Last Surviving Hindu Shrine in China :

Shrine in Chidian village of Fujian Province, southeastern China.

On first day of every lunar month, a few dozen villagers gather in front of a small temple in centre of Chidian, a run-down village tucked away in urban sprawl of Jinjiang industrial town, "world's shoe factory", in southeastern China.

Shrine, called Xingji Pavilion, residents pray and burn incense-not an unusual sight in Buddhist and Taoist villages of eastern China. Chidian shrine, however, is unlike any other in China, golden deity it houses is neither Buddhist nor Taoist, but Hindu. Four-armed goddess has unmistakably Indian features, strikingly resembling deities in Vishnu and Shiva temples of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. She sits upright, flanked by two companions, and standing over a fallen demon.

Village had always thought this shrine was a local version of Guanyin (popular Bodhisattva), but local scholars told us this goddess is from India. Local historians believe traders from south India made Quanzhou and its surrounding areas their home during reign of Song (960-1279 AD) and Yuan (1279-1368 AD) dynasties, when Quanzhou was busiest port in the world. Chidian is upstream from Quanzhou port along Jinjiang or Jin river, which gives its name to nearby industrial town.

Some of its history has been preserved in Quanzhou's Kaiyuan Temple, one of China's most famous, which has at its entrance a panel of inscriptions depicting Narasimha, man-lion avatar of Vishnu. None of other shrines have been found intact, only leaving behind panels, statues and Tamil inscriptions. Chidian, however, is a remarkable living museum-perhaps, local historians say, the only such surviving shrine.

Lying in a corner of Li family shrine, an ancient courtyard home that pays tribute to Chidian's most famous resident, a wealthy sugar baron named Li Wu (1386-1457 AD), is what appears to be a beautifully rendered Nandi bull, mount of lord Shiva. Nandi lies out of sight, propped up against walls of home. Covered in dust are stone panels that appear to show images of Hindu gods and goddesses, more than 800 years. These are valuable testaments to a part of India's own cultural history. Today, they lie forgotten in a village home in a corner of China.

Wang Liming has been, for greater part of a decade, waging a lone battle to bring this chapter of history to light. The soft-spoken vice-director of Quanzhou Maritime Museum says there is much that is still not known about Chidian's Xingji Pavilion. Maritime museum has collected and preserved many of findings from Quanzhou and surrounding areas. Discoveries comprise an extraordinary trove. There is a stone engraving showing an elephant garlanding a Shiva lingam, an image one finds in south Indian temples and beautifully rendered Vishnu statues. Most of exhibits on display in museum are replicas but there are some perfectly preserved originals as well, such as stone temple pillars that one would expect to find in Madurai, not Fujian.

Not much is known about Quanz-hou's Indian community but museum offers some fascinating insights: traders were likely wealthy as is evident from fact that they built grand temples. In 1271 AD, an Italian merchant, on a stopover in Quanzhou, wrote that Indian residents of city were "recognised easily".

Chidian's villagers have on their own preserved what could have easily gone to ruin but now stands as possibly last surviving Hindu shrine of its kind in China. It has not been an easy effort. Village has seen better times. The wave of urbanisation that has transformed Fujian, a prosperous coastal province in China's southeast, has skipped the narrow bylanes of Chidian. It is a poor suburb sandwiched between prosperous port city of Quanzhou and Jinjiang, a manufacturing town littered with shoe factories. The village, like many in south China, is home to only elderly and young children; most women and men are employed in nearby cities.

© India Today

#archaeohistories

点击图片查看原图