Chinese Steles: Pre-Buddhist and Buddhist Use of a Symbolic Form 9780824861872

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CHINESE STELES

PRE-BUDDHIST AND BUDDHIST USE OF A SYMBOLIC FORM

u n i v e r s i t y o f h awa i ‘ i p r e s s honolulu

CHINESE STELES DOROTHY C. WONG

Publication of this book has been assisted by The Blakemore Foundation © 2004 University of Hawai‘i Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 09 08 07 06 05 04 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wong, Dorothy C. Chinese steles : pre-Buddhist and Buddhist use of a symbolic form / Dorothy C. Wong. p. cm. Includes bibliographical reference and index. isbn 0-8248-2783-x (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Stele (Archaeology)—China. 2. China—History—Northern and Southern dynasties, 386–589. I. Title. DS719.W65 2004 931'.04—dc22 2004005998 University of Hawai‘i Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Council on Library Resources. Designed by Kaelin Chappell Printed by Thomson-Shore, Inc.

To my family

List of Illustrations ix Foreword by John M. Rosenfield xi Acknowledgments xiii Abbreviations xv Dynastic Chronology xvii introduction

1

PART I TRADITIONAL CHINESE STELES AND THEIR BUDDHIST ADAPTATION c h a p t e r one Ancient Roots of the Chinese Stele Tradition 15 c h a p t e r two The Origins and Rise of Han Steles 25 chapter three The Origins of Buddhist Steles under the Northern Wei 43

PART II THE FLOURISHING OF BUDDHIST STELES c h a p t e r four General Characteristics of Buddhist Steles 63 c h a p t e r five The Initial Flourishing of Buddhist Steles in Shanxi 71 c h a p t e r six The Maitreya Faith and Henan Steles 89 c h a p t e r seven The Shaanxi School: Buddhist-Daoist Elements and Ethnic Diversity 105 c h a p t e r eight Buddhist Steles from the Gansu-Ningxia Region 121 c h a p t e r nine Monumental Complex Steles and Further Developments in Mahâyâna Buddhist Iconography 135 c h a p t e r ten Sichuan Buddhist Steles and the Beginnings of Pure Land Imagery in China 151 conclusion Buddhist Steles as a Symbolic Form 175 Notes 181 Glossary 199 Bibliography 207 Index 221

contents

figures 1.1 1.2 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6

3.7 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7

Kong Xian bei in Qufu, Shandong 21 Kong Qian bei in Qufu, Shandong 22 Gao Yi bei in Ya’an, Sichuan 26 Diagram of a Han-dynasty tomb and spirit-path 27 Inscribed stone, Zhongshan tombs, Hebei 28 Biao Xiaoyu bei from Sishui, Shandong 30 Rubbing of Yi Ying bei, detail 35 Rubbing of Dangli lishe bei, fragments 37 Drawing of a seated image of the Buddha from Weixian, Hebei 48 Colossal Buddha, Yungang Cave 20 48 Ninety-five Images Dedicated by Fifty-four Members of an Yiyi Society, Yungang Cave 11 53 Diagrams of niches on north and south walls of Guyang Cave, Longmen 54 Image of Maitreya Bodhisattva Dedicated by Lady Yüci for Niujue, Guyang Cave, Longmen 55 ´ Image [of Sâkyamuni Buddha] Dedicated by Sun Daowu, Wei Baidu, and Some 200 Members of an Yiyi Society, Guyang Cave, Longmen 57 Buddha-niche, Yungang Cave 16 58 Han que-gates carved with buddha-images in recessed niches, Sichuan 65 Votive stûpa from Qinxian, Shanxi 65 Leaf-shaped sema from Wat Bodhijayasemârâma, Thailand 67 Ground plan of Shaolinsi, pre-1928 68 Wang Huangluo bei from Gaopingxian, Shanxi 73 South wall of the exterior of Yungang Cave 16 75 Sackler stele from Shanxi 76 V & A stele from Shanxi 78–79 MFA stele from Shanxi 84–85 Dance and acrobatic performance, Han tomb tile from Sichuan 86 Cheng Zhe bei from Changzi, Shanxi 87 Monsters engraved on sides of Xiao Hong bei from Nanjing 88 Maitreya Bodhisattva in Tu∂ita Heaven, Dunhuang Cave 275 93 Maitreya Bodhisattva, Yungang Cave 11 94 Maitreya Bodhisattva, Guyang Cave, Longmen 95 Standing Maitreya Buddha statue from Shandong 95 Zhai Man Maitreya stele, perhaps from Henan 97 Maitreya Buddha in Tu∂ita Heaven, Yungang Cave 10 98 Xingyang Maitreya stele from Dahaisi, Xingyang, Henan 100

illustrations

6.8 6.9 6.10 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 7.7 7.8 7.9 7.10 7.11 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6 8.7 8.8 8.9 8.10

8.11 8.12 9.1

x

Sculpture of the Buddha, Maijishan Cave 127 Rubbing of an apsaras, Gongxian Cave 3 Shaanxi Maitreya stele with two niches Seated Maitreya Buddha statue from Xingping, near Chang’an, Shaanxi Two sides of a stone votive stûpa from Xi’an, Shaanxi Wei Wenlang Buddhist-Daoist stele from Sanyuanxian, Shaanxi Deified Laozi statue with two attendants, from Shaanxi Rubbing of a standing figure holding a vase, Han tomb relief from Nanyang, Henan A horse, a groom, and an attendant, Han tomb relief from Xingjinxian, Sichuan Rubbing of Qi Maren Daoist stele from Fupingxian, Shaanxi Shi Lusheng Buddhist-Daoist stele from the vicinity of Lintong, Shaanxi Four-Sided Stele Dedicated by Gao Falong and Others from Shaanxi/Gansu Rietberg stele from Shaanxi/Southern Shanxi Rubbing of Li Heicheng bei from Luochuan, Shaanxi Diagram of a longitudinal section of Maijishan Cave 133 Maijishan stele no. 1, from Maijishan Cave 133 Maijishan stele no. 11, from Maijishan Cave 133 Maijishan stele no. 16, from Maijishan Cave 133 Maijishan stele no. 10, from Maijishan Cave 133 Buddhist stele depicting the Buddha’s life, from Sârnâth, India Jin Shenlu bei from Guyuanxian, Ningxia Wang Lingwei bei from Eastern Gansu Rubbing of a processional scene, Han tomb relief from Shandong Kushan donors flanking Maitrya Bodhisattva on the pedestal of an image from Paitava, Gandhâra Xianbei donors, lay and monastic, shown at the bottom of a pagoda, Yungang Cave 11 Xianbei royal donors in Chinese attire on the pedestal of an image, Guyang Cave, Longmen Zhang Dangui bei from Xiangchengxian, Henan

102 103 103

9.2 9.3 9.4

106

9.5 9.6 9.7 9.8 9.9 9.10

107 110 111

10.1 112 10.2 113 10.3 115 10.4 116 10.5 117 118 119 123 124

10.6 10.7 10.8 10.9 10.10 10.11

125 126

10.12 10.13

128

10.14

129 130 132

10.15 10.16

132

10.17

Buddha triad from Henan Zhang Fuhui bei from Xiangchengxian, Henan Shangguan Sengdu bei, lower half, from Xianpingsi, Boxian, northwestern Anhui Shaolinsi bei from Henan Luoningxian bei from Henan Amitâbha altar from Xi’an, Shaanxi Chen Hailong bei from Shanxi Foshisi bei from Foshisi, Xunxian, Henan Pingdengsi steles, including the Gao Run Pingdengsi bei, from Luoyang, Henan Sichuan stele no. 1 from Wanfosi site, Chengdu, Sichuan Sichuan stele no. 2 from Wanfosi site, Chengdu, Sichuan Sichuan stele no. 3 from Wanfosi site, Chengdu, Sichuan Maitreya in Tu∂ita and Ketumatî, Dunhuang Cave 148 Bodhisattva with attendants from Wanfosi site, Chengdu, Sichuan Sichuan stele no. 4 from Maoxian, Sichuan Amitâyus’ Pure Land, Dunhuang Cave 320 Amitâyus’ Pure Land, Dunhuang Cave 148 Amitâbha’s Pure Land, Maijishan Cave 127 Amitâbha’s Pure Land, Xiangtangshan cavetemple, Henan The Bodhisattva’s Prophecy, Dunhuang Cave 423 Detail of Deer Jâtaka, Dunhuang Cave 257 Salt-mining and hunting activities, Han tomb tile from Sichuan A boatman paddling in a lotus pond, Han tomb tile from Sichuan Two figures carved on the doors of a Jin tomb, Sichuan Feasting and entertainment scene, Han tomb tile from Sichuan Buddha triad dedicated by Monk Huiying

138 138 139 141 142 143 146 148 149 154 156 157 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 169 169 169 170 171 172

maps 133

1

133

2 3 4 5 6

134 136

Geographical Distribution of Chinese Buddhist Steles 3 Stele Sites in Shanxi 72 Stele Sites in Henan 90 Stele Sites in Shaanxi 108 Stele Sites in Gansu-Ningxia 122 Stele Sites in Sichuan 152 illustrations

hinese Buddhist sculpture, eloquent and deeply moving, has gradually entered the awareness of the Western public at large. Though scorned for millennia by Confucian scholars in its homeland, reviled in this century by Marxists and Maoists, and slighted by Western connoisseurs beguiled by Chinese painting, this array of brilliant imagery has captivated scholars by its visual and intellectual appeal, and public interest has been excited by recent archaeological discoveries of statuary in China. Dorothy Wong’s new book treats an important subset of Chinese Buddhist art—stone steles of the fifth and sixth centuries, ornately carved and inscribed with instructive texts that attest to the spread of the Buddhist faith among the Chinese people. Missionaries had conveyed the faith from India and Central Asia possibly as early as the first century c.e. Not until the fifth century, however, did the Chinese create coherent artistic statements of Buddhist doctrine. They employed the canons of Indian imagery to represent the high deities— buddhas and savior bodhisattvas—as idealized, suprahuman beings, but they also turned to Chinese modes—flat, linear, semi-pictorial, semi-realistic—to depict guardian figures, donors, and allegorical scenes. Dragons, ubiquitous emblems in China’s pre-Buddhist imagery, were placed at the tops of the Buddhist steles as guardians of the faith, their tails interlocked in marvelously intricate patterns. The imported Indian and native Chinese artistic traditions coexisted, often on the same monuments, until they merged into a more unified idiom in the late sixth and early seventh centuries as the diverse kingdoms were united under the Sui and Tang dynasties. At the same time the custom of erecting steles declined. In the fifth century royal patrons began building cavetemples akin to the rock-cut monasteries of India and adorning them with a rich repertory of sculpture and painting. Virtually every large town had temple compounds filled with votive images. Auspicious mountain settings offered shelter to monastic communes. Wealthy families established their own private chapels. Today, though, most of those original religious contexts are destroyed or in ruins, owing to centuries of natural disasters and warfare, and especially to the deadly pogroms of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1965–1968) carried out by followers of Mao Zedong. Stone steles, however, have survived in great numbers, widely scattered and remarkably well preserved. Erected in cities and in country villages, at crossroads and in temple grounds, they were usually commissioned by sodalities of

C

foreword

pious devotees as a way to gain spiritual benefits for themselves, for their ancestors, and for their rulers—a goal that conjoined the Buddhist doctrine of karma (recompense for worldly actions) with Confucian concern for family and state. The stone slabs often depict the deities particularly ´ revered by the devotees who commissioned them: Sâkyamuni Buddha, the historical founder of the faith, for example; or Maitreya, dwelling in paradise, awaiting his descent to earth to become the next fully enlightened buddha. The steles also present narrative scenes from Buddhist legends, as well as the oldest images of the grand visionary paradises that were to play such a prominent role in later Buddhist iconography. As this sculptural idiom evolved, it manifested certain traits that have appeared in other contexts—Christendom, Islam, and the Hindu world, for example. Art and religion are separate categories of human expression, existing and evolving in independent ways—but they also interact. At what point, and how, do religious requirements begin to affect artistic practice? When, and how, do art forms become

xii

vital instruments of religious practice? When, and how, do aesthetic factors—beauty of workmanship, fine materials, harmony of proportions—acquire religious import? How do artists express abstruse concepts of theology? Hermeneutic issues of this kind, universally applicable, play a major role in the study of Chinese Buddhist art. Dorothy Wong constructs a solid platform from which such issues can be explored. She shows, for example, how the Chinese practice of erecting memorial steles long antedated the arrival of Buddhism. She traces how the changes in Buddhist ideology, from a focus on monasticism to concern for the welfare of the laity, caused radical changes in symbolism. She demonstrates how this ideology, originally foreign to China, was gradually adjusted to local custom. Above all, however, she presents the creations of ingenious artists who greatly enriched the imported idioms of Buddhist art and helped the faith penetrate so deeply into the consciousness of this enormous nation. jo h n m . r o s e n f i e l d

foreword

he subject of Buddhist steles as the topic of my doctoral dissertation at Harvard was originally suggested to me by John M. Rosenfield, to whom I owe the deepest gratitude for his inspiration and guidance as a teacher and mentor through the years. Wu Hung, my other advisor under whom I completed the dissertation, has also been an inspiring teacher, and his intellectual acumen and disciplined scholarship have set high standards for his students to follow. One of the great pleasures of art historical research is the opportunity to travel. My research on steles involved extensive journeys throughout China, Japan, Europe, and North America. At the dissertation stage, the research was made possible by funding from the Mellon Foundation, the American Association of University Women, the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art, and the Whiting Foundation. My 1993 to 1995 residencies at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art, and at the Freer and Sackler Galleries in Washington, D.C., were particularly fruitful times for thinking and writing. Subsequent research and revision of the book manuscript received substantive support from the University of Virginia (including a Sesquicentennial Associateship and several Summer Research Grants), the Metropolitan Center for Far Eastern Art Studies in Tokyo, and the Weedon Foundation. Finally, a year in residence at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University enabled me to bring this book to completion. I would like to acknowledge the generosity of these granting institutions and of the communities of scholars that these institutions nurtured. My research and fieldwork also would not have been possible without the hospitality and assistance proffered during my visits to museums and institutions. Although there are far too many to name every one of them, I would like to mention the following: in China: the provincial museums of Anhui, Gansu, Henan, Shaanxi, Shanxi, and Sichuan, the Confucius Temple in Shandong, the Dunhuang Academy, the Lintong Municipal Museum, the Luoyang Municipal Museum, the Museum of Chinese History in Beijing, the Nanjing Museum, the Shanghai Museum, the Yaoxian Museum, and the Zhengzhou Municipal Museum; in Europe: the British Museum, the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities in Stockholm, the Rietberg Museum in Zürich, and the Victoria and Albert Museum; in Japan: the Kyoto National Museum, the Osaka Municipal Museum, and the Tokyo National Museum; and in the United States: the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, the Arthur M. Sackler Museum at Harvard,

T

acknowledgments

the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Freer and Sackler Galleries in Washington, D.C., the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Many of these institutions also kindly granted me permission to reproduce images of Buddhist steles and other artworks in their collections (see captions). For archival research, I have benefited from the rich holdings of the following libraries: the Academia Sinica Library in Taipei, the Beijing Library, the Freer Library in Washington, D.C., the Harvard libraries (the Widener Library, the Fine Arts Library, the Rübel Asiatic Library, and the Harvard-Yenching Library in particular), the Library of Congress, the Research Institute of Oriental Culture at Tokyo University, the University of Hong Kong Library, and the library system at the University of Virginia. I am very grateful to these libraries and for the assistance offered by their staffs. Various aspects of this research have been presented at seminars and conferences, including the “Traditional China Seminar” at the Institute for Advanced Study (1999, organized by Patricia Ebrey), the “Religious Art Between Han and Tang” conference at the University of Chicago (1999, organized by Wu Hung), the “Nomads, Traders and Holy Men Along China’s Silk Road” symposium at The Asia Society (2001, organized by Annette Juliano and Judith Lerner), the Buddhist Studies Forum at Harvard University (2003, chaired by Robert Gimello), and several Association for Asian Studies annual meetings. I wish to thank these organizers for inviting me to participate. At these venues and in other settings, I benefited from intellectual exchanges with colleagues in various disciplines: Stanley Abe, Terese Bartholomew, Susan Bush, Anne Clapp, Nicola di Cosmo, Alice Donohue, Albert Dien, Jan Fontein, Takahashi Koetsuka, Robert Linrothe, Amy McNair, Victor Mair, Scott Pearce, Liu Shufen, Jenny So, Nancy Steinhardt, Lu Yang, Roderick Whitfield, Irene

xiv

Winter, Don Wyatt, and Grace Yen. At the University of Virginia, I wish to express gratitude for helpful suggestions on the manuscript and other acts of collegial friendship from colleagues Malcolm Bell, Paul Barolsky, John Dobbins, David Germano, Paul Groner, Anne Kinney, Kevin Kordana, Karen Lang, Marion Roberts, and David Summers. I remain indebted to my former teachers in Japan and Hong Kong— J. Edward Kidder Jr. and Jao Tsung-i, respectively—for their early training and continued interest in my research. I am very appreciative of the generous and constructive criticisms of the two anonymous readers for the University of Hawai‘i Press. Special thanks are also due to Lewis Lancaster, Director of the Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative, for his interest in my work; I look forward to working with him to publish the book digitally in its next phase. Earlier versions of chapters 7 and 10 have previously been published as articles by Brepolis and The Asia Society. The maps were prepared using the China Historical GIS database, and I am grateful to the project manager, Merrick Lex Berman at the Harvard-Yenching Institute, for his help. Mike Furlough and Blair Tinker of the Geospatial and Statistical Center at the University of Virginia came to my assistance when I encountered technical difficulties with the maps; for the final improvements to the maps, I am much indebted to David Newman. I would also like to thank Victoria Scott for her judicious editing and patience throughout the editorial process. Patricia Crosby, Ann Ludeman, and their staff at the University of Hawai‘i Press have also been a pleasure to work with. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the support I have received toward the publication of this volume from the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and the Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies at the University of Virginia, and the Metropolitan Center for Far Eastern Art Studies, Tokyo.

a c k n ow l e d g m e n t s

BCC

Erik Zürcher, The Buddhist Conquest of China

BT

Beijing tushuguan cang Zhongguo lidai shike taben huibian, ed. Beijing tushuguan jinshizu, 100 vols.

CBCR

Matsubara Saburo, ¯ Chûgoku bukkyo¯ chokokushi ¯ ron, 4 vols.

CS

Chûgoku sekkutsu series, 17 vols.

CS, BSZS

Bakusekizan sekkutsu (in Chûgoku sekkutsu series)

CS, TB

Tonko¯ Bakkokutsu ¯ (in Chûgoku sekkutsu series)

GSZ

Gao seng zhuan, comp. Hujiao (T 2059, vol. 50)

HG

Tsukamoto Zenryû, Shina bukkyoshi ¯ kenkyû: Hoku-Gi hen

HLNF

Tang Yongtong, Han Wei liang Jin Nanbeichao fojiao shi, 2 vols.

RSK

Mizuno Seiichi and Nagahiro Toshio, Ryûmon sekkutsu no kenkyû

SBC

Òmura Seigai, Shina bijutsushi: chosohen ¯

SSJ

Shisanjing zhusu, 1815 ed.

SZ

Shodo¯ zenshû series, ed. Kanda Kiichiro¯ and Tanaka Shinbi, 15 vols.

T

Scriptures in the Chinese Buddhist canon are cited according to standard numbers in the Taish¯o printed edition, Taisho¯ shinshû daizoky ¯ o, ¯ ed. Takakusu Junjir¯o and Watanabe Kaigyoku, 85 vols. The texts of the Buddhist canon are given by their numbers in the Taish¯o edition, followed by the volume and page number.

ZMQ

Zhongguo meishu quanji, ed. Zhongguo meishu quanji bianji weiyuanhui, 100 vols.

abbreviations

Shang dynasty (c. 1766–c. 1050 b.c.e.) Zhou dynasty (c. 1050–256 b.c.e.) Western Zhou (c. 1050–771 b.c.e.) Eastern Zhou (770–221 b.c.e.) Qin dynasty (221–206 b.c.e.) Han dynasty (206 b.c.e.–220 c.e.) Western Han (206 b.c.e.–8 c.e.) Eastern Han (25–220 c.e.) Three Kingdoms period (220–265) Wei kingdom (220–265) Shu kingdom (221–263) Wu kingdom (222–280) Jin dynasty (265–420) Western Jin (265–316) Eastern Jin and Sixteen Kingdoms (317–420) Cheng Han (303–347) Han/Former Zhao (304–329) Former Liang (314–376) Later Zhao (328–351) Wei (350–352) Dai (338–376) Former Qin (351–394) Former Yan (352–370) Western Yan (384–394) Later Yan (384–409) Later Qin (384–417) Western Qin (385–431) Later Liang (386–403) Southern Liang (397–414) Northern Liang (397–460) Southern Yan (400–410) Western Liang (400–421) Xia (407–431) Northern Yan (409–436) Northern and Southern Dynasties period (386–589) Northern Dynasties Northern Wei (386–534) Eastern Wei (534–550) Western Wei (535–551) Northern Qi (550–577) Northern Zhou (559–581)

dynastic chronology

Southern Dynasties Song dynasty (420–479) Qi dynasties (479–502) Liang dynasty (502–557) Chen dynasty (557–589) Sui dynasty (581–619) Tang dynasty (618–907) Five Dynasties period (907–960) Song dynasty (960–1279) Liao dynasty (916–1125) Jin dynasty (1115–1234) Yuan dynasty (1260–1368) Ming dynasty (1368–1644) Qing dynasty (1644–1911) Republic of China (1911–present) People’s Republic of China (1949–present)

xviii

dy n a s t i c c h r o n o l o g y

CHINESE STELES

uddhist steles—upright stone tablets carved with Buddhist images and symbols—flourished only for a short period during the Northern and Southern Dynasties. Considering the enduring history of Chinese steles, which have been in use from the first century c.e. until modern times, the phenomenon of Buddhist steles represents just a brief interlude. Yet this episode offers important insights into the role Buddhism played in the history and culture of early medieval China, and into the process of adaptation and transformation by which the foreign religion was assimilated into Chinese society and became part of its civilization. More than two hundred Buddhist steles are known to have survived, many of superb artistic quality. Ranging in height from 1 to 3 meters, these monuments are carved with votive images of Buddhist deities and graceful depictions of donors. Long inscriptions express the religious outlook of donors and indicate their social and ethnic character. The status of these steles in the history of Chinese art is equivalent to that of sculptures on Romanesque churches: they are eloquent expressions of an ardent religious faith. Their patrons included nobles and wealthy families, but most were members of devotional groups from small towns and villages across the north. Erected in temple courtyards, in village entryways, or by the roadside, Buddhist steles stood as emblems of the communities’ religious, social, cultural, and territorial identities. Many of these steles rank among the best sculptures of the period. The content of the steles and the information they contain about Buddhist patronage offer invaluable historical sources for the study of the beginnings of Buddhism in China. No comprehensive study of Buddhist steles has thus far been attempted, despite the abundance and high artistic quality of these monuments. Scholarship on Chinese Buddhist steles has been inhibited by the circumstances under which the steles have been collected and documented, and by other obstacles that the modern scholar still encounters. This book is the first comprehensive study of these Buddhist steles produced in China from the late fifth through the sixth century. The upright stone is one of the most common art forms used in many civilizations, from the Ancient Near East to Egypt, the classical world, the Islamic lands, and Mesoamerica. The term “stele” (Gr.), or “stela” (Lat.), means a “shaft” or a “pillar,” referring to an upright stone slab, frequently inscribed or carved, used primarily as a grave marker but also for dedication, commemoration, and demarcation.1 In very early times, the Chinese used upright stones to symbolize the

B

introduction

earth spirit, a tutelary deity called She. But around the first century c.e., the dressed stone tablet called bei emerged as a primary symbolic form, serving funerary and commemorative functions. The use of bei was especially associated with Confucianism, the orthodox ideology established in the Han dynasty. Often bearing elaborate calligraphic inscriptions, bei were produced throughout China, and the custom survives to this day. Because of the similarity in form and function between the traditional Chinese bei and the steles used in the ancient world and other cultures, the translation of the term “bei” as “stele” is quite appropriate. Traditional Chinese bei are flat stone slabs of regulated size and shape, sometimes embellished with symbols such as dragons. The content of steles is conveyed primarily through inscriptions, which are also valued as literary and calligraphic artworks. In contrast, the Indian Buddhist tradition is characterized by the abundant use of imagery—icons and pictorial narratives—to articulate its spiritual teachings. The Chinese call Buddhist images xiang (images), foxiang (Buddhist images), zunxiang (icons, statues), or kanxiang (images in recessed niches, like those in cave-chapels), and the acts of dedicating images are referred to as zaoxiang. The terms for Buddhist steles are “zaoxiangbei,” “beixiang,” and “xiangbei,” all of which mean “flat stone slabs (in the form of the Chinese bei) carved with images.” Traditional Chinese steles and their Buddhist counterparts, although different in content, carry the same inherent symbolism, perform comparable functions, and share similar patterns of patronage. These parallels are demonstrated by the common use of specific terms associated with both types of steles. The appropriation of the native Chinese tablet for carving Buddhist imagery thus epitomizes the close interactions between and synthesis of Indian Buddhist and indigenous Chinese traditions on many levels: religious, social, cultural, and artistic. A difference between Western and Asian scholars in their definition of Buddhist steles should be noted. Western scholars from Édouard Chavannes to Laurence Sickman (see discussion of scholarship below) have designated two types of Buddhist sculptures as steles: the upright stone slabs similar to the Chinese bei in form, and the high-relief sculptures set against leaf-shaped mandorlas (see fig. 6.4).2 Sickman writes: There are two basic forms of these steles. One type is a rectangular monolith set up vertically on a low base. The top is generally rounded and sculptured with two, four, or six protecting dragons, their bodies intricately intertwined. This is an old, traditional Chinese form which reached its full development at the

2

end of the Han Dynasty, that is in the latter part of the second and the early third century. Such pre-Buddhist monuments were set up to carry commemorative inscriptions. When adopted by the Buddhists, the inscription was greatly contracted or omitted and the surface thus left free was treated sculpturally with niches and low-relief much as the wall of a cave-temple. . . . The second basic style of early Buddhist steles generally has a relatively large trinity or a single Buddha in high relief against a great leaf-shaped mandorla. Some of the earliest surviving steles are in this form and it may antedate the use of the more traditional Chinese monument. As will be seen, the steles with the pointed, mandorla screen are very similar to some images in giltbronze, and it seems not unlikely that their form derives from bronze images on a large scale which according to records were cast in the sixth century.3

The type of carvings that the Chinese call beixiang, xiangbei, or zaoxiangbei are stone slabs in the form of the Chinese bei carved with Buddhist imagery. The other type, with the leaf-shaped mandorla, has always been referred to with terms that mean “image” or “icon,” such as “xiang” or “zunxiang.” As Sickman observes, this particular type is similar to, and perhaps derived from, bronze images and altar groups. These two types of sculptures are therefore distinguished not only by form but also by function: the steles that serve commemorative functions, like Chinese bei, versus the images and icons that are primarily objects of worship. This book excludes study of the iconic type, focusing only on Buddhist steles associated with Chinese tablets, although there are also possible Indian prototypes for this type of Buddhist slab (see chaps. 4, 8, and 10). The phenomenon of Chinese Buddhist steles lasted about a century. Incipient forms of Buddhist steles had already appeared in the fifth century, but the steles flourished primarily during the sixth century. By the seventh century, they had basically died out, despite lingering on in localized areas. Buddhist steles were popularly used across wide territories in the north, particularly in Shanxi, Shaanxi, Henan, and the Gansu-Ningxia region, and in Sichuan in the southwest (map 1). The phenomenon of Buddhist steles—as regards both time span and geographical distribution—must be understood against its specific historical and cultural contexts. The period of Northern and Southern Dynasties was a time of disunion in Chinese history that has often been compared to the Dark Ages in Europe. After the fall of the Han dynasty, nomadic peoples advanced into and eventually occupied the entire northern half of China, setting up numerous petty kingdoms. The indigenous Chinese dynasty was forced to migrate south of the Yangzi River and establish

introduction

map 1. Geographical Distribution of Chinese Buddhist Steles. 1820 province boundary lines. “CHGIS, Version: 1.0.” Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Yenching Institute, April 2002.

court at Jiankang (present-day Nanjing). The political turmoil and mass movements of populations caused widespread chaos and disruptions to the existing social, economic, and cultural order. What resulted was a deeply fragmented society that lasted several centuries. Neither Confucianism nor Daoism—the two indigenous schools of thought—offered satisfactory answers to the current ills of the society, creating an intellectual vacuum that facilitated the widespread reception of Buddhism. Buddhism reached China in the first century c.e., but it did not initially have much impact. It was during the period of disunion that the religion was finally able to take root and sweep through the country. It first gained acceptance among Chinese intellectuals and aristocrats who were attracted to its

introduction

complex metaphysics, otherworldly goals, array of images, and sophisticated rituals. Most emperors of the Southern Dynasties and their courtiers became devout Buddhists. In the north, the nomadic rulers were among the most ardent supporters of Buddhism. They were attracted to Buddhism because the religion provided them with a cultural identity different from that of the Chinese they had conquered, and with a universal ideology that would enable them to unify a divided society. Under the Northern Wei dynasty, Buddhism virtually became a state religion and rapidly penetrated the northern countryside. Stronger administrative rule established by the Northern Wei also enabled the rehabilitation of social and economic life in rural communities. Under these circum-

3

stances, indigenous cults and practices were revitalized, and the Chinese stele became the monument of choice to commemorate the new Buddhist faith. It is no accident that the geographical territories where Buddhist steles initially flourished corresponded to the regions of direct Northern Wei administration. Throughout the sixth century, Buddhist steles were popularly used in the north to express the fervent religious faith embraced by different social and ethnic groups. As the understanding of Buddhism matured, the religion began to develop independently in China, while simultaneously absorbing new teachings introduced from India and Central Asia. The content of Buddhist steles charts these doctrinal developments as well as local cultic and stylistic preferences. Toward the end of the sixth century, the reversal of the stele to its pre-Buddhist form—namely, reliance on inscriptions rather than imagery to convey its content—heralded the consolidation of the country into the unified Sui and Tang empires. The demise of this art form was significant, in that it signaled the full integration of Buddhism with Chinese society.

scholarship and methodology An overview of the history of collecting and study of Chinese Buddhist steles (and of early Chinese Buddhist art in general) can be divided into four broad categories: (1) traditional Chinese antiquarian scholarship, (2) Japanese and Western scholarship, (3) scholarship in contemporary China and abroad, and (4) epigraphical studies.

Chinese Antiquarian Scholarship The earliest documentation of Buddhist steles is found in the branch of Chinese historiography known as jinshixue (the study of bronzes and stone). Originating in the Song dynasty, jinshixue developed hand in hand with the collection and connoisseurship of antiquities, spurred by the formation of imperial collections of bronzes and other antique objects.4 Inscriptions on stone surfaces were collected in the form of rubbings and studied for their historical and calligraphic value. From the mid-Qing to the early Republican era, antiquarian scholarship experienced a revival, the impetus for which came from a radical change in taste in calligraphy, the most highly valued art form in traditional China. As Lothar Ledderose explains, scholars and connoisseurs had traditionally preferred the Southern style of calligraphy, whose chief expo-

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nent was Wang Xizhi (303–361) and which is distinguished by its refinement and fluency. However, in the seventeenth century, due to a dearth of original works from the Southern Dynasties, scholars began to turn for an artistic alternative to the calligraphic style of the Northern Dynasties, which is characterized by forcefulness and a rugged charm.5 Northern Dynasties writings were abundant, and most of them were Buddhist dedicatory inscriptions engraved on steles and other stone carvings. The documentation and collecting of Buddhist steles thus had its beginnings as a by-product of the antiquarian taste for northern-style calligraphy. During this renaissance of antiquarian scholarship in the late Qing, numerous works were published, ranging from the reproductions of rubbings to catalogues, bibliographies, notes, and commentaries.6 Two can be singled out for their importance in the study of Buddhist sculptures and steles: Jinshi cuibian (Anthology of the essence of bronze and stone inscriptions, 1805), compiled by Wang Chang (1725–1806), and Ye Changchi’s (1849–1917) Yushi (On stone, 1909). One of the best compendia of inscriptions among late Qing antiquarian writings, Wang Chang’s Jinshi cuibian records about eleven hundred bronze and stone inscriptions from the Zhou through the Jin dynasty in the thirteenth century. Chronologically arranged by dynasty and by date, each entry includes measurements of the object, provenance (when known), bibliographies, and the author’s comments. Under the Northern Dynasties section (juan 27 to 37), some seventy entries of Buddhist dedicatory inscriptions are recorded; none is recorded under the Southern Dynasties section. This represents one of the earliest systematic documentations of Buddhist inscriptions. Wang also attempts to classify the inscriptions according to the forms of the objects on which they appear and their literary styles. Categories of stone carvings include images (or statues), niches (recessed niches, as in Buddhist cave-chapels), steles, rock cliffs, pagodas, sutra-pillars, and others, while literary genres include records (ji), inscriptions (ming), eulogies (song), commemorative inscriptions (bei), and so on. As a literary form, bei refers to commemorative inscriptions recorded on steles, such as steles commemorating the founding of temples or the meritorious deeds of individual persons. These commemorative steles, although erected for Buddhist purposes, follow the usages of traditional steles and do not always bear images. It is the category of carving known as zaoxiangbei, literally “steles carved with images,” that designates the specific type of monuments examined in this book (see further discussion below).7

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Wang’s notes and commentaries make reference to previous scholarship, correct erroneous transcriptions, and study the historical and geographical information, names and titles of officials, religious and nonreligious societies, and variant forms of written characters found in these ancient inscriptions. Wang’s work demonstrates the erudition of an antiquarian scholar at his best. Moreover, his compendium includes records of inscriptions that have since become further eroded and less legible. However, because Wang’s scholarly interest was epigraphy, any information pertaining to the visual aspects of the stone carvings is treated as ancillary. The Buddhist imagery on the carvings is never discussed and sometimes not even mentioned. Added to this, although rubbings faithfully record inscriptions and linear engravings, they are inadequate in reproducing sculptural images. Due to these limitations, jinshixue scholarship only presents partial documentation of Buddhist steles as visual objects.8 The second antiquarian work of significance, Ye Changchi’s Yushi, advances beyond the narrow focus of epigraphic study to attempt an empirical, comprehensive overview of the history of stone carvings in China.9 Ye classifies all types of stone carvings and engravings, studying their origins, terminology, historical development, geographical distribution, function, and patronage as well as the format and content of their inscriptions. In addition, he discusses the styles of calligraphy and the calligraphers. Steles with imagery (beixiang) are one type of carving under the section on Buddhist imagery (zaoxiang, juan 5). However, Ye’s discussion of bei (juan 3) reveals his ambivalence toward the hybridized art form of Buddhist steles. He summarizes four general rules for erecting bei: (1) extolling virtues (shude), (2) commemorating successful political and military campaigns (minggong), (3) recording events (jishi), and (4) compiling words of wisdom (zuanyan). These criteria, established in the indigenous Chinese tradition, became standardized in the Han dynasty, when Confucianism was established as the orthodox ideology (see chap. 2, on Han steles). Under the first rule of extolling virtue (de), Ye enumerates the kinds of virtue that are worthy of celebration: sagely conduct (such as that of Confucius), loyalty, filial piety, and virtuous government. When discussing a type of stele called gongdebei (steles commemorating acts for the accretion of Buddhist merit), however, Ye notes that Buddhist de (merit, as in gongde) is not equivalent to Confucian de (virtue, as in dezheng), so that the Buddhist gongdebei cannot be classified as a bei. As a staunch advocate of Confucianism, Ye argues

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that Buddhist, and thus foreign, elements must be rejected, thereby reaffirming the orthodoxy of Confucianism. Ye’s hostility toward Buddhism was characteristic of most Chinese intellectuals of his day, who spurned Buddhist works of art as relics of old, superstitious ways. It also underscores the tension between Buddhism and native Chinese traditions during much of the religion’s history in China. Nevertheless, the nomenclature and cataloging system established by Wang and others formed the foundation of later antiquarian scholarship in China and Japan, as exemplified in works such as Fanjiang zhai jinshi conggao by Ma Heng (1881–1955), the first director of the Palace Museum in Beijing. Ma’s work summarizes the achievements of the antiquarian tradition and provides the classificatory system that has had a profound influence on modern Chinese archaeology and art historical studies.10 The compilation and study of stone inscriptions continued well into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. An important contemporary compendium is Yan Gengwang’s Shike shiliao congshu (Anthology of historical sources from stone inscriptions, 969 juan, 420 vols., 1966) and its addendum, Shike shiliao xinbian (30 vols., 1977–1982), which Yan also compiled. In the last few decades, institutions that own vast collections of rubbings have also begun to edit, photograph, and publish their holdings. Beijing Library published its collection, in one hundred volumes, from 1989 to 1991 (Beijing tushuguan cang Zhongguo lidai shike taben huibian), while the Academia Sinica in Taipei issued the first volume on rubbings of Buddhist inscriptions in 2002 (Zhongyang yanjiuyuan lishi yuyan yanjiusuo zang Bei Wei jinian fojiao shike tuoben mulu). There are also efforts to prepare these rubbings for publication in electronic formats.11

Japanese and Western Scholarship From the late nineteenth century through the two World Wars, Japanese and Western scholars conducted preliminary surveys of Chinese art, including many Buddhist monuments and cave-temples. The political and social turmoil of this era also created opportunities for the collecting of Chinese art overseas.12 Many works of Chinese Buddhist sculpture and steles found their way into Japanese, European, and North American museums and some private collections. Contacts with China during this period and the later access to these monuments in overseas collections generated new research abroad. Two early Japanese surveys of special significance in the

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study of Chinese Buddhist art are Òmura Seigai’s Shina bijutsushi: ch¯os¯ohen (A history of Chinese art: Sculpture volume, 1915–1920), and Tokiwa Daij¯o and Sekino Tadashi’s Shina bukky¯o shiseki (A history of Chinese Buddhist monuments, 6 vols., 1925–1931). In general, Japanese scholars’ understanding of Buddhism and their sympathetic attitude toward the religion led to a greater understanding of the significance of Buddhist artworks. The authors of these volumes were not only knowledgeable in Chinese history and culture but also informed in Buddhism, the study of which flourished during the late Meiji (1868–1912) and Taish¯o (1912–1926) eras.13 In Shina bijutsushi: ch¯os¯ohen, Òmura combines Chinese antiquarianism with Japanese Buddhist scholarship to reconstruct the history of Chinese sculpture. The materials are presented chronologically, with further classification by material, function, and religion. After each section Òmura summarizes the types of images, materials, iconography, and information on patronage. Some of Òmura’s observations are insightful, including his discussion of the origins of the yiyi Buddhist associations frequently recorded on Buddhist steles (see chap. 3). The volume records some twelve hundred literary references and twenty-six hundred inscriptions, and is accompanied by a visual chronology of the objects in photographs and rubbings. Alexander C. Soper calls Òmura’s work “an anthology of Chinese sources.” Soper translated a large portion of the records into English, adding his own study and interpretations, in Literary Evidence for Early Buddhist Art in China (1959). In Tokiwa and Sekino’s survey, Buddhist sites and monuments are arranged according to their geographical locations. Imbued with a sense of Buddhist piety, the authors embarked on their archaeological expedition to record the Buddhist monuments in China as a quest for the Japanese Buddhistic heritage, faithfully researching and documenting the history of each locality, accompanied by ample photographs. The site-based survey includes the study of Buddhist temples that still have steles in situ and is valuable for contextual studies of these monuments. Slightly later than these two Japanese scholars, Mizuno Seiichi and Nagahiro Toshio undertook surveys of Chinese Buddhist cave-temples that included Xiangtangshan (1937), Longmen (1941), and Yungang (1951–1956). After World War II, Japan’s contact with China diminished and Japanese scholars’ interest in Chinese Buddhist art waned. Some scholars, however, continued their efforts. Most noteworthy is Matsubara Saburo, ¯ whose Chûgoku bukky¯o ch¯okokushi kenkyû (A history of Chinese Buddhist

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sculpture, 1961) is a compendium of Chinese Buddhist sculptures furnished with both literary documentation and goodquality photographs. Matsubara also applied formal analysis in Western art historical studies to the study of Chinese Buddhist sculpture, especially in the formulation of regional and period styles (see below). A new edition of Matsubara’s work, Chûgoku bukky¯o chokokushi ron (A study of the history of Chinese Buddhist sculpture, 4 vols.), was published in 1995. It incorporates recently published materials from China and remains a useful sourcebook. Among the early Western scholars of Chinese art, Édouard Chavannes was as learned in sinology and Buddhism as were his Asian colleagues. His Mission archéologique dans la Chine septentrionale (13 vols., 1913) includes a survey of Buddhist temples and cave-chapel sites. Victor Segalen, another French scholar, documented many stone steles and monuments from the Sichuan region with Gilbert de Voisins and Jean Lartigue in Mission archéologigue en Chine, 1914–1917 (2 vols., 1923), which is especially valuable for the study of Han steles. Scholars trained in Western art historical methods also introduced formal analysis to the study of Chinese art, notably Osvald Sirén, in his Chinese Sculpture from the Fifth to the Fourteenth Centuries (4 vols., 1925). Sirén presents the development of Chinese sculpture in a geo-chronological framework, using known dated pieces as anchors. With the theoretical premise that there are distinct successive stages in the evolution of style, Sirén maintained that stylistic analysis would enable him to assign pieces of unknown date and provenance to their relative positions within this sequence. His survey also documents a significant number of Buddhist steles. Other scholars who have applied formal analysis to the study of Chinese Buddhist sculpture include Leigh Ashton (1924), Alan Priest (1944), Harry Vanderstappen and Marylin Rhie (1965), and, more recently, Marylin Rhie (1999–2002). The collecting and display of Chinese Buddhist steles in overseas collections provided new opportunities for the detailed study of these monuments. Two early exemplary works in this genre are Chavannes’ Six monuments de la sculpture chinoise (1914), which includes discussion of two steles, and Perceval W. Yetts’ The George Eumorfopoulos Collection, Vol. 3, Buddhist Sculpture (1932), which contains detailed study of a Buddhist stele and a brilliant essay on the beginnings of Buddhist art in China. Because of their broad-based training, both authors were able to combine their encyclopedic knowledge in sinology and Buddhism with an acute sensitivity to the stylistic aspects of the sculptures.

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By means of thorough study of the inscriptions, these scholars examine issues such as folklore, Buddhist iconography, and the religious sentiments and social background of donors. This comprehensive approach enabled these scholars to reconstruct the historical, religious, cultural, and social contexts of individual steles, and their works have set the standard for such studies. Some thirty monumental Buddhist steles in European, North American, and Japanese collections have been published in monographs and catalogues and are well documented in photographs.14 Because of the stagnation of scholarly exchange in the several decades after Communist rule began in China in 1949, however, the study of Buddhist steles (and Buddhist art in general) abroad has until recently been limited to catalogue entries and analyses of individual pieces, or to brief discussions in surveys of Chinese Buddhist sculpture. Necessarily taken out of context, these steles have been treated without relation either to their original environment or to one another. Though the study of Chinese Buddhist art languished, the fields of Chinese painting and bronzes flourished, and the methodologies adopted by Western scholars of Chinese art have ranged from formal analysis to contextual studies, reflecting current debates in art historical studies.15 These diverse approaches, apparent in the works of the prewar generation of scholars discussed earlier, are also evident in studies of Buddhist art undertaken in the postwar era. The formalist approach, whose chief exponent is Heinrich Wölfflin, is concerned with the intrinsic life of the form and the problems of dating and chronology.16 This theoretical paradigm is vigorously pursued by Max Loehr, who maintains that “the image is not a mere symbol of doctrine, but a work of art possessing an inner dimension of its own, unconditioned by its assigned meaning and function.”17 The contextual approach, aligned with the theory of iconology proposed by Erwin Panofsky, corresponds to an emphasis on sinological and textual studies upheld by many early scholars who had those kinds of training.18 A specific branch of the contextual study of Buddhist art is iconography, which identifies the meaning of motifs and images in relation to Buddhist texts, and this area of research has yielded many monographs and articles both in Asia and in the West.19 In his overarching discussion of Buddhist art in Asia, Dietrich Seckel considers Buddhist works of art expressions of the “ecumenical unity” of the Buddhist spirit, insisting that they are not meant to be enjoyed because of their aesthetic values but are primarily intended “to hold religious

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meaning and to serve Buddhist ritual, edification, and salvation.”20 In the surveys of Chinese/Asian art undertaken in the postwar era, including Laurence Sickman and Alexander C. Soper’s The Art and Architecture of China (1956, 3rd ed. 1968), Sherman Lee’s A History of Far Eastern Art (1964, 5th ed. 1994), and Michael Sullivan’s The Arts of China (1973, 4th ed. 1999), the authors seldom adhere strictly to any particular theoretical model but combine formal analysis in varying degrees with contextual studies in history, Buddhism, and archaeology. This methodological strategy recognizes the development of Buddhist art in China as neither a linear development nor as homogeneous, thereby reconciling the extreme positions of the “extrinsic” impact of contextual factors and foreign influences versus the “intrinsic” development of style, or, in George Kubler’s phrase, “the existential dilemma between meaning and being.”21

Scholarship in Contemporary China and Abroad During the first few decades of Communist rule in China, the study of Buddhism and Buddhist art suffered a major setback because of the regime’s antireligious policy. The field of archaeology, however, received state support and flourished because excavated artifacts could be employed to substantiate the Marxist theory of dialectic materialism in historical evolution. Beginning in the 1980s, when the government’s policy on scholarly and cultural activities gradually relaxed, research on Buddhist art resumed, leading to the current revival of interest. Initial efforts focused on the documentation of major cave-temple sites, which are relatively free of the nagging question of forgeries that plagues most areas of Chinese art. A landmark of the renewed scholarly endeavors is the SinoJapanese publication of the Chûgoku sekkutsu (Chinese Buddhist cave-temples) series (17 vols., 1980–1990; the Chinese edition, Zhongguo shikusi, was published 1981–1998). The methodological approaches undertaken by mainland Chinese scholars emphasize typology, quantitative analysis, and iconography—essential steps toward establishing a chronology, a classification system, and the identification of subject matter. The leading scholar is Su Bai, whose meticulous work and close reading of historical sources enabled him to revise the chronology of the Yungang cave-chapels established by Mizuno and Nagahiro half a century earlier.22 Su exerts much influence in the field, as many of the students he trained at Beijing University now hold leading positions in research institutes and museums across the country. The pre-

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mier institution is the state-funded Dunhuang Research Academy; staffed with a team of research scholars, the Academy holds regular conferences and publishes its own journal. Cultural and scholarly exchanges between China and other countries have resumed since the 1980s. Joint efforts in major publications, exhibitions abroad, and international conferences are all venues that have stimulated interest and advanced scholarship in Chinese Buddhist art.23 These efforts have resulted in the fine-tuning of chronology, thematic studies, patronage research, and cross-cultural and interdisciplinary endeavors, as well as the application of postmodern theories and literary criticism. More recently, a number of Buddhist scholars have examined the role of Buddhist images and artifacts in ritual contexts, favoring anthropological and ethnographical theories as models of inquiry.24 Amid these advances in Buddhist art studies in the last two decades, Buddhist steles still have not received sufficient attention, although there is now more documentation of these monuments and a brief descriptive account in Wang Ziyun’s Zhongguo diaosu yishu shi (A history of the art of Chinese sculpture, 1988). Buddhist steles are found in scattered locations, many in remote regions, and are then moved to local museums. Initial reports are published in archaeological journals. These accounts give basic information about the objects, and the accompanying photographs (if any) are usually poor in quality. Only selected monuments have been published in color in major anthologies and catalogues.25 The poor condition of many steles, in fragments or badly eroded, renders them less valuable for thorough investigation. Thus far the Shaanxi group of steles has received greater scholarly attention because of the concentration of more than a hundred steles in that particular region and because of their strong currents of mixed Buddhist-Daoist and Daoist content (see chap. 7).

Inscriptional Studies Although epigraphy is a legacy of antiquarian scholarship, the richness of inscriptions as original source materials is undisputed. The vast corpus of inscriptions on stone steles and other kinds of carving, both traditional and Buddhist, has supported historical, religious, and, more recently, sociological and ethnological research. The Dutch scholar J. J. M. de Groot was among the first Westerners to draw attention to the significance of funerary and commemorative steles in traditional China, in his magisterial The Religious System of

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China (6 vols., 1892–1910). Patricia Ebrey (1980) used Han stele inscriptions as primary sources to study the social history of Han China, especially the social network of local elites. Martin Kern (2000) recently published his study of the inscriptions of Qinshihuang’s imperial steles as a literary genre and as ritual texts. Buddhist inscriptions no doubt offer some of the most valuable sources for studying Buddhist beliefs and practices. In fact, the existence of the Buddhist associations called yi or yiyi became known primarily through inscriptions on Buddhist steles, which provide firsthand information for understanding these grassroots religious organizations. With their interest in Buddhism and familiarity with Chinese sources, Japanese Buddhist scholars were pioneers in drawing on inscriptions to study Buddhism. In addition to Òmura, Tsukamoto Zenryû discussed the character of Northern Wei Buddhism based on his analysis of inscriptions in the Longmen cave-chapels; he analyzed the donors’ religious beliefs, their social background, and the motivation for their dedication (Shina bukky¯oshi kenkyû: Hoku-Gi hen, 1942). Others have similarly employed inscriptional information to investigate the social and economic impact Buddhism had on Chinese society, including Yamazaki Hiroshi (1942), Naba Toshisada (1974), and the French scholar Jaques Gernet (1956). Analyzing the inscriptions of the Shaanxi group of steles, the Chinese historian Ma Changshou (1985) examined the social and ethnic background of the Buddhist patrons in the Guanzhong plain in the sixth century. Zhou Zheng (1985, 1990, 1992) and others analyzed the historical information contained in individual stele inscriptions. Younger scholars from Taiwan (Liu Shufen, 1993) and mainland China (Hou Xudong, 1998) continue to mine the rich resources of Buddhist inscriptions. These studies have contributed greatly to our understanding of Buddhism in the early medieval period. Nonetheless, epigraphical studies cannot replace comprehensive studies of Buddhist steles that also take into account the visual character of these monuments.

b u d d h i s t s t e l e s a s wo r k s o f a r t This book represents the first systematic investigation of Buddhist steles as a group, as a unique art form. My goal is twofold: first, to investigate the origins, flourishing, and demise of this art form; and second, to understand these monuments in their historical, religious, cultural, social, and artistic contexts.

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It appears that the phenomenon of Buddhist steles is analogous to the biological model of birth, growth, and decay, although I am not suggesting that such a model is universally applicable to every art form. This being so, steles provide a fascinating opportunity to reexamine the relationship between form and meaning in religious art. First, it seems that form follows function. The need of the Chinese Buddhists to commemorate their religious faith predisposed them to choose a pre-Buddhist form customarily used for commemoration, namely, the bei. Second, the new form acquired additional meaning from the borrowed form, since Buddhist steles have the same symbolism—and similar functions and patterns of patronage—as their traditional counterparts. In their most fundamental usage, stone steles are emblems of identity that embody the religious, social, cultural, and territorial identity of their users, who include those honored with steles, the patrons of steles, and the steles’ audience or viewers. Through steles, these users articulated their aspirations, projected their ideals, and constructed notions of identity in a public manner. The possession of steles also enabled their users to broadcast as well as negotiate their own status. As a ritual object and a public monument, the stele was not only a visual channel through which changing ideological and religious beliefs were expressed but also a potent symbolic form employed in the display and transference of power. Considering the common use of stone slabs in many cultures, this study of traditional Chinese bei and their Buddhist adaptations contemplates subjects that transcend the steles’ own time and place, thus entering the larger discussion of the nature of symbolic forms. To use Ernst Cassirer’s definition, the creation of symbolic forms enables humankind to “understand and interpret,” “articulate and organize,” and “synthesize and universalize” the human experience. It is a process by which the energies of the human spirit produce forms (be they language, art, myth, and religion) within a symbolic universe, thereby transforming reality (or truth) into material existence.26 While focusing on a unique type of Buddhist monument, this book also addresses larger issues in the study of the history, culture, religion, and society of early medieval China. Previous works either list the monuments chronologically or study individual monuments in isolation, whereas here the known corpus of Buddhist steles is arranged according to broad chronological and regional groupings. Within each section, thorough analyses of selected steles explore the nexus of complex issues that surround this art form, from cultural

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symbolism to the interrelations between religious doctrine and artistic expression, economic production, patronage, and the synthesis of native and foreign art styles. Because of their known dates and provenances, Buddhist steles provide the most concrete and thorough evidence of the chronology, iconography, and regional styles of early Chinese Buddhist art, supplementing current scholarship on Buddhist cave-temple sites and individual sculptures.

o r g a n i z at i o n o f t h i s s t u d y Because a discussion of pre-Buddhist steles sets the stage for this study and is crucial to understanding the significance of the later adaptation of this symbolic form, Part I traces the ancient roots of the Chinese stele tradition and investigates the process by which Chinese steles became adapted for Buddhist use. Chapter 1 begins with an etymological study of several key terms shared by both traditional Chinese and Buddhist steles, terms that shed light on the inherent meaning of steles as symbolic objects and their associated practices. Using textual sources and archaeological evidence, it investigates the meanings of these terms in their historical and cultural contexts, and how these meanings evolved as the society, political structure, and cultural and religious beliefs underwent major changes. One of the most ancient terms is “She” (the earth god), which is sometimes symbolized by an upright stone. With the transition of the feudalistic society of the Shang and Zhou dynasties to the imperial bureaucracy of the Qin and Han dynasties, the worship of She became institutionalized. “Yi” (town) and “li” (hamlet) designate the basic units of rural communities; by extension, “yishe” and “lishe” were the local religious and social organizations associated with the worship of She. These yishe and lishe became models for the later Buddhist devotional societies, called yi or yiyi, that were the chief patrons of Buddhist steles (a subject examined in chap. 3). Of later origins are the terms “li” (ritual) and “bei” (stele), which came from a separate cultural tradition. Li governed the conduct of junzi (the noble ruler), both being principal tenets of Confucianism, while bei referred to wooden poles or stone pillars used as spatial markers and as symbols of status in ritual ceremonies in pre-Han times. As such, bei were used symbolically to enact the principles of ritual, specifically the ritual conduct of the ideal ruler. Chapter 2 investigates the rise of bei, which now desig-

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nate stone steles, in the latter part of the Han dynasty. Of regulated size and shape, steles served a variety of commemorative functions and became a main carrier of ritual inscriptions. Funerary and immortality cults, an increasing emphasis on the individual, and the preference for stone as a medium for ritual inscriptions were among the principal reasons this occurred. Most importantly, the adoption of Confucianism as the orthodox ideology and the concomitant rise of the shi (scholar-official or literati) class contributed to the emergence of steles as a principal symbolic form. Chapter 2 also explores how the bei served as a vehicle through which individuals or collective groups expressed their constructed notions of identity publicly. Chapter 3 examines the origins of Buddhist devotional societies and the first use of the stele form for Buddhist purposes. It begins with the historical background of the Northern Wei, the strongest nomadic empire of this period. The cultural policies of the Northern Wei dynasty had a direct impact on the rise and flourishing of Buddhist steles. In implementing Chinese-style administrative bureaucracy, the Northern Wei began social and economic rehabilitation following the long period of turmoil and warfare after the fall of the Han dynasty. The adoption of Buddhism as a state religion by the Northern Wei provided a universal ideology for a fragmented society, transcending ethnic and social differences. It also facilitated the spread of the Buddhist faith to the northern countryside. In the process, ancient religious practices and community-based religious organizations were revitalized. Modeled after the ancient yishe and lishe, Buddhist devotional societies called yi or yiyi emerged. Chapter 3 also discusses the flourishing of Buddhism and Buddhist art under the Northern Wei, as the faith reached a mature phase in this period. With imperial patronage, Buddhist art thrived and a uniform artistic and iconographic idiom emerged. Under these favorable conditions, it is not surprising to find that the first documentation of Buddhist devotional societies and the earliest Buddhist use of the Chinese tablet can be linked to two major Buddhist cave-temple sites of the Northern Wei period (Yungang and Longmen, respectively) in the last two decades of the fifth century. Once the Chinese tablet was converted to Buddhist content, the stage was set for the widespread use of Buddhist steles in the sixth century. Part II is devoted to the phenomenon of Buddhist steles in the sixth century. Chapter 4 gives an overview of Buddhist steles, including their typology, spatial contexts, purposes of

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donation, patronage, and production. It also examines possible Indian prototypes and the use of steles in other parts of the world. Chapters 5 through 10 examine individual groups of steles arranged according to their general chronological and regional developments. The production of Buddhist steles in the sixth century can be divided into two phases: the phase of initial flourishing (c. 500–530), and the mature phase (c. 530–600). During the initial phase, Buddhist steles flourished in regions directly under the Northern Wei administration: Shanxi, Henan, Shaanxi, and the Gansu-Ningxia region. Chapters 5 through 8 examine these four regional schools individually. Although the Buddhist steles from this period exhibit the uniform idiom of late Northern Wei Buddhist art, they also display distinct regional characteristics in style, iconography, and patronage patterns. Because many steles are similar to each other and the inscriptions follow formulaic expressions, I examine in detail selected examples that best represent the full range of types as well as the major issues and developments in form, iconography, style, and patronage. The steles from Shanxi are examined in chapter 5. Most closely associated with the power base of the Northern Wei and the type-site of Yungang, the Shanxi steles reveal a wide range of forms, including the monumental type that emerged at the end of the period. Chapter 6 focuses on Maitreya steles from the Henan region. The messianic cult of Maitreya, the Future Buddha, reached a peak from the late fifth to the early sixth century; Longmen, the second Northern Wei type-site in Henan, bears witness to the popularity of Maitreya as a devotional deity. The significant number of Maitreya steles, some of which are also of the finest quality, attests to both the religious and the political and social significance of this cult. Chapter 7 shifts the focus to a large group of steles from the Shaanxi region. What distinguish the Shaanxi steles are the strong currents of mixed Buddhist and Daoist ideas and the marked presence of ethnic nomads among their patrons. Chapter 8 examines a relatively small group of steles from the Gansu-Ningxia region, the majority of which are from the Maijishan cave-temple site. Without inscriptions and records of patronage, the Maijishan steles exhibit fewer features associated with traditional Chinese steles, suggesting a possible foreign source for these slabs and their function as devotional objects in cave-chapels. By the middle of the sixth century, the regional differences of northern steles had diminished. Chapter 9 studies the pre-

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dominant form of monumental complex steles that emerged in the central plains of Shanxi, Henan, and Shaanxi provinces in the middle to the second half of the sixth century. It also discusses Buddhist commemorative steles, a harbinger of the new trend in the seventh century and of the demise of the sixth-century form that emphasizes imagery. Chapter 10 is devoted to southern steles from Sichuan, which represent a distinct tradition. Unlike their northern counterparts, which present Buddhist icons in recessed niches, Sichuan steles contain pictorial reliefs with landscape elements that draw on local artistic conventions to represent Buddhist teachings. Among the Sichuan reliefs are some of the earliest images of the Pure Land, which are important to understand-

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ing the devotional cult of Amitâbha Buddha and the rise of the plethora of Pure Land paintings in the Tang dynasty. In investigating the origins of both pre-Buddhist and Buddhist steles in China, and in charting the developments of Buddhist steles as an art form, this book closely examines both Buddhism’s dialogues with native traditions and the processes by which Buddhism was assimilated into Chinese culture and society and became part of its civilization. In the course of these interactions and mutual adaptations, the Chinese artistic idiom was enriched and transformed, planting the seeds for major achievements in figural and landscape arts in the ensuing Sui and Tang periods.

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Part I TRADITIONAL CHINESE STELES AND THEIR BUDDHIST ADAPTATION

ince the first century c.e., the Chinese have used steles, or flat stone slabs, as symbolic monuments. The adap tation of these slabs for Buddhist purposes in the fifth and sixth centuries represented only a brief episode in the long history of the Chinese stele tradition. All Chinese stone slabs, whether they were of the traditional type or Buddhist ones, served many of the same social and religious functions. In fact, it is impossible to account for the widespread popularity of Buddhist steles without recognizing the indigenous stele tradition that antedated by centuries the coming of Buddhism. Both traditional Chinese steles and their Buddhist counterparts shared several Chinese terms of varying antiquity, namely, “She” or “she,” “yi,” “li” (hamlet), “li” (ritual), and “bei.” The oldest, She , originally referred to the ancient Chinese earth god, first known as a tutelary deity worshiped by the Shang people. Throughout the Shang and the succeeding Zhou dynasties, She played an important role in state cults. When the ancient feudalistic society made a transition to an imperial empire with a centralized administration in the Qin and Han dynasties, the status of the earth god diminished but remained tied to the territorial and social aspects of communities. The worship of She was institutionalized and became intertwined with terms designating communities: “yi” (a town, also an ancient term) or “li” (a hamlet, a later but also pre-Han term). Local religious and social organizations responsible for worship activities were called “yishe” and “lishe” . These organizations were antecedents of the religious groups that customarily erected steles both in non-Buddhist and Buddhist contexts. Beginning in the first century c.e., Chinese used dressed stone slabs, or tablets, called bei for funerary or commemorative functions. Members of a clan or a community raised steles to honor individuals or events. These monuments espoused the values of Confucianism, and their production conformed to the Confucian concept of li , or ritual. Erected in public spaces, the steles stood as emblems of a community’s collective identity. Chinese steles were widely adapted for Buddhist use from the late fifth through the sixth century, and lingered on in later times. Buddhist steles served many of the same commemorative functions as traditional tablets. The majority of them were commissioned by local religious groups called yi, yiyi , or she. Thus it is apparent that many of the customs and practices surrounding the use of Buddhist steles originated in the indigenous Chinese stele tradition.

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chapter one ANCIENT ROOTS OF THE CHINESE STELE TRADITION

This chapter investigates the etymology of the terms “She”/“she,” “yi,” “li” (town), “li” (ritual), and “bei” in their historical, social, and cultural contexts, and the ritual use of bei in pre-Han times. Such an analysis sheds light on the origins and intrinsic meaning of these symbolic stones and is crucial to understanding the later Buddhist adaptation of this Chinese symbolic form.

the worship of she, the earth god, in ancient china Since ancient times the Chinese worshiped the god of earth or soil, called She, as one of their most important deities.1 Associated with agriculture and fertility, the earth spirit was revered in a primeval form of nature worship common to most ancient civilizations. Etymologically, the character She consists of two radicals: the left radical shi is a pictograph of an altar, while the right element tu means “earth” or “land.” The character She therefore means “the deified earth, worshiped at an altar.” Evidence for the worship of She dates back as far as the Shang dynasty. Inscriptions on oracle bones record that the Shang people worshiped a panoply of deities, including an anthropomorphic supreme deity known as Shangdi (the God on High), mythical ancestors, and a host of nature deities. Among the nature deities, She was the most important. As a life-sustaining force essential to the well-being of the whole community—and, by extension, the state—the earth spirit was worshiped as a tutelary deity. In Shang state cults, She’s significance was on a par with ancestor-spirits, who were worshiped as dynasty founders for their primeval procreative power. Ancestor-spirits and the earth god were in fact the twin foci of Shang worship. They were often perceived to have gender: ancestor-spirits were seen as male and were associated with yang, while the earth spirit was sometimes perceived as female and was associated with yin.2 The Shang kings and nobles performed lavish rituals, including the offering of human and animal sacrifice to nature deities and the spirits of deceased ancestors.3 They believed that deities and ancestor-spirits had both a benevolent and a destructive side, and therefore had to be propitiated.4 Sacrifice, the ritual taking of life, was considered a form of sanctioned violence,5 and ancestors and nature spirits were the only recipients of sacrifice allowed in the Shang tradition. In

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Shang oracle script, She or Tu is written , , or , which some scholars interpret as the performance of blood sacrifice, with blood dripping on the god of earth or on its altar.6 As in many traditional societies, rituals of state cults served to reinforce kingship and to maintain the hierarchy of political order. As David Cannadine writes: All of the pageants, in some way or other, seem to confirm consensus, to disguise conflict, and to support both hierarchy and community. No matter which country is taken, its royal ritual centers on the secular and sacred identities of the king, and on his role as an exemplary center, linking earthly and celestial hierarchies.7

The royal rituals of the Shang were thus symbolic actions undertaken periodically to reiterate the authority of the royal clan, in whom the social, economic, and political power of the entire state concentrated. In ancient times the earth god was symbolized by a variety of objects: a raised mound (which formed a natural altar), a tree (which grew from the soil), an upright stone (the hardest substance of earth), or a wooden pole.8 A passage from the Han text Huainanzi records that the Shang people used an upright stone to represent She: In the rites of You Yushi [the legendary Emperor Shun], they used a mound of earth in their altar of the soil. . . . In the time of Houshi [Emperor Yu] of [the dynasty of] Xia, they used a pine tree in their altar of the soil. . . . In the rites of the men of [the dynasty of] Yin [Shang], they used a stone in their altar of the soil. . . . In the rites of the men of [the dynasty of] Zhou, they used a chestnut tree in their altar of the soil.9

A site at Qiuwan, near Xuzhou, in Jiangsu province, may eliminate any doubt that Shang people worshiped the earth god. Excavated in 1965, the site includes a small area of habitation and a ceremonial center. In the center of this ceremonial ground, four large stone slabs, all naturally shaped, were erected. The tallest stone in the middle is about 1 meter high, roughly shaped like a square pillar. Scattered around the stones are remains of humans and dogs, which were probably sacrificed as offerings. Stratification indicates that at least two such sacrificial rituals took place. On the evidence of human and animal sacrifice and written records of Shang customs, Yu Weichao has concluded that this is the earliest example of the worship of She in Shang times.10 After the conquest of the Shang, the Zhou dynastic house continued to worship ancestor-spirits and She, although She was now worshiped in conjunction with Ji, the god of grain.

ancient roots of the chinese stele tradition

Together they were known as Sheji. The ancestor-spirits were housed in an ancestral temple (zongmiao), while the gods of soil and grain were worshiped on an altar (tan) in the open. Inside the palatial compound, according to the Zhou text Kaogong ji, the ancestral temple was built on the east (associated with yang) while the Sheji altar was built on the west (associated with yin); the palace, the seat of the emperor, was located in the north, facing south.11 Accorded equal status, the ancestral temple and the Sheji altar became the twin symbols of the state. Only the Zhou king held the privilege of officiating at state ceremonies in the ancestral temple and at the Sheji altar. Such ceremonies were performed with great pomp and solemnity. Offerings were also made on special occasions, such as when praying for rain, and before and after military campaigns. She functioned as the tutelary god of the state, protecting its military force. As in Shang times, She was symbolized by a mound, a tree, or a stone. In particular, the Junshe (She as patron god of the military) was symbolized by an upright stone.12 To remove a She stone that belonged to an opponent state was to perform an act symbolic of conquering that state. In that way, the She stone compares to the modern-day state flag. H. G. Creel writes: The importance of the ancestral temple and the she as the twin centers of the spiritual influences guarding the state is shown by the fact that when a state or a dynasty was extinguished it was considered necessary to destroy them. Only in this way could the spirits protecting the former ruler be enfeebled, and their enmity be made less dangerous.13

The Zhou worship of She also developed in conjunction with the worship of Heaven. In place of the supreme god Shangdi of the Shang, the Zhou people worshiped Tian, or Heaven, as an impersonal source of life and morality. An innovative political concept derived from the worship of Tian was tianming, or “Heavenly Mandate.” The ruler, known as tianzi, the “Son of Heaven,” was believed to receive his mandate to rule directly from Heaven, a mandate based on his moral behavior and not his right by birth. This notion of tianming later became not only the cornerstone of the Chinese imperial system but also the justification for dynastic revolution. In relation to the worship of Heaven, the Zhou royal house devised a new state ritual called jiaoji (suburban sacrifice). Altars or shrines were built in the suburb of the capital for the worship of Heaven and Earth in conjunction with the

ancient roots of the chinese stele tradition

astral bodies of the sun and the moon. Altars for She in the suburb were called jiaoshe. The Zhou king made offerings twice a year, on the winter and summer solstices.14 While clearly connected to agricultural rites, these sacrifices were performed with the idea that human institutions should harmonize with the operations of nature. The ruler, by observing sacrificial rites correctly, would earn the heavenly mandate to rule. Despite the additional cult of the god of grain and cult of Heaven, Zhou rituals still emphasized the worship of ancestors and the earth spirit. In conjunction with the developments of feudalism and territorial expansion in early Zhou times (a process that began in late Shang), the worship of She also became formally institutionalized.15 The Zhou king established new fiefs by sending nobles out to faraway lands, whereby elements of Zhou culture, including religion and rituals, were also introduced to remote parts of the state. In addition, the Zhou king gave the nobles small portions of soil from the She altar of the state for creating localized She altars in the new feudal states. In this way a divided earth god of the state became the tutelary deity of the feudal states. Lesser earth gods, however, presided over small towns and villages. Thus from the royal capital of the Zhou king to the vassal states of feudal lords and to towns and villages, every community large and small was to have its own She god and She altar. Ancestral cults were also prevalent at all levels of the ancient Chinese society, so much so that the whole empire had been likened to a family system. Just as ancestors and lineage grouped men in kinship terms, so the land god grouped men in territorial terms. Édouard Chavannes writes: The earth god is the personification of the power inherent in the earth. Each plot of earth possesses a god of its own, but the earth is split up according to the human groupings which occupy it. A complete hierarchy of earth gods corresponds to these various territorial divisions.16

Presiding over the human groupings and societies that occupied each plot of land, the earth god came to represent the territorial identity of these communities. The sovereign earth deity presiding over the state was called taishe or wangshe, the earth spirits presiding over the feudal states were called guoshe or houshe, and those governing local communities were called yishe, lishe, or xiangshe (see discussion below). Official worship affirmed the importance of She to the wellbeing of the state. At local levels, the worship of the earth

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spirit guaranteed the welfare of towns and villages, while rituals and festivities associated with this worship became the focus of local social and religious life.17

she, yi (tow n), and li (hamlet) Since She was the tutelary deity of every state or community, at the local level the term became associated with other terms that designated individual communities or neighborhoods: “yi” and “li.” “Yi” is an older term found in Shang oracle script, written , and its meaning is still controversial. The term has been translated either as “a domain” (Henri Maspéro) or as “a fief” (H. G. Creel), meanings that reflect the territorial and the political aspect of the concept, respectively.18 K. C. Chang defines yi as a “walled town,” an entity that has a spatial and a political as well as a social dimension: [The character] consists of two elements: a square enclosure above and a kneeling person below. These elements signify the two essentials of a Shang town, a walled enclosure to mark its boundaries, and its resident people. In oracle bone inscriptions we find many divinations about tso yi [zuoyi], “building of towns,” which was a deliberate, planned event rather than a gradual, “natural” growth.19

The building of yi probably related to the territorial expansion and the establishment of the feudal system in Shang and early Zhou times. Later on, however, the term designated an individual community and a unit in administrative terms. In the land settlement system called jingtian (wellfield), established under the Zhou, a tract of land was divided into a three-by-three grid, like the character jing (which means a well). Eight peasant families shared a nine-unit grid, each cultivating its own slot and jointly farming the central slot, which belonged to the feudal lord.20 Four such grid units formed an yi; sixty-four yi formed a xian, or a county. A new term for a hamlet, devised in Eastern Zhou times, was “li.” Because of the transition from bronze to iron technology, inexpensive agricultural tools became available and the individual family gradually became the basic unit of agricultural production. A number of peasant families formed a hamlet, and such a hamlet was called a li; some Zhou records mention that twenty-five households formed one li.21 In local worship of She, offerings were made annually in spring and in autumn. Local altars or shrines for the earth god were called yishe or lishe. Marked by a mound, a stone, or a large tree, symbols of the She god were called zhu or

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shezhu, meaning “the lord.” When sacrificial animals were offered, red strings (red being the color of yang) were sometimes tied around the stone or other objects symbolizing the earth god.22 After the ceremonies, entertainment and banquets were held for all members of the community, with the meat and gifts offered to the god divided among the participants. These festivities were called sheji as well as chunji (spring festival) and qiuji (autumn festival). Prayers were made not only for seasonal rites but also on other important occasions, such as the end of a drought or the shared effort of fending off natural calamities. All participants of rituals and festivities shared the expenses. The rudimentary organizations responsible for these activities were called she or yi, usually led by community elders (fulao) or the village chief (lizai). The space around the She altar, shexia, became the public space for communal gatherings. The upright stone or tree that symbolizes the earth god came to stand for the identity of the community, which also carried an inherent territorial dimension. With the emergence of an imperial bureaucracy in Qin and Han China, the institutionalized worship of the earth god also underwent changes. The Qin divided the country into two classes of administrative units, jun (provinces) and xian (counties). To govern these units, the central government appointed civil officials who were paid for their services.23 This centralized, bureaucratic government was structured in a hierarchical fashion, similar to the feudalistic Shang and early Zhou, except that the feudal lords were replaced with civil administrators recruited from the new and independent scholar class that emerged during the middle to the latter part of the Zhou dynasty. Under the administration of provinces and counties, yi and li remained administrative units at the local level. The evolution of she as an institution also became intertwined with these developments. Literary sources record a custom called shushe in the spring and autumn periods. Shu means “to write” or “to record,” and shushe means “to record the names of all members of a she in a registry.” This practice marked the beginnings of population registry in China, an essential instrument in later bureaucratic administration.24 Continuing the Zhou custom, in Han times the worship of She was instituted at all levels of administration, from the central government to jun (commandery), xian (county), xiang (district), and li (hamlet). At the county level or above, government officials led the religious rituals, whereas in districts and hamlets, worship of She remained a local affair.

ancient roots of the chinese stele tradition

She, now also called houtu, tudi, or dizhu, or “the land god,” came to symbolize the collective existence of the agrarian, territorially based community. C. K. Yang notes that while Sheji were the theistic symbols of the feudal states, houtu or tudi was the patron god of local community. The merging of the Sheji cult with the tudi cult in Han times perhaps resulted from the elimination of feudal states after the Zhou period, thus diminishing the political significance of Sheji worship. The veneration of the earth god thus evolved from a political cult into a community fair.25 The area around the altar of She developed into a public space that also served as the ceremonial ground where communal activities such as the swearing in of a local official, taking of a public vow, and praying for rain took place. The rural organizations of sheyi (or yishe) and lishe became more complex and stratified. Titles such as shezai, shezhu, or jizun designated the priests or shamans officiating at the rituals. During the Han dynasty, privatization and voluntary participation in these organizations developed.26 Private she were formed to pursue common interests, such as collecting funds to purchase a piece of land. Participation in the village she was no longer required of all members of a community but became voluntary. Sometimes donations were collected to fund certain activities. These private, voluntary social organizations, established to pursue common interests and funded through members’ subscriptions or donations, became the direct models for later Buddhist devotional societies, leading to the Buddhist adoption of the names she and yi (see chap. 3). Festivities associated with the local worship of She included the distribution of meat to all participants and winedrinking ceremonies, which facilitated a kindred spirit within the community.27 Later, in religious Daoism, gatherings called zhai (fasts) often turned into orgies of eating and drinking, reminiscent of fertility rites. Chinese Buddhism also had maigre feasts, which were vegetarian, called by the borrowed Daoist term.28 Sponsors of such maigre feasts for monasteries or for devotional societies, called zhaizhu, were frequently recorded on Buddhist steles. Another term related to these organizations was “dan” ( , ). Yu Weichao analyzes this term as originally designating a settlement group. He also relates it to the worship of She, mentioning that the character dan was derived from the shape of the sacred tree symbolic of She, with Y-shaped branches at the top.29 The term “danguan” designated an official in later Daoist societies and was recorded on Daoist steles, but the term “dan” was never found in association

ancient roots of the chinese stele tradition

with Buddhist devotional societies. The ancient custom of installing an upright stone to symbolize the earth god and represent a community’s identity apparently has continued into fairly recent times.30

the concept of li (r itual) The term “bei” was coined in the Han dynasty to designate the prototypical Chinese stele as we know it today (see chap. 2). All early references to bei are found in the ritual texts of the Confucian classical canon established in the Han; thus the inception of the use of bei as a symbolic object is closely tied to the concept of li, translated as “ritual” or “propriety.” The three ritual texts are the Zhou li (Rites of Zhou), the Yi li (Observances and rites), and the Li ji (Record of rites).31 They form the core of writings explicating the Confucian concept of li, and offer invaluable information on Chinese beliefs and ritual practices prior to the Qin and Han eras. The ritual texts were compiled and edited when the Han court made major efforts to collect and preserve ancient texts suppressed during the previous Qin dynasty. This compilation project led to the creation of an imperial library and the establishment of a canon of Chinese classics ranging in subject from poetry to music and ritual, including philosophical treatises and historical accounts.32 Honored with the title jing , these classical texts became the canonical foundation of the orthodox or Confucian tradition of subsequent Chinese culture. (Later, the use of the honorific term “jing” to denote translated Buddhist sutras gave the scriptures a canonical status as well.) In written form li consists of a right element li, an ideograph of a ritual vessel, and a left radical shi, denoting an altar stand and thus things religious. James Legge translates Xu Shen’s definition of li in the Shuowen (a second-century dictionary) as “a step or act; that whereby we serve spiritual beings and obtain happiness.”33 Therefore, at its inception, the term “li” meant performing religious rites to appease supernatural powers. The term “li” was next used in moral and philosophical disquisitions. However, scholars of ancient China have often noted two distinct and parallel processes in early Chinese thought: the secularization of the religious and the sacralization of the secular.34 Confucius was a seminal thinker in this historical development because he summarized early religious beliefs and applied them to the human domain. By

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shifting the emphasis from the supernatural realm to the human sphere, he instilled the quality of humanism in Chinese thought. By emphasizing moral virtue and ceremonial deportment in everyday behavior, he elevated ordinary human conduct to a higher moral plane. For Confucius, li designated one of the five cardinal virtues, the other four being ren (love, compassion), yi (righteousness), zhi (wisdom), and xin (faithfulness). In concrete application, li meant the rules of propriety, a code of conduct. In the time of Confucius, however, the principles of ritual applied only to junzi, “the superior man” or “noble ruler,” because moral conduct on the part of rulers and ministers was essential to good government.35 Later, junzi meant “gentlemen” in general (see discussion below).

the discussion of bei in r itual texts and the confucian notion of rulership Bei were free-standing stone pillars or wooden poles that, unlike later steles, bore no inscriptions in general. They were used exclusively in ritual ceremonies, and thus were symbolic objects that represented the enactment of li. By extension, they also embodied the values of Confucianism, specifically the principles of rulership that govern the conduct of junzi. An analysis of relevant passages in the ritual texts indicates that bei were used in three types of ritual contexts: sacrificial, ceremonial, and funerary. Xu Shen defined bei, which bears the stone radical shi , as “an upright stone.” Zheng Xuan (127–200 c.e.), the Han commentator on the ritual texts, explained that bei were used to guide or lead objects: “All palaces have bei, which were used to mark the sun’s shadow, and to differentiate day and night.”36 Zheng further mentioned that the bei used in the courtyards of temples and palaces were carved from stone, whereas those used for funerary rituals were made of wood because they had to be carried around. The first ritual function of the bei was its role in sacrificial offerings to ancestors and deities, one of the principal duties of the king or ruler. A passage from the “Jiyi” (Meaning of sacrifice) chapter of the Li ji vividly describes the Zhou ritual of blood sacrifice: On the day of suburban sacrifice, the ruler led the sacrificial animal [an ox], along with and assisted by his son on the opposite side; the ministers and officers followed in order. Upon entering

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the gate of the temple [or shrine], they fastened the sacrificial animal to the bei. The ministers and officers then proceeded to inspect the hair and ears of the creature and slaughter it. Offerings were first made with the hair and blood, and the party retreated for a while. Then the flesh, both boiled and raw, was offered, and the party retreated again to show ultimate reverence.37

We have already seen that in Western Zhou times the worship of Heaven, ancestors, and the gods of earth and grain was part of an elaborate state apparatus associated with divine kingship. The ruler’s liturgical activities, including sacrifices, maintained his mandate to rule. The bei, in this case a stone pillar in the compound of the ancestral shrine or on the altar of deities, recalled the upright stone symbolizing She the earth god. The bei was not a cultic emblem, however, but a ritual object that served a specific function in sacrificial ceremonies. The second ritual function of the bei was its use in court ceremonies. In the “Pinli” (Rites of receiving guests) chapter in the Yi li, several passages mention bei in ceremonial directives to a ruler or a nobleman receiving the courtesy calls of guests from other states. One of these passages describes the presentation of meat, grain, and wine and the display of ritual vessels for an elaborate ceremonial banquet. For example, the nine ding (tripod) vessels of a ruler were to be arranged in a row in front of the steps of the palace in a specific relation to the bei in the palace courtyard, with the wine vessels on either side of the bei.38 Thus the bei served as a ceremonial marker in the palace courtyard. The scenario described probably refers to a secular banquet held at the court of a feudal prince in Eastern Zhou times. In court pageantry, ritual objects were symbols of power. For example, the possession of nine ding vessels in Eastern Zhou and Qin times conferred the heavenly mandate to rule.39 When banquets were performed solemnly and elaborately, the divine power implicit in religious ceremony was transferred to the secular plane, that is, to the person officiating the banquet. By imitating ceremonies appropriate for the Zhou king at the pinnacle of the feudal hierarchy, feudal princes asserted their autonomy and displayed their wealth or political capital. Jenny F. So writes: Politically, the Eastern Zhou period saw an accelerated decline of the central government . . . and a corresponding increase in the power of the feudal states and local princes. The Eastern Zhou kings possessed little actual power, becoming ceremonial figureheads to whom the increasingly powerful and ambitious lords paid merely nominal allegiance.40

ancient roots of the chinese stele tradition

Recently recovered Eastern Zhou bronze ritual vessels, many sumptuously made, attest to the changing function of such objects from religious ceremonial objects to display objects symbolic of political status.41 Another passage in the “Pinli” chapter mentions the use of bei in the courtly ceremonies of a ruler receiving guests: The guest stands within the area marked by the bei [in the palace compound] to receive orders. Facing the southwesterly direction he receives a [jade] gui-tablet [a ritual symbol] and then steps back.42

In Eastern Zhou times, powerful regional vassal lords held their own courts and fought against each other. Strategists, thinkers, and lobbyists offered them advice and sometimes traveled from state to state. The ceremonial directive quoted above prescribes the proper behavior of a ruler when receiving guests, but there is another reading of the passage as well. By practicing ceremonial deportment befitting a ruler, a prince could aspire to becoming the supreme ruler one day. The jade gui-tablets were ritual objects associated with rank from Neolithic times onward, and some Han steles were modeled in the shape of a gui-tablet (fig.1.1). The bei, while serving as a ceremonial and spatial marker, was an accoutrement of rulership as well. Appropriating the use of a symbolic object that was above one’s status was an act equivalent to the usurpation of power. The third ritual use of the bei was its function as a mechanical device and a status marker in funeral rituals. In the Li ji, the “Sangfu daji” (Record of the dressing of the dead) chapter records of the use of wooden bei as tools to carry and lower a coffin into the grave: In burying the coffin of a ruler, a bier, four ropes, and two bei were used. Those guiding the course of the coffin carried the shade with pendant feathers. In burying a great officer, they used two ropes and two bei. Those who guided the coffin carried a reed of white grass. In burying a common officer, they used a carriage of the state, employed two ropes but no bei. As soon as they left the residence, those who directed the coffin carried the shade of merit. In letting down the coffin into the grave, they removed the ropes from the bei, and pulled at them with their backs to the bei. For a ruler’s coffin, they also used levers, and for a great officer’s or a common officer’s, ropes attached to the sides of the coffin. Orders were given that they should not cry out in letting down the coffin of the ruler. They let it down as guided by the sound of a drum.43

This passage specifies that only rulers and ministers of the highest rank were entitled to the use of bei in their funerary

ancient roots of the chinese stele tradition

fig. 1.1. Kong Xian bei, guishou-type stele. Eastern Han period, dated 222 c.e. Stone. Confucius Temple, Qufu, Shandong Province. From SZ, Chûgoku series, vol. 2, p. 34, fig. 48.

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your ingenuity in the case of another man’s mother. Would you do likewise in the case of your own mother? Would that not distress you? Bah!” They did not allow him to carry out his plan.44

fig. 1.2. Kong Qian bei, round-top stele with a hole in top center. Eastern Han period, dated 154 c.e. Stone. Confucius Temple, Qufu, Shandong Province. From SZ, Chûgoku series, vol. 2, p. 33, fig. 47.

processions, and that only in burials of rulers could bei be used to lower coffins. Some Han stone tablets bear round holes in the top center, presumably a feature added to bei used in funeral rituals (fig. 1.2). Another passage in the Li ji, from the “Tan Gong” chapter, warns against improper use of bei for those not entitled by rank: When the mother of Ji Kangzi died, Gongshu Ruo [the chief craftsman in charge of funeral matters] was still young. After dressing [the deceased], Pan [Ruo’s kinsman, known for his skills in mechanical devices] asked permission to let the coffin down into the pit by a mechanical contrivance. They were about to accede when Gongjian Jia said, “No. According to the early practice in [the state of] Lu, the ducal house used [for this purpose] fengbei [large pillars], and the three principal families used huanying [large wooden columns]. Pan, you would make trial of

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The terms for funerary pillars were “fengbei” and “huanying” (also huanbiao). Fengbei refers to large poles in pre-Han palace architecture, and thus, metaphorically, to the stature of the ruler or ministers as “pillars of the state.” The word “feng,” which denotes the “massiveness” of columns, originally meant “rich” and “fertile.” Reminiscent of fertility stones of earlier origins, the term “fengbei” is therefore a verbal recapitulation of an ancient concept. In the term “huanying,” the characters huan and ying both bear the wood radical mu; huanying refers to large wooden columns of a front reception hall, again using architectural terminology to confer stature on the person entitled to the use of columns in his burial. “Huan” is also interchangeable with the term “biao,” pillars erected to extol excellence. “Biao” is another term referring to columns used as sundials, and thus serving the same function of bei as spatial markers.45 In the ritual texts, the discussions of bei in these three ritual contexts—sacrificial, courtly, and funerary—all emphasize their proper use, according to the appropriateness of the occasion and the social status of the parties involved. Because the code of conduct in Confucius’ time applied only to junzi, the superior man, bei in their inception as ceremonial objects were associated with this cult of the “great person,” namely, a noble person qualified to rule by virtue of his moral conduct. Although this code of conduct originally applied only to men of noble birth, in the end these moral precepts became a path by which a commoner could elevate himself. Anyone who practiced the precepts of a nobleman became a noble person; thus these precepts represented a path to rulership.46 Throughout the history of imperial China, the Confucian classics provided the essential preparation for government in the education of princes. Even rulers of conquest dynasties studied these skills of rulership in order to establish rule in China. For those aspiring to a career in the civil service, mastery of the Confucian classical canon was required as well. The model of the superior character as a path to kingship is not unique to China; parallels to it are found in many ancient civilizations. In India, the comparable concept is that of mahâpuru∂a, the great person or cosmic man. Already expressed in Vedic mythology and mysticism, the concept of mahâpuru∂a supported the deification and cultic worship of ´ the Historical Buddha Sâkyamuni. In anthropomorphic representations of the Buddha, the lak∂an. as (bodily marks) that

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distinguish the Buddha’s superhuman qualities are derived from the distinctive marks of the cosmic man. In conjunction with another ancient Indian notion of the cakravartin (universal monarch), the Buddha is worshiped as the spiritual ruler of the universe.47 Although the concepts of the Chinese junzi and the Indian mahâpuru∂a are not comparable, they both associate divine and secular kingship, a conceptual affinity that is an important underlying theme in the Buddhist adaptation of the Chinese tablet form. At the Han court, scholars formulated the Confucian orthodoxy. In turn, the literati or official class (called ru or shi ) came to assume an elevated high social status.48 They were selected through civil service examination, as first documented in 165 b.c.e. In 124 b.c.e., the Grand Academy (taixue) was established to educate future office-holders.49 Literacy, education, and the civil service examination thus provided channels for a limited degree of social mobility. Education at that time, however, exclusively involved study of the orthodox canon. The literati or scholar-officials, the product of this system, became agents who disseminated the values of Han Confucianism. The formation of a dominant social class and a unified ideology contributed to the rise of the bei in the Han dynasty (see chap. 2).

bei as r itual objects in pre-han times This analysis of key terms and textual sources has examined the functions of bei as ritual objects in pre-Han China. In recent decades, the concept of ritual has received much scholarly attention from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, bringing to light the central roles that ritual, ritual structure, and the process of ritualization play in culture, society, and religion.50 As a form of social action or a communication system, ritual functions to inculcate the accepted values of a society and to reinforce hierarchy and consensus. The three types of ceremonies in which bei operate as ritual objects— sacrificial, courtly, and funerary—all involve staged, deliber-

ancient roots of the chinese stele tradition

ate actions and the lavish use of ritual props in specific locations and orientations. Among the different schools of ritual theory, the performance theory perhaps best describes the character of these rituals. Stanley Tambiah, a chief proponent of this school, distinguishes the three ways in which ritual is performative: (1) it involves actions; (2) it is staged and uses stage sets and multiple objects to afford the participants an intense experience; and (3) it concerns indexical values.51 Deliberate actions that engage the body in movement and that incorporate symbolic objects in a theater of drama are components of a system of communication. Ritual is indexical in that it presents and validates social hierarchy, while at the same time referring, through symbols, to the cosmos. These characteristics clearly reveal themselves in the ritual use of bei in pre-Han China. In suburban sacrifice, for example, the ruler establishes his relationship with the astral deities of Heaven and Earth through the ritual killing and offering of a sacrificial victim, thereby affirming his mandate to rule. In court ceremonies, the ruler receives guests from other states with a degree of deportment appropriate to the relative status of each party. In burials of a deceased ruler or high-ranking minister, ritual actions are embellished with objects representative of his stature in his past life as he makes the transition into the next. Confucianism as a political philosophy is conservative in outlook, emphasizing stability, human relations, and social obligations. Scholars of ritual studies have long recognized that ritual activities engender social cohesion and control and serve to maintain the existing social order.52 It is no wonder that the concept of li developed to such an elaborate extent in ancient China. Perceived as the cultural norm, these rituals effectively regulated social relations and preserved the order and hierarchy of the traditional society. The bei, especially since Han times, developed into the quintessential symbolic monument of this ritual tradition. Several centuries later, the Buddhists’ adaptation of the Chinese bei also meant assimilating the symbolic values and the social and cultural practices associated with this type of monument.

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n the latter part of the Han dynasty, the stone stele called bei became widely used in China. The stele, or tablet, was a flat stone slab of regulated size and shape and was usually engraved with an inscription. Han bei served funerary, commemorative, or edifying purposes, and espoused the values of Confucianism. The popular use of steles was also associated with the rise of a new social class, the scholar-officials, who were both sponsors and audience for these monuments. The Han bei exhibits both continuities with and new developments from its predecessor in Eastern Zhou and Qin times, which is primarily known through ritual texts. Our analysis in the last chapter indicates that, in pre-imperial times, the bei was a symbol of status and a marker of ritual space, and that its usage evolved in accordance with the developments of the concepts of li (ritual) and junzi (the gentlemen) in Confucian thought. These symbolic roles became more pronounced because of the adoption of Confucianism as the orthodox ideology in the Han dynasty. The use of the stele as a funeral monument to memorialize a person’s identity also became more prominent as funerary and immortality cults grew in strength. In pre-imperial times, the bei was either a stone or a wooden pole and apparently did not carry inscriptions. The Han stele, however, evolved into a stone slab of standardized shape and size, and has become a main vehicle for ritual inscriptions. This metamorphosis of the bei was a product of the transformed social and cultural landscape of the Eastern Han, and can be attributed to the confluence of a number of factors: the proliferation of funerary stone sculptures and monuments commensurate with the intensification of funerary and immortality cults, the increasing consciousness of the individual person, the preference for stone as a medium for ritual inscriptions, the adoption of Confucianism as an orthodox ideology, and, consequently, the rise of the shi (scholar-official) class. Most Han steles date from the first and second centuries c.e. They originate from widespread geographical areas— from well-known centers of Han art in Henan, Hebei, Shandong, and Sichuan to remote regions in the northwest. More than three hundred steles are known from rubbings and other records. Han steles are commemorative monuments. Although often carrying several levels of symbolism, they can be grouped into four major types based on their primary functions: (1) funerary/commendatory steles that honor individuals, (2) religious steles, (3) secular steles, and (4) stone texts.

I

chapter two THE ORIGINS AND RISE OF HAN STELES

The Han stele is a vast topic and there already exists a large body of scholarly works on them, especially in the branch of traditional Chinese historiography known as jinshixue (the study of bronzes and stones; see introduction). Here I only sketch the form and function of Han steles and discuss selected examples from each of the four primary groups. Greater attention, however, is given to the social and cultural conditions that gave rise to Han steles as outlined above. An investigation into the nature of and practices associated with bei—and, more specifically, how these monuments functioned as emblems of individual or group identity—provides insight into the later Buddhist adaptation and transformation of this Chinese symbolic form.

the form of han steles Han bei are upright stone slabs, which are monoliths, supported on separate bases.1 They are usually carved from granite, limestone, marble, sandstone, or other natural stone. A bei consists of three parts: the head (beishou), the body (beishen), and the base (beifu). The stele’s body is continuous with the top, or head, which displays a variety of styles. The first style has a gui-top (guishou), triangularly shaped (see fig. 1.1). The pointed bei is modeled after the gui-tablet or gui-scepter; in ancient times a nobleman or an official carried a gui-tablet, usually carved in jade, as a symbol of status.2 Another speculation about the pointed-top stele is that it was originally used to hold a sacrificial animal—one of the bei’s earlier functions.3 The second style has a plain flat top. The third style is a four-sided pillar, square or rectangular in cross-section. The fourth style has a plain round top (see fig. 1.2). The fifth style has a dragon-top (chishou), with a round top surmounted by a pair or pairs of intertwined, hornless dragons called chi (fig. 2.1). The dragon is one of the most ancient mythical animals in Chinese lore and by imperial times had evolved into a symbol of sovereignty; the dragon’s elusive, transforming power represents the ruler’s ability to adapt to and master changes. The symbols of sovereignty, such as the gui-scepter and the dragon adorning the Han bei, relate to the object’s association with the concept of rulership and to its function as a marker of status. Throughout later imperial history, the dragon-top style and other plain-style steles continued to be used, whereas the gui-top style was popular initially in the Han dynasty but soon went out of vogue.

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fig. 2.1. Gao Yi bei, chishou-type stele. Ya’an, Sichuan. Eastern Han period, dated 209 c.e. Stone. H. 280 cm. From Victor Segalen, Gilbert de Voisins, and Jean Lartigue, Mission archéologique en Chine, vol. 1, pl. l.

On the obverse of the tablet, a cap within the stele top is reserved for inscribing the title, usually rendered in seal script (zhuanshu), and thus the term “zhuanshou” (see fig. 1.1). The main text of the inscription is carved below this, on the stele’s body, from the right to the left and from top to bottom, sometimes continuing to the reverse. The sides and reverse sometimes bear names of sponsors. Steles with round tops sometimes bear curved grooves at the top called yun (see fig. 1.2), while others have round holes in the top center called chuan (see figs. 1.1, 1.2). Both features are vestiges of the bei’s earlier function in funerary ritual, when four pillars were placed at the corners of the grave, and ropes were passed along the grooves and through the holes in the pillars

origins and rise of han steles

to lower a nobleman’s casket into it. Han bei were not used for that purpose, however, and both features soon disappeared. The base for the bei is either rectangular (fangfu) or shaped like a turtle (guifu), the turtle being a symbol of longevity and endurance. Among all the styles of bei, the most august form is one with a dragon-top and a turtle base, reserved only for the highest officials.4 Sumptuary laws regulated who was entitled to erect a stele (based on social status and official rank) and the size and kind allowed. In general Han bei range in height from 1 to 3 meters, but exceptionally large ones can measure up to several meters high.

f u n e r a ry / c o m m e n dat o ry s t e l e s Funerary steles are by far the largest group of Han bei, constituting almost half of the known corpus. A small number of them were components of elaborate groups of mortuary stone sculptures and architecture. An elaborate Han tomb was built with a tumulus above the grave and a spirit-path (shendao) leading up to the tomb mound; lining the spirit-path would be pairs of stone animals, pillar-gates (called que; see fig. 4.1), one or a pair of memorial tablets at the end of the path, and an above-ground offering shrine (fig. 2.2).5 These tablets, called shendaobei, thus served as part of a group of commemorative sculptures for a large tomb complex. The majority of funerary tablets, however, were individual grave markers. Early examples of funerary steles bear short inscriptions, but gradually the inscriptions evolved into lengthy eulogies. The dual roles of the Han funeral stele as a carrier of ritual inscriptions and as a funerary monument continued established traditions and practices of earlier times, and I will first examine these traditions and practices as well as the direct antecedents of Han bei.

Ritual Inscriptions and Antecedents of Han Steles One of the most important characteristics that defines the Han bei is its new function as a carrier of ritual inscriptions. The written word has always played a central role in Chinese civilization.6 In ancient times writing was primarily religious in nature, for early writings were addressed to the spirits as attempts to establish a link between the living and the deceased, between men and the gods. For example, the writings on oracle bones for divination in Shang times expressed the

origins and rise of han steles

fig. 2.2. Diagram of a Han-dynasty tomb and spirit-path lined with monuments and sculptures. From Hung Wu, Monumentality in Early Chinese Art and Architecture, pp. 190–191, fig. 4.1.

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fig. 2.3. Inscribed stone. Found near the Tomb of King Cuo (r. 323–313 b.c.e.). Zhongshan, Hebei. Warring States period, fourth century b.c.e. Stone. H. 90 cm, W. 50 cm, Th. 40 cm. Hebei Provincial Museum. From ZMQ, Shufa zhuanke, vol. 1, pl. 29.

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concerns of Shang kings and sought answers from deceased royal ancestors and spirits.7 During the Zhou dynasty, ritual bronzes—vessels, bells, axes—were the main carriers of inscriptions. The Chinese term for inscription is “ming,” which means “to extol the virtues of ancestors for posterity.”8 The character bears the metal radical jin because it originally referred to inscriptions on bronzes. Bronze inscriptions commemorated political events or military campaigns in order to proclaim the merits of kings and nobles to ancestors and spirits and to obtain blessing and longevity from them. In funerary contexts, ritual inscriptions were “to attract felicity to the buried person and emit it through the buried person to his offsprings.”9 In its earliest usage in Eastern Zhou times, the term “jinshi” (metal and stone) denoted specifically bronze bells and stone chimes, which, together with drums, were the principal rhythmic instruments in Zhou ancestral rites.10 Although bronze was the preferred medium for ritual inscriptions, the existence of a small number of inscribed stones dating to the Eastern Zhou and Qin periods provided a linkage between bei of pre-imperial and imperial times.11 In particular, the stone slab from the Zhongshan tombs, of fourth-century b.c.e. date, and the inscribed stones that Qin Shihuang (the First Emperor of Qin, r. 221–210 b.c.e.) erected on mountaintops are precursors of the Han bei.12 The Zhongshan slab was found near the tomb of King Cuo (r. 323–313 b.c.e.) of the kingdom of Zhongshan in Hebei province. The flat stone slab measures 90 centimeters high, 50 centimeters wide, and 40 centimeters thick. It is slightly rounded at the top and has an indentation to the top left (fig. 2.3). In shape and size the Zhongshan slab comes fairly close to the standard form of a Han bei. A two-line inscription in an ancient script is engraved on the slab’s obverse. It records the name of Minister Gong Cheng as supervisor of the king’s fishing and hunting enclosure, and proclaims that Man, the king’s former General, is announcing this fact to later exalted worthies.13 In Shang and Zhou times, hunting was one of the king’s principal ritual duties. Erected at the site of the king’s fishing and hunting enclosure and his tomb, the slab hence marked both the king’s sovereign space as well as his resting place, “a ritualized liminal sphere between life and death.”14 As an emblem of status and a marker of the king’s political and ritual space, the Zhongshan slab fulfilled the functions of the bei as outlined in the ritual texts (see chap. 1). It thus far presents the most concrete evidence of an inscribed stone slab that was clearly a precedent for the later Han bei in both form and function.

origins and rise of han steles

Another well-known instance of pre-Han inscribed stones consists of those commissioned by Qin Shihuang. Between 219 and 210 b.c.e., the First Emperor of Qin embarked on an inspection tour through the eastern commanderies of his newly unified empire. He climbed to the top of various mountains and had his officials “erect stones” (lishi) to record the eulogies of the emperor’s virtues and achievements. Although the stones no longer exist, the full texts of these eulogies are recorded in dynastic histories.15 In lauding the emperor’s achievements and proclaiming them to the gods, these inscriptions were firmly grounded in the Zhou ritual tradition. However, the decision to carve these inscriptions on stone (instead of casting them on bronze vessels) and the placement of these stones on mountaintops (instead of inside ancestral temples) represented Qin Shihuang’s political and ritual innovations. Because of the association of mountains with immortality and the proximity of the peaks of sacred mountains to Heaven, these slabs denoted not only the emperor’s political sovereignty but also his aspiration to immortality and eternity.16 Unprecedented and ambitious in scale, Qin Shihuang’s inscribed stones were a landmark in elevating stone to a worthy medium for ritual inscriptions. By the Han dynasty, the meaning of the term “jinshi” had also changed, denoting funerary objects in general and serving as a metaphor for immortality and post-mortem fame. Ancestor worship and elaborate burials were evident from the beginnings of Chinese civilization, but increasingly the emphases were on achieving immortality for individuals and on elaborate funerary rites as fulfilling the obligations of filial piety. In Confucius’ time, the reverence for parents and ancestors was codified as the doctrine of xiao (filial piety). Mourning duties were among the most important obligations of children to parents and ministers to the ruler, respectively, with the Li ji (Record of rites) giving detailed accounts of the proper procedures and etiquette of funerary rituals. The Han imperial government’s sanctioning of Confucianism further elevated the Xiao jing (Classic of filial piety) to a cultic status, asserting that filial piety be the model for all social relations. This emphasis on filial piety encouraged lavish displays in burial services and funeral monuments.17 Furthermore, immortality cults that began in Zhou times gained further momentum in the Qin and Han dynasties.18 Qin Shihuang’s elaborate tomb and his inscribed stones on mountaintops attest to his ambitious attempts to achieve immortality in the afterlife. The many other tombs of Han times, and religious cults such as that of the Queen Mother of

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the West, evince the strengthening of immortality cults during this period. In addition to these religious developments in funerary and immortality beliefs, the Chinese began to use stone for largescale commemorative sculptures and monuments beginning in the first century c.e., and the bei was one component of this new class of Han stone art.19 The rise of the art of stone in China is still a subject of scholarly debate, but it is thought that the association of stone with permanence, and thus immortality, may have been one of the reasons that led to the widespread use of stone for fashioning funerary art.20

Funerary Inscriptions The funeral inscriptions on Han tablets are also related to other forms of preexisting funerary inscriptions. Although the inscriptions on early steles are brief, gradually they evolved into lengthy accounts that extol the accomplishments of the deceased and sometimes narrate their ancestry. The literary precedents of such writings can be traced to funerary inscriptions on other objects of different materials in pre-Han times. The first type of object was the zhong, translated as “spirittablet” or “soul-tablet.” Made of wood, it was inscribed with the name and rank of the deceased. During the mourning ritual, the tablet was set up by the coffin as a temporary resting place for the spirit that had left the body. Offerings were placed near the tablet. Subsequently a more permanent spirit-tablet, called a shenzhu, was displayed in the family or ancestral shrine to receive offerings generation after generation. This practice has remained essentially unchanged to the present day.21 A second type of inscribed object was the mingjing, translated as “inscribed banner” or “name-banner.” Bearing the name of the deceased, a name-banner was also a substitute for the deceased who could no longer be present physically. Suspended from a bamboo pole, the name-banner was used throughout the funerary ritual. Eventually it covered the coffin and was buried with it.22 Like bei, mingjing were “banners of distinction” reserved for distinguished persons. A number of banners or cloths, in hemp or silk, have been recovered from tombs of Warring States and Han periods. The most spectacular is the example, dating to circa 175–145 b.c.e., recovered in 1971 from Mawangdui tomb no. 1.23 Instead of bearing a written name, however, the T-shaped silk cloth represents a cosmological scheme, in the center of

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which is what may be a portrait of the deceased, Lady Dai, with her attendants.24 Both the spirit-tablet and the name-banner expressed beliefs in the continuous existence of the spirit of a person after death, rendering the spirit into tangible forms.25 A written name or a portrait stood for the identity of that spirit. The tombstone, which bears the name of the deceased, thus served a similar function in preserving the identity of the deceased.26 The only difference between a tombstone and the other two funeral objects was that the tombstone, standing in the open, spatially marked the location where the deceased was buried. In conjunction with ideas of harmony with the elements, geomantic ideas (called fengshui, literally “wind and water”) about the sites of graves developed.27 The permanency of the medium of stone itself no doubt further enhanced the notion of a firm support for the continued existence of the spirit of the deceased. Inscriptions on tomb steles also served as a channel linking the deceased with the living because they recorded the ancestry of the deceased and included blessings for descendants. As noted earlier, the Chinese term for inscription, “ming,” means to extol the virtues and achievements of the deceased for posterity and to attract felicity, through the deceased, to future generations. Thus it was through inscriptions, which expressed belief in an afterlife and in ancestor cults, that tombstones inherited some of the functions and symbolic meanings of bronze ritual vessels. Tomb epitaphs were also related to the literary genres called minglei (eulogy and dirge).28 These were prayers chanted and recited, or songs sung, at burials and at ritual sacrifices offered to the deceased. Eulogies and dirges expressed filial feelings and ensured the reward of blessings from ancestor-spirits. In later Han times, these mourning addresses were written on bamboo slips called aice (elegiac bamboo slips) and were buried in tombs; bamboo slips were one of the mediums for writing before the invention of paper in the Eastern Han. Funeral eulogies and dirges thus provided the literary model for Han tomb epitaphs carved on tablets.

Examples of Funerary/Commendatory Steles

fig. 2.4. Biao Xiaoyu bei. From Sishui, Shandong. Western Han period, dated 26 c.e. Stone. H. 132 cm. Shandong Provincial Museum. From SZ, Chûgoku series, vol. 2, pl. 59.

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Developed as an embodiment of funerary beliefs about the existence of an individual’s spirit after death and the memory of that individual’s identity, the funerary tablet also came to be identified with persons of a particular social class and their ideology. Han bei also commemorated events and institutions,

origins and rise of han steles

both religious and secular (see below). Although of diverse content, the stele inscriptions frequently singled out individuals in order to honor their political or military feats, civic deeds, performance of religious rituals and duties, or leadership roles in institutions and communities. Unlike funerary steles, however, these commendatory tablets paid tribute to people while they were still alive. Through a survey of selected examples of Han steles, and a few post-Han ones, the following discussion further explores the social background of the individuals honored by steles, the sponsors and audience of these monuments, their shared values, and how steles functioned as symbolic monuments. The majority of Han steles date from the Eastern Han period, with a few exceptions.29 Among the earliest extant examples is a tombstone from the Western Han period: Biao Xiaoyu bei (fig. 2.4): dated 26 b.c.e.; the inscription on the obverse identifies the deceased and gives his title, a date, and a place (recovered in Shandong in the late nineteenth century; the stele is now in the Shandong Provincial Museum; SZ, Chûgoku series, vol. 2, pl. 59; BT, vol. 1, pl. 14)

The stele is shaped as a flat slab with a round top, and slightly tapers upward. The inscription is engraved on the obverse in two lines; it reads: [Deceased on] the dinghai [day] of the eighth month, in the third year of the reign of Heping [26 b.c.e.], Biao Xiaoyu, the Marquis of Pingyi.