There is a magical legend about the introduction of Buddhism. During the Eastern Han Dynasty, Emperor Han Ming dreamed of a 6-foot-tall golden man flying in the palace at night with white light on his head. When I woke up, I asked the courtiers, who said it was a western god, "Whose name is Buddha". So Emperor Han Ming sent 12 messengers to the western regions to worship Buddha and seek scriptures. Cai Bei, Luo Jing and others went to Da Yue and got Buddhist scriptures and statues. They happened to meet Indian monks Kaya Morten and Zhu Falan who were preaching locally, and immediately invited them to Luoyang, Kyoto.
At first, two Indian monks lived in the split temple in Guanya. The following year, Emperor Hanming ordered another beautiful house to be built outside the West Gate of Luoyang for them to live and place the classic Buddha statues, and named it after the White Horse that brought them the scriptures to China. As for the "Temple", it was borrowed from the "Temple" of Xihong Temple and named as Baima Temple, which was the beginning of China's calling Buddhist Temple a temple. Since then, although the "temple" still exists as a government office, it soon gradually became the proper name of the Buddhist temple in China.
Two eminent monks, Kayamoton and Zhu Falan, not only brought the original text of Baye Sutra in Sanskrit, but also translated the earliest Buddhist Sutra in China, such as Forty-two Chapters Sutra, and other Buddhist scriptures on the balcony of Baima Temple. Since then, Buddhism has officially spread in China. This story, called "Yongping's Seeking for Dharma", is 570 years earlier than "Xuanzang's Learning from the Scriptures" and occupies a certain position in the history of cultural exchanges between China and foreign countries. Therefore, the cemeteries of the two eminent monks were later built in Baima Temple.
The White Horse Temple we see now has been rebuilt several times, but there are many precious cultural relics. The Three Buddhas, the Two Heavenly Generals and the Eighteen Arhats in the Hall of the Great Hero were deities made by the method of "painting with bells" in the Yuan Dynasty. Cooper was planted on the balcony about 6 meters high, and a high pavilion of the genus Euphorbia was built. It is the tallest building in the whole temple, in contrast to the Ursa Major Hall in front. It is worth mentioning that the two stone horses opposite the temple gate are said to be works of the Song Dynasty. Look at their drooping heads and necks, their eyes looking down and their calm demeanor, which seems to remind people of their long journey and the hardships of carrying classics from the East! They became the symbol of the whole temple.