Padma Bhushan for a Chinese Sanskrit expert

BEIJING: For the first time, a Padma Bhushan has crossed the Himalayas to reach out to a scholar who introduced the Ramayana and other aspects of Indian tradition to China.
The decision to honour widely-respected Indologist Ji Xianlin, coming within 10 days of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to China, is seen in Beijing as a strong and reliable hand of friendship. "This is a big initiative on the part of Prime Minister Singh to develop the friendship between the two nations. It will make a lot of difference in the way a lot of Chinese view India," Jiang Kui, vice director of the Centre for Indian Studies at Beijing University told TOI in chaste Hindi. The political dimensions of the award are as evident as the fact that Ji Xianlin, the guru of all Indologists in China, is a highly deserving case. If informed sources are to be believed, Chinese premier Wen Jiabao told Singh in mid-January that Ji was his mentor. The Indian government had been in the process of examining Ji's case since December 2006 when Nirupama Rao, the ambassador in Beijing, obtained a rare interview with the 97-year-old scholar who lives in a military hospital and hardly ever meets outsiders. But Wen's remarks might have given the final push for the government to decide in favour of honouring Ji. "This is a great event. The award will have a very positive effect in the manner ordinary Chinese look at India," Wang Bang Wei, a professor of Sanskrit at Beijing University said. Ji is the most suitable Indologist to be chosen for the purpose, he added. Xu Ke Qiao, an expert on Sino-Indian cultural communication at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, sees it as a clear signal that India looks at the relationship from a holistic viewpoint covering history, cultural traditions and contemporary trends. "A lot of what Chinese know about India's tradition and culture has come from Ji. He translated from the original Sanskrit and rendered them in poetry in Chinese. It is a tremendous achievement covering most of his life," Xu said.