A T'ang Parinirva Stele

Author(s): Alexander C. Soper

Source: Artibus Asiae, Vol. 22, No. 1/2 (1959), pp. 159-169
Published by: Artibus Asiae Publishers
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3249153 .
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ALEXANDER C. SOPER
A T'ANG PARINIRVANA STELE
T
he
T'ang
Buddhist stele to be discussed below stands
-
or stood in
1941,
when it was seen
and
photographed by
the
Japanese archaeologists
Mizuno and
Hibiya
- in one of the
buildings
of the Confucian shrine in the
prefectural
town of
I-shih,
in the southwestern
tip
of
Shansi.
Along
with a
great variety
of other
sculptural
and architectural
monuments,
it has been
published
in the
exemplary guide-book
that records the finds made
by
the two
Japanese along
the
valley
of the Fen
River,
downstream from
T'ai-ytian-fu'.
It seems to me to warrant further
notice here for two main reasons. It is a work of
extraordinary
interest,
and deserves more
prolonged
examination than could be
given
it in the restricted dimensions of the Shansi
report.
In
addition,
the latter is
probably
not well known outside of
Japan,
and its rich store of in-
formation is accessible
only through
the
Japanese language.
The stele is a
large
one,
2.81 metres
high,
with the
interlacing dragon
crown and the tortoise
base common to monumental
T'ang practise (figs.
i, 2).
Both faces are
elaborately carved,
for
the most
part
with scenes that deal with the Buddha's
Parinirvina. Unfortunately
the stone
stands too close to the wall to
permit
more than the front to be
photographed.
On this side a
dado-like area is left at the bottom for donors' names and titles
(fig. i).
Then
follow,
in ascend-
ing
order:
The Buddha's last formal
preaching,
at the house of
Cunda;
The
entry
into
Nirvana.
Four smaller
scenes,
intended to be read in a clockwise
sense,
beginning
at the
upper right
(fig. 2).
These show:
Queen Maya's
lamentation over the closed
coffin;
The miraculous
rescuscitation,
and last words to
Maya;
The funeral
procession;
The cremation.
In the area between the
dragon legs
rises Mount Sumeru.
A title for the stele runs down the frame between the four small
panels, reading:
"Great
Chou, Great Cloud
Temple; humbly
on behalf of the Sacred and Divine
Imperial Majesty,
one
stele with scenes of the
Nirvania
has been
reverently
made."
("Chou"
was the
dynastic
name
assumed
by
the
usurping empress-dowager, Lady Wu, for the
period
of her titular rule, 690-705.)
The
description
of the rear face
given
in the Shansi
report might
be rendered as follows2:
I
Mizuno S. and
Hibiya T.,
Shansai
Koseki-shi, Kyato, I956;
a research
report
of the
Jimbun Kagaku Kenkyi-sho
of
Ky6to
University. My
illustrations are
reproduced through
the kindness of Professor Mizuno.
2 Ibid., pp. 153-54.
'59
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"First,
between the
dragon
forms,
a
reliquary pagoda
is carved. The
body
of the stele is divided
into three tiers. In the
top
tier is shown the scene of the
partition
of the relics between the
eight
kings.
At the center is a
large
relic coffer with an
enclosing
screen,
supported by
four naked
men.
Single
monks are seated on left and
right,
while two more stand on either side above
them,
behind the coffer. In the
foreground, arranged
on
diagonals,
are four
kneeling figures,
who look as if
they
were
being given something.
To left and
right
of these kneelers are a total of
eight
men,
with attendants behind
them,
all
reverently facing
the
coffer;
so that
they
must be
the
eight kings
who are
receiving
the relics.
"The middle tier has at its center a Buddha seated with
legs
down,
on a lotus stalk. He is
flanked on
right
and left
by
Buddhas
squatting
on
multiple
lotus
thrones,
with
overhanging
skirts.
Judging
from the
inscription alongside,
the central
figure
must be
Maitreya
and the left-
hand one
Sakyamuni.
The
other, then, may
be Amitabha. Between the three Buddhas stand four
Bodhisattvas,
all on lotus stalks."
"The bottom tier has a votive
inscription
entitled 'Stele for the
Two-storeyed Maitreya
Pavilion of the Great Cloud
Temple, Ta-yuin-ssu'..."
"The ends of the stele show lions at the bottom and then mailed
Vajrapani figures.
Above,
a
lotus stalk in rinceau form holds a Bodhisattva within each of its
loops, making
four in
all."
With reference to the
inscription,
the
Japanese summary
notes the names and titles recorded
for the
composer
of the
text,
the
calligrapher,
and the "chief
supervisor
of the stele's manu-
facture",
i. e. the master
sculptor.
The
temple's prior
is called a native of I-shih - the old
place
name has survived
unchanged.
The
inscription goes
on to state that "on the
twenty-fourth day
of the second month of the second
year
of T'ien-shou
[i.
e.
691]
the
temple
was renamed Ta-
ytun-ssu
in
conformity
to
law;
while in the
following year
its title was
again changed,
in con-
formity
to
law,
to
Jen-shou-ssu,
the
Temple
of
Mercy
and
Longevity3."
At the end is a dedi-
catory phrase
dated
858;
but the
Japanese
dismiss this as a later
addition,
pointing
out that the
inscription proper
contains the
special
characters used
during
the
empress dowager's
"Great
Chou"
regime,
and must
certainly
have been executed in
692. They
note that the stele was
brought
into the town in
1921
from an old hillside
temple
which still bears the name
Jen-shou-
ssu,
and is said to have been founded in the Sui
dynasty.
Its brief existence as
Ta-ytin-ssu
was
unquestionably
due to the
operation
of one of those
sweeping
edicts
by
which the
usurping
Lady
Wu showed her
might.
A
spurious
Buddhist
scripture,
the
"Sfitra
of the Great
Cloud",
had been
interpreted
in
690
to
prove
that she was none other than
Maitreya
in His next-to-last
incarnation,
and so was
divinely
destined to rule over the whole world. To
exploit
this revelation
as
fully
as
possible, temples
were
founded,
or
appropriated,
in the satra's name
throughout
the
empire,
to house
copies
of the text4.
Presumably
the I-shih
monastery
received not
only
a new
name, but a new
major building,
a
lofty pavilion
dedicated to
Maitreya;
while the
propaganda
importance
of the latter
deity explains
His
presence
on our stele, alongside
a
cycle
otherwise
devoted
exclusively
to
Sakyamuni.
Since almost all of the Buddhist art of the Far East was
produced
under
strong Mahayana
inspiration
and so showed little interest in
Sakyamuni's
earthly career, representations
even of
3
The whole text of the
inscription
is
published
in the Chinese
anthology
Shan Yu Shih K'e
Ts'ung-pien,
v.
4 On this
act,
see the Buddhist
encyclopedia
of Mochizuki
S., Bukkyj Daijiten,
Taky6,
1936 (2nd. ed.), pp. 3195-96, entry
"Daiunji".
Also L.
Wieger,
Textes
historiques, Hsien-hsien, 1923, II, pp. 1380-81.
16o
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Fig. I
Parinirv;qna
stele of
692,
lower half
I-shib, Shansi
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Fig.
2
Parinirv.na
stele of 692, upper half
I-shih, Shansi
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the
dogmatically
central scene of the
Parinirv.na
seem
always
to have been
infrequent
there.
Narrative
cycles
devoted to the whole
sequence
of events
preceding
and
following
the "Great
Release" must have been rarer
stills.
No other
example
known to me is
quite
as
leisurely
and
generous
in its
story-telling
as our
present
stele. Two other
examples,
frescoes at
Tun-huang,
approach
it
closely
in
iconography,
and
suggest by
their
greater fluency
and
expressiveness
that
the theme is
likely
to have been first worked out
by painters.
On the remarkable
Parinirvina
wall of Cave
146,
which
may
be attributed to
roughly
the same
period
as the
stele,
the narrative
is set
against
a
panoramic landscape6.
The
episodes
are
informally ranged along
a
sinuous
line
of
action,
moving
and
rising
out of the lower
right
and
finally curving
back
again.
The three
partly
obliterated
groups
at the start must illustrate the last
sermon,
the
entry proper,
and the
lamentation over the closed coffin. The
fourth,
which looks as if it had been
deliberately
iso-
lated for
greater emphasis, clearly
shows the miraculous
reemergence
of
Sdkyamuni,
who sits
on the
edge
of His
open sarcophagus
to
preach
to His
miraculously
recalled
mother,
kneeling
in the
guise
of a Chinese
queen.
Above,
the funeral
cortege
winds this
way
and that
through
a
rocky landscape, heading
toward a
bridge.
The
final,
indistinct
group
at the
upper right
must
stand for the
cremation;
a memorial
stfipa
is
just
visible. The
episode
of the
quarrel
over the
relics is transformed into an almost
gay
encounter of
galloping knights,
set like a frieze
just
under the cornice of the room.
The other fresco version occurs in two of the dado
panels
of the
huge,
late Cave
i 177.
Here,
perhaps
as an accidental result of the
general stiffening
and formalization seen
throughout
the
late
Tun-huang style,
the resemblance to the
stele's
design
is much closer. The
sequence begins
at the bottom of the left-hand
panel,
rises,
crosses at the
top,
and descends to the bottom on the
right:
i.e. in the same clockwise
sense,
though
with a different
starting-point.
The same main
episodes
occur. The
painter
has been more faithful to his
scriptural
authorities than the artist of
Cave
146,
and less
imaginative,
as the
temper
of his
age
made natural. The funeral
procession
is
shown outside the
city
of
Kudinagara, through
which the
siatras
insist that it traced an
elaborate,
crisscrossing
route before
halting
at the cremation
ground.
The relic
scene, finally,
is
staged
as
a
solemn,
symmetrical
distribution,
in the manner of the
panel
on the rear of our stele.
Detailed
analysis
of the stele is
possible
at
present only through
the
single
- but excellent -
photograph
taken
by
the
Japanese archaeologists.
To
begin
with the wide scene at the
bottom,
it is obvious that the literal
requirements
of the
story
have been
played
down to
permit
the use of a
typical Mahayana assemblage;
the intention
being perhaps
to
provide
one such
group, centering
on
Sdkyamuni,
on the front of the stele to
balance the
Maitreya group
on the rear.
Only
the
kneeling figures
of the lower tier,
in clerical
or
lay dress, and the
preaching Sgkyamuni
are
proper
to the theme of the last sermon. The
figure
at the center, seen from the rear in isolation, is
presumably
the
lay
devotee Cunda of the
s
For
general
comments on this
sequence
see A.
Foucher,
La vie du Bouddha
d'apres
les textes et les monuments de
l'Inde,
Paris, 1949, pp. 30Iff.;
for a close
analysis
of the
early
textual
evidence, J.Przyluski,
"Le
ParinirvIina
et les funerailles
du
Bouddha,
examen
comparatif
des
textes," Journal Asiatique, IIe
ser.
XI, 1918,
continued in
XII, XIII,
and
XIV;
for
the material available in Chinese
translations,
Matsumoto
E., Tonki-ga
no
Kenkyz,
Thky6,
1937, Pp. 235-49.
6
Ibid., pp. 238-39, pl. LXXXIV, b;
P. Pelliot
Lesgrottes
de
Touen-houang, Paris, 1914, pl.
CCCXXI.
7
Matsumoto, pp. 235-38, pl. LXXXIV, a; Pelliot, pl.
CCXIV. This is one of the latest donations of the local
ruling
house of
Ts'ao,
executed in the
early years
of the
Sung dynasty.
163
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village
of
Pava,
whose
generosity provided
a last meal for the Buddha and His
discipless8.
The
rectangle
in front of him
must
represent
an altar-like
table,
on which the
maigre
feast is set out
in various
types
of containers. The
upper
tier of Bodhisattvas and
gods, miraculously
seated or
standing
on lotus
blossoms,
lend the scene the
incongruous
look of a Paradise. Their
arrange-
ment, indeed,
shows a
simple
version of the formula that underlies all the
great
Paradises,
or
Paradise-like
assemblages,
found in the
Tun-huang
frescoes of the
eighth century
and later. Their
actual effect is more
closely paralleled,
however,
in the kind of sacra
conversazione
found in the
round in the
T'ang
caves of
T'ien-lung
Shan. The latter
site,
some zoo miles
upstream
from the
old "Great Cloud
Temple",
in the
vicinity
of the
provincial capital, provides
several
fairly
close
approximations
of the stele
panel's figure style.
The
grouping
and characterization of the deities
are
recalled,
in a somewhat stiffer and
perhaps slightly
earlier
rendering,
in Cave XVIII. The
small,
ruinous triad of Cave V is
quite
like the three
major figures
of the
stele;
while the
single,
squatting
Bodhisattvas of Caves IV and VI differ
chiefly
in
being
shown with an air of
alertness,
rather than the
stele's
languorg.
The
standing deity type,
which lacks both the elaborate crown and the
double,
crossing
scarf lines of the earlier
T'ang
and Sui
styles,
is
essentially
that
repeated
in the
Ch'ang-an
reliefs
of
Pao-ch'ing-ssu,
several of which are dated in the first
years
of the
eighth
centuryIo.
The
figure
on
S~kyamuni's right
also recalls the
standing
Bodhisattvas of Cave
146
at
Tun-huang,
and so
helps
in
linking
the
latter's
frescoes to the stele
cycleII.
The
important
elements in the
Parinirvana
scene above define it as a transitional
design,
combining
both ancient and modern details. The Buddha's
pose, particularly
the use of the
right
hand to
support
the
head,
is the traditional
one,
which
may
be traced back to Gandharan
sculpture
and to the Nirvdna
scriptures;
in almost all other versions in the Far East both arms
are extended and enclose the trunk. The
complexity
of the
group
of mourners is still
fairly
restrained,
being
not much
greater
than that seen in the late
Gandharan
relief from
Loriyan-
tangaiIz.
The later Chinese
development
moved toward a
picturesque universality.
The so-
called
"VWu
Tao-tzu"
paintings
in the late
Sung style,
as seen for
example
in the excellent
Japanese copy
at the museum in
Cologne, exaggerate
to the utmost
degree
the differences be-
tween the
attending figures,
and
push
their
expressions
of
grief
to the
verge
of caricature's.
Even
so,
the human and divine mourners and the
figure
of
S~kyamuni
Himself seem in that
age
to have been found too traditional to
carry
the full burden of
pictorial
interest. As a result
they
are backed into the middle
distance;
while the whole of the
foreground
is surrendered to the
animal
kingdom,
rendered with an even more bizarre combination of realism and
grotesque
pathos.
The much more conservative
stage
reached
by
the middle of the ninth
century
is recorded
8
Foucher, pp. 304-306.
The
early
texts
innocently speak
of a meal of roast
pork,
which
proved
fatal to
k5kyamuni's
already
enfeebled
body.
The late account
quoted by Mochizuki, pp. 2525-26, entry "Junda",
has
yielded
to the
dietary
strictness of
full-fledged
Buddhist
monasticism,
and so
speaks
instead of a
cryptically-named,
but
certainly vegetarian
dish,
"ears from the sandalwood tree".
9 Naito
T.,
Tenrydzan, T6ky6,
1922, pls. 75, 31, 34, 33 respectively.
10
O. Siren,
Chinese
Sculpture, London, 1925, pls.
391ff.;
Omura
S.,
Shina
Bijutsu-shi,
Ch&so-hen,
Tokya, 1915, pls. 330ff.;
et alia.
11
Pelliot, pl.
CCCXX.
i2 Foucher,
L'art
grico-bouddhique
du
Gandhdra,
Paris, 1905, fig. 277.
13
A. da
Silva-Vigier,
The
Life of
the
Buddha, London, 19 55, pls. 130-31.
164
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by
the
Japanese pilgrim
Ennin
among
the
sights
of the
great pilgrimage
center Wu-t'ai
Shan,
in north central Shansi. He
saw,
in the words of his
diaryI4:
"The sixteen-foot
figure [of
the
Buddha] lying
on His
right
side beneath the twin
trees;
the
figure
of the
Lady Maya swooning
to the
ground
in
anguish;
the Four
Lokapalas,
the
Eight
Classes of
Demi-gods,
celestial
beings,
and a crowd of
saints,
some
holding up
their hands and
weeping bitterly,
some with their
eyes
closed in a attitude of
contemplation:
all executed in ac-
cordance with the
scriptures."
Our late seventh
century
version of the scene is not
clearly enough
shown in the
photo-
graph
to
prove
the
presence
of
any supernatural beings beyond
the two
Apsarases
in the
sky.
Two mailed warriors at the far
right may
stand for the
Lokapalas.
A male
figure
next to
them,
holding
a staff-like
object
above his head with both
hands,
is
likely
to
represent Vajrapani
throwing
his
golden
mace on the
ground,
as some of the texts describe him. The rest of the
crowd
may
well be
composed merely
of monks and of the male and female devotees from the
city
of
Ku'inagara.
The
beginning
of an interest in the
grief
of the animal world is evident in
the
figure
of a lion at the lower
right,
with his
forepaw
on a
step
of the funeral couch. In the
great K6yasan Nirvana picture
of
io86,
which
probably
derives from some
early Sung original,
there is
again
a lion in the same corner -
shown, however,
rolling
on his back in an absurd
abandonment to sorrows5.
The
extraordinary crouching
form in the left
foreground
of the stele
panel
has so far defied
decipherment.
Some of its details
suggest
a human
figure wearing
a fantastic
headdress,
bending
almost to the
ground
and
clutching
his
right thigh; roughly
similar
beings, representing
the
demi-gods,
are found in the
foreground
of the
K6yasan picture.
There seems to be no
Queen Maya
in the
panel.
The
single
monkish
figure
who bows his
head over the Buddha's feet is
probably
Maha
Ka-yapa.
Mention of these two
persons requires
a brief
digression.
The
fully developed iconography
of the
Parinirvina permitted emphasis
to be
given
to one or another of four
secondary figures
associated in various
ways
with the Buddha's
passing.
The natural first candidate would seem
to have been
Ananda,
Sdkyamuni's
faithful attendant and
helper.
Ananda's
importance
for
the
early
Church, however,
was
gravely compromised by jealous
rivals. His role in the
growing
Parinirv.na
legend
came to be
obscured,
or was even
reinterpreted
to his detriment. In con-
sequence
he was celebrated
only rarely;
and
probably
nowhere else with the
unique majesty
given
him in the
colossal,
twelfth
century,
rock-cut
group
at
Polonnaruva
in
CeylonI6.
The old Brahman
Maha
KaSyapa,
Ananda's
chief
opponent, admittedly played
no
part
in the
Buddha's last
days.
His adherents were shrewd
enough
to turn his late arrival into a
propaganda
asset. It was said that in his absence the mourners were unable to
light
the funeral
pyre; and
even more
impressively,
that
Sakyamuni
- who had willed to remain unburned until the
great
disciple
should come to bid him farewell - vouchsafed at the end a still
stranger
miracle. As
Kifyapa
knelt at the foot of the coffin, his master's feet
emerged
to receive his salutation. When
'4
Adapted
from the translation
by E.
O. Reischauer,
Ennin's
Diary,
New
York, 1955, pp. 224
and
230 (the description
being given twice,
in not
quite
identical
forms).
's Frequently reproduced, recently
in Fine Arts
of
the Heian
Period, Kyato, 1958, pl. 17-18.
I6 Da
Silva-Vigier, op. cit., pl.
15
.
I65
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they
were
withdrawn,
the
pyre
burst
spontaneously
into flame. This moment was
particularly
stressed in the late
Hinayana
cave
paintings
of the Kucha
style17.
Another Brahman
ascetic, Subhadra,
emerged
from
anonymity
in the Buddha's final hours
as the
last,
personal
convert,
accorded immediate sainthood
by Sakyamuni's dying
wish. When
his
part
of the
legend
reached its full
growth,
he was said to have
preceded
his master into
Nirvaina, ending
his life in the
voluntary
cremation of the "fire
samadhi."
An isolated
position
in front of the funeral couch identifies him in certain
Gandharan
reliefs
8 ;
he
reappears
there with
a silhouette of flames in the fresco of Cave
I
17
at
Tun-huang.
The most
expressive
role was that won
by
the Buddha's mortal mother. All the
early
accounts
had
agreed prosaically
that
Queen Maya
died a week after His birth. Pious
speculation
had
imagined
her as reborn in the Heaven of the
Thirthy-three
Gods;
one train of
thought assigned
her the further reward of a male
bodyi9.
To
give
this bleak karma
diagram
some semblance of
human
warmth,
two mother-and-son
legends
were invented. The
earlier,
current at least
by
the
period
of the Bharhut
sculptures, imagined
the Buddha at the
height
of His career
undertaking
a
pious
ascent to His mother's
heaven,
to
preach
to her - re-feminized - and her fellow
deities20o.
The second
story,
which made the divine
Maya
a
participant
in the lamentation over her
son,
was
probably
formulated a
good
deal later. It is not mentioned
among
the
aspects
of the
Pari-
nirvana
that the Chinese
pilgrim
Fa-hsien found commemorated at
Ku'inagara
in the
early
fifth
century21.
On the other hand it does
appear,
full-blown,
in the Mahd
Myad
Sitra,
a
brief,
minor
scripture
which was translated into Chinese at
Nanking during
the last
quarter
of the same
century2z.
The crucial
passage
runs:
'Thereupon
Maha
Maya...
came down from the
sky, hastening
to the
place
where the twin
trees
grew.
On
reaching
the sala
grove
and
seeing
from a distance the Buddha's
coffin,
she was
overcome
by
an unbearable sorrow. When the
gods
had
sprinkled
water on her face and so
brought
her back to
consciousness,
she went
straightway
to the
coffin,
and bowed her head
upon
it in adoration... Then the World-honored
One, using
His
supernatural powers,
com-
manded all the lids of His
multi-layered
coffin to
open spontaneously.
He Himself rose out of
the coffin with hands
pressed together, bursting
forth like a
lion-king
who rushes from his
cave;
while from
every
one of the
hair-pores
of His
body
there shone forth
Iooo
rays
of
light,
each
containing Iooo miraculously-created Buddhas..."
The account
goes
on to tell of the words of consolation and wisdom which He bestowed
before His second and irrevocable
disappearance.
I cannot
argue
here the
question
whether this
extraordinary
turn of the
Parinirv.na
legend
was invented
by
late
Hinayana preachers
in India
proper,
or was borrowed in the
passage
of Buddhism
beyond
the northwest
frontier,
from some
I7 E.g. A.Griinwedel, Alt-Kutscha, Berlin, 1920, pls.
XLIV-XLV.
18
E.g. H. Ingholt, Gandhdran Art in
Pakistan,
New
York, 1957, figs. 138-140.
An earlier
Tun-huang
version
showing
the
Arhat
enveloped
in flames is that of the Sui cave
I26B;
see Basil
Gray,
Buddhist Cave Paintings
at
Tun-huang, Chicago,
1959, pl. 27.
I9 Foucher, Vie, pp. 65-69.
20
Ibid., pp. 274-277.
2,
Trsl. by S.
Beal,
Buddhist Records
of the Western
World, London, 19o06, I, p.
lii.
22
Translated
by T'an-ching
under the Southern
Ch'i;
no.
382
in
Nanjio's catalogue; reprinted
in the
Japanese Tripitaka
Daizgjky6,
XII, pp. IOI2c-IOI3a.
The mid seventh
century
Chinese
pilgrim Hsuan-tsang
tells much the same
story,
and
claims to have been shown at
Ku'inagara
a
stiipa marking
the
spot
where
Mdyd
mourned:
Beal, op. cit., II, p. 38.
The
scene of the
emergence
from the
golden
coffin was isolated and
given
its most monumental treatment in
Heian Japan,
in the
great picture belonging
to
Ch6haji
in
Kyato (reproduced
in color in Fine Arts
of
the Heian
Period, pl. 2).
I66
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other
religion
in which the
sorrowing
mother theme had been
long
established. The
point
to
be made is
simply
the fact that the material
provided by
the
Maya episode
and those of the other
three human
protagonists
was treated
by
artists in a
variety
of
ways. Conceivably
there were
illustrative
cycles
of such
length
and
completeness
that all
aspects
of the
legend
could be
pre-
sented in their
proper chronological sequence.
Most often the theme was summed
up
in the
single
scene of the decease. In that case the late artists
usually preferred expressive
richness to
narrative
accuracy,
and so added one or both of the
key figures
who should have
appeared only
in a later act. As we have
seen,
the Wu-t'ai Shan version
reported by
Ennin included "the
figure
of the
Lady Maya swooning
to the
ground
in
anguish."
She
appears
- with the
greater
dignity
of an earlier
period
- as the
single,
non-monkish mourner in the
strange
Northern
Ch'i
relief of Cave V in the southern
Hsiang-t'ang
Shan
group23.
The
designer
of our stele omitted
her because his
cycle permitted
her introduction at the
proper
moment later. He
did,
on the
other
hand,
compress
the time
sequence arbitrarily by including
the
(for
the
Chinese,
less
interesting) figure
of
Maha
Ka~yapa.
The small stele
panel showing Maya
in the act of
embracing
or
swooning
over the closed
sarcophagus
is to the best of
my knowledge unique.
The
T'ang
artist's
instinct for three-
dimensionality, setting
the coffin on a
sharply rising diagonal,
has made her
pose
so unusual as
to be at first
sight
difficult to
explain.
The costume and hairdresses of the ladies in this scene
seem to
represent
the kind of
compromise
with actual court fashions found two
generations
or
so later in the
Japanese painting
of
Kichij6ten,
with
drifting girdle
ends added to
express
the
etherial nature of
goddesses.
In
treating
the next
scene,
the Buddha's
preaching
from His
opened sarcophagus,
the stele
version stresses the act of
emerging literally;
in the
Tun-huang paintings Sdkyamuni
is
fully
seen,
and so
presented
with a more conventional
dignity.
The stele's
procession
suffers more than
any
of the other
episodes by comparison
with
the
greater
latitude and animation
possible
in
painting.
Reduced to its
essentials,
a litter with
bearers,
it seems to continue an
ancient,
secular
design
that had been rendered with
infinitely
more
imagination
in the Ku K'ai-chih "Admonitions" scroll. It
is,
at the same
time,
both like
and
superior
to the
Tun-huang
banner scene of
Queen Maya
in her
palanquin,
done
perhaps
in
the latter half of the ninth
century,
when the
T'ang style
at
Tun-huang
had lost much of its
vitalityz4.
The cremation
scene,
with its
energetic
stokers,
more
distantly
recalls
another,
earlier
Chinese
design,
the
burning
house and
fire-fighters
of the Kansas
City
sarcophagus5s.
The
illustrative
requirements
of the two are so unlike that the
comparison
is
perhaps chiefly
useful
23
Mizuno and
Nagahiro T.,
The Buddhist Cave-temples of Hsiang-t'ang-ssu, Kyoto, 1937, pl. 23
A. The
composition
is curi-
ously
like a
Quattrocento
Last
Supper scene,
with
Maya
in the
isolated, foreground position
of
Judas.
The
unique
prominence given
the
mourning
mother makes one wonder whether the cave
may
not have been vowed
by
a Northern
Ch'i
empress
who had known the same sorrow. If this were
so,
the most
likely
candidate would be
Lady Li,
the consort
of the first
emperor.
When the latter's
younger
brother came to the throne in
561
as Wen
Ch'eng Ti,
he both
raped
the
beautiful widow and
brutally
slew her
remaining son,
the Prince of
T'ai-ytian.
Lady Li,
"a lover of
Buddhism",
became
a
nun,
and survived both the Chou and Sui
conquests.
She would
probably
have been
permitted
to dedicate a memorial
cave-temple
at
any
time after Wen
Ch'eng
Ti's death in
568
(he
had abdicated in
565).
See the Pei Ch'i
Shu, ix, p. 2a,
and
xii, p.
lb.
24
Matsumoto, Tonk&-ga, pl. LXXIII, b;
or Sir M. A.
Stein,
The
Thousand Buddhas, London, 1921, pl. XXXVII.
25 L. Sickman and A.
Soper,
The Art and Architecture of China, Baltimore, 1956, pl. 52A.
167
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as a
way
of
highlighting
the
stylistic gap
between late Northern Wei and mature
T'ang.
The
stele's air of bustle and sturdiness is
obviously
much better suited to its theme of
action;
yet
there is
just enough similarity
in
gestures
and
body poses
to hint at a
possible continuity.
The
crowning
relief of Mount Sumeru summarizes the salient features of the kind of fan-
tastic
description
that is
given
in the Sanskrit collection of
"Long
Sermons",
the
Dirghdgama,
which was translated into Chinese around
400
at
Ch'ang-anz6.
The familiar
hour-glass shape
is
crowned
by
the
palaces
of Indra's heaven. The extent of the celestial
city
is
suggested by
mini-
ature walls
running
back on reverse
perspective
lines. Of the three
buildings
in the
foreground,
those on left and
right
are shown as wood-framed halls with tiled
roofs,
in the
pure
Chinese
style.
The structure at the center -
unfortunately damaged
- looks like a
two-storeyed masonry
pagoda
of a more
hybrid design;
the Buddhist Church was
always
anxious to redeem the
traditional
voluptuousness
of life in Indra's realm
by insisting
that it revolved around a fervent
worship
of the Buddha.
Half-way up
the world-mountain are the foothills of the Four
Lokapalas,
three of whom are
shown seated on their
respective peaks
in the Indian
prince's pose.
The
Dirghdgama
account
lingers
over the mountain's
staircase,
fashioned of the Seven
Treasures,
with
parapet
walls and
railings;
lower, middle,
and
upper
sections are
mentioned,
each narrower than the one below.
The
sculptor
has turned these into a
sweeping, spiral ramp.
The
tiny figures moving up
and
down
probably
owe their
presence
to the attention
paid
Mount Sumeru in an even more famous
scripture,
the Vimalakirti Sfitra: the text
specifically
mentions that the
jewelled
staircase is used
by gods
who descend to
Jambudvipa,
and
by
mortals
mounting
to
heavenz7.
The frames between the stele's relief
panels
are filled with a fine-line ornamentation. The
wider surfaces contain a
clearly
drawn floral
rinceau,
with blossoms
facing alternately up
and
down. A
similar, though
somewhat richer
pattern
occurs on the inner frame of the stone
epitaph-lid
of the
T'ang general Ch'iian Nan-sheng,
a north Korean
renegade
who died loaded
with honors in
67928.
The stele's narrower frames are decorated with a
simple, repeating
motif,
which
might
be described as a
puffy
cloud-scroll with a
hanging
tail. Here a convenient
parallel
exists with the
early eighth century epitaph-lid
of a
Lady
Tu-ku,
wife of the court official
Yang
Chih-i,
with whom she was buried. The latter
stone,
and the
corresponding
ones done for
Yang
himself in the same
style
- he died in
716
- show
throughout
the
greater floridity
and
sophisti-
cation that
began
to overtake
T'ang
decorative art after the
Empress
Wu's
reign
had
closedz9
It
may
be noted in conclusion that the
Japanese party
found a second
Parinirvana stele, very
similar in
style
and
iconography
but
lacking
its
top,
and
undated,
among
a collection housed in
one of the
prefectural buildings
of
An-i-hsien,
just
southeast of I-shihso. Here
only
the bottom
two wide
panels
are
preserved (and apparently only
the front and ends are
carved).
Both the
preaching group
and the scene of the decease include the
figure
of
Maya, occupying
the con-
26 No. 545
in
Nanjio's catalogue; transl.
in
412-13
under the title
Ch'ang A-han Ching by Buddhaya'as;
Dai.Zkyj,
I,
no.
I,
xviii, p. I14.
27
Matsumoto, op. cit., pp. 157-58 quotes
the relevant
passage,
from
Daizjkyj,
XIV, p. 555.
28 Reproduced
in the Honan Provincial Museum's album of
rubbings,
Ho-nan
Chin Shih Chih T'u, I,
1933.
Ch'iian's
bio-
graphy appears
in Hsin
T'ang Shu,
cx.
29
Reproduced
in Ku-tai Chuang-shih
Hua-wen
Hsiian-chi, Hsi-an,
1953,
pls. 55, 57. Yang's biography appears
in Chiu T'ang
Shu,
lxii.
30
Shansai
Koseki-shi, pp. 113-14.
i68
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spicuous positions
that on the
I-shih
stone were
given
to Cunda and to Mahd
Kdayapa,
re-
spectively. Just enough
remains of the third tier to
prove
that it was divided into left and
right
panels.
The
right
side shows what look like the
legs
of the
pallbearers,
and the left
apparent
traces of the coffin and
Maya. Obviously
the
iconography
of the
cycle
was far from
inflexible,
even in the same
region,
and
during (what
the
Japanese
take to
be)
the same
period.
From a
quite
different
standpoint
it is
interesting
to note that the first-named donor bore as his
given
name the Chinese
equivalent
of
Bhaisajyaguru,
i.e. Yao-shih.
CHINESE AND
JAPANESE
GLOSSARY
An-i-hsien
~
,
Choh6ji : R
t
y
Ch'ang
A-han
Ching & pJ &
Ch'tian
Nan-sheng _
Ennin
Hibiya
Takeo
H
UIA~5t
Ho-nan Chin
Shih Chih
T'u
"
?
n
~j M
I-shih-hsien
,g
Ku-tai
Chuang-shih
Hua-wen
Hsiian-chi - g g g g
Li, Lady
YS
Matsumoto Eiichi
@ g g--
Mizuno
Seiichi
7Kf --
Mochizuki Shinka
,f
Nagahiro
Toshio
:
Nait6
Torajir6 N)
-5
~
J
Omura
Seigai
7k
Pao-ch'ing-ssu
7
Shansai Koseki-shi LI
-
. Shan Yu
Shih
K'e
Ts'ung-pien gIj
7Mi
Shina
B!utsu-shi,
Chjso-hen
JiTC PZ-
Tenrytzan R
Tonko-ga
no
Kenkyz7
R
) A
Tu-ku, Lady gr
T'ai-ytian,
Prince of
Jg
5
T'an-ching
--
Wen
Ch'eng
Ti
?Zfq &
Yang
Chih-i
f A
-
169
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