Its reputation as a center promoting historical study and modern relations between the two countries was built by such figures as Rabindranath Tagore and Tan Yun-Shan.
This is, indeed, a great day for me, a day long looked for, when I should be able to redeem, on behalf of our people, an ancient pledge implicit in our past, the pledge to maintain the intercourse of culture and friendship between our people and the people of China, an intercourse whose foundations were laid eighteen hundred years back by our ancestors with infinite patience and sacrifice.Cheena Bhavana was a part of Tagore's grand concept of the world making its home in a single nest, Tan Yun-Shan was the person who built and developed Cheena Bhavana.
A calligraphist, poet, essayist, author and writer, Tan was also a linguist trained in Chinese classical literature and philosophy.
He gained the reputation of being able to satisfy all with his sober approach and his politeness left a mark in the minds of those with whom he came in regular contact.
Inspired by the poet’s message of peace and understanding, Tan arrived in Santiniketan and immersed himself in cultural dialogue with the intellectual elite of the ashram.
The names of Faxian (Fa Hien), Xuangzang (Hiuen Tsang) and Yijing (I-Tsing) were well-known, but there had been a break of a thousand years in such exchanges.
The idea struck both the poet and the Chinese scholar that a permanent institute could serve as a nucleus for cultural exchange.
Tan Yun-Shan went to China in 1931, to acquaint people there about the ideals of Tagore's Visva Bharati and garner support for cultural cooperation.
[2] At Santiniketan Tan Yun-Shan realised that his work required a separate hall/ building but Visva Bharati, then a private institution, was short of funds.
Nandalal Bose, Benode Behari Mukherjee and others from Kala Bhavana adorned the hall with beautiful frescoes and relief work.
On 14 April 1937, Cheena Bhavana, the first institute of its kind in India, was formally inaugurated by Indira Gandhi.
Mahatma Gandhi, in his message to Tagore said: "May the Chinese Hall be a symbol of living contact between China and India".
When he spoke in the evening all the students gathered round him, and Mrs. Tan served everybody some Chinese meal, with ingredients from her vegetable garden.
[12][9]Chiang Kai-shek, the Chinese nationalist leader, had donated rare and precious literature to Cheena Bhavana.
[13]Zhou Enlai, Prime Minister of China, presented 12,638 books to Cheena Bhavana library.
It consists of 100,000 volumes including the Sung Edition (10th Century A. D.) and the reproduction of the CH’ing or the so-called Dragon Edition (1936) of the Buddhist Tripitaka along with many separate volumes of important Buddhist works and a large number of selected Chinese works representing the Chinese classics, history, philosophy and literature.
This edition of the Tripitaka contains 1916 different books consisting of 8,416 Fascicles of which most were translated from Sanskrit and the originals are now lost in India.