Panel Two - Soteriology & Funerary Practices
Soteriology & Funerary Practices: April 6th, 2pm - 3:35pm EST
The philosophies and practices related to death are universal human issues that live on, paradoxically, through a rich spectrum of material vestiges. Through the rock-cut grotto, Tibetan thangka, or Tang mirror, women in medieval Buddhist societies from across Asia have sought salvation through the language of flora and fauna or in the landscape directly. This panel demonstrates that by reinvesting grotto excavation with new meaning, devising zoomorphic iconography or enriching the gendered associations of trees and insects, medieval Buddhist practitioners rearticulated soteriological aims through inspiration from their natural surroundings.
Discussant: Wei-Cheng Lin, Associate Professor of Art History, University of Chicago
Soteriology and Funerary Practices
“Sacred Landscape for Women’s Salvation: Tang (618–907) Burial Practices at the Longmen Grottoes”
Zhu Pinyan (Assistant Professor, Kent State University) - “Sacred Landscape for Women’s Salvation: Tang (618–907) Burial Practices at the Longmen Grottoes”
Like many other famous sites of Buddhist caves in China, the Longmen Grottoes was also a burial ground in the Tang (618–907) period. While donors dug the living cliffs to enshrine Buddhist statues, a few women in the seventh and eighth centuries excavated chambers on and near the cliffs to inter their own remains. In their tomb epitaphs, these women prayed to be separated from their husband’s family and to remain close to the Buddha and Buddhist masters. Contextualizing these pronounced justifications with two local tales of miraculous events, I argue that they reveal a common dilemma faced by Buddhist lay women in the early Tang: whereas young girls were imagined turning into seductive spirits, married women were expected to maintain her spousal and parental ties in the afterlife. Such posthumous imaginations created the urgency for women to proclaim socially acceptable alternatives to a conventional joint burial with their husbands. As a result, these women made the choice of preparing for their own burial in the sacred landscape of Longmen, and thereby literally connecting themselves to the community of their Buddhist teachers and colleagues.
“Perpetual Roar: Early Simhamukha Imagery in Ladakh”
Tori Andrews (PhD Candidate, Harvard University) - “Perpetual Roar: Early Simhamukha Imagery in Ladakh”
With the body of human and the head of an animal, images of dakinis populate tantric Buddhist visual programs. In western Himalaya, they hold a multivalent role in Buddhist practice and understandings of earthly, astronomical, and cosmological environments. My paper will focus on the representations and development of the lion-faced dakini Simhamukha (Tib. Senge dong ma) in tantric Buddhism in Ladakh. The unexpected discovery of a fourteenth century painted thangka of Simhamukha in a stupa inspired my paper and line of inquiry into the relationships between dakinis, the environment, Buddhist ritual, and funerary practices. The paper will begin by examining the environmental and soteriological inflections evidenced in this thangka and will investigate her continued role in navigating physical and meta-physical environments in Ladakh in later Simhamukha imagery.
The recently discovered thangka of Simhamukha prominently portrays the dakini at the center of the composition as a stand-alone figure. Five diminutive attending bodhisattvas surround her, and a white naga—a mythical environmental water spirit with both human and serpentine features—sits at her side. Beneath her, four donors kneel each holding a lotus stalk in their hands clasped at heart center. The portrayal of her as the main deity contrasts with the frequent representation of dakinis as marginal figures in accompaniment of male consorts. Many scholars have noted the most salient role of dakinis in tantric Buddhism is as a consort for male deities and practitioners “at key junctures in [their] course of development.” The thangka contrasts with this understanding of dakinis as more than auxiliary figures. My paper will build from the thangka’s unique representation of the lion-faced dakini to consider the autonomy of dakinis and their contribution to Buddhist spaces in Ladakh.
“Fragrant Flora: Gendered Aspirations and the Gui Tree in Medieval Chinese Art”
Isabel McWilliams (PhD Candidate, Harvard University) - “Fragrant Flora: Gendered Aspirations and the Gui Tree in Medieval Chinese Art”
This paper explores the blossoming of floral vocabulary in the visual arts of the Chinese Six Dynasties and Tang periods. In particular, this paper traces the development of the associations of the gui 桂 tree through a variety of sources. As the cinnamon cassia, the tree signals first and foremost the iconography of the moon, the remote and cold environment on which the tree grows and which is also home to the legendary goddess Chang’e. The metaphoric potential of the tree gained several nuances in the centuries following the Han dynasty, especially through homophones: known for being homophonous with the word gui 歸 meaning to “return,” this paper considers the full spectrum of associations of the gui 桂 tree, which go beyond the pun and rely on the qualities of the tree itself. In so doing, the gui is even revealed to possibly allude to two species at once– the cinnamon cassia and the sweet osmanthus tree. By probing a variety sources, in particular the poetry of the Tang period and epitaphs from preceding centuries, this paper demonstrates how the visual rhetoric of Tang bronze mirrors capitalizes on the full spectrum of the gui’s associations, revealing contemporaneous attitudes about the mortal female and the power of the mirror as a tool for interior exploration.
