Located 12 kilometers east of Luoyang, the White Horse Temple is one of the oldest Buddhist temples in China and is renowned as the cradle of Chinese Buddhism. Although it is neither the largest nor the most beautiful monument to Buddhism in China, this temple has a large number of Buddhist items housed there and is well worth a trip.
A legend goes that originally, the place was used by the second Han Emperor-Liu Zhuang as a summer resort and for scholarly pursuits. However, in 68 A.D., when Buddhism reached its peak in India, two Indian monks brought Buddhist scriptures to Luoyang on the back of a white horse. The emperor was a devout Buddhist believer and so he built the temple to house the scriptures and named it White Horse Temple. It was said that there were once thousands of monks living in the temple and it was even used as a refugee sanctuary during the turmoil of Wang Mang in the Easte Han Dynasty.
The two monks who brought scriptures from India were buried here, and to many monks from outside China have made a pilgrimage to visit the monks. Many of them have spent the rest of their time in that temple. The famous Tang Dynasty monk, Xuanzang, started his 17-year-long pilgrimage trip to Indian from the temple. When he retued, Xuanzhang became the abbot of the White Horse Temple.
