Clerics › Religious Figure
Jingjing
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.
Life and times
Dates Dates unknown; active c. 781