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Tang-dynasty Church of the East cleric in Chang'an, Syriac name Adam, who composed the text of the Nestorian Stele erected in 781
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.
Also known as Adam · Jingjing, monk of the Daqin Monastery
Jingjing, known in Syriac as Adam, was a cleric of the Church of the East at the Daqin Monastery in Chang'an under the Tang. The stele recording the spread of the Luminous Religion, set up in Chang'an in 781 and now in the Forest of Steles in Xi'an, is signed as composed by him, and its Syriac lines call him priest, chorepiscopus and papash of China. A Buddhist catalogue of the Zhenyuan era records that he worked with the north Indian monk Prajna on a translation of the Six Paramitas Sutra, and a postscript in the Dunhuang manuscript Zunjing credits him with translating some thirty Christian texts; scholars still debate these accounts. His dates are unknown.
Tangactive c. 781
Treasures · Brushwork1The stele set up in 781 bears the signature of the monk Jingjing of Daqin Monastery as its author. Its text, a preface and a verse eulogy, tells how the Luminous Religion came to Chang'an with Aluoben in 635 under Emperor Taizong and spread under Gaozong, Xuanzong, Suzong and Daizong down to the Jianzhong era; the stone carries 1,780 Chinese characters.
Jingjing, whose baptismal name was Adam, was a Persian monk of the Church of the East in the Tang dynasty, attached to Daqin Monastery, active in the eighth century; his dates of birth and death are not known. The Tang catalog of Buddhist scriptures records that the Persian monk Jingjing of Daqin Monastery, together with Prajna, a monk from Kapisa in northern India, jointly translated the Buddhist sutra Six Paramitas. The scholar Zhu Qianzhi, reading the Syriac text, held that he was a priest and provincial bishop and overseer of the church in China.