Kāśyapa-Mātaṅga 迦葉摩騰 (also 攝摩騰 Shè Mó-téng; DILA Authority A000883), traditionally said to have died in CE 73, is the legendary first Buddhist missionary-translator to China. According to the Móu-zǐ lǐhuò lùn 牟子理惑論 and the Gāosēng zhuàn 高僧傳 (T2059, juan 1), he was a Central Indian (中天竺) Brahmin who reportedly came to Luòyáng 洛陽 in the Yǒngpíng 永平 reign of Emperor Míng 明帝 of the Eastern Hàn (specifically 永平 10 = CE 67), in response to the Emperor’s celebrated dream-vision of a “golden-bodied man.” He travelled together with 法蘭 (Dharmaratna / 竺法蘭) and on arrival was settled at the newly-built Báimǎ-sì 白馬寺 (“White Horse Monastery”) — a foundation traditionally regarded as the first Buddhist monastery in China. The two are credited jointly with the translation of the [[KR6i0483|Sì-shí’èr-zhāng jīng 四十二章經]] (T17 No. 784, “Sūtra in Forty-Two Sections”), the earliest reputed Chinese Buddhist scripture.
The historicity of the Mātaṅga–Dharmaratna mission is heavily disputed by modern scholarship. Henri Maspero (1934) and later Erik Zürcher in The Buddhist Conquest of China (Leiden: Brill, 1959/2007) have argued that the entire foundation legend, including the figures of Kāśyapa-Mātaṅga and Dharmaratna and the Báimǎ-sì origin story, is a Six Dynasties / Tang fabrication retrojected onto the Eastern Hàn to give Chinese Buddhism a prestigious foundation date. The historical introduction of Buddhism into China was a more gradual process attested earlier through merchant communities and the activities of 安世高 and 支婁迦讖. Mātaṅga is therefore best treated as a hagiographical figure rather than a historical translator; the Sì-shí’èr-zhāng jīng attributed to him is itself almost certainly a Chinese compilation drawn from earlier translated āgama and sūtra materials, not a single Indian text. He remains, however, one of the most culturally important figures in East Asian Buddhist memory, paired with 法蘭 in iconography, monastery foundation-narratives, and on the Northern-Sòng Báimǎ-sì site.