Inscription No. 494 from the Temple of Toutuo as Prototype of the Inscription on the “Nestorian Monument” from Xi’an, 781 (Preliminary Notes)

Abstract

The article seeks to further research the method of adaptation used by ‘imported’ schools of thought to adjust to Chinese ethical, political, philosophical and religious teachings and practices. The author does so by comparing two epigraphic monuments: A lost inscription by the secular Buddhist enthusiast Wang Jin (5th century) from the Chinese Buddhist temple Toutuo (Dhuta) and the well-known inscription on the so-called “Nestorian monument” from Xi’an (Chang’an) of the Tang Dynasty, which is more than three centuries younger than the first inscription. The author shows that the compiler of the latter (and later) inscription, a Syrian Christian named Adam (Jing-jing), was guided by the structure, style and logic of the first (Buddhist) document when composing his history of the spread of Syriac Nestorianism in Tang China, prefacing the historical part of his work with a general theological preamble and flirting with a priori archaic literary formulas that quote an obsolete literary style of the 5th century. The author concludes that when trying to adapt to the Chinese spiritual milieu, alien beliefs introduced to China inevitably followed the same logical paths, appropriating the vocabulary of the previous imported religion. Thus, for the Syrian Nestorians of the Church of the East, Buddhism became such a forerunner, while Western Christian denominations (the Franciscans and further the Jesuits) each time at a new stage rediscovered the principles of “preaching to all”. A kind of apotheosis of such a “rediscovery” was the “method of Matteo Ricci”, a 16th-century Jesuit missionary who elevated the theory and practice of theological and cultural accommodation to an absolute and joined the conceptual apparatus of Christianity on Chinese soil with the notions and even the ritual practices of Confucianism.