thumb|200px|Remnants of the pagoda

The Daqin Pagoda () is a Buddhist pagoda in Zhouzhi County of Xi'an (formerly Chang'an), Shaanxi Province, China, located about two kilometres to the west of Louguantai temple. The pagoda has been claimed as a Church of the East in China church from the Tang dynasty but there has been no conclusive evidence of such a connection.

History

The Daqin Pagoda is first attested in 1065, when the Chinese poet Su Dongpo visited it and wrote a well-known poem about it, "Daqin Temple". His younger brother Su Zhe also wrote an "echoing" poem referring to the monks at the temple. An earthquake severely damaged the pagoda in 1556 and it was finally abandoned. Due to the earthquake, many of the underground chambers of the complex are no longer reachable.

Features

The seven-storeyed octagonal brick pagoda is about 34 meters high (was thought to be 32 in the past). Each side of the first storey measures 4.3 meters.

In 2001 the pagoda was claimed by Martin Palmer, the translator of several popular books on sinology, including Zhuangzi and I Ching, as a form of Christianity from the Tang dynasty, in his controversial book The Jesus Sutras. According to Palmer, the church and the monastery were built in 640 by early Church of the East missionaries. Daqin is the name for the Roman Empire in the early Chinese-language documents of the 1st and 2nd centuries; by the mid-9th century it was also used to refer to the mission churches of the Syriac Christians.

As a potential stimulus to the district's tourist trade, Palmer's claims have been given wide publicity by the local authorities but have also received approbation by Chinese academics. The exterior of the pagoda and its surroundings were featured in the first episode of the 2009 BBC program A History of Christianity. The program also featured an interview with Palmer by the presenter Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch.

Despite the publicity they have received, Palmer's claims are controversial, and have been dismissed by Michael Keevak, the author of The Story of a Stele, and by David Wilmshurst, the author of The Martyred Church: A History of the Church of the East.

James Morris of the University of St. Andrews has stated of the pagoda that "until more detailed archaeological analysis of the site is undertaken [...] we must be content in maintaining that there are no proven direct archaeological remains for the presence of Christianity during the Táng period."

See also

  • Xi'an Stele
  • Jingjiao Documents
  • Cross Temple – temple in Beijing used during different periods by Buddhists and East Syriac Christians
  • Pearl Temple – a Tang-dynasty East Syriac church in Chengdu built no later than 756 AD

References

Citations

Sources

  • Keevak, Michael, The Story of a Stele: China's Nestorian Monument and Its Reception in the West, 1625-1916 (Hong Kong, 2008).
  • Palmer, Martin, The Jesus Sutras: Discovering the Lost Scrolls of Taoist Christianity (New York, 2001).
  • Wilmshurst, David, The Martyred Church: A History of the Church of the East (London, 2011).
  • Did Christianity Reach China In the First Century?
  • Orthodox article on site