Ten Thousand Miles Without a Cloud

by Sun Shuyun

  SEVEN

  Light from the Moon

  I NEVER KNEW where our name for India came from, or even what it really meant, until I read Xuanzang’s Record. It was called Tianzhu before, and he explains how he chose the new Chinese characters, Yindu, which we still use today. The word sounds like ‘Hindu’, but it means ‘the moon’. He said the land of the Buddha, with its innumerable wise men and sages, was like the moon, shining in the darkness of human existence.

  His reverence for India was profound, and now as he was about to set foot in the holy land after a year of travel, he must have been elated. He had dreamed of this moment from his boyhood. The monastery in Luoyang he entered when he was thirteen was not far from the White Horse Monastery, the very first in China, which featured in an important legend that he would inevitably have known. One night in 65 AD, the Chinese emperor saw a golden man in a dream and he told his courtiers. They said it must be the Buddha, whose teachings were reputed to save all beings from suffering. Promptly he dispatched envoys abroad to find out more about the saint. A year later, they brought back two Indian monks, Dharmaraksa and Kasyapa Matanga, who arrived with a white horse laden with sacred texts and images. This was supposed to be how Buddhism came to China.

  Over the next five hundred years, thousands of Indian monks went across the Himalayas or navigated the Indian Ocean and South China Sea. They set about translating the vast canon of the Buddha’s teaching. Xuanzang learned about Buddhism from their work – until he himself undertook it, there was no translation by a Chinese. But the more the Chinese learned from their Indian teachers, the more determined they were to seek the source of this knowledge and clear the doubts in their minds, as Xuanzang wanted to do. They were also keen to see the land of the Buddha for themselves. From the fourth century AD, Chinese monks began pilgrimages in tens, or even hundreds. Few people know about them – most left no record and many died on the way, but it was one of the largest missionary movements in the first millennium. One of the earliest and most renowned pilgrims was Fa Xian, who left China in 399 at the age of sixty-five and returned fifteen years later. He wrote Record of the Buddhist Countries, the first Chinese account of India that has come down to us, though a brief one. This book left such a deep impression on Xuanzang, he decided that ‘the duty of a great monk is to follow in their steps’. Now he was here.

  I was as excited as Xuanzang about going to India, but I knew much less about the country than he did. I learned in school that India and China fought a brief war in 1962 over a disputed border in the Himalayas – before I was born; India started it by taking Chinese territory. Chairman Mao wanted to teach a lesson to Nehru, that running dog of imperialism, blackguard of feudalism, rentier of the bourgeoisie. The Chinese army marched down from the Himalayas, meeting hardly any resistance. But China declared a unilateral ceasefire, gave back all the territory it had taken and held on to that we regarded as ours, and withdrew its forces. After that all was quiet on our western frontier, and we forgot about India.

  Then suddenly Indian movies hit our cinemas in the late 1970s. The tuneful songs, romantic storylines, handsome actors and beautiful actresses captured our hearts. My favourite, and everyone else’s, was The Wanderer, a sentimental, tear-jerking black-and-white film. I saw it a dozen times and invariably came home with puffy red eyes. But this influx ended as suddenly and mysteriously as it began, leaving me and tens of millions of Chinese heartbroken. Nobody asked why there were no more Indian movies: you took what you were given – a fact of Chinese life. From then on anything else we learned about India, which was not much, came from television. Twice a year, perhaps, when some disaster struck India, we were shown the same images of the poor: stick-thin, wearing rags and looking as if they were ready to drop dead any minute. The message was clear: China was marching on, leaving India far behind, trapped in its feudalism and the turbulence of democracy.

  That was why when my mother was helping me pack for the journey, she stuffed my suitcase with instant Chinese noodles and medicine. ‘Do you really have to go there?’ she pleaded with me. ‘It is so poor, so dirty. You will get sick; the food is horrible, you will starve.’ She was shocked by a series of live reports from India, shown on a major Chinese channel recently. They portrayed India as the dirtiest, poorest and most chaotic country in the world: Iran was paradise by comparison and even Iraq was more desirable with its wide roads and clean restaurants. The Indians were not just backward; they were the tragedy of mankind.

  I wanted to see India for myself.

  I flew to Delhi from Lahore in late January 2000. The security at the airport was exhaustingly thorough, an indication of the tension between Pakistan and its neighbour. But I was feeling very happy. At last, I was on my way to India. On the plane I began a conversation with the woman sitting next to me, a fabric designer. She was wearing a beautiful scarf, gauzy and soft, with subtle, almost elusive pale colours. I loved it and asked if it was one of her designs. ‘Yes, but you have such fine silk in China,’ she enthused. ‘You know what the Indian word for silk is? Chinamshuka, which means “Chinese cloth”. We got it from you.’ Then she went on to tell me other things that India received from us and gratefully acknowledged. They are identified with the prefix china or chini, which means ‘of China’, such as china badam, Chinese nut or peanut, chinarajaputra, Chinese prince or pear, chinakapu, camphor, chinaja, steel, chinavanga, lead. ‘And of course, chini!’ she said in a singing voice, pointing to the sachet of white sugar on my tea tray.

  The links between China and India are well illustrated by the sugar story. Indians were the first people in the world to make brown sugar from sugarcane, as they still do today. Merchants and pilgrims carried it along the Silk Road to China just when Xuanzang was coming to India. But by the time it had completed the three-thousand-mile journey, it was as hard as stone. For want of a better name, the Chinese called it ‘stone honey’. Emperor Taizong enjoyed this exotic delicacy very much and sent a special envoy to India to learn the secrets of making it. But he did not like its colour – it reminded him of dirt. He asked his courtiers if they could do something about it. The emperor’s wish was their command. In no time, they came up with a sugar as white as snow, fit for imperial consumption. Indian merchants took it back to their country and that was chini.

  It was early afternoon when I landed in Delhi, and slightly chilly, with hazy sunshine. I got into a battered black-and-yellow taxi. The air was grey and heavily polluted; the road was crowded with cars, buses, trucks, motor scooters and bicycles weaving crazily in and out of each other’s path. It might sound odd for me to complain about crowding, but somehow our streets seemed more orderly. Still, being here filled me with happiness and expectation. Coming to India was what Xuanzang dreamed of; it was my first encounter with this other vast country, and a civilization as ancient as ours. Would I find much of what he saw? Was his a name to conjure with, as my Oxford friend suggested? Was Buddhism a thing of the past? Would the land of the Buddha be a spiritual experience for me, as it was for him? All that lay ahead.

  My host, Prem, was waiting for me at his house, welcoming me with a big hug and a broad smile. He was an old friend of my husband’s and we had already met briefly in London. We sat down in his drawing-room and I felt immediately at home. There was a big Japanese screen on the wall, pale gold with a black pagoda among mountains, and a pair of lamps made from blue-and-white Chinese pots. Prem was a great admirer of all things Chinese, and of course Xuanzang. ‘We know all about your monk from school. We call him Hiuen-Tsang. He is our hero,’ Prem said. I was keen to hear what he knew about Xuanzang but I thought first I should ask him what he was writing for his newspaper column. ‘Oh, let’s not talk about that. It’s too depressing.’ He threw up his hands. ‘India is in such a mess. Unlike the Chinese economic reform, ours is not getting us anywhere. The infrastructure sucks. Industry is growing at a snail’s pace. Very little foreign money comes in and nobody cares about the poor. I know there is corruption in your country
but at least those who take the bribes do the job for you. Here they take the money and do nothing.’ He sat down suddenly in a glum heap. Prem was a flurry of contradictions: a moody, highly intelligent man burdened by the early death of his wife, he seemed to relish making an inventory of his country’s shortcomings.

  Prem still vividly remembered his visit to China in 1990. ‘It is so impressive what China has done,’ he said, enthusiasm reigniting in his eyes. ‘Nobody is starving. People seem cheerful and hard-working – and everything they make, they make better and cheaper. God, you are such disciplined people. No wonder you are so far ahead of us.’ He told me he was writing a book comparing the Chinese and Indian economic reforms. ‘There is so much we could learn from you. Sometimes I even think a little authoritarianism would do India no harm. We need a strong government to get us out of this mess. It is hopeless. I want to go and live in China.’ He launched his hands into the air again in exasperation, but they fell back to land inertly in his lap.

  I reminded him that he was lucky – his Chinese colleagues would be envious of the freedom he enjoyed. Prem’s expression became serious. He was well aware of restrictions on the press in China, but I had the feeling he had conveniently forgotten this in his desire to find a model, such was his frustration with his own country. ‘I suppose you’re right. We have a constitution that respects the individual, even if it’s not always observed. I can say what I like, I can criticize the government as I see fit and they can’t send me to a labour camp.’ He smiled.

  Did he not resent the Chinese, especially after India’s humiliating defeat in 1962?

  ‘Of course, how can we forget? The war came as a total shock. Nehru loved China – its history, its people, its determination to change its fate.’ I knew of Nehru’s fondness for China. Reading his autobiography, I copied out this quote, which rather touched me. ‘My mind was filled with the days of long ago when pilgrims and travellers crossed the oceans and mountains between India and China in search of the rich cultural inheritance which each country possessed. I saw myself in the long line of those pilgrims journeying to the Heaven of my desire.’

  ‘Nehru was so keen to continue his friendship,’ Prem said. ‘He put China at the centre of India’s foreign policy and brought the Indian people to share his admiration. We had been chanting “Hindi, Chini, Bhai Bhai! – Indians and Chinese are brothers!” And all of a sudden, you declared war on us.’

  Whether it was China that started the war, as Prem said, or India, as I was taught in school, it was incredible that the two countries abandoned their friendship of almost two millennia and went to war over some disputed territory, the barren Himalayan Mountains along the McMahon Line, drawn arbitrarily on a map by a British officer. Perhaps we will understand its real cause one day. But China lost its closest ally, and Nehru was shattered by the defeat, personally and politically. Nothing in his long career, Prem said, had hurt and grieved him more. ‘It finished him off,’ Prem remembered. ‘What was left of his vigour was gone, and he became another person.’ He died in 1964, barely two years after the war, a painful reminder of his despair. Prem gave a rueful smile. ‘All this would have made Xuanzang so sad. He really loved India.’

  ‘If anything, I think he had almost too much affection for India, as if once he had set foot in this holy land, everything was holy. You can tell from his glowing account,’ I said.

  The love Xuanzang had for India is clear from the Record, which is so detailed, so specific and so sympathetic, not just in its treatment of Buddhist monasteries and sacred sites, but about everything in India. He wanted his fellow-countrymen, and posterity, to benefit from the knowledge he had acquired, and to appreciate the greatness of the country. He wrote of the towns and cities, how they all had gates and high walls, but tortuous and narrow lanes and streets. He discussed how the country was run by wise kings, and found it ‘remarkable for its rectitude’, with people upright, honourable, considerate and polite. He noticed how important education was, how learned men were respected by the king and the common people alike. Their study of the classics reminded him of his own in China, except they were much broader here, covering arts, astronomy, medicine, morality, as well as religious training. He could go into great detail, much of it still familiar today: ‘Their clothing is not cut or fashioned. The men wind their garments round their middle, then gather them under the armpits, and let them fall down across the body, hanging to the right. The robes of the women fall down to the ground … They use flowers for decorating their hair, and wear gem-decked caps; they ornament themselves with bracelets and necklaces … They are very particular in their personal cleanliness, and allow no remissness in this particular. All wash themselves before eating; afterwards they cleanse their teeth with a willow stick and wash their hands and mouth.’ And he was not above recording small points of etiquette in among a botanical list: ‘It is difficult to name all their plants, so I only give those most esteemed by the people. Dates, chestnuts, the persimmon, they do not have. But pomegranates and oranges are grown everywhere. Onions and garlic are little grown and few people eat them – if anyone uses them for food, they are expelled beyond the walls of the town.’

  I had not realized just how important Xuanzang’s information in the Record was to the Indians until recently. And I wanted to find out more about it. I had received a fax from Ajay Shankar, the Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India, or ASI as the Indians call it. Of all the people I had contacted before my trip, I was most keen to meet him: the sites I wanted to visit and the people I wished to talk to were all under his jurisdiction. I had written to him about my plans and received an immediate and most welcoming reply, giving the names and telephone numbers of the key people who could be of help to me. I rang one of those mentioned on the fax, Dr Agrawal, an archaeologist who had led many ASI excavations on Buddhist sites and currently its Director of Monuments. When I explained to him who I was, there was a long silence. For a moment, I thought the line had been cut off. ‘I have some bad news for you, Madam,’ he said slowly. ‘Mr Shankar was killed in a car crash last night. If you switch on the television, it is on the news.’

  I rushed to turn on the television. After a few items in the news bulletin on Doordarshan, the Indian government channel, a picture appeared in the top right-hand corner of the screen behind the newsreader, the face of a bespectacled middle-aged man with a benign expression. This was the man who had been so kind, and he was gone. The suddenness of his death was brutal: my father’s did not shock me as much, perhaps because it was after a long illness. As the Buddha reminded his disciples, life is only a breath of air, and it can end at any moment. I remembered reading about a Zen master who meditated in front of a poster with the Chinese character for death written on it. What a way to live, I said to myself. But the line between life and death is so thin; the monk was only dwelling on the impermanence of things.

  Still feeling the sadness of Ajay Shankar’s death, I went straight to the ASI. It was on Janpath, an imposing avenue that runs through the middle of New Delhi, from Parliament to Connaught Circus, the commercial centre. It is leafy and spacious, almost empty, with grand government buildings and smart hotels – it reminded me of Tiananmen Square and the Avenue of Eternal Peace in the heart of Beijing. I had no problem finding the place – stone carvings and statues welcome you at the entrance. The compound was eerily quiet and in a tiny room right at the back, I found Dr Agrawal. As soon as I sat down, he pulled from under a pile of papers and pamphlets on his desk his copy of Shankar’s fax to me. ‘This is our late Director General’s will. So how can I help you?’

  I told him I was following in Xuanzang’s footsteps and would like to visit some major Buddhist sites and monuments mentioned in the Record. He smiled with his eyes and his voice became more cheerful. ‘You could say Xuanzang is my guide and his Record my holy book. You cannot imagine how important he is for us.’ He suggested we go to the National Museum next door. It had a fantastic collection of Buddhist statues, s
ome of which Xuanzang would have seen. ‘You could say he even helped us get them here,’ he said emphatically.

  The sun came through the glass of the corridor on the ground floor, casting a gentle light on the beautiful and imposing statues of Shiva, of Ganesh and of Vishnu, carved in polished granite, limestone, red sandstone. Together they form a superb parade of sculptural styles. I was particularly fascinated by the Yakshis, the fertility spirits, with their exaggerated female charms – thrusting breasts, hour-glass waists, strong and full hips and smouldering looks. I could not help admiring the sensuality and vitality, the love and beauty, the passion and joy they express – something we never see in Chinese art. The halls devoted to Buddhist statues, sculptures and paintings on the ground and first floors had an ambience of serenity and peace, a contrast to the force and energy that permeated the Hindu statuary. The Buddhas and Bodhisattvas were smaller too, as if to tell people that they were only human, not gods. I did not have to crane my neck to see them; I could look them in the eyes and feel not overpowered, but assured by their compassionate gaze.

  Looking at the Buddhas and the Bodhisattvas, beautifully displayed and softly lit, it was hard for me to imagine that until 150 years ago, both the Indians and people in the West had little idea who the Buddha was. ‘Whether Buddha was a sage or a hero,’ wrote Francis Wilford in the early nineteenth century, ‘the founder of a colony or a whole colony personified, whether … black or fair, he was assuredly either an Egyptian or an Ethiopian.’ Even as late as 1942, the Encyclopaedia Britannica began its entry on Buddhism by defining the Buddha as ‘one of the two appearances of Vishnu’. This ignorance beggars belief, given that Buddhism is older than Christianity and Islam, that it reigned supreme for more than a thousand years in India, that the whole of Asia embraced it, that Genghis Khan, one of the most powerful rulers in his tory, adopted it throughout his empire, that Marco Polo and Franciscan missionaries to Japan, China and Tibet all encountered it, and reported their findings to a curious West. So here were two utterly extraordinary stories: one, the virtually complete disappearance of the knowledge of the Buddha from the land of his birth – as if the identity of Christ had been forgotten in Palestine, or the Chinese did not know who Confucius was; the other, the equally remarkable recovery of this past by the British and the Indians, with the help of records kept by two Chinese monks in the first millennium. I was hoping that Agrawal would enlighten me about both stories.