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 The
Baima Temple in Luoyang, Henan Province, was the first Buddhist
Temple in China. It is said that one night in the year A. D. 64, Emperor
Mingdi of the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220) dreamed of a golden man
12 feet high, and the light from the man's head illuminated the hall
where he stood.
In the morning, the emperor told his officials what he had seen, and
one of them, named Fu Yi, said the emperor had dreamed of the Buddha,
a god of the West. Then the emperor sent Cai Yin, Qin Jing, and others
to Tianzhu (now India) for Buddhist scriptures.
When Cai, Qin, and their group arrived in what is now Afghanistan,
they met Kasyapamatanga and Dharmaranya, two eminent Indian monks,
who were preaching Buddhism there. In A. D. 67, they loaded Buddhist
scriptures written in Sanskrit and a portrait on white felt of Sakyamuni,
the Buddha, onto a white horse and returned to Luoyang with the two
Indian monks. The emperor lodged the monks at the Honglu Temple, which
had a guesthouse for foreign emissaries. When living quarters for
the monks were built in the temple the following year, the temple
was renamed Baima (White Horse) Temple so people could remember the
white horse that carried back the Buddhist scriptures and the portrait
of Sakyamuni. |
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