A brief study on Hindu temples built in China by early Tamil Traders

[virarajendra]

Author - Virarajendra

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A brief study on Hindu temples built in China by early Tamil Traders

Kaiyuan Temple

Kaiyuan Temple is a Hindu Temple built at Quang Chow (Canton) Seaport city by the Tamil Traders from Tamil Nadu, India, of the medeival period who were trading with then China. The basement with carvings on granite in this temple is seen in the following Video.

Further there had been many other Hindu temples in Quang Chow region which has gone on ruins and some of the Panels from these temples are now preserved in Quang Chow Museum. One of them is the statue of Vishnu and the other most intersting stone panels kept in this museum is that with Spider and Elephant with a Sivalingam below the tree depicting the Tamil Saivite story from Tamil Periyapuraanam where the Spider sheltering the Sivalingam was born as the Chola king the Kochenganaan in the Chola country. This further confirms the presense off Tamil - Traders and the Warriors in attendence (Senaa Muhaththaar), Artisons and Saivite Priests in this Seaport city in the medieval period.



Quanzhou, Eastern China

There had been a Siva Temple and from the remains of a Siva temple Quanzhou there had been a late thirteenth-century bilingual Tamil and Chinese-language inscription. This temple must have been built in the south-eastern region of the old port, where there had been a settlements of Tamil Traders from Tamil Nadu.

The section of the inscription written in Tamil language reads as:

"Obeisance to Hara (Siva)! Let there be prosperity! On the day Citra in the month of Chittira in the Saka year 1203 (1281 A.D.), the Tavachchakkarvarttigal Sambandhap-Perumal (a Saiva religious leader) caused, in accordance with the firman (written permission) of Chekachai Khan (the Mongol ruler), to be graciously installed the God Udaiyar Tirukkadalisvaram Udaiya-nayinar (Siva), for the welfare of the illustrious body of the illustrious Chekachai Khan."

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