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India-China ties and a Buddhist resonance

Pallavi Aiyar

For the first time, an Indian stupa-style Buddhist temple is coming up in China near the Bai Ma Si temple, rekindling the ancient ties between the two countries.

THE BAI Ma Si, or White Horse temple, is only a few minutes' drive north of Luoyang city in China's central Henan province. The grey, tiled roofs of its pagodas turn gently upwards in characteristic Chinese style and the bronze statues of Bodhisattva glint in the shafts of sunlight that cut through the otherwise gloomy temple interiors.

There is little at first glance to reveal Bai Ma Si's centrality to the history of Sino-Indian ties or, more broadly, to Buddhism in China.

The temple is in fact the first Buddhist monastery to have been built in the Middle Kingdom. It was established in A.D. 68 under the patronage of Mingdi, the Eastern Han dynasty emperor.

One night, or so the legend goes, the emperor dreamt of a deity flying over his palace. Greatly agitated, he asked his ministers the next day for an interpretation of the dream, and was told he had probably had a vision of the Buddha. Mingdi immediately dispatched a delegation of 18 persons to India to find out more about Buddhism. When his ambassadors returned, they brought with them a 42-chapter long sutra, an image of Gautama Buddha and two eminent Indian monks, all on white horses.

The next year, the emperor ordered the construction of the White Horse Temple in commemoration of the horses that bore the Buddhist relics to Luoyang, and to house the two Indian monks, Kasyapamatanga and Dharmaraksa. The two monks spent the rest of their lives at the temple producing what was the first Chinese translation of a Buddhist sutra.

Bai Ma Si's current Abbot, Yin Le, has an impossibly infectious smile, as he gives this correspondent a tour of the temple. Rosary in one hand, mobile phone in the other, the 41-year-old stops in front of the burial spots of Kasyapamatanga and Dharmaraksa, pointing out that traditionally monks are not buried inside a temple complex.

Break with tradition

"But their contribution to Buddhism in China was so great, that an exception was made," he explains. After a thoughtful pause he adds, "So many hundreds of years ago when distances were vast and the means of communication few, our countries still had such close contacts. Today, despite so many planes and computers we hardly know each other anymore. It's a strange state of affairs."

A modest step in changing this state of affairs took place in late April, when the groundbreaking ceremony for the first Indian stupa-style Buddhist temple in China was held on a plot of land to the west of the main temple on the Bai Ma Si compound.

The idea for this venture was first mooted by the former Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, when he visited Bai Ma Si on a trip to Luoyang city in 2003.

"I still remember how excited he was when he realised the deep connections between our countries that this temple represents," Li Cheng Yu, the Governor of Henan province, said during a separate interview. "His stop at Bai Ma Si was scheduled for half an hour but he stayed on much longer for almost two hours."

The plan to construct the stupa was finalised during Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's trip to India in April 2005. While India is providing the architectural design for the temple and funding its construction, the Bai Ma Si is contributing the 2,667 sq metre plot of land. Construction is expected to begin in June and be finished before the end of this year.

Yin Le is enthused by the project. He says Buddhists in China hold India in reverence but few ordinary Chinese can afford to make the trip there. "Now everyone can have the chance to see a little bit of India, right here in Henan," he smiles.

The Abbot has much to smile about. Buddhism is seeing a remarkable renaissance in China. During the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), the Chinese authorities equated religion with feudal superstition and temples across the country were razed to the ground, their monks flogged in the streets and sent off to remote outposts for hard labour.

Yin Le recounts how only five monks were left at Bai Ma Si at the time, subsisting on 70 mu (1 mu equals one-sixth of an acre) of land. Today he says, smiling even more broadly, "we have almost 800 mu of land and 120 monks."

Around 2,000 people visit the temple every day according to the Abbot. "This is a prosperous time for people in China. People are satisfied with their material lives, but realise that is not enough. Traditional beliefs are returning as people feel the need for something more spiritual."

China's officially atheist government has in recent years taken to encouraging this revival of Buddhism. Beijing no longer denounces religion as a feudal evil, seeing it instead as a useful panacea for the anomie that arises in times of rapid social and economic change.

As a result, Bai Ma Si now enjoys government subsidies and is exempted from paying tax. The Luoyang city authorities recently stated that it was their intention to transform the temple into an international centre for Buddhist research.

"Come back and visit once the Indian temple is finished," says Yin Le as he hands this correspondent a farewell present. The present is a book that contains the Chinese translation of the original 42-chapter sutra that Kasyapamatanga and Dharmaraksa devoted their lives to. "Perhaps you can have it translated back into Sanskrit?" he says.

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