Organizer and Chair: Janet Baker, Bowers Museum of Cultural Art
Discussants: Valerie Hansen, Yale University; Annette L. Juliano, Rutgers University
The region of which is today Xinjiang province in China constituted a major cultural crossroads between China, Central Asia, Tibet and India from the seventh to the thirteenth centuries. Numerous excavated tombs and Buddhist temple complexes testify to dramatic developments in funerary and religious art that suggest iconographical links between the two functions as well as between geographical regions. The integration of Hindu deities into the Buddhist pantheon, the inclusion of Buddhist images in mortuary repertoire, the emergence of strongly Esoteric or Tantric doctrines into Chinese and Central Asian art, and finally the incorporation of political motives into religious patronage are issues which have heretofore not been thoroughly explored by art historians and scholars of other disciplines.
With the release of information regarding excavated sites and the formation of liaisons between scholars in Asia and those in America, new findings are currently being pursued that may lead to conclusions that allow further clarification or revision of existing theories about the cultural and ethnic milieu of Central Asia and the religious doctrines and political agendas which forged its complex artistic traditions.
The Image of the Heavenly King in Chinese Tombs and Temples
Janet Baker, Bowers Museum of Cultural Art
Excavations of tomb #206 at the Astana graveyards near Turfan yielded a rare wooden figure of a Heavenly King. According to the burial inscription, the chief occupant of this seventh-century tomb, Zhang Xiong, was a relative of the reigning King of Gaochang, who had close ties with the Sui and Tang court.
The Heavenly King figure can be traced to Khotan and Gandhara, deriving from Iranian deities and Kushan royal portraiture. The King of the North, Pishamen, appears in Chinese Buddhist caves at Yungang and Dunhuang during the 5th and 6th centuries. Through evidence pointing to imperial patronage, a link between Pishamen and Vairocana Buddha can be established. This was furthered by Empress Wu Zetian’s support of the Huayen School, dominated by Vairocana, and the emergence of Tantric doctrines which favored geometric delineations in tomb and temple design.
Comparison with the clay example from the tomb, dated 709, of central Anpu of Luoyang, indicates that individuals were singled out for the inclusion of the Heavenly King in their mortuary repertoire. Resistance to Empress Wu’s reign compelled her to turn to advisors such as General Anpu and Zhang Xiong for support. Her successor, Tang Xuanzong, promoted Pishamen as a protector against the threat of military violence to sacred places. Issues of political power and religious doctrine were resolved through the judicious adoption of images and scriptures by China’s rulers in a manner which linked China with Central Asia and Buddhist art with mortuary art.
Bezeklik and Early Esoteric Buddhism
Denise Patry Leidy, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Uighur patronage of the religious center at Bezeklik in Xinjiang adds a unique chapter to the history of esoteric Buddhism from the late ninth to the mid-thirteenth centuries. On the one hand, Bezeklik includes some of the earliest forms of esoteric imagery, such as certain manifestations of Avalokiteshvara, that are also known in China and Japan. On the other, this sight also contains examples of imagery associated with the later Anuttara-yoga tradition of Tibet. The position of Maheshvara (a form of the Hindu god Shiva) as the principle icon in the side chamber of Temple 20 represents one of the first examples of the inclusion of this deity into the Buddhist pantheon. The female divinities known as dakinis and the ascetics painted on the walls of this room provide additional parallels to Tibetan traditions.
Bezeklik also includes motifs—such as the ubiquitous pranidhi scenes, which depict a large standing Buddha with smaller worshipers—that illustrate the complicated layering of meanings which underlies the development of Buddhist thought and imagery. Visually, the so-called pranidhi scenes can be traced to Indian sculptures of large Buddhas with miniscule adorants that date from the late fourth and fifth centuries. Canonically, several can be identified with moments in past lives of Siddhartha/Shakyamuni during which his upcoming buddhahood is predicted. However, the vignettes of everyday life and the large assemblies in the Bezeklik murals suggest these paintings may also represent the esoteric Buddhist belief that enlightenment can be achieved in a single lifetime, and is available to all.
The Religious-Funerary Complex at Beiting
Nancy Shatzman Steinhardt, University of Pennsylvania
The subject of this paper is an architectural complex whose ruins lie in Beiting, known as Beshbaliq when it was a Uighur capital, today in Jimusa’erxian, Xinjiang. This paper will propose that the two-level, double-building complex was both a funerary shrine and temple of a Uighur prince in about the tenth century.
The proposed date of the structure is based on comparative evidence from wall painting in cave-temples in the Turfan region, notably at Bezeklik and Murtuk. The function of site is suggested by Buddhist subject matter in the murals, including portraits of Uighur royalty and a Uighur seated in a meditational pose, as well as a monumental image of the Buddha in parinirvana opposite those paintings and a Buddhist image in the core of one of the structures.
The building which contains the image at its core will be shown to be a stupa, one of which can be associated with freestanding architecture from the Uighur capital Qoco, in the vicinity of Turfan. It will also be suggested that the structure corresponds to that of central-pillar vihara-style cave-temples in Xinjiang and North China. The two-building complex also will be related to architecture in the Turfan region, but its sources will be traced to Buddhist monastery plans of sixth-century East Asia; and it will be shown to have links with architectural complexes of Soghdiana.