KoyaQuest
Nestorian Stele
Nestorian Stele
Nestorian Stele
Along a lesser used side path just beyond the Ichi-no-Hashi Bridge, is one of the more unexpected features at Oku-no-in.
It is a replica of a 2.7-meter-tall monument originally erected in China in the year 781.
The nine Chinese characters at the top give the name of the monument as "The Memorial to the Propagation in China of the Luminous Religion of Daqin."
The inscription below (in Chinese and Syriac) records the arrival of a man name Alopen 阿羅本 in the capital of Chang’an in the year 635.
So who was Alopen? Where is Daqin? What faith is meant by the “Luminous Religion”? And, finally, why is there a full-sized copy of this monument at Mt. Kōya? A clue to the answers appears just above its name, where we can clearly see a Christian cross within the triangular space between the two dragons. Alopen, as is known from this monument and this monument alone, seems to have been the first Christian missionary to China. He is believed to have been of Syrian origin and a member of the Church of the East, a branch of Christianity which is sometimes identified with the Nestorians. The place name Daqin, mentioned in the name of the stele, was used by the Chinese to refer variously to either the Roman or Byzantine empires. The original monument, which was re-discovered in 1625 after having been buried for more than seven centuries, is a testament to the recognition of Christianity by the second emperor of the Tang Dynasty
The establishment of a replica of this monument here at Mt. Kōya is the work of an English woman named Elizabeth Anna Gordon (1851–1925).
A devout Christian, Gordon spent most of the last 18 years of her life in Japan studying Buddhism and collecting various works of art. It was one of her beliefs that Buddhism and Christianity were fundamentally related.
The “Stele of the Luminous Religion” was proof that Christianity was known in Chang’an at the time that Kūkai lived there. Since it is likely that he would have been aware of Christianity, the development of Kūkai’s religious thought and the doctrine of “True Speech” (i.e. "Shingon") may have been influenced by its teachings.
Under Gordon’s patronage, this replica was created and placed at Oku-no-in in 1911. This was still a few years before women were allowed on the mountain, so Mrs. Gordon presumably was not there to see its dedication.
Her ashes, however, are interred just a few meters to the right of the stele.
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