- Church of the East in China
- Jingjiao Documents
- Adam (Jingjing)
- Mogao Christian painting
- Murals from the Christian temple at Qocho
- Sogdian Daēnās
Related Research Articles
The Daqin Pagoda is a Buddhist pagoda in Zhouzhi County of Xi'an, Shaanxi Province, China, located about two kilometres to the west of Louguantai temple. The pagoda has been claimed as a Church of the East from the Tang dynasty.
Daqin (Chinese: 大秦; pinyin: Dàqín; Wade–Giles: Ta4-ch'in2; alternative transliterations include Tachin, Tai-Ch'in) is the ancient Chinese name for the Roman Empire or, depending on context, the Near East, especially Syria. It literally means "Great Qin"; Qin (Chinese: 秦; pinyin: Qín; Wade–Giles: Ch'in2) being the name of the founding dynasty of the Chinese Empire. Historian John Foster defined it as "the Roman Empire, or rather that part of it which alone was known to the Chinese, Syria". Its basic facets such as laws, customs, dress, and currency were explained in Chinese sources. Its medieval incarnation was described in histories during the Tang dynasty (618–907 AD) onwards as Fulin (Chinese: 拂菻; pinyin: Fúlǐn), which Friedrich Hirth and other scholars have identified as the Byzantine Empire. Daqin was also commonly associated with the Syriac-speaking Nestorian Christians who lived in China during the Tang dynasty.
The Xi'an Stele or the Jingjiao Stele, sometimes translated as the "Nestorian Stele," is a Tang Chinese stele erected in 781 that documents 150 years of early Christianity in China. It is a limestone block 279 centimetres high with text in both Chinese and Syriac describing the existence of Christian communities in several cities in northern China. It reveals that the initial Church of the East had met recognition by the Tang Emperor Taizong, due to efforts of the Christian missionary Alopen in 635. According to the stele, Alopen and his fellow Syriac missionaries came to China from Daqin in the ninth year of Emperor Taizong (635), bringing sacred books and images. The Church of the East monk Adam composed the text on the stele. Buried in 845, probably during religious suppression, the stele was not rediscovered until 1625. It is now in the Stele Forest in Xi'an.
Alopen is the first recorded Assyrian Christian missionary to have reached China, during the Tang dynasty. He was a missionary from the Church of the East, and probably a Syriac speaker from the Sasanian Empire or from Byzantine Syria. He is known exclusively from the Xi'an Stele, which describes his arrival in the Tang capital of Chang'an in 635 and his acceptance by Emperor Taizong of Tang. His is the earliest known name that can be attached to the history of the Church of the East in China.
The Naiman were a medieval tribe originating in the territory of modern Western Mongolia, and are one of the 92 tribes of Uzbeks, modern Mongols and in the middle juz of the Kazakhs.
The Seleucid era ("SE") or Anno Graecorum, sometimes denoted "AG," was a system of numbering years in use by the Seleucid Empire and other countries among the ancient Hellenistic civilizations, and later by the Parthians. It is sometimes referred to as "the dominion of the Seleucidæ," or the Year of Alexander. The era dates from Seleucus I Nicator's reconquest of Babylon in 312/11 BC after his exile in Ptolemaic Egypt, considered by Seleucus and his court to mark the founding of the Seleucid Empire. According to Jewish tradition, it was during the sixth year of Alexander the Great's reign that they began to make use of this counting. The introduction of the new era is mentioned in one of the Babylonian Chronicles, The Chronicle of the Diadochi.
The Church of the East historically had a presence in China during two periods: first from the 7th through the 10th century in the Tang dynasty, when it was known as Jingjiao, and later during the Yuan dynasty in the 13th and 14th centuries, when it was described alongside other foreign religions like Catholicism and possibly Manichaeism as Yelikewen jiao.
The Jingjiao Documents are a collection of Chinese language texts connected with the 7th-century mission of Alopen, a Church of the East bishop from Sassanian Mesopotamia, and the 8th-century monk Adam. The manuscripts date from between 635, the year of Alopen's arrival in China, and around 1000, when the cave at Mogao near Dunhuang in which the documents were discovered was sealed.
Martin Giles Palmer is a theologian, Sinologist, author and international specialist on all major faiths and religious traditions and cultures. He is the Founding President and Chief Executive of FaithInvest, an international not-for-profit membership association for religious groups and faith-based institutional investors, which empowers faith groups to invest in line with their values. FaithInvest grew out of the Alliance of Religions and Conservation (ARC) of which Palmer was Secretary General from 1995 to 2019. Palmer is also the Director of the International Consultancy on Religion, Education and Culture (ICOREC).
Adam, also known by his Chinese name Jingjing, was an 8th-century Syriac Christian monk and scholar in China. He composed the text on the Nestorian Stele, which described the history of the Church of the East in China from 635 to 781. Many scholars believe he is also the author of the later Jingjiao Documents.
The Church of the East or the East Syriac Church, also called the Church of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, the Persian Church, the Assyrian Church, the Babylonian Church or the Nestorian Church, is one of three major branches of Nicene Eastern Christianity that arose from the Christological controversies of the 5th and 6th centuries, alongside the Miaphisite churches and the Chalcedonian Church.
Christianity is a minority religion in the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan. The Eastern Lipo, Kadu people and A-Hmao are ethnic groups present in the province.
The Mogao Christian painting, also known as Painting of a Christian figure or Fragment of a Christian figure, is a fragmentary silk painting of a haloed man with crosses on his head and chest who has been interpreted as a Christian figure associated with the Church of the East. The painting dates to the end of the 9th century, during the Guiyi rule of Dunhuang under the Zhang family. It was discovered by the Hungarian-born British archaeologist Aurel Stein at the Library Cave of the Mogao Caves in 1908, and is now kept in the British Museum, London.
The Mongol conquest of Eastern Xia was part of the conquest of China by the Mongol Empire in the early 13th century. An initial conflict broke out in 1217 when the founder of Eastern Xia, Puxian Wannu, rebelled against the Mongol Empire. However, Wannu shortly afterward submitted to Mongol overlordship. Wannu later broke from the Mongols again, and in 1233 Ögedei Khan sent his son Güyük to conquer the kingdom. Eastern Xia was destroyed and Wannu executed.
The three Persian religions, as a medieval Chinese concept, referred to a group of Iranian religions that spread to Tang China. They were recognized and protected under Tang rule, helping them to prosper in China at a time when Sassanid Iran was falling to the early Muslim conquests. The three religious movements identified by the term were Zoroastrianism, the Persian Church, and Manichaeism.
Dietmar Werner Winkler is an Austrian scholar of patristics and ecclesiastical history. He is a professor and the founding director of the Center for the Study of the Christian East at the University of Salzburg.
George was the king of the Ongud and an official of the Yuan dynasty in the late 13th century.
The Cross Temple is a former place of worship in Fangshan, Beijing. The temple was used during different periods by Buddhists and early Chinese Christians. Though it was originally built as a Buddhist temple, some scholars hypothesise that it saw Christian use during the Tang dynasty (618–907). The temple was used by Buddhists during the Liao dynasty (916–1125) and by Christians during the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368). It returned to Buddhist use during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), before being sold in 1911. It was first recorded in modern scholarship in 1919, damaged during the Cultural Revolution, and re-established as a national-level protected site in 2006. Some scholars consider it to be the only place of worship of the Church of the East discovered in China.
References
- ↑ Nicolini-Zani, Matteo (2009). "The Tang Christian Pillar from Luoyang and ITS Jingjiao Inscription a Preliminary Study". Monumenta Serica. 57: 100. doi:10.1179/mon.2009.57.1.003. ISSN 0254-9948. JSTOR 40727622. S2CID 190861764.
- ↑ Winkler, Dietmar W.; Tang, Li (2009). Hidden Treasures and Intercultural Encounters. 2. Auflage: Studies on East Syriac Christianity in China and Central Asia. LIT Verlag Münster. p. 109. ISBN 978-3-643-50045-8.
- ↑ Winkler, Dietmar W.; Tang, Li (2009). Hidden Treasures and Intercultural Encounters. 2. Auflage: Studies on East Syriac Christianity in China and Central Asia. LIT Verlag Münster. p. 110. ISBN 978-3-643-50045-8.
- ↑ Li, Tang; Winkler, Dietmar W., eds. (2020). Artifact, Text, Context: Studies on Syriac Christianity in China and Central Asia. "orientalia – patristica – oecumenica" series (vol. 17). Zürich: LIT Verlag. pp. 126–127. ISBN 978-3-643-91195-7.
Further reading
- Holm, Frits (2001), My Nestorian Adventure in China: A Popular Account of the Holm-Nestorian Expedition to Sian-Fu and Its Results, Volume 6 of Georgias reprint series, Gorgias Press LLC, ISBN 0-9713097-6-0 . Originally published by: Hutchinson & Co, London, 1924.
External links
- SIR E. A. WALLIS BUDGE, KT., THE MONKS OF KUBLAl KHAN EMPEROR OF CHINA (1928) - contains reproductions of early photographs of the stele where it stood in the early 20th century (from Havret etc.)
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 Rubbing of the Nestorian pillar entitled "大秦景教宣元至本經", which was erected in China in 814-815. |
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