of Chinese religion was being shaped to receive the new graft.”
Saunders believed that Mingdi’s dream could not have come out of the blue. “There must have been some basis for the vision in thoughts already in the emperor’s mind, and in some Buddhist image or Buddhist teachings already circulating in China,” he said. “Indeed an image is said to have been brought back by an expedition in 121 BC.”
After consulting his ministers, Mingdi sent a delegation to India to learn more about Buddhism. Numbering 18, the group set off for India, travelling West and through modern-day Xinjiang. For the three years it was away from Luoyang, the mission interacted widely with laymen and Buddhist monks.
Perilous journey
It is believed that Mingdi’s mission convinced two Indian monks to move to China. One of them was Kashyapa Matanga, who hailed from a Brahmin family in Central India and became well versed in the Mahayana sutras, and the other was the learned Dharmaratna.
Saunders believed the monks were already missionaries in Central Asia and had tried to spread the word of the Buddha to the Yuezhi people, a nomadic community that lived in modern-day Afghanistan and parts of what is now Pakistan.
Travelling to China with Mingdi’s delegation, the two monks took with them a white horse that carried a bundle of Buddhist sutras and images of the Buddha. The journey was long and arduous, taking a lot out of the monks, but it was more than made up for by the grand welcome they received in Luoyang.
“Weary with their long journey, they would enjoy the wide prospect over lake and river, and not far away were mountains dear to the Buddhist heart,” Saunders said.
In the year 67 CE, they “settled in the capital, and the one work assigned to them which has come down to us was a handbook of moral teaching, which could give no great alarm either to Confucianists or to Taoists, and which might be claimed equally well by Theravada and by Mahayana Buddhists,” Saunders said.
“In the Royal Library they worked,” Saunders said, “and their first apologetic is still an honoured classic, a proof of the tact and skill with which they approached the Chinese mind. An early record tells us that ‘they concealed their deep learning and did not translate many books,’: if they did nothing but give the Chinese this Sutra of Forty Two Sayings their mission was amply justified.”
This Sutra was in most likelihood written by Kashyapa Matanga to explain the basics of Buddhism wherever he preached. Saunders, who studied the text in detail, said it was more or less an explanation of Theravada principles. It made him wonder: how well monastic teachings that called for detachment would have been received in a country of “filial piety” like China? “But as if to disarm criticism, the Sutra goes on to suggest a sublimated family life; if the monk meets women he is to treat the young as sisters or daughters, the old as mothers,” Saunders said.
According to a widely accepted story, within a year of the monks’ arrival in Luoyang, Mingdi had the Temple of the White Horse built in the memory of the horse that accompanied the missionaries.
To be sure, there are some scholars who dispute this account. “We were puzzled by the fact that a Buddhist temple should be named after a white horse, a symbol that had no relation to ancient Buddhism in India,” Godfrey Liu and William Wang wrote in the Chinese Journal of Linguistics in 1996.
They argued that the name of the temple came from the Sanskrit word for lotus (padma), adding that the Chinese word bai ma (white horse) was originally a transcription and the symbol of the white horse came about as a result of “folk etymology”. Liu and Wang added, “This is a process whereby an expression in a source language X, being semantically opaque in a target language Y, gets associated with a phonetically similar expression in Y, which has a different meaning.”
The explanation offered by Liu and Wang is quite possible. The lotus is an important symbol in Buddhism, and several older temples in China and other parts of Asia are named after the flower. Still, whatever the origins of the temple name, it is the story of the white horse that is accepted by most pilgrims and the temple management.
Finding respect
The white horse’s companions on the journey did not live long. Chinese historians largely agree that Kashyapa Matanga, who was called Jia Yemoteng in Chinese, passed away in 73 CE. Dharmaratna, called Zhu Falan in Chinese, probably died a few years later.
“The two pioneers did not long survive their arrival at the capital, but they left a tradition of sound scholarship and earnest work, and their Monastery of the White Horse, became the model for many of its successors,” Saunders said. “‘Toil on as the ox plods through deep mire, his eye fixed on the goals that lie ahead’ – in these words of their Sutra, we may find perhaps an echo of their resolute endeavour, and their fitting epitaph.”
Both Indian monks were buried in the White Horse complex, a rare honour for clergymen in China. Centuries later, the great scholar and traveller Xuan Zang, who returned to China after an epic India visit (629-645 CE), became the abbot of the White Horse temple.
After the death of Kasyapa Matanga and Dharmaratna, many other monks from India and Afghanistan began to undertake the arduous journey to Luoyang.
“Indian monks were no doubt motivated to travel to China, in spite of the difficulties of their journeys and the slim likelihood of ever returning to their homeland, because of the respect and warmth with which they were received in China,” Madhavi Thampi, who taught Chinese history at Delhi University for 35 years, wrote in her book Indians in China, 1800-1949. “From all accounts, the Indian missionaries to China were highly appreciated by their patrons, the Chinese emperors and princes, as well as other sections of society.”
Indian Buddhist monks were regular travellers on the ancient Silk Road until the end of the 11th century, after which the decline of Buddhism in India was complete. As KM Pannikar, the writer-diplomat who served as independent India’s first ambassador to China, pointed out, this millennium of contact between the two countries that was facilitated by Buddhist missionaries was one of the most important occurrences in Asian history.
Ajay Kamalakaran is a writer, primarily based in Mumbai. His Twitter handle is @ajaykamalakaran.
