Lotus and Swastika in Assyrian Church in China: Buddhist Legacy for Aryan Heritage?

Abstract

The Assyrian branch of Christianity (Jin Jiao 景教) was introduced to China from the seventh century (the Tang Dynasty). Since then, Assyrian missionaries appeared to utilize seemingly Buddhist symbols, such as lotus, to communicate this new faith to the Chinese audience. Many scholars thought that the lotus symbol used by Assyrian Christians in China suggested a close link between Buddhist expressions and Assyrian Christian expressions in China, as these two faiths seemed to have interacted closely with each other. Furthermore, such closeness between Assyrian Christianity and Buddhism might have even caused the downfall of Assyrian Christianity in China as the government later suppressed Buddhism. Assyrian Christianity had declined in China since the ninth century and did not reappear in strength until the beginning of the Yuan Dynasty in the twelfth century, as many of the Mongols were Christians of the Assyrian Church. These Christians in the Yuan Dynasty usually carried a bronze cross (commonly yet wrongly referred to as Nestorian cross) and many of these crosses contained a swastika symbol. Based on the suggested Buddhist-Christian relation in the Tang Dynasty, scholars interpreted that the swastika design in the Nestorian cross further evidenced the continual close relation between Assyrian Christians and Buddhists just as they had done several hundred years ago with the lotus symbol. The use of lotus and swastika by Assyrian Christians in China became a strong evidence to support such an hypothesis. However, this paper suggests that the lotus and swastika found in the Assyrian Christian artefacts in China might be a legacy of Aryan tradition carried over by the Persians from Central Asia, rather than syncretistic integration with Buddhism in China. Such hypothesis suggests that there may be far less exchange between Assyrian Christianity and Buddhism in China than scholars wished to acknowledge.