BackPresident Pranab Mukherjee highlights cultural connect in China visit
Pranab Mukherjee on his first state visit to China as president, visited the Hualin Temple in Guangzhou
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Guangzhou: India and China may share uneasy ties thanks to an undemarcated border, a ballooning trade deficit and other irritants but that did not stop President Pranab Mukherjee from stressing on the commonalities between the two countries especially trade and cultural links including Buddhism.
On Wednesday, Mukherjee on his first state visit to China as president, visited the Hualin Temple in Guangzhou, capital of the industrialised Guangdong province.
Legend has it that a Buddhist monk from India came to China in the 6th century and spread the ideas and philosophy of Buddhism. The monk, Bodhi Dharma, is also credited with training the famous Shaolin monastery monks in martial arts that later evolved into the Kung Fu style of martial arts.
Bodhi Dharma, known as Ta-Mo in China is also “regarded as the founder of Chan, which basically comes from Dhyan," Pradeep Rawat, joint secretary in charge of China and East Asia told reporters last week in New Delhi. “The Chan or Zen tradition of Buddhism later spread from China to Japan and Korea," he said.
According to Chinese tourism websites, the Hualin Temple is regarded as one of the most revered places of worship by Chinese Buddhists and is frequented by a large number of devotees every day.
To underline the Buddhist link with China, Mukherjee on Wednesday installed a bronze statue of Buddha, approximately four feet in height and weighing about 40 kilograms. According to Indian officials, the statue was specially made for Mukherjee to install in the Hualin Temple – the president’s last engagement in Guangdong, his first stop during his four- day China tour, before leaving for Beijing.
According to people familiar with the development, Chinese Communist Party leaders in Guangdong welcomed and appreciated Mukherjee’s gesture of visiting the shrine.
Buddhism wasn’t the only link highlighted by Mukherjee on the second day of his China visit. Earlier on Wednesday, Mukherjee also emphasised the common historical links between India and China at a business meeting in Guangzhou.
“Han Shu (a book on the Han dynasty) of the second century BC talks of a direct sea route between Guangdong (province of which Guangzhou is the capital) and Kanchipuram in South India. As early as the fourth century BC, Chinese silk is mentioned in Kautilya’s treatise, the Arthashastra," the president said referring to an early Indian book on statecraft, economic and military policies.
In referring to the cultural connects Mukherjee was walking down a carefully crafted path traversed by many Indian leaders. The aim has been to emphasise the common threads between the two countries that went to war briefly in 1962 and have been wary of each other since.
Mukherjee’s immediate predecessor, former Indian president Pratibha Patil, inaugurated an Indian-style Buddhist Stupa inside the White Horse Temple complex in Luoyang, in central China. The Indian style stupa said to be modelled on the lines of the Sanchi Stupa, the famous Buddhist pilgrimage centre in Madhya Pradesh. An agreement to construct the stupa was signed in 2005 during then Chinese premier Wen Jiabao’s visit to India.
Former prime ministers P.V. Narasimha Rao in 1993 and Atal Behari Vajpayee in 2003 had visited the White Horse Temple which is considered to be one of the oldest such Buddhist shrines to be constructed in China. It is believed to have been built to accommodate Indian monks who took Buddhism to China.
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