Abbot Shi Yinle has a lot of things to deal with every day as
head of the White Horse Temple in Luoyang, China's first Buddhist
temple.
But all that's on his mind at the moment is the expected
completion in April of an Indian hall inside the 1,900-year-old
temple.
The exotic structure, the same style as the Great Sanchi Stupa
in India, is being financed by the Indian government as part of a
religious and cultural exchange agreement endorsed by the prime
ministers of the two neighbors in 2005.
Abbot Yinle is proud that his temple was chosen to house the
Indian hall, almost 20 centuries after the introduction of Buddhism
to China from India.
"Our temple stands as testimony to the time-honored friendship
between China and India," he said.
The Indian hall covers 3,450 sq m and contains facilities for
Buddhist lectures, prayers, exhibitions and conferences. All of the
stone used to build the hall has been shipped from India.
A senior Indian engineer has been supervising the interior
decoration, which started last September. Two other Indian master
craftsmen will soon come to supervise the final exquisite wall
carvings, said Hu Xuanyan, an official with Luoyang's religious
affairs bureau.
A 3.6-m high Buddha statue from India weighing 22 tons was
placed in the hall last September, the largest Buddha statue the
Indian government has given to China, local officials said.
The White Horse Temple is named after an ancient tale about a white
horse that carried Buddhist scripture between India and Luoyang,
then China's capital city. The temple had its heyday during the
rule of Wu Zetian (AD 624-705), the only woman emperor in Chinese
history.
In exchange for the Indian hall, the Chinese government financed
the building of a Xuanzang Memorial Hall in Nalanda, in the
northern Indian state of Bihar in 2006. Xuanzang was a Buddhist
monk, a translator and an envoy of peace and Buddhism between China
and India some 1,300 years ago.
(China Daily January 12, 2008)
