China & Inner Asia: Table of Contents
Organizer: Susan Bush, Harvard University
Chair and Discussant: Robert Sharf, University of Michigan
Imagery can inform us about social and religious concerns of specific periods and locales, often filling in gaps in the textual record. Focusing on later Chinese art of the Song through the Qing dynasties, this panel explores issues of religious practice, patronage and audience in sculptural reliefs and temple murals. Angela Howard’s study of the Song Dazu reliefs that depict the Sichuanese patriarch of Esoteric Buddhism, Liu Benzun, focuses on his practices of self-immolation and their significance in Sichuan and throughout China. Filial excesses of self-sacrifice also occur in the Baoen jing, and Susan Bush compares narrative illustrations of this sutra in two Song and Jin Shanxi temples. Stories directed to a female audience occur at Kaihuasi; at Yanshansi, Guanyin acts as an exorcist while a penitent Hariti, Mother of Demons, adopts Buddhist austerities. From Song times on female divinities play prominent roles in religious imagery. Lu Ling-en’s paper on Ming murals in the Jiyi temple considers the dual nature of Jiang Yuan as the humanized mother of Houji, the god of agriculture, and as an agricultural deity in her own right. Finally, Klaas Ruitenbeek treats depictions of Mazu, Queen of Heaven. She functions as the patroness of sailors in a late Qing Fujianese temple, where a local artist painted her exploits in genre detail. In each of these papers imagery is discussed that is not found in extant official sources. Instead it often reflects local conditions and gives form to contemporary beliefs.
Angela F. Howard, Rutgers University
Liu Benzun was a legendary figure of western Sichuan active at the end of the ninth to the early tenth century in the area of Mount Emei, Chengdu, Xindu, and Guanghan. Reputedly he was the first patriach of Esoteric Buddhism in this region and the founder of a suigeneris religious movement which stressed the use of mantras (incantations) and self-mutilations for the welfare of his followers. In fact Liu successively amputated and burned ten parts of his body. These acts became the object of several sculptural representations in Sichuan that should be receiving more attention for both their religious and artistic significance. Liu Benzun’s importance was such that he inspired the making of Baodingshan, Dazu, the most extensive Song Buddhist site of China.
This paper explores the relationship of extant historical records and their visualization in the reliefs of Dazu and Anyue Counties with the goal of separating fiction from reality and understanding the reasons (patronage, clerical interpretation, proselytizing intent) for the divergencies between the written records and the sculptural images. Secondly, the paper asks whether developments such as self-immolation were confined to Sichuanese Buddhism or were present in other parts of China, and considers the factors that may have contributed to their widespread acceptance in Sichuan. Lastly, the reliefs are executed in a well established Song sculptural style.
Susan Bush, Harvard University
Inscriptions and donor portraits at these Song and Jin temples provide evidence for the patrons, clergy, artists responsible for the murals, and help define two different approaches to narrative illustration, a literary/temporal sequence versus a pictorial/spatial overview.
Kaihuasi was associated with a Later Tang Chan monk poet. Literate monks appear to have supervised the layout of Baoen jing murals in the rebuilt main hall, finished by 1096. Extant cartouches summarize the sutra and avadana stories illustrating Buddhist sermons directed to female audiences are placed over portraits of women donors.
Yanshansi, on a pilgrimage route to Wutaishan, was founded by a Jin emperor. In 1158 a Water-Land ritual was held there for the benefit of soldiers killed on a nearby battlefield. A Jin court artist was primarily responsible for the extant Manjushri Hall murals, completed by 1167 under local patronage. Cartouche labels highlight a map-like layout, where architecture and landscape frame events that occur at different times. On the west wall, cityscape scenes of the Sumedha jatataka and Shakyamuni’s life stress pollution and purification. An unrecorded version of Hariti’s pilgrimage on the east wall includes various agricultural occupations and types of beings. Another Baoen jing tale there is effectively obscured by the elegant architecture and blue-and-green landscapes that hark back to Northern Song court art.
As the products of distinct localities, these murals treat similar subjects quite differently. But they also indicate the relative influence of patrons, clergy and artists at these sites.
Ling-en Lu, University of Kansas
Murals in the Jiyi Temple at Yangwang, Xinjiang Prefecture, Shanxi, display assemblies of mythical figures of agriculture, hunting and forestry who were worshipped by the local people in the Ming period. Images of women in these murals, which include Jiang Yuan, an agricultural deity and various female attendants, blend Confucian ideals with local beliefs. Represented by means of iconographical and stylistic vocabularies derived from regional wall-painting traditions, these images humanize divine females in a way that contrasts with the hierarchial authority of the male "high gods" and officials in this temple.
Confucian scholars regarded Jiang Yuan as the exemplary mother of the agricultural pioneer Houji, but local people recognized her both as mother of the local god and as goddess of agriculture. The story of her giving birth to Houji, which was compiled in Han Confucian didactic literature for women, is revised in the murals as a narrative of miraculous birth with an emphasis on the mother’s value. Another unidentified female deity, conceivably a manifestation of Jiang Yuan, appears in a salient position on the east wall and demonstrates the divine power of agriculture with her attributes. Moreover, the court ladies shown in the inner halls not only function as servants of the enthroned deities but also emphasize the temple’s agricultural theme. In sum, while rooted in ancient tales and mural iconography, many of the female images in the Jiyu shrine must be understood in relation to the local agricultural cult to which the temple was devoted.
Klaas Ruitenbeek, Royal Ontario Museum
After Guanyin, Mazu is the most important female deity of China. The paintings, woodblock prints, and sculptures representing her and the miracles she performed form a separate category in Chinese religious art. Mazu was included in the state cult, and an "official" hagiography developed gradually from the Song Dynasty on. It was codified in the 17th and 18th centuries in a number of printed illustrated books. Various popular local traditions also existed.
The oldest Mazu representation is found in the 14th century murals of the Bilusi near Shijiazhuang, Hebei. There she is part of a large pantheon forming the entourage for the Water-Land ritual (shuiluzhai). All other existing Mazu paintings date to the 18th or 19th century. Most are in sets of 24 or 48 and show episodes from the official hagiography, which stresses the goddess’ support during naval battles or maritime expeditions. A set of murals in a small Mazu temple rebuilt in 1838 near Putian, Fujian, are quite different in nature. Many of the 56 panels, painted in 1880 by a local artist named Xue Yihao, illustrate stories such as Mazu’s ploys to avoid marriage that are not in the official record, and depict them with great gusto.
The paper focuses on the religious background, the style, and the narrative program of the Fujianese murals, which have never been published. For comparison, a number of paintings and prints illustrating the "official" hagiography will also be discussed.