The Golden Dream

According to the Book of Later Han history, in the year 64 AD, Emperor Ming was said to have dreamed one night of a golden person standing 20 metres tall and with a radiating white aureola flying from the West.

The next day one of his ministers explained to him that he had probably dreamed of the Buddha from India. The emperor then sent a delegation of 18 headed by to seek out Buddhism.

They returned, in 68 AD, with two Indian monks, on the back of a white horse, with the Sutra of Forty-two Chapters.

While these monks started translating the sutras, the emperor ordered the construction of China's First Buddhist temple - The White Horse Temple, about seven miles away from the city of Louyang, Henan Province.

Earlier, in 2005, the governments of India and China had declared their intention to jointly construct an Indian-style Buddhist temple on the western side of the historic White Horse Temple, in Luoyang. Work on that temple will complete by June 2008, said Ambassador Nirupama Rao. It would be styled as Sanchi with a Buddha statue modelled after Sarnath.

A few months back, the Chinese government had invited India to build The First Hindu temple in China. The invitation was extended to the Swaminarayan Trust that runs the Akshardham temples in Noida and in Gandhinagar, to build a similar temple.