White Horse Temple Picture

White Horse Temple was the first Buddhist temple in China, established under the patronage of Emperor Ming in the Eastern Han capital Luoyang 2000-years ago. Emperor Ming was said to have dreamed one night that a golden person standing 20 meters tall and with a radiating white Aureola flying from the West. The next day he told his ministers and then the minister Zhong Hu explained to him that he had probably dreamed of the Buddha from India. The emperor then sent a delegation of 18 headed by Cai Yin, Qin Jing and Wang Zun to seek out Buddhism. They returned from Afghanistan with an image of Gautama Buddha, the Sutra of Forty-two Chapters and two eminent monks. The next year, the emperor ordered the construction of the White Horse Temple east of the capital Luoyang, to remember the horse that carried back the sutras. It was China's first Buddhist temple…