INFOCUS | INDIA-CHINA | CULTURE
The Bard in Beijing If one day the cultural relationship between our two countries can reach the same extent as in the glorious days when Buddhism entered China, let us not forget Gurudev, for he was the pioneer and the very symbol of this revival of international cultural collaboration. Sampson C Shen
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abindranath came to China at the invitation of the Lecturer’s Association of Peiping, which was organized by various universities and colleges in that city, with the late Prof Liang Chi-Chao as its president. Starting from that ancient city, he toured all the big cities in China to the extreme south, and wherever he went, he was cordially welcomed and anxiously asked to deliver speeches on Indian culture and civilization. During this visit, he negotiated with Chinese cultural leaders on exchange of scholars and professors. According to the plan mapped out at that time Pandit Vidhushekhara Shastri and another scholar of Santiniketan were to be sent to Peiping to teach Sanskrit and to study the Chinese language. On the other hand, Liang Chi-chao and some others were to go to Santiniketan to help the institution in Chinese studies and to study Sanskrit. A lump sum of
Rs 20,000 had been donated by Seth JK Birla to the Visva-Bharati to build a special guest house for the coming Chinese scholars. But due to the instability of the political situation in China, the scheme was unfortunately foiled. But his visit was not in vain. He made a deep impression upon the Chinese mind. He loved China and was loved by the Chinese. Since then, almost all of his works in English have been translated into Chinese, one after another. He came to China just when the latter was beginning her Renaissance and his visit certainly gave a great impetus to this new movement. His poems of “Stray Birds” and “The Crescent Moon” have created new styles of prosody in the new Chinese poetry. A Crescent Moon Society (for poetry) and a Crescent Moon magazine were started immediately after this event by the late Mr Hsu Chih-mo and Dr Hu Shih. Dr Hu was later hailed by some Americans as the counterpart of Rabindranath in China. “As for the Poet’s ideal and hope
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to unite Asiatic cultures and to revive the Indian and Chinese cultural relationship,” a Chinese professor once said, “all of our Chinese scholars have the sincerest sympathy with him and our leading scholars and leaders have also cherished for long the same idea and are willing to co-strive for the common goal with joint endeavors. Now is the time for India and China to resume and strengthen their cultural relationship.” Actually, Tagore had been given a Chinese name, ‘Chu Cheng-tan” when he was in China. After that, he became an ardent lover of China and understood China better than any foreigner of that time. Prof YS Tan, who was teaching at Santiniketan remarked: “I found in the modern world two great savants who knew China and her people and culture best: one was Gurudeva, another is Bertrand Russell. But, after all, Russell is a Westerner and Gurudeva is an Easterner. A Westerner’s comprehension of an old eastern country like China and her
Rabindranath Tagore ( Chu Cheng-tan ) January-February 2011 India-China Chronicle |49|