Organizer: Robert L. Brown, University of California, Los Angeles
Chair and Discussant: Donald S. Lopez, University of Michigan
Far from being a monolithic tradition, the legacy of Buddhism is its diversity and its ability to adapt to changes over time and across cultural boundaries. This panel invites both historians of Buddhism and art historians to examine closely the moments of change and transformation, and the junctures of thought and visual expression. Change over time may denote a shift in doctrinal emphasis; transformation across culture may indicate selective preference. Interpretations of these mutations have largely remained the domain of Buddhologists, while the traditional iconographical approach to studying Buddhist art is ill-equipped to grasp the nuances in the underlying changes. The panel calls upon cross-disciplinary and inter-area studies that would open up avenues and create dialogues in exploring the relationship between religious concepts and artistic expression set against the fluidity of doctrinal alterations and cultural metamorphosis.
Robert Brown revisits the perplexing issue of the achievement of a classical Buddha image type in Sarnath during the Gupta period. Looking beyond traditional, art historical explanations, his paper asks if important doctrinal concepts, abstractions like wisdom and means, with their gendered associations in the texts, may have influenced the representation of the Buddha. Trian Nguyen’s paper discusses both the doctrinal underpinning and textual source for visual representation of the ritual of feeding the hungry ghosts, an important Buddhist ritual that survives into modern times in Vietnam. It explores the way in which a text is enacted in the visual medium of ritual and artistic representation. Phyllis Granoff explores the symbolic meanings of houses and palaces in Indian Buddhist art and literature. Juxtaposing the multiplicity of meanings ascribed to architecture in a variety of texts and objects, the paper reflects on the strategy of interpreting objects in relation to doctrine and religious contexts. The paper goes back to the very fundamental issue of what constitutes an object of religious discourse and the role doctrine plays in defining such objects.
The Ritual of Feeding the Hungry Ghosts: Doctrinal and Visual Aspects
Trian Nguyen, University of California, Berkeley
This paper examines the image of Ananda honored in Vietnamese Buddhist temples in the context of the ritual of feeding the hungry ghosts. The Spell for Saving the Burning-Mouth Hungry Ghost is a key scripture that provides the doctrinal basis for one of the most important Buddhist festivals in China and Vietnam: the mass of feeding the hungry ghosts which takes place in the seventh lunar month. The paper investigates the doctrinal underpinning that led to the development of the hungry ghost festival and as a textual source for the creation of the image of Ananda presiding over the ritual.
The emphasis is also laid upon how the people came to perceive the ritual as part of their religious belief and to internalize it as moral requisites. Since the eighth century, the scripture has been used as the principal text in the ritual of feeding the dead and the hungry ghosts, which was performed not only in the seventh lunar month but also throughout the year. This ritual was regularly performed on behalf of recently-deceased relatives or for the uncared-for dead.
Finally, the paper also studies the visual aspect of Ananda feeding the hungry ghosts in the Vietnamese Buddhist tradition. Ananda’s portrayal is prominently displayed in sculptures, as the Buddha’s eminent disciple and attendant. In the text, Ananda saw a hungry ghost appear to him while he was in meditation; he later asked the Buddha for help in feeding the hungry ghosts. The paper thus addresses Ananda’s role in the ritual of feeding the hungry ghosts, wandering souls, and uncared-for dead, which hitherto has received little scholarly attention. It also includes discussion of contemporary practices of the ritual of feeding the ghosts in Vietnam. In examining the uniqueness of this ritual in Southeast and East Asian Buddhism and its survival into present times the paper addresses the way in which Buddhism adapts to local traditions. The historical popularization of this ritual also offers insight into the meaning of religious and social life of Vietnamese Buddhists which is reflected in the artistic expression.
Soteriological Androgyny: The Gupta-Period Sarnath Buddha Image and Buddhist Doctrine
Robert L. Brown, University of California, Los Angeles
A new type of Buddha image was created at Sarnath in the second half of the fifth century. It was a softened, non-aggressive, and feminized image. My paper asks if this new image type can be related to a change in Buddhist doctrine. There are a series of other explanations: concretization of lakshana, reaction to current Hindu and Jain imagery, stylistic development, and so forth, but these do not relate to a change in doctrine. In this paper, I ask if the new image type is in fact related to the development of Mahayana, with the combining of the feminine (wisdom/prajna) and the masculine (means/upaya) leading to enlightenment, mandated a less obviously masculine Buddha image. That the Buddha image itself served to combine both the feminine and masculine function at Sarnath is indicated as well by the almost complete absence of bodhisattva images, whereas some 300 Buddha images are listed from the site. The male and female roles played by the bodhisattvas and Taras at such contemporaneous sites as Aurangabad were apparently incorporated into the Buddha image itself at Sarnath.
Houses and Palaces: Changing Images in Indian Buddhist Art and Literature
Phyllis Granoff, McMaster University
This paper studies a group of objects to which was assigned different meaning in different religious contexts. In doing so it explores the wider issue of how objects are invested with doctrinal significance. Specifically I examine one group of objects that figures prominently in Indian Buddhist art and texts: buildings, from the simple houses of ordinary people to the lavishly described mansions of the wealthy. I begin with the Lotus Sutra parable of the burning house and a discussion of the associations between house and body in early Indian literature, as a contrast to the rich symbolic use of architecture in other texts. I focus on the Gandavyuha, in which architectural settings predominate. I will look at the various meanings given palaces and mansions in the text. The best known of these structures is the kutagara of Maitreya, and with it we see clearly that the house has now become not a negative object from which we must escape, but a part of a glittering revelation. I then turn to some Tantric texts in which the kutagara is one of many elements of a complex meditation/worship and is still differently understood. My interest is in trying to highlight some of the many different ways a single object could be represented in Buddhist art and literature.
Monks, Portraits, and Jain Beliefs about the Dead
Jack C. Laughlin, McMaster University
The Jain temples of Rajasthan contain a large number of portraits of lay people and monks. The majority of the images portray deceased individuals and thus, represent an aspect of medieval Jain memorial practice. Although some claim that the portraits of monks were intended as objects of veneration, this demands careful scrutiny for one third of monks’ portraits were donated by monks. Monks also sponsored Jina images and temple additions, some explicitly for the merit of themselves or other monks. I shall discuss portraits donated by monks, in the context of other monastic gifts, for the light they shed upon monastic self-identity and how the monastic donors conceived of their vocation. I contend that monks who donated portraits did not see themselves or their fellows as on the straight road to liberation, but were more immediately hopeful of rebirth in heaven. This short-term goal was furthered in one way by portraits of deceased monks which served as receptacles of merit for their subjects. Hence, the portraits point to an expectation of death and the afterlife among certain monks usually attributed only to the laity.