The casket containing the relic related to Hieun Tsang, which was brought from Patna Museum to Nalanda. Picture by Deepak Kumar

Nalanda (Bihar), Feb. 12: Amidst the timeless rhythms of Bihar, history has a strange way of repeating itself.

Exactly 50 years ago, on the ruins of the 1,500-year-old Nalanda university, Jawaharlal Nehru had received a relic — a small piece of the skull of China’s most famous pilgrim, Hieun Tsang — sent by his friend and erstwhile Chinese Premier Zhou En-lai. Both governments promised that a memorial would be built in his honour.

Today, in the backdrop of the Nalanda ruins, both governments fulfilled that pledge and promised themselves a new destiny as they dedicated a spanking new memorial to China’s first traveller to India.

China’s foreign minister, Li Zhaoxing, had flown straight from Beijing to Patna in a chartered flight last night. From Delhi, the UPA government sent minister for tourism and culture Ambika Soni. Governor R.S. Gavai and chief minister Nitish Kumar represented Bihar. “Long live India-China friendship,” the slogan rang out from the assembled galaxy of star visitors.

And so, for two hours this morning, all roads led to the enormous Hieun Tsang memorial hall. The ceremony began with a 100-odd Chinese Buddhist monks, in spanking new red robes — an unmistakable reference to the colours of the motherland — praying in front of a 30-foot statue to Hieun Tsang. They were followed by Indian monks who recited Sanskrit shlokas.

The importance of the Sino-Indian reconnection, one day before talks between the two foreign offices in the far more formal atmosphere in faraway Delhi, escaped no one.

In front of the statue on one side, inside a casket of burnished gold shaped in the form of a Tibetan monastery, lay the relic. It had been borrowed from the Patna museum, where it has lain since 1957, when Zhou En-lai had sent the Dalai Lama with it to give Nehru. On the other side, on a large piece of grey granite, was a large representation of the Buddha’s feet. Alongside the footprints was an inscription in Chinese, by none other than Hieun Tsang.

Li was so excited that he abandoned his native Mandarin for English. “How excited, proud and pleased I am,” he gushed, “to see such glorious Chinese architecture in this memorial hall….This seed of friendship sowed so many centuries ago, we enjoy today.”

Soni said the Chinese pilgrim had been a pioneer in building cultural bonds between the two civilisations.

There was no reference at all during the speeches, or later at a Chinese-Indian lunch, by any of the leaders to their painful history of the last 50 years.

Nitish Kumar said it was time to revamp old connections in the service of a new prosperity.