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| White Horse Temple |
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One night, the emperor was said to have dreamed of a deity flying over his palace. The next day he told his ministers, and the minister Zhong Hu explained to him that he probably dreamed of Buddha in India. The emperor then sent a delegation of 18 headed by Cai Yin, Qin Jing and Wang Zun to seek Buddhism. They returned from Afghanistan with an image of Gautama Buddha, the Sutra of Forty-two Sections and two eminent monks.
The monks names have been variously romanized as Kasyapamatanga and Dharmavanya, Moton and Chufarlan.
The next year, the emperor ordered the construction of White Horse Temple three li west of the capital Luoyang, to remember the horse that carried back the sutras. It was China's first Buddhist temple.
Notably, the emperor ordered the suffix 寺 (pinyin si) to be used in the temple's name, as a display of respect. Previously, this character had been used to denote ministries of government. In later periods, all temples came to use this character in their name and it was dropped from the names of government ministries. As a result, the temple's name is sometimes translated as White Horse Ministry, a translation true to the time. However, White Horse Temple is the correct, literal reading to modern Chinese people.