JYOTI MALHOTRA
The Telegraph, February 15, 2007
China has a new mascot in India, and his name is Hieun Tsang. Or as the Chinese call him, Xuan Zang.
In the backwaters of Bihar, away from the prying eyes of New Delhi, Chinese foreign minister Li Zhaoxing dedicated a 30-foot high statue to the 7th century Chinese pilgrim on Monday, even as Nalanda’s eternal ruins nearby kept its own vigil on the event.
For it was here, some 1500 years ago, that Hieun Tsang, braving the wrath of the Tang dynasty emperor, overcoming the all-consuming thirst of the Gobi desert, climbing the precipitous Tian Shan mountains of Central Asia and subduing all the remaining mortal temptations in between, arrived in search of the Buddhist sutras.
The Chinese monk stayed in Nalanda for nearly ten years, taking the teachings of the great Buddha, the Yogacharya, back with him to China. Even as the Buddha lost influence in the mother country, unable to break though the Brahminical stranglehold of the Hindu upper castes, translated versions of the Middle Path spread far and wide in the Middle Kingdom.
It was to be the first, substantive connection between two of Asia’s oldest civilizations.
As for the Chinese, masters of the message in the 21st century, they were happy in Nalanda on Monday to avow the old, Indian linkage, as long as the predominantly Indian audience understood that Beijing, one of the most powerful nations in the world, had taken the initiative to do so.
So as the enormous statue of Hieun Tsang -- surrounded by Chinese mother-of-pearl murals, a virgin-white mural of the Maitreyi Buddha built by Chinese artisans as the backdrop, the ceiling murals painted in the `bagh’ style of the Ajanta paintings, all of it encased in an enormous hall with Chinese architectural characteristics --- loomed large over the gathering, it was quite clear that the red star had forged a new arc over the ancient, Indian Buddhist homeland.
In front of Hieun Tsang were Chinese candles, a Chinese banner with the single letter, ``Fo,’’ the representation for the Buddha. One one side, an enormous stone tablet with the Buddha’s footprint and a commentary alongside, said to be that of Hieun Tsang himself. And on the other side, in a glass case, a beautifully burnished gold Tibetan chhorten, inside which in a glasscase lay a piece of the skull, the relic, of Hieun Tsang himself.
It was this little piece of bone that gave such aura to the event. It had been brought to Nalanda only the day before from the Patna museum, but was to be soon returned for security reasons. First, the Chinese Buddhist monks, imported specially for the occasion, prayed at the altar, their blood-red robes unmistakably denoting their loyalty. Then it was the turn of the Indian monks to pray, in Sanskrit, their ragged chappals a clean giveaway to their origins.
So what were the Chinese doing in Bihar anyway? Bhikku Bodhipala, the chief priest of the Mahabodhi temple in Bodh Gaya, pointed out that ``things were opening up…China is an ancient civilisation and needs to expand cultural ties. Naturally,’’ he added, ``China has a stake in what happens around it.’’ The monk pointed out that Japanese pilgrims had brought so much prosperity to Bodh Gaya, perhaps Chinese pilgrims would do the same for Nalanda.
A teacher of Pali at the Nalanda university, was more cautious. This memorial, he added, could be a monument to `shanti,’ peace, or to `ashanti,’ discord. Referring to the Maoists who were still pretty much a law unto themselves in Bihar, he pointed out that the Chinese, perhaps, also wanted to keep an eye on this part of India.
Chinese foreign minister Li Zhaoxing stressed the benevolent connection. His boundless energy that morning gave away none of the exhaustion and the jet lag that may have arisen from the little Kingair jet he’d hired the day before to fly all the way from Beijing to Patna. (That was a first too.) Only the day before that he’d arrived in Beijing after a gruelling 15-day journey across Africa, China’s latest, sweetest partner, now enjoined in the service of assuaging the great Chinese hunger for natural resources. On Monday evening, Comrade Li flew to Delhi for other kinds of meetings with Indian officialdom.
In Nalanda, Li emphasized the great meeting of minds between China’s first premier Zhou-en Lai and India’s Jawaharlal Nehru, and how the latter had received the relic Zhou had sent, in Nalanda, exactly 50 years ago. ``This seed of friendship sown by him we enjoy today,’’ he said, ``a great bridge between the two countries.’’
The visiting galaxy of stars, from Bihar governer R S Gavai, chief minister Nitish Kumar and the UPA’s minister for tourism & culture Ambika Soni, applauded the sentiment.
Clearly, this wasn’t the time to challenge the mutual interpretation of events. Not the time to rake up the painful history between 1957 and 2007, how after the Nehru-Zhou `Hindi-Chini bhai bhai’ era petered out, both countries went to war in 1962, and how, ever since, both had been severely mired in mutual distrust and suspicion.
Or to ask, how the relic had got to Nalanda/Patna in the first place. To know the truth, that it was none other than Zhou-en Lai who had entrusted the Dalai Lama with the relic in the first place, when he came to Nalanda to participate in the 2500 `mahaparinirvana’ anniversary celebrations of the Buddha. How Nehru persuaded the Dalai Lama to go back to Tibet the next year, in 1958, because Zhou wanted him to do so. And how in the succeeding year, when the crackdown took place in Tibet, the Dalai Lama fled Tibet for exile in India.
Clearly, the Indian side hadn’t wanted to embarrass the visiting Chinese dignitaries. They knew very well that any mention of the Dalai Lama would make them see red. And so, a full week before, in nearby Bodh Gaya, New Delhi had seen to it that the Tibetan monk was allowed to make what he wanted of the `mahaparinirvana’ celebrations himself.
So if that was the Indian way, the Middle Path, it seemed like a perfect solution to the power-crunching prickliness of many, modern nations.
ENDS
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