Xian – A Great City of Sanskrit Texts and Masters

 

Speaker: Dr. Shashibala, Dean, Centre of Indology, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan
Chair: Smt. Aruna Vasudev

 

 

 

The historical and cultural relationship between India and China spans over two millennia and has always been cordial. Xian, the former capital of China has been a city of Sanskrit texts and great masters who translated them with Imperial support. To this day, it preserves innumerable documents of cultural ties between India and China. Xian (ancient Ch’ang-an) an ancient capital of several dynasties began to be a centre of translation of Sanskrit texts into Chines from the 3rd century. Some of the outstanding monk-scholars who lived and worked there (out of more than 225 Indian and 100 Chinese Buddhist masters) under state patronage are – Kumarajiva, Hsuan Tsang, Amoghavajra, Vajrabodhi and Itsing. Many of them hailed from Kashmir and the Gangetic plains. Their work gave rise to eight major Buddhist sects in China and also spread into Korea and Japan as scholars used to come there to Ch’ang-an to study under the Indian and Chinese masters. The monasteries where they worked are the best known Buddhist monasteries in Xian – Caotang, the Great Goose pagoda, Da Cien and Jingfu. The Forest of Inscriptions is a mesmerising place where a large number of Buddhist Sanskrit texts in translation are engraved on huge stone slabs so that people can get copies made to take back