Assyrian "Nestorian" Church of the East Monument in Xi'an China

• published: 03 Mar 2015
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The Nestorian Stele (also known as the Nestorian Stone, Nestorian Monument, or Nestorian Tablet) is a Tang Chinese stele erected in 781 that documents 150 years of early Christianity in China.[2] It is a 279 cm tall limestone block with text in both Chinese and Syriac describing the existence of Christian communities in several cities in northern China. It reveals that the initial Nestorian Christian church 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 Syraic missionaries came to China from Daqin (Roman Empire) in the ninth year of Emperor Taizong (Tai Tsung) (635), bringing sacred books and images. Buried in 845, probably during religious suppression, the stele was not rediscovered until 1625. The heading on the stone, which is in Chinese, means Memorial of the Propagation in China of the Luminous Religion from Daqin (大秦景教流行中國碑; pinyin: Dàqín Jǐngjiào liúxíng Zhōngguó bēi, abbreviated 大秦景教碑). An even more abbreviated version of the title, 景教碑 (Jǐngjiào bēi, "The Stele of the Luminous Religion"), in its Wade-Giles form, Ching-chiao-pei or Chingchiaopei, was used by some Western writers to refer to the stele as well. On top of the tablet, there is a cross. Below this headpiece there is a long Chinese inscription, consisting of around 1,900 Chinese characters, which is glossed occasionally in Syriac (several sentences, amounting to about 50 Syriac words). Calling God "Veritable Majesty", the text refers to Genesis, the cross, and the baptism. It also pays tribute to missionaries and benefactors of the church, who are known to have arrived in China by 640. The text contains the name of an early missionary, Alopen. The tablet describes the "Illustrious Religion", emphasizing the Trinity and the Incarnation, but there is nothing about Christ's crucifixion or resurrection. Other Chinese elements referred to include a wooden bell, beard, tonsure, and renunciation. The Syriac proper names for God, Christ and Satan (Allaha, Mshiha and Satana) were rendered phonetically into Chinese. Chinese transliterations were also made of one or two words of Sanskrit origin, such as Sphatica and Dasa. There is also a Persian word denoting Sunday. The stele is thought to have been buried in 845, during a campaign of anti-Buddhist persecution, which also affected the Nestorians. The stele was unearthed in the late Ming Dynasty (between 1623 and 1625) beside Chongren Temple (崇仁寺). According to the account by the Jesuit Alvaro Semedo, the workers who found the stele immediately reported the find to the governor, who soon visited the monument, and had it installed on a pedestal, under a protective roof, requesting the nearby Buddhist monastery to care for it. The newly discovered stele attracted attention of local intellectuals. It was Zhang Gengyou (Wade-Giles: Chang Keng-yu) who first identified the text as Christian in content. Zhang, who had been aware of Christianity through Matteo Ricci, and who himself may have been Christian, sent a copy of the stele's Chinese text to his Christian friend, Leon Li Zhizao in Hangzhou, who in his turn published the text and told about it to the locally based Jesuits. Alvaro Semedo was the first European to visit the stele (some time between 1625 and 1628). Nicolas Trigault's Latin translation of the monument's inscription soon made its way in Europe, and was apparently first published in a French translation, in 1628. Portuguese and Italian translations, and a Latin re-translation, were soon published as well. Semedo's account of the monument's discovery was published in 1641, in his Imperio de la China. Early Jesuits attempted to claim that the stele was erected by a historical community of Roman Catholics in China and called Nestorianism a heresy and claimed that it was Catholics who first brought Christianity to China, but later historians and writers admitted that it was indeed Nestorian, not Catholic. A full-sized replica cast from that replica is on permanent display in the Bunn Intercultural Center on the campus of Georgetown University (Washington, DC). Info from Wikipedia. Music by Fereidoun Es-Haq - Folklore Music of Agalari