In The Times of India, Ronojoy Sen on the legacy of Fa Hien and Hieun Tsang which lives on through Ji Xianlin, the first Chinese to get the Padma Bhushan
Well before Hindi-Chini bhai bhai became fashionable in the 1950s, there was one Chinese scholar who was already practising it. Now that the slogan is back in vogue following Manmohan Singh’s recent Beijing visit, it is only fitting that those achievements have finally been recognised. Tuck-ed away in this year’s Republic Day award list was the name of Ji Xianlin, the first Chinese national to receive a Padma Bhushan.
Ji is not well known in India. But the 97-year-old is a name to reckon with among Indologists. Ji has been studying India and interactions between the Indian and Chinese civilizations for over six decades. His tryst with India began after he graduated from Tsinghua University and received a scholarship to study at Germany’s Gottingen University. It was there that Ji’s interest in India was sparked. He studied under German Indologists Ernst Waldenschmidt and Emil Sieg, and learnt several classical languages, including Sanskrit and Pali. He wrote his PhD dissertation on the Buddhist text, Mahavastu.
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