Tang monk of Hongfu Temple in Chang'an who assembled Wang Xizhi's running script character by character for the Preface to the Sacred Teaching stele
Mural guide
In a temple courtyard at dusk, a great bronze bell hangs at the right and incense smoke rises from a bronze urn; monks in orange robes and plainly dressed visitors walk toward a lamplit hall, lotus flowers bloom in a stone basin, and a gold prayer wheel stands at the left.
Huairen was a monk of Hongfu Temple in Chang'an about whom little is known. After Xuanzang returned from India and translated scriptures at Hongfu Temple, Emperor Taizong wrote a Preface to the Sacred Teaching for the translations, and Huairen gathered every character of the preface, the crown prince Li Zhi's accompanying record and the Heart Sutra from Wang Xizhi's running script in the palace collection and in private hands, a task tradition says took more than twenty years. The stele was set up at the temple at the end of 672, moved to the Confucian temple in the Northern Song, and now stands in the Forest of Steles in Xi'an; the Palace Museum in Beijing holds a Northern Song rubbing.
Collected Wang Xizhi's characters for the Preface to the Holy Teaching stele
Stele set up in the twelfth month of 672
Huairen, a monk of Hongfu Temple in Chang'an, collected characters from Wang Xizhi's surviving writings in the Tang palace collection to make the Preface to the Holy Teaching in Wang Xizhi's Characters, a task of twenty-five years. The running-script text of thirty lines was set up in the twelfth month of 672 and is now in the Forest of Steles Museum in Xi'an.
Tang