For the residents of Chedian, a few thousand-year-old village of muddy
by-lanes and old stone courtyard houses, she is just another form of
Guanyin, the female Bodhisattva who is venerated in many parts of China.
But the goddess that the residents of this village pray to every
morning, as they light incense sticks and chant prayers, is quite unlike
any deity one might find elsewhere in China. Sitting cross-legged, the
four-armed goddess smiles benignly, flanked by two attendants, with an
apparently vanquished demon lying at her feet.
Local scholars are still unsure about her identity, but what they do
know is that this shrine’s unique roots lie not in China, but in far
away south India. The deity, they say, was either brought to Quanzhou — a
thriving port city that was at the centre of the region’s maritime
commerce a few centuries ago — by Tamil traders who worked here some 800
years ago, or perhaps more likely, crafted by local sculptors at their
behest.
“This is possibly the only temple in China where we are still praying to
a Hindu God,” says Li San Long, a Chedian resident, with a smile.
“Even though most of the villagers still think she is Guanyin!” Mr. Li
said the village temple collapsed some 500 years ago, but villagers dug
through the rubble, saved the deity and rebuilt the temple, believing
that the goddess brought them good fortune — a belief that some, at
least, still adhere to.
The Chedian shrine is just one of what historians believe may have been a
network of more than a dozen Hindu temples or shrines, including two
grand big temples, built in Quanzhou and surrounding villages by a
community of Tamil traders who lived here during the Song (960-1279) and
Yuan (1279-1368) dynasties.
At the time, this port city was among the busiest in the world and was a thriving centre of regional maritime commerce.
The history of Quanzhou’s temples and Tamil links was largely forgotten
until the 1930s, when dozens of stones showing perfectly rendered images
of the god Narasimha — the man-lion avatar of Vishnu — were unearthed
by a Quanzhou archaeologist called Wu Wenliang. Elephant statues and
images narrating mythological stories related to Vishnu and Shiva were
also found, bearing a style and pattern that was almost identical to
what was evident in the temples of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh from a
similar period.
Wu’s discoveries received little attention at the time as his country
was slowly emerging from the turmoil of the Japanese occupation, the
Second World War and the civil war. It took more than a decade after the
Communists came to power in 1949 for the stones and statues to even be
placed in a museum, known today as the Quanzhou Maritime Museum.
“It is difficult to say how many temples there were, and how many were
destroyed or fell to ruin,” the museum’s vice curator Wang Liming told The Hindu.
“But we have found them spread across so many different sites that we
are very possibly talking about many temples that were built across
Quanzhou.”
Today, most of the sculptures and statues are on display in the museum,
which also showcases a map that leaves little doubt about the remarkable
spread of the discoveries. The sites stretch across more than a dozen
locations located all over the city and in the surrounding county. The
most recent discoveries were made in the 1980s, and it is possible, says
Ms. Wang, that there are old sites yet to be discovered.
The Maritime Museum has now opened a special exhibit showcasing
Quanzhou’s south Indian links. Ms. Wang says there is a renewed interest
— and financial backing — from the local government to do more to
showcase what she describes as the city’s “1000-year-old history with
south India,” which has been largely forgotten, not only in China but
also in India.
“There is still a lot we don't know about this period,” she says, “so if
we can get any help from Indian scholars, we would really welcome it as
this is something we need to study together. Most of the stones come
from the 13th century Yuan Dynasty, which developed close trade links
with the kingdoms of southern India. We believe that the designs were
brought by the traders, but the work was probably done by Chinese
workers.”
Ms. Wang says the earliest record of an Indian residing in Quanzhou
dates back to the 6th century. An inscription found on the Yanfu temple
from the Song Dynasty describes how the monk Gunaratna, known in China
as Liang Putong, translated sutras from Sanskrit. Trade particularly
flourished in the 13th century Yuan Dynasty. In 1271, a visiting Italian
merchant recorded that the Indian traders “were recognised easily.”
“These rich Indian men and women mainly live on vegetables, milk and
rice,” he wrote, unlike the Chinese “who eat meat and fish.” The most
striking legacy of this period of history is still on public display in a
hidden corner of the 7th century Kaiyuan Buddhist Temple, which is
today Quanzhou’s biggest temple and is located in the centre of the old
town. A popular attraction for Chinese Buddhists, the temple receives a
few thousand visitors every day. In a corner behind the temple, there
are at least half a dozen pillars displaying an extraordinary variety of
inscriptions from Hindu mythology. A panel of inscriptions depicting
the god Narasimha also adorns the steps leading up to the main shrine,
which houses a Buddha statue. Huang Yishan, a temple caretaker whose
family has, for generations, owned the land on which the temple was
built, says the inscriptions are perhaps the most unique part of the
temple, although he laments that most of his compatriots are unaware of
this chapter of history. On a recent afternoon, as a stream of visitors
walked up the steps to offer incense sticks as they prayed to Buddha,
none spared a glance at the panel of inscriptions. Other indicators from
Quanzhou’s rich but forgotten past lie scattered through what is now a
modern and bustling industrial city, albeit a town that today lies in
the shadow of the provincial capital Xiamen and the more prosperous port
city of Guangzhou to the far south.
A few kilometres from the Kaiyuan temple stands a striking several
metre-high Shiva lingam in the centre of the popular Bamboo Stone Park.
To the city’s residents, however, the lingam is merely known as a rather
unusually shaped “bamboo stone,” another symbol of history that still
stays hidden in plain sight.
