Organizer: Jinah Kim, Vanderbilt University
Chair: Tamara I. Sears, New York University
Esoteric religious practitioners have always occupied
a powerful, yet paradoxical, position in Indic society as both renunciants
and agents for social change. Recent studies by textual scholars have explored
the active role that ascetics played in shaping lay devotion in medieval India.
This panel looks beyond text to examine how material and visual culture formed
important loci for interactions between ascetics and lay devotional communities.
What can we learn about the relationship between ascetics and society through
an analysis of sacred objects and architectural spaces? In what ways was the
institutionalization of esoteric communities refracted through the production
of material culture? Can we understand physical objects as not merely reflecting,
but actively bringing about cultural transformations? Tamara Sears’s paper focuses on how changing relationships
between Saiva ascetics, lay devotees, and royal patrons were articulated through
the architectural space of mathas (monasteries) during the eighth through tenth
centuries in Central India. Jinah Kim turns to the esotericization of the Buddhist
book-cult in twelfth-century eastern India and suggests that the spread of illustrated
manuscript production to non-monastic sites resulted in the development of increasingly
complex iconographic programs. Rob Linrothe’s paper examines the integration
of Tantric Buddhism into Tibetan society through a series of murals on a
stupa in Zangskar that documents the participation of multiple communities in
the production of ritual space. Finally, Pika Ghosh investigates how ascetic
practices were incorporated into the Gaudiya Vaishnava devotional community
through the creation of differentiated temple spaces in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
Bengal.
Tamara I. Sears, New York University
The rise of Saiva religious movements in Southern Asia during the last few
centuries of the first millennium C.E. was fundamentally linked to shifts
in political authority, social organization, and lay devotional practices. In
recent years, scholars have charted the role that Rajagurus, royal religious
preceptors, played in the formation of state-sponsored ritual activities, particularly
in centers of textual production. This paper explores how interactions between
Gurus, kings, and lay devotees were formed and formalized through new architectural
developments, particularly in the development of mathas, or residential monastery
buildings. It focuses on a highly complex matha (monastery) at the central
Indian site of Surwaya (Shivpuri district, Madhya Pradesh) that was associated
with a prominent sect of royally-sponsored known as the Mattamayuras. One of
the earliest surviving fully intact Saiva mathas within the Indian subcontinent,
the Surwaya matha was built up in at least two or three phases over the course
of the eighth through tenth centuries. As a result, it provides a gradated
history of expansion and transformation that corresponds both with the Mattamayura
sect’s
institutionalization through royal patronage and with the expansion of religious
activity at the site. My presentation maps the development of complex spatial
programs designed to create differentiated zones for facilitating both exclusive
ascetic ritual practice and expressions of lay devotion.
Jinah Kim, Vanderbilt University
This paper explores two different trajectories of development in the Buddhist
book production during the twelfth century in eastern India by analyzing the
social, regional, and religious affiliations of patron donors and producers
of illustrated Buddhist manuscripts. It also investigates the spread of manuscript
production to non-monastic, non-institutional sites during the twelfth century
and examines how the shift in production relates to the advent of complex forms
of esoteric deities in the iconographic programs. Illustrated Mahayana manuscripts
have often been understood as products of monastic settings, where textual experts,
trained artisans, and skilled scribes were known to reside. A few surviving
illustrated manuscripts indeed bear the names of famous monasteries in eastern
India as the sites of their production, such as Nalanda and Vikramasila. However,
a cursory inspection of the colophons of dated illustrated manuscripts reveals
that by the mid-twelfth century, most illustrated manuscripts were being made
outside monastic centers. Even when the manuscripts were made within the monastic
communities, the donors were often lay persons of wealth and status. In fact,
the patronage pattern and the shift of production to non-institutional sites
suggest the laicization of Buddhist book production, while the involvement of
non-institutionalized acaryas as scribes and the advent of complex forms of
esoteric deities in the iconographic programs suggest esotericization of the
Buddhist book-cult. This paper examines how seemingly monastic products might
have transformed into lay and esoteric cult objects as the monastic communities
waned in eastern India during the twelfth century.
Rob Linrothe, Skidmore College
Paintings and inscriptions in a stupa (Tib. chorten) dubbed the Queen’s
Chorten above Karsha village in Zangskar—an area now within India’s
borders but culturally part of western Tibet—document a series of pivotal
shifts in the Buddhist landscape of the second half of the sixteenth century.
The stupa is built to accommodate in its interior four elevated walls and
a ceiling (now collapsed) onto which murals were painted. Thematically, these
paintings demonstrate rare ecumenical content. Although showcasing Gelukpa
themes, they also pay homage to another lineage important in the region, the
Drukpa Kagyud. Moreover, Tantric deities and famous practitioners of those and
other lineages such as Indian Mahasiddhas, Rechungpa (1085-1161), and Machig
Labdron (12th c.) are highlighted in the stupa murals.
This paper analyses the religious and social features reflected in these
late sixteenth-century paintings to elucidate the creative and organic ways
in which Tantra was folded into the communal fabric of this Buddhist village.
Monastic, aristocratic, and ordinary communities participated in the erection
of the stupa and documented their own roles in its construction, decoration,
and consecration. Although each had its own interests, collectively the murals
demonstrate the integration of Tantric Buddhism into Tibetan society as a privileged
arena for specialists in a kind of top-down pyramid. At the same time, the paintings
and inscriptions show that all levels of society could be mobilized around a
common cause.
Pika Ghosh, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
This paper explores how monuments and their imagery may have helped mediate
between more private practices and public displays of devotional communities.
A close examination of the visual evidence suggests that yogic practices
were incorporated into Gaudiya Vaishnavism, the community of Krishna worshippers
that cohered in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in north and eastern
India. Specifically, I analyze the introduction of the image of the ascetic
on the walls of Krishna’s temples in eastern India that seem to be dedicated
to recounting Krishna’s love affair with his beloved, Radha, and to the
public performance of song, dance, and storytelling. In conjunction with
this juxtaposition, in the terracotta imagery on the temple exterior are experiments
in spatial organization. I trace the process of creation of a more enclosed
private space at the back of the temple, while the front is reserved for
the expressive practices of the larger community. Like the imagery, the ground
plans thus indicate that the physical site of the temple is set up to create
multiple locations for the different practices and constituencies of this religious
community. Together, these shifts suggest that while the monuments are concerned
engaging the larger lay community, they also affirm and enable practice of the
more interiorizing paths of yoga and asceticism.
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