Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v2.c15.s2.t55.6

v2.c15.s2.t55.6

Having accepted Tagore’s offer of Professorship of Sino-Indian Studies in Visva-Bharati, Tan Yun-shan was entrusted with the task of building Cheena-Bhavana as the perfect repository of their shared dream, as the first learning and research centre of Chinese language, literature and culture, as first modern-day symbol of India-China cultural interface. This task went beyond the academic construction of a discipline that has come to be known today as China Studies; it included the mundane task of raising funds which involved many arduous journeys back and forth between India and China. More importantly, Tan Yunshan’s efforts for this cause were based in enhancing awareness and understanding of each other’s contemporary society and culture, rooted in re-inforcing that cultural interface threatening to ‘relapse into forgetfulness’. In other words, while Tan Yun-shan found in Tagore a visionary mentor, Tagore saw in him the personification of his ‘*Visvakarma*’, a world-worker, a true constructor of human culture who would go beyond all personal interests to fulfill this vision. Tan Yun-shan was the first bird from afar and Cheena-Bhavana the first nest in Tagore’s Visva-Bharati, built on the foundation of a Vedic dictum ‘*yatra visva bhavati eknidam*’ (the world becoming one nest). It is no accident that he came to be known as Xuanzang of modern times, as he clearly wanted to retrace the great monk’s footsteps so that he could re-claim the threads of India-China cultural contacts that had been relapsing into shadowy depths of forgetfulness.