Shroro

The Syriac Orthodox Christian Digest - July, 2005

Did a Christian Priest Influence the transmission of Buddhist Literature to Japan?

Fr. Bar Hanna (Fr. Dale A. Johnson)

The co-translator of Buddhist literature in China at the beginning of the 9th century CE was a Christian priest and monk. His seven volume work, produced under the direction of the Indian sage, Prajna, was completed precisely at the time two Japanese monks arrive at the same monastery in China in search of Buddhist literature to bring back to their homeland: Kukai and Saicho. These monks were founders of the Lotus and True Word schools, 

In the Buddhist monastery of Ta-tsin near Xian, China ( 782 CE) Prajna from India arrived as a guest of the Chinese Emperor. He was asked to translate the Buddhist scriptures. Because he did not know Uighar or Chinese languages he sought the help of a Christian missionary priest and monk from Afghanistan, Father Adam. Father Adam was a Nestorian Christian who was under the direction of his Patriarch near Bagdad (Selucia Cestiphon). He studied in Gundushapur where former Persian Emperors had brought intellectuals from various conquered populations on the eastern frontier of a collapsing Roman Empire since 363 CE. For 400 years in Gundushapur a cross pollination of ideas occurred that created an intellectual evolution in religious and scientific thought. It especially produced advancements in translation literature and techniques, creating the seedbed for transplantation of ideas throughout Asia. 

The west, on the other hand, was cutoff from this intellectual flowering in the east due to its own bigotry and anti-Semitism which denied the source of its emerging Christian culture. After all, Jesus was Asian and a Semite. But in Constantinople and Rome there was an adolesant effort to create its own religious identity. It rejected everything that wasn’t Greek or Latin. This reactionary nature would sow the seeds of its own Dark Ages in the west for nearly a millennium until it was reconnected with Eastern cultures during the Crusades. 

Asian Christianity, on the other hand, benefited from the intellectual fruits of the East. Because it was neither understood nor accepted by the West, this form of Christianity turned its attention to Central Asia and China. A gifted and intellectual corps of priests and monks arose who advanced into China and by the 638 CE, had established a significant religious presence in the Chinese capital city of Xian, perhaps numbering up to 30,000 Christians. 

Father Adam, belonged to an Asian branch of Christianity who maintained the language of Jesus: Aramaic. They were the Christians who had never left the Middle East and retained many of the Semitic traditions and worldviews of an Asian culture. This mature and advanced form of Christianity was able to transmit the fullness of its genius into Father Adam who was sent to China at the end of the 8th century. One of the first significant things Father Adam did was compose an Aramaic/Chinese text for an eight-foot high stele, commemorating the official presence of Christians in China since the early 7th century under the leadership of Bishop Alopen. The following year he began work with Prajna on a Catalogue of Teachings of Shakya (Buddha), the Chen-yuan Hsin-ting Shih-Chao Mu-Lu. From 785-804 CE, this pair of foreigners translated several thousand pages of Indian texts into Chinese. It inspired Father Adam to write several Sutras on Jesus that were completely unknown in the west until 1922 when they were discovered in a cave in Tunhuang. Even then they were ignored until recently. He wrote the Hymn of Adoration of the Transfiguration of our Lord (San-Wai-tsan) and the Sutra of Mysterious Joy and Rest (Chih-hsuan-an-lo) and the Sutra on the Origin of Origins (Hsuan-yuan-chih-pen).3 

Perhaps, the most remarkable event was the arrival of two Japanese missionary monks who were sent by the Emperor of Japan, Kammu, (804-806) to find Buddhist texts in China. Perhaps they had heard about this academic project of Prajna and Father Adam. Nevertheless, they showed up at the monastery just when the 20 year work was finished. Saicho brought a copy of the seven-volume work back to Mt. Hiei and established the Lotus School out of which the Pure Land and Zen schools emerged in later reform movements. Kukai, who was seven years younger than Saicho (Dengyo), and brought back to his monastery on Mt. Koya the True Word teaching. 4 I believe Father Adam influenced this tradition with its emphasis on text and ritual. Honeysuckle designs on the architecture of his monastery on Mt. Koya can be directly traced to designs from Nestorian architecture in Bagdad, institutional and religious headquarters of Father Adam.5 

In a room of the Chinese Buddhist monastery of Ta-tsin, in the year 804 CE, four foreign monks sat together and marveled over the words of ancients Sutras and stories of the Buddha. Did they discuss the teachings of Jesus? It seems that if they did not speak about this subject, certainly the subject worked its way into the translations. Through the writings we know that Father Adam and his fellow Nestorians were perceived by some as being too influential on Buddhism.6 Christianity survived in China only for another 100 years. But the influence of Father Adam lived on in Japan embedded in the translations he helped to shape. The same kind of intellectual cross-pollination of ideas that spawned a dynamic Asian Christianity in Gundushapur (Afghanistan) produced a new hybrid of religious thought in the Buddhist transmission of teachings in Japan mediated by Father Adam. 

(This is the first of a three part series of articles by Fr. Dale Johnson on Christian Buddhist Influences. This article begins to lay down the foundation for cross religious influences. The Assyrian Church of the East profoundly influenced Buddhism and Buddism infuenced Christianity.)