Brief information on White Horse Temple  

Located 12 km away from Luoyang City in the east, White Horse Temple (Baima Temple) was built in 68 AD during East Han Dynasty with a long history of more than 1900 years, which is said to be the first Buddhist temple built by officials in Chinese history.

According to historical records, Emperor Ming of the Eastern Han Dynasty (25 - 220 AD) had a dream about a great Buddhist. When he woke up, he sent some ministers as diplomats to study Buddhism. After acquiring the doctrines of Buddhism, they came back with two eminent Indian Buddhists and white horses carrying Buddhist scriptures, which were intended to preach Buddhism in China. The emperor was so pleased because they successfully completed the mission that he decided to build a temple to commemorate the contribution and the successful mission. But they had no idea about the name of the temple at the beginning, so they named it White Horse Temple and set two white horses statues to showcase the difficulty of the mission. Regarded as the ”Cradle of Chinese Buddhism”, the White Horse Temple still plays an important part in Chinese Buddhism, attracting many Buddhists and scholars all over the country to visit.

Today’s White Horse Temple is a rectangle court with an area of 40,000 square meters. It comprises of Tianwang Hall, Great Buddha Hall, Daxiong Hall, Jieyin Hall, Qingliang Terrace and Pilu, which are all situated along the north-south central axis.

*You can download the bilingual note to show it to a taxi driver or someone else to find your way to White Horse Temple if you plan to visit White Horse Temple and have language problems.

   

Hours: Weekdays 07:30-17:30
Address: Luoyang City, Henan
Transportation: Bus No. 56