Patil’s China visit a time for temple diplomacy

As India and China celebrate the sixtieth year of establishment of diplomatic relations,they are placing enormous emphasis on their ancient civilisational connect,stretching back across millennia.

President Pratibha Patil inaugurated a new Indian-style temple in the precincts of China’s famous Baima Si,or the White Horse Temple in Luoyang,Henan province. She called it a “gift from the people of India to a sister civilisation”,and a reminder of how the two countries have enriched each other in the past. Meanwhile,Wang Zhizhen,vice chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Congress,said that “our mutual history is as long as the river Yangtse and the river Ganga”,and that “we must follow in the footsteps of our forefathers to write new chapters of friendship and exchange.”

Buddhism was established in China in the first century AD —- the story goes that the White Horse temple in Luoyang became the crucible of Chinese Buddhism after two scholar monks from India,Kashyapamatanga and Dharmaratna (She Moteng and Zhu Falan) bearing Buddhist sutras on a white horse settled down to translate them here. The story has made the monastery one of the most powerful Buddhist institutions in China.

Inaugurating the temple,President Patil remarked on the role played by Chinese travellers and scholars such as Faxian,Xuanzang,and Yi Jing,“whose writings not only enriched Chinese culture,but also proved to be a remarkable source of understanding India’s own ancient history.” This temple sets the enduring ties between the two nations,rarely remembered today,in stone.