“This is an important work on the well known but little-studied Buddhist manuscripts created in eastern India during the last centuries of major Buddhist activity there. Her use of contemporary evidence in Nepal wonderfully grounds historical imagining of the cultic practices associated with books. Simply put, Jinah Kim has produced a scholarly jewel.” –Dr. Janice Leoshko, Professor at the University of Texas at Austin

“A dazzling demonstration of the centrality of the Buddhist book cult in medieval India and Nepal. Illuminated books come alive in the hands of their scribes, painters, and donors, and for the reader as well. The most important work on late Esoteric Buddhism and its relationship to Mahayana and society at large since Ronald M. Davidson’s 2002 Indian Esoteric Buddhism.” –Rob Linrothe, Associate Professor at Northwestern University

Jinah Kim is Assistant Professor of History of Art & Architecture at Harvard University.

Receptacle Of The Sacred

Illustrated Manuscripts and the Buddhist Book Cult in South Asia

By Jinah Kim

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Copyright © 2013 Regents of the University of California
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-520-27386-3

Contents

Acknowledgments, xi,
List of Figures in the Printed Book, xv,
List of Figures and Diagrams Online, xxi,
Introduction: Text, Image, and the Book, 1,
PART ONE. THE BOOK,
1. Buddhist Books and Their Cultic Use, 23,
2. Innovations of the Medieval Buddhist Book Cult, 43,
PART TWO. TEXT AND IMAGE,
3. Representing the Perfection of Wisdom, Embodying the Holy Sites, 73,
4. T he Visual World of Buddhist Book Illustrations, 113,
5. Esoteric Buddhism and the Illustrated Manuscripts, 149,
PART THREE. THE PEOPLE,
6. Social History of the Buddhist Book Cult, 213,
Epilogue: Invoking a Goddess in a Book, 271,
Notes, 287,
Bibliography, 351,
Index, 367,

CHAPTER 1

BUDDHIST BOOKS AND THEIR CULTIC USE

THE BOOK AND THE GODDESS

In today’s ritual worship of a Buddhist scripture performed in Kwa Baha, or the Golden Temple, in Patan, Nepal, a Vajracarya priest invokes the goddess Prajñaparamita to come into a book (fig. 1–1). The contemporary ritual that takes place around a treasured thirteenthcentury black-paper manuscript of the Astasahasrika Prajñaparamita (Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Verses) sutra, henceforth AsP, may not date back to the inception of the Buddhist book cult in the early centuries of our Common Era. But it reveals an intriguing issue regarding the relationship between the goddess and the book. In this twentieth-century version of pustaka puja, or the ritual worship of the book, the book serves as a vessel for the goddess to come into, and it becomes an icon of the deity throughout the ritual. There is almost a promiscuous absence of the goddess Prajñaparamita, the personification of the famed Mahayana philosophical text of the same name. Of course, her presence is clearly palpable through the sound of the text recited loudly and through physical communications that occur between her and her devotees. It is her form that is absent in this ritual. As a personification of the perfected (paramita) wisdom (prajña) that embodies the profound Mahayana concept of emptiness (sunyata), perhaps the absence of her visual manifestation itself represents her presence. But why is there a book in worship instead of an image of the goddess? How can a book replace a goddess when the possibility of “darsan (the divine grace through mutual gaze or seeing the divine),” the most quintessential aspect of devotional practices in Indic religions, practically disappears with this replacement? We will seek answers to these questions in subsequent chapters by exploring the history of illustrated Buddhist manuscripts in India. We will examine how a medieval Buddhist book was constructed as a sacred object and how its sacrality was intensified through various iconographic means and ritual interventions. Before entering the world of medieval Indian Buddhist manuscripts, understanding the historical process in which certain types of books emerged as the foremost sacred objects for Mahayana Buddhists will guide us to address this study’s central theme, the significance of a book as a material object. In this chapter, we will first examine how Buddhist books were used in ritual context historically and consider the nature of the Buddhist book cult in practice.

RITUAL USE OF BUDDHIST BOOKS

As written and material records of the Buddha’s teachings, books were important doctrinal assets for the Indian Buddhist traditions, especially for Mahayana Buddhists. In addition to the passages in the sutras and vinayas, we could glance at how some of the surviving manuscripts might have been used in cultic context in ancient and medieval India by examining the visual evidence that depicts books in ritual use. Scholastic use of manuscripts is easily attested from as early as the second to third century in a Gandharan relief where we see monks holding a manuscript in their hands and discussing the contents. It is in the Buddhist caves of Ellora excavated during the seventh century where we find some of the earliest surviving visual evidence for cultic use of a manuscript. Here we see a manuscript being used to invoke a goddess, paralleling the contemporary Nepalese practice mentioned above.

Upon entering the antechamber of Cave 6 at Ellora, we meet two impressive standing goddesses, Mahamayuri and Bhrkuti, flanking either end of the room. Mahamayuri is clearly identifiable, thanks to the presence of a peacock (mayur) with his fanned trains on the mid-left section, right next to the goddess. Below the peacock sits a monk on a bench to the lower left corner. His shaven head and red monk’s robe covering only the left shoulder bear out his monastic identity (fig. 1–2). He is seated with a narrow cross-legged table in front. On top of this table lies a book, a long, narrow rectangular object, represented in a typical pothi format of birch bark and palm-leaf manuscripts. This is most likely a manuscript of the Mahamayuri sutra. What is a monk doing with a manuscript at the feet of a goddess?

With his head tilted slightly downwards, the monk appears almost indifferent to the presence of the glamorous goddess. His mind is focused on the book in front of him. It is difficult to make out what he holds in his hands. It could be either an offering to the book as he worships the sutra or a folio of the book that he lifted up from the stack in front of him while reciting it to invoke the goddess. The book on the table is visually and physically connected to the goddess as one end of the book extends to the back and meets the end of her robe draped from her raised right arm. It is as if she has been generated from the book. As Mevissen speaks of this panel, “the monk, by virtue of his imaginative powers causes the divine energy of the text … to appear in his mind’s eye and materialize before him in an anthropomorphic form.” This panel seems to represent a process of transformation from a text to a goddess through a monk as a mediator. A simple ritual of beholding and reading a book with no elaborate ritual implement is so efficacious as to invoke an impressive protector goddess. The devotees can easily follow the monk’s activity as an exemplary model when they need the mercy of Mahamayuri’s presence. Although there is no textual instruction accompanying the panel, the visual message seems quite clear: to invoke the goddess Mahamayuri, one should worship and/or recite a book of the Mahamayuri sutra.

The panel establishes an interesting semiotic relationship between the book and the goddess. The goddess may be a symbol of the book, but it can be vice versa. Both the book and the goddess are, in fact, signs of the text, the Mahamayuri sutra, one indexical and the other symbolic, if we are to employ Piercean terms. The Mahamayuri sutra is an apotropaic text in which the Buddha explains the power of Mahamayuri against various disasters, including snake bites. Amoghavajra’s (705–774) Chinese translation of the Mahamayuri sutra, Fo-mu-da-kong-qiao-ming-wang-jing, which dates to the eighth century, begins with the story of a bhiksu named Svati ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) who was stung by a poisonous black snake. The snake bit his right foot and the venom quickly spread through his body. Ananda sees Svati in great pain and reports the situation to the Buddha and asks what is to be done. Hearing this, the Buddha mentions the great power of the Mahamayuri-buddhamatrika-vidyarajñi dharani ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], lit. “Great dharani of Mahamayuri, the Buddha mother-wisdom queen”), which destroys all sorts of poison, fear, calamity, and anguish. He instructs Ananda to protect Svati from calamity using this dharani. While the Chinese translation makes it clear that the text concerns the power of a dharani, in a later Sanskrit manuscript made in the eleventh century, the text is more ambiguous about what is signified in the epithet “mahamayuri vidyarajñi,” because the word dharani is omitted in the Buddha’s instruction to save poor Svati with this powerful tool. The context makes it clear that it denotes the dharani, but the term mahamayuri-vidyarajñi could also be an epithet of the goddess Mahamayuri as well as that of the entire text of the Mahamayuri sutra. Later in eastern India and Nepal, Mahamayuri was subsumed into a group of five protective goddesses, called Pancaraksa, and all five goddesses are symbols of the texts that they are supposed to personify. In the context of the Pancaraksa cult, which eventually developed within the frame of the Buddhist book cult, the goddess is the text, and the book becomes a container of both the goddess and the text. But this interpretation is not applicable yet in Cave 6 at Ellora. Here the book still remains a sign of the text, and the book and the goddess retain a more or less parallel semiotic relationship to the text.

If the nature of the monk’s activity was not entirely clear in Cave 6, the Mahamayuri panel in Cave 10, completed a few decades later, makes it clear that he is reading, or perhaps reciting, a book (see web 1–1). The panel is smaller in scale, and it is not as glamorous in its presentation. The body of the goddess also appears more robust in style. But the basic iconographic scheme remains the same. Mahamayuri is standing in the middle, with a strutting peacock in the mid-left section. The monk squats in the lower left corner, and it is clear that he is holding a manuscript in his two hands with his eyes downcast, as if reading carefully from the text. One end of a long pothi manuscript hangs low from his right hand over the rectangular object underneath. This rectangular object may be a bookcase that sits on a simple cross-legged book stand. Our monk is probably reciting the sutra, as his mouth seems slightly open, as a small gap in between his lips suggests. The efficacy of a dharani, and any mantra, is in sound. Given that surviving Sanskrit Buddhist manuscripts are written in scriptura continua, which would have made “silent reading” quite difficult, it is only sensible to assume that these texts were recited and vocalized. This panel, then, also suggests to us that Indian Buddhist monastic establishments were probably not as quiet as one might imagine, with many monks and novices reciting and reading out loud different texts simultaneously. According to this panel, the ritual of using a book for a cultic purpose required only two essential elements: a special book on a book stand to recite from and a reciter with an ability to read the text.

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE PRAJÑAPARAMITA CULT

Emergence of a book as a special object of worship is closely tied to the renewed popularity of the Prajñaparamita sutras in medieval India. The Prajñaparamita literature deals with the most fundamental Mahayana Buddhist philosophy for many Mahayana Buddhist schools. But was this text a super hit from the time when it originally appeared in the beginning of our Common Era? It had an enormous impact on the philosophical development of Mahayana Buddhist schools and had enthusiasts, but it seems to have attained “no great cult,” at least not until the ninth century. The later, received status of the text contributed to its legendary historical importance in our understanding. The composition of the Prajñaparamita text has been dated to the early centuries of the Common Era, largely based on the dates of Chinese translations. 15 The earliest Chinese translation of the Prajñaparamita literature was the translation of the AsP, done in 179–180 CE by Lokaksema (Taisho 220). The AsP seems to have enjoyed a privileged status as a favored text of scholastic Buddhism from early on: it was translated into Chinese six times beginning with Lokaksema’s translation and ending with Danapala’s translation in 985 CE. However, the earlier Chinese translations do not exactly match the surviving Sanskrit manuscripts of the AsP, most of which date from the eleventh and the twelfth centuries. The fact that the AsP was translated six times in eight hundred years not only reflects the enthusiasm over this text but also suggests the possibility that this text may have evolved and changed in India, reflecting the changes in Buddhist doctrine and practice. When compared with the Chinese translations, the extant Sanskrit form of the AsP corresponds loosely to Danapala’s translation, with later interpolated sections that could have been included after the seventh century and well into the Pala period (ca. eighth–twelfth centuries) when the Pala kings ruled in the area of the modern day Bihar and West Bengal.

During the Pala period, almost eight hundred years after its proposed inception, the Prajñaparamita became one of the two foremost doctrines promoted in eastern India. According to Taranatha, the Prajñaparamita was extensively propagated during the reign of the second Pala king, Dharmapala (reign ca. 775–812 CE):

He (Dharmapala) accepted as his preceptors Haribhadra and Jnañapada and filled all directions with the Prajñaparamita and the Sri-Guhyasamaja…. Immediately after ascending the throne, the king invited the teachers of the Prajñaparamita. He had great reverence for Haribhadra in particular. This king built in all about fifty centres for the Doctrine, of which thirty-five were centres for the study of the Prajñaparamita. He also built the Sri Vikramasila vihara.

Taranatha’s account is to be read with caution because, as a sixteenth-century Tibetan scholar, he tends to idealize the north–east Indian Buddhist world with nostalgic notions that lack accuracy. His historical details are not trustworthy, but this passage suggests that the Prajñaparamita texts (re)surfaced as one of the two primary doctrinal principles, paralleling the clearly esoteric teachings of the Guhyasamaja in the early ninth century. Taranatha also records that there was a belief at his time that Dharmapala was a reincarnation of a master of the pitaka who was reborn for the purpose of propagating the Prajñaparamita. According to our Tibetan source, the Prajñaparamita sutra needed an official, royal boost in the ninth century to restart the support system. A revival of the doctrinal interest in the Prajñaparamita texts may also be seen from the dates of the major commentators of the AsP. One of the two major commentators, Haribhadra (the Abhisamayalamkara), was active during the reign of King Dharmapala at the beginning of the ninth century, while Abhayakaragupta, a famed scholar of the Vikramasila monastery, was active during the reign of King Ramapala at the beginning of the twelfth century.

The cult of Prajñaparamita was already in practice earlier in the fifth century, as reported by the Chinese pilgrim Faxian (ca. 377–422 CE), but it is difficult to ascertain what the focus of this cultic practice was, whether it was the goddess or the book. Faxian reports that he saw that Mahayanists worshipped the Prajñaparamita in a monastery he visited in Madhyadesa, somewhere between Mathura and Samkasya. This reference has been taken as evidence for the existence of the goddess Prajñaparamita in the fifth century, but what Faxian meant by “Prajñaparamita ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII])” is not clear: he could have meant a book of the Prajñaparamita sutra or an image of the goddess Prajñaparamita. This passage indicates that the Prajñaparamita cult was established as a specifically Mahayana practice. Faxian reports Mahayanists worshipped Prajñaparamita, Mañjusri, and Avalokitesvara, in comparison to other groups worshipping other objects, namely texts: Vinaya masters worshipped the Vinaya, and Abhidharma masters the Abhidharma.

Contrary to the popular perception that identifies Prajñaparamita as a quintessential Buddhist mother goddess, Prajñaparamita’s goddess identity seems to emerge much later than the appearance of the Prajñaparamita text. Western scholarly understanding of Prajñaparamita as a Buddhist mother goddess originates from the analogies in the AsP text where the Buddha compares the relationship between Prajñaparamita and Buddhas to that of a mother and her children. But these references are metaphorical analogies that emphasize the importance of “Prajñaparamita” in achieving enlightenment. Her qualities in these passages do not fit the general conception of a mother goddess with a loving, nurturing, and sometimes wrathful character. For example, the AsP explains how the “Prajñaparamita” should be treated and respected like their mother by all the Buddhas because it is from her that enlightenment originates. Yet there is no mention about what she can do for her spiritual sons. If Prajñaparamita had ever been a mother figure, it would have been a very remote and reserved one. Such a simile played a role in determining Prajñaparamita’s anthropomorphic form as a goddess (fig.1–3). In a twelfth-century manuscript painting from Nalanda, a voluptuous goddess bedecked with ornaments sits in vajraparyanka (cross-legged posture), displaying the gesture of preaching. She is regal and serene, symbolizing the perfection of wisdom, the foremost requirement for one’s enlightenment. The mother analogy in the AsP comes to the forefront in understanding and representing the goddess Prajñaparamita with the development of Esoteric Buddhism in India, in which the female principles became important for one’s spiritual success. Surviving epigraphic and art historical evidence suggests that Prajñaparamita’s identity as the mother of all Buddhas was established by the tenth century. The fact that only the late-tenth-century Chinese translation of the AsP (Taisho 228) by Danapala in 985 CE uses the term Fo-mu or “Buddha mother” in its title (Fo-shuo-fo-mu-chu-sheng-san-fa-zang-ban-ruo-bo-luo-mi- duo-jing,[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) also suggests this.

(Continues…)Excerpted from Receptacle Of The Sacred by Jinah Kim. Copyright © 2013 Regents of the University of California. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS.
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