[Buddha-l] nestorians

[Dan Lusthaus]

The claim against Empress Wu is allegedly based on the inscription on a
stele in China, made in 781, and rediscovered by the Jesuits in the 17th
century. Previously we noticed Martin Palmer's take on the inscription -- 
while I had warned that Palmer is usually unreliable as an historical
accountant.

Here is a link to a translation of the stele itself.

http://www.nestorian.org/east_asian_history_sourcebook_.html

The key passage from which the charge of "persecution" is drawn reads:

"The Emperor Kau-tsung respectfully succeeded his ancestor, and was still
more beneficent toward the institution of truth. In every province he caused
Illustrious churches to be erected, and ratified the honor conferred upon
Olopun, making him the great conservator of doctrine for the preservation of
the  State. While this doctrine pervaded every channel, the State became
enriched and tranquillity abounded. Every city was full of churches, and the
royal family  enjoyed luster and happiness. In the year A.D. 699 the
Buddhists, gaining power,  raised their voices in the eastern metropolis; in
the year A.D. 713, some low fellows excited ridicule and spread slanders in
the western capital. At that time there was the chief priest Lohan, the
greatly virtuous Kie-leih, and others of noble estate from the golden
regions, lofty-minded priests, having abandoned  all worldly interests; who
unitedly maintained the grand principles and  preserved them entire to the
end. The high-principled Emperor Hiuen-tsung caused the Prince of Ning and
others, five princes in all, personally to visit the felicitous edifice; he
established the place of worship; he restored the consecrated timbers which
had been temporarily thrown down; and re-erected the sacred stones which for
a time had been desecrated."

So the sentence is:

"In the year A.D. 699 the Buddhists, gaining power,  raised their voices in
the eastern metropolis..."

What did they "raise their voices" about? The "eastern metropolis" implies
Loyang (the capital was Changan at that time, not Loyang). As the passage
suggests, the Buddhists themselves, only shortly before, had been in a
precarious situation, and were only beginning to gain some sense of
security. There are some indications that the Nestorians initially passed
themselves off as a Buddhist sect (a dissimulation repeated by Mateo Ricci
centuries later -- he pretended to be a Buddhist monk for a dozen years
until he realized he had a better chance with the imperial powers and
intellectual elite if he didn't represent "superstitious, decadent"
religion, and changed his dress and approach to that of a Confucian
mandarin). We don't know the exact details, but apparently the Buddhists
were outraged at the deceit and complained. That seems to be the extent of
that. Hardly the stuff of which "persecution" (or even intolerance) is made.

Note that the stele includes portions in Syriac (a version of Aramaic
adopted by Christians and others) and portions in Chinese. The majority of
this translation is from the Chinese, nor Syriac sections, primarily copied
from Edgar Johnson Goodspeed's rendition in "The Nestorian Tablet", The
Biblical World, v. 33, n. 4, April 1909, pp218+279-282. Scholars have
concluded that much of the Chinese portion of the stele was added much later
(I'll avoid the term "forgery"). On that, see T.H. Barrett's "Buddhism,
Taoism and the eighth-century Chinese term for Christianity: a response to
recent work by A. Forte and others", Bulletin of the School of Oriental and
African Studies (2002), 65: 555-560 Cambridge University Press and

 http://www.nestorian.org/the_nestorian_monument_in_chin.html

The latter states:

"It has been confirmed that most of the Chinese portion of the inscriptions
is a modern fabrication (meaning it was added later), meant to 'save the
face' of the Chinese Mandarins, in which the Jesuit missionaries had taken
part in the alterations."

And elsewhere on the same site:
http://www.nestorian.org/nestorian_stone.html

"The inscription in Chinese indicated that there were millions of Nestorian
Christians in China in the 8th century (estimated at millions  from the
description on the monument of the organization of the Chinese church which
followed the Assyrian model). This undermined the claims of Rome to
universal spiritual domination. So both the Chinese and the Jesuits did not
appreciate what had been found. A replica was made.  Now, neither the
Chinese nor the Jesuits could read Syriac. When scholars  investigated the
replica, they found that the Syriac account on the monument differed from
the Chinese account. It is clear that the  Chinese inscription had been
tampered with in order to bring it into conformity  with the doctrines of
the Roman Catholic Church. They did not want the world to know that the
hated Eastern Church, which would not acknowledge the authority of the Roman
Church had achieved such widespread success in the East."

So the entire slander may have been a later Jesuit invention. (I have not
seen the Syriac version, so don't know if that includes something comparable
to the passage discussed above or not.)

Dan Lusthaus