St. Pachomius Library

The Nestorian Inscription at Xian Fu

VIII Century
Stela dated 781. It contains a summary of some principal Christian doctrines written by the Nestorian monk Jingjing, followed by an historical account of how the Church of the East mission led by Alopen had reached China a generation earlier. Most of the inscription is in classical Chinese, but a portion is in Syriac.
The stela was apparently buried, perhaps to avoid destruction during the anti-Nestorian persecution under Empress Wu. It was accidentally re-discovered sometime around 1625, and although there was initially some suspicion of its being a Jesuit forgery, its authenticity has been almost universally accepted since the early XX Century. The text of the inscription is the most famous of the "Jesus Sutras", expressions of Christian, albeit usually Nestorian, theology in Chinese.
Interestingly, a copy of the stela is among the spiritual treasures in the mountaintop temple of the Shingon sect of Japanese Vajrayana Buddhism, a group which shows other signs of Christian influence as well. The date and origin of this Japanese copy are not known to me.
Norman Hugh Redington
Under construction --- far from complete! Read with caution.

ABOUT:
- Ian Gillman and Hans-Joachim Klimkeit: The Monument at Sian-Fu, (1999). From their Christians in Asia before 1500 (University of Michigan, 1999): 271. Heavily dependent on Saeki infra.
- Frits Holm: My Nestorian Adventure in China, (1924). Piscataway, N.J.: Gorgias, 2001. Holm led a 1907 expedition to Xian to study and copy the stela (and in intention to remove it to the West). This book narrates his experiences.
- P. Yoshiro Saeki: The Nestorian Monument in China, (1915). London: SPCK, 1915.
- Copy of Nestorian Stone, Mt. Koya, Japan. Photograph. The characterisation in the caption of Kobo Daishi, founder of Shingon, as an advocate of "Christianized Buddhism" is debatable. Similar material about the Mt. Koya stone may be found on the Internet, often at sites which claim the Japanese Hatas were Central Asian Nestorian immigrants. In some cases, there seems to be some sort of connexion with certain nationalistic Japanese "new religions" which teach that the Japanese are lost Israelites, that Christ lived in Japan, and the like. --- Nestorian.org
TEXT:
- Inscription of the Nestorian Monument. Translated by A. Wylie. The Open Court (23): 35 (1909). --- Sacred Texts
- A Monument commemorating the Propagation of the Ta-ch'in Luminous Religion in the Middle Kingdom. Translation and commentary form Chapters 1 and 2 of The Nestorian Documents and Relics in China by P. Yoshiro Saeki, (Tokyo: Maruzen, 1951).
- The Way of Light --- The Stone's Teaching. This recent translation goes out of its way to sound different from standard Christianity, so as to appeal to a certain kind of Western reader. Chapter 8 of The Jesus Sutras by Martin Palmer, (New York: Ballantine, 2001).

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