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expression 'brilliant teaching' and its meaning. The first section of the inscription, which describes the main doctrines of the Christian faith and the missionary character of the Christian church, concludes as follows:
"This true and unchanging way is wonderful and hard to name. Its merit is so clear and its usefulness so obvious that we strive to express it by calling it the 'brilliant teaching'.”
Adam also removed from a quotation in the Sian tablet inscription two inconvenient references to the former official identity of the Nestorian church, the teaching of the scriptures'. As has been mentioned earlier, the emperor T'ai-tsung gave permission in 638 for Reuben to build a Nestorian monastery in Ch'ang-an, and the relevant imperial decree has been preserved in the T'ang hui-yao. This decree is also quoted by Adam in the Sian tablet inscription, but with two slight, but significant, changes to the authentic text. Where the original referred to the virtuous Persian monk Reuben', Adam silently substituted 'Syrian' (Ta-ch'in) for 'Persian' and, carefully altering the original text of the imperial decree as little as possible, transformed the phrase 'Reuben has come to our high capital from afar with the teaching of the scriptures (ching-chiao)' into 'Reuben has come to our high capital from afar with scriptures and images (ching-chang)', by the deft alteration of only one Chinese character. Again, this suggests an effort to promote a new image: if the term 'brilliant teaching' had been firmly established in 781, it would have been unnecessary to take such pains to avoid references in the Sian inscription to the previous official identity of the Nestorian church.
Adam and the promotion of the term 'Syrian Brilliant Teaching'
It should come as no surprise that a man of Adam's character was determined to ensure that his new term for Christianity, the 'Syrian brilliant teaching', should be uniformly applied by all Nestorian monasteries in China, so as to achieve maximum impact. There is evidence that, once this term had been adopted by the Nestorian church as an official description in 780, efforts were made to apply it consistently and to erase traces of the former official identity wherever they occurred. So far, this process has not been adequately analysed. In fact, a sustained effort appears to have been made in the
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66
expression 'brilliant teaching' and its meaning. The first section of the inscription, which describes the main doctrines of the Christian faith and the missionary character of the Christian church, concludes as follows:
"This true and unchanging way is wonderful and hard to name. Its merit is so clear and its usefulness so obvious that we strive to express it by calling it the 'brilliant teaching”.”
Adam also removed from a quotation in the Sian tablet inscription two inconvenient references to the former official identity of the Nestorian church, the teaching of the scrptures'. As has been mentioned earlier, the emperor T'ai-tsung gave permission in 638 for Reuben to build a Nestorian monastery in Ch'ang-an, and the relevant imperial decree has been preserved in the T'ang hui-yao. This decree is also quoted by Adam in the Sian tablet inscription, but with two slight, but singificant, changes to the authentic text. Where the original referred to the virtuous Persian mank Reuben', Adam silently substituted 'Syrian' (Ta-ch'in) for 'Persian' and, carefully altering the original text of the imperial decree as little as possible, transformed the phrase 'Reuben has come to our high capital from a far with the teaching of the scriptures (ching-chiao #)' into 'Reuben has come to our high capital from afar with scriptures and images (ching-chang_*), by the deft alteration of only one Chinese character. Again, this suggests an effort to promote a new image: if the term 'brilliant teaching' had been firmly established in 781, it would have been unnecessary to take such pains to avoid references in the Sian inscription to the previous official identity of the Nestorian church.
Adam and the promotion of the term 'Syrian Brilliant Teaching'
It should come as no surprise that a man of Adam's character was determined to ensure that his new term for Christianity, the 'Syrian brilliant teaching, should be uniformly applied by all Nestorian monasteries in China, so as to achieve maximum impact. There is evidence that, once this term had been adopted by the Nestorian church as an official description in 780, efforts were made to apply it consistently and to erase traces of the former official identity wherever they occurred. So far, this process has not been adequately analysed. In fact, a sustained effort appears to have been made in the
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