Buddhist Practice and Visual Culture: The visual rhetoric of Borobudur 9780415780988, 9780203829813

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Buddhist Practice and Visual Culture The visual rhetoric of Borobudur

Julie A. Gifford

Routledge Critical Studies in Buddhism

Buddhist Practice and Visual Culture

Providing an overall interpretation of the Buddhist monument Borobudur in Indonesia, this book looks at Mahayana Buddhist religious ideas and practices that could have informed Borobudur, including both the narrative reliefs and the Buddha images. The author explores a version of the classical Mahayana that foregrounds the importance of the visual in relation to Buddhist philosophy, meditation, devotion, and ritual. This book goes on to show that the architects of Borobudur designed a visual world in which the Buddha appeared in a variety of forms and could be encountered in three ways: by realizing the true nature of his teaching, through visionary experience, and by physically encountering him as he is “embodied” in images. Furthermore, this book analyses a particularly comprehensive and programmatic expression of Mahayana Buddhist visual culture so as to enrich the theoretical discussion of the monument. It argues that the relief panels of Borobudur do not passively illustrate, but rather creatively “picture” selected passages from texts. Presenting new material that demonstrates the central importance of visualization meditation to the design of the monument, this book contributes immensely to a new and better understanding of the significance of Borobudur for the field of Buddhist and Religious Studies. Julie A. Gifford is Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Religion at Miami University of Ohio.

Routledge Critical Studies in Buddhism Edited by Stephen C. Berkwitz, Missouri State University, USA Founding Editors: Charles S. Prebish, Utah State University, USA and Damien Keown, Goldsmith’s College, London University, UK

Routledge Critical Studies in Buddhism is a comprehensive study of the Buddhist tradition. The series explores this complex and extensive tradition from a variety of perspectives, using a range of different methodologies. The series is diverse in its focus, including historical, philological, cultural, and sociological investigations into the manifold features and expressions of Buddhism worldwide. It also presents works of constructive and reflective analysis, including the role of Buddhist thought and scholarship in a contemporary, critical context and in the light of current social issues. The series is expansive and imaginative in scope, spanning more than two and a half millennia of Buddhist history. It is receptive to all research works that are of significance and interest to the broader field of Buddhist Studies. Editorial Advisory Board: James A. Benn, McMaster University, Canada; Jinhua Chen, The University of British Columbia, Canada; Rupert Gethin, University of Bristol, UK; Peter Harvey, University of Sunderland, UK; Sallie King, James Madison University, USA; Anne Klein, Rice University, USA; Ulrich Pagel, School of Oriental and African Studies, UK; John Powers, Australian National University; Juliane Schober, Arizona State University, USA; Donald Swearer, Harvard University, USA; Vesna A. Wallace, University of California-Santa Barbara, USA; Paul Williams, University of Bristol, UK

A Survey of Vinaya Literature Charles S. Prebish The Reflexive Nature of Awareness A Tibetan Madhyamaka defence Paul Williams Altruism and Reality Studies in the philosophy of the Bodhicaryavatara Paul Williams

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Beyond Enlightenment Buddhism, religion, modernity Richard Cohen Buddhism in the Public Sphere Reorienting global interdependence Peter D. Hershock British Buddhism Teachings, practice and development Robert Bluck Buddhist Nuns in Taiwan and Sri Lanka A critique of the feminist perspective Wei-Yi Cheng New Buddhist Movements in Thailand Towards an understanding of Wat Phra Dhammakaya and Santi Asoke Rory Mackenzie Buddhism, Power and Political Order Edited by Ian Harris Buddhist Rituals of Death and Rebirth Contemporary Sri Lankan practice and its origins Rita Langer Environmental Ethics in Buddhism A virtues approach Pragati Sahni The Cultural Practices of Modern Chinese Buddhism Attuning the Dharma Francesca Tarocco Mindfulness in Early Buddhism New approaches through psychology and textual analysis of Pali, Chinese and Sanskrit sources Tse-fu Kuan Religion, Medicine and the Human Embryo in Tibet Frances Garrett Power, Wealth and Women in Indian Mahayana Buddhism The Gandavyuha-sutra Douglas Osto

Buddhist Manuscript Cultures Knowledge, ritual and art Edited by Stephen C. Berkwitz, Juliane Schober and Claudia Brown Buddhist Monasticism in East Asia Places of practice Edited by James A. Benn, Lori Meeks and James Robson Tibetan Rituals Of Death Buddhist funerary practices Margaret Gouin Buddhism in Australia Traditions in change Cristina Rocha and Michelle Barker Buddhist Practice and Visual Culture The visual rhetoric of Borobudur Julie A. Gifford The following titles are published in association with the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies

The Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies conducts and promotes rigorous teaching and research into all forms of the Buddhist tradition. Early Buddhist Metaphysics The making of a philosophical tradition Noa Ronkin Mipham’s Dialectics and the Debates on Emptiness To be, not to be or neither Karma Phuntsho How Buddhism Began The conditioned genesis of the early teachings Richard F. Gombrich Buddhist Meditation An anthology of texts from the Pāli Canon Sarah Shaw

Remaking Buddhism for Medieval Nepal The fifteenth-century reformation of Newar Buddhism Will Tuladhar-Douglas Metaphor and Literalism in Buddhism The doctrinal history of Nirvana Soonil Hwang The Biographies Of Rechungpa The evolution of a Tibetan hagiography Peter Alan Roberts The Origin of Buddhist Meditation Alexander Wynne

Buddhist Practice and Visual Culture The visual rhetoric of Borobudur

Julie A. Gifford

First published 2011 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2011 Julie A. Gifford The right of Julie A. Gifford to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978–0–415–78098–8 (hbk) ISBN: 978–0–203–82981–3 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon

For all my teachers

Contents

List of figures Acknowledgments Note on transliteration Introduction

xv xvii xix 1

The Gan.d.avyūha and the religious world of the Śailendras 7 Rhetoric, ritual, and commemoration in monumental architecture 12 Memory and vision in the upper galleries of Borobudur 15 Chapter outlines 18 1

Borobudur: monumental mandala and bodhisattva path

21

Borobudur as a representation of the path 22 Theories of Borobudur as a mandala 30 The mandala principle and the prologue of the Gan.d.avyūha 35 Mandala and path: meeting the embodied teaching 42 2

Carving out time: the narrative relief panels

48

Narrative art and temporality 49 Narrative art and the life of the Buddha on Borobudur 52 Narrative art and the previous lives of the Buddha on Borobudur 56 The problem with time 58 Picturing the Nirmān.akāya 61 Narrative art, ritual, and commemoration 66 3

Piecing together space: the panorama of the purified field The word-by-word method of picturing the Gan.d.avyūha 76 The purified field and the body of communal enjoyment 82 Images of the purified field on Borobudur 90 Panoramic art, ritual space, and buddhānusmr.ti as meditative craft 98

74

xiv Contents 4

Pervading space: bodhisattva activity in the cosmic panorama

109

Compassionate multilocation: the manifestations of Maitreya 110 Devotional multilocation: the offerings of Samantabhadra 119 Serlingpa, Atiśa, and the cosmic sequence for giving and taking meditation 130 The cosmic sequence and the upper galleries 135 Ritual circumambulation and the transition from giving to offering 139 5

To emptiness and back: the transformative work of the terraces

147

The cosmic Buddhas of the terraces 149 “Seeing” emptiness: the dharmakāya and the limits of vision 153 Wisdom and generosity: ritual practice on the terraces 162 The descent of the bodhisattva: the stairs 164 The Borobudur mandala reconsidered 168 Conclusion: visual rhetoric and ceremonial diplomacy at Borobudur 172 Notes Bibliography Index

180 207 218

List of figures

0.1 0.2

0.3

2.1 2.2 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5

General view of Borobudur Photograph by John C. Huntington, Courtesy of the Huntington Photographic Archive at The Ohio State University. Plan of Borobudur Based on a diagram by Gunkarta Gunawan Kartapranata uploaded to Wikimedia Commons on 21 December 2009, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Borobudur cross-section Drawn by Richard Polt, based on a diagram in N. J. Krom and T. van Erp, Beschrijving van Borobudur, vol. 1 (’s-Gravenhage: Nijhoff, 1920). Original source is in the public domain. Drawing is reproduced by permission of Richard Polt. Great Departure (I a 65) Photograph by John C. Huntington, Courtesy of the Huntington Photographic Archive at The Ohio State University. Descent from Tus.ita (I a 12) Photograph by John C. Huntington, Courtesy of the Huntington Photographic Archive at The Ohio State University. Maitreya opens the palace (III 4) Photograph by John C. Huntington, Courtesy of the Huntington Photographic Archive at The Ohio State University. Palace with bells (III 21) Photograph by John C. Huntington, Courtesy of the Huntington Photographic Archive at The Ohio State University. Palace with banners (III 31) Photograph by John C. Huntington, Courtesy of the Huntington Photographic Archive at The Ohio State University. Maitreya in a heaven (III 65) Photograph by John C. Huntington, Courtesy of the Huntington Photographic Archive at The Ohio State University. Taima mandala Drawing by Richard Polt, reproduced by permission of Richard Polt.

4

6

6 55 65 78 79 79 85 88

xvi List of figures 3.6 3.7 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 5.1 5.2 5.3

Children born from lotuses (III B 34) Photograph by John C. Huntington, Courtesy of the Huntington Photographic Archive at The Ohio State University. Jōgenzi detail of Taima mandala Drawing by Richard Polt, reproduced by permission of Richard Polt. Maitreya among the animals (III 71) Photograph by John C. Huntington, Courtesy of the Huntington Photographic Archive at The Ohio State University. Cosmic Buddhas of the ten directions (IV 1) Photograph by John C. Huntington, Courtesy of the Huntington Photographic Archive at The Ohio State University. Offering of lamps (IV 14) Photograph by John C. Huntington, Courtesy of the Huntington Photographic Archive at The Ohio State University. Transition from giving to offering (III 88) Photograph by John C. Huntington, Courtesy of the Huntington Photographic Archive at The Ohio State University. Person standing in first gallery, west façade From N. J. Krom and T. van Erp, Beschrijving van Borobudur, vol. 1 (’s-Gravenhage: Nijhoff, 1920). Source is in the public domain. Circumambulation path on the terraces Photograph by John C. Huntington, Courtesy of the Huntington Photographic Archive at The Ohio State University. Buddha statue in latticed stupa Photograph by John C. Huntington, Courtesy of the Huntington Photographic Archive at The Ohio State University. Stairs Photograph by John C. Huntington, Courtesy of the Huntington Photographic Archive at The Ohio State University

94 106 116 122 124 141 144 147 152 165

Acknowledgments

This book could not have been written without the kindness and generosity of many people. I am deeply grateful to Frank E. Reynolds for encouraging me to pursue this project in the first place, and for his indispensable guidance throughout. If there is any intellectual merit in this book, I am sure it can be traced to the many marginal notes he made on earlier drafts, or to some insightful comment he made in conversation. He has been a true mentor, teacher, and friend. I am equally grateful to Wendy Doniger, who helped me find my way at the University of Chicago from the day I first arrived as a prospective student. She is an inspirational thinker and writer, and if these pages do not reflect her influence as much as they should, it is only because genius cannot be imitated. I would like to thank Paul J. Griffiths for reading this project in its previous incarnation as a dissertation, and for his work in Buddhist philosophy, which has done so much to shape my own understanding. At the University of Chicago, I benefitted from the expertise and assistance of many teachers, including Matthew Kapstein, Steven Collins, Sheldon Pollock, David Tracy, A. K. Ramanujan, and David Grene. I have also had the good fortune to have many gifted and generous friends, including Jon Walters, Anne Blackburn, Bronwen Bledsoe, and Andy Rotman, to name just a few. I am grateful to Jan Fontein for inviting me to participate in a master class in Leiden and for responding so insightfully to an early conference paper that eventually grew into Chapters 3 and 4. His early support of my work gave me the confidence necessary to pursue such an interdisciplinary project. More recently, I owe a huge debt to Marijke J. Klokke, who has provided invaluable assistance in the final stages of this project. I am grateful to Andy Rotman for suggesting several ways in which I could improve my translations from the Sanskrit; any remaining infelicities are of course my own. I would like to thank Susan and John Huntington, who have been consistently encouraging and have given valuable feedback and guidance on multiple occasions. Special thanks are due to the Huntington Archive, co-directed by Susan and John Huntington, for providing several of John Huntington’s excellent photographs of Borobudur for publication here. I would also like to thank John C. Holt, John S. Strong, Robert L. Brown, and Richard K. Payne for their helpful responses to my work and their multiple acts of kindness.

xviii Acknowledgments I have many institutions to thank for their support. The Fulbright Foundation provided a Junior Research grant that allowed me to study for a year in Thailand, where I learned about Buddhist ritual and devotional practices in a living and vibrant Buddhist culture. The Institute for the Advanced Study of Religion at the University of Chicago Divinity School granted me a Junior Fellowship that provided a year of research support. From the University of Chicago, I received a William Rainey Harper Fellowship that provided another year of support for writing the dissertation. More recently, I have Miami University of Ohio to thank for a Junior Faculty Development Grant and an Academic Research Appointment that provided support for new research and revision. Stephen C. Berkwitz, in his capacity as series editor, and Dorothea Schaefter, Leanne Hinves, and Jillian Morrison in their capacities as Asian Studies editors and editorial assistant at Routledge have all gone out of their way to make the publication of my first book an even more enjoyable experience than I thought it could be. I thank them all for their extraordinary blend of kindness and professionalism. My colleagues at Miami University, including Liz Wilson, Peter Williams, Jim Hanges, and Lisa Poirier, have all been generous with their time, support, and friendship. I would also like to thank Stephen Nimis, whose encouragement in the final phases of this project has been a genuine gift. Closer to home, I am deeply grateful to my parents, Cheryl K. and Darrell M. Gifford, for their love, their hard work, and their abiding belief in the power of education. My mother, the world traveler, gave me my very first glimpse of Borobudur. My husband Richard Polt has given unstintingly of his love, patience, and encouragement. He has also been willing on numerous occasions to contribute his philosophical insights, his editorial acumen, and his lightning-fast typing skills. I am grateful to my daughter, Amelia Polt-Gifford, for filling our home with music, dance, laughter, and joy. To my spiritual teachers, I owe more than I can possibly say. Their kindness is beyond measure or words and the spiritual community that they have made possible has provided support of an entirely different order. May the intentions of our teachers be completely fulfilled.

Note on transliteration

For Sanskrit terms, I have used diacritical marks and italics, except in cases where the words are commonly used in English, such as “mandala” and “stupa.” For Chinese terms and names, I have used the Pinyin system, providing the Wade–Giles transliteration on the first use.

Introduction

If a building is a work of art, then it is not only the artistic solution to a building problem posed by the contexts of purpose and life to which it originally belongs, but somehow preserves them, so that they are visibly present even though the building’s present appearance is completely alienated from its original purpose. Something in it points back to the original.1

What does it mean to be a Buddha? How does one become a Buddha? In a broad sense, this book is about how Mahāyāna Buddhists have formulated these questions and fashioned lived responses at the nexus of religious practice and visual culture. In a more specific sense, it is about how one Buddhist community carved out a place in which one could become a Buddha by recollecting what it means to be one. This is a humanistic study. Rather than applying a preconceived, fully formed method, I have tried to allow my understanding to emerge, to the degree that this is possible, from a more open encounter with the material. The great Buddhist monument of Borobudur presents an opportunity to enter, both literally and figuratively, a particularly well-rendered version of the classical Mahāyāna Buddhist world. Borobudur is, among other things, an enormous replica of the Mahāyāna cosmos that can be entered literally by climbing a stairway and crossing a threshold. It is also a rich historical record of the early ninth-century Javanese Buddhist world – a vanished world that can be entered only figuratively through a process of reconstructive interpretation. I have been a willing student of the people who designed the first world and inhabited the second because I trust that their version of the Mahāyāna was then and remains now at least as profound as anything that contemporary theory has to offer. This is not at all to suggest that by entering the Javanese Buddhist past, I have somehow been able or even willing to leave the contemporary Western academy; this study takes its bearings from and contributes to current conversations in the history of religions, Buddhist studies, and the study of religious visual culture. It is rather to say that the scholars I admire most are those who learn not only about the worlds of others but also from them. In any such enterprise, there are bound to be difficulties. In the current instance, having missed a face-to-face meeting with the architects of Borobudur by over a

2

Introduction

millennium, I have had to live with the gaps left by their absence while trying to make sense of their work in my present. In one sense, the gaps point to our differences: they are the temporal and cultural distances that make understanding difficult and necessarily limited, but also genuinely transformative. In another sense, the gaps point to our kinship: the architects of Borobudur had also, in their own estimation, missed a crucial face-to-face meeting. Living as they did well over a millennium after the Buddha’s death and an ocean away from the seat of his enlightenment, they were also attempting to understand something they trusted was profound from a considerable temporal and cultural distance. Although their aims were soteriological rather than historical, their practices were religious rather than academic, and their efforts far surpassed anything I might hope to achieve here, they were also attempting to build understanding in the face of absence. As M. David Eckel has demonstrated in his study of the sixth-century Indian philosopher Bhāvaviveka, the absence of the living historical Buddha was a source of deep regret for classical Mahāyānists, but it did not mean that the Buddha could not be seen. To see the Buddha could mean to analyze the Buddha’s true nature. It could mean to engage in a form of concentration in which a person has a vision of the Buddha’s physical form. It could mean to be illuminated by the power of the Buddha’s presence. Or the vision of the Buddha could be a combination of all these varieties of vision in a single philosophical and devotional act.2 The architects of Borobudur designed a visual world in which the Buddha appeared in a variety of forms and could thus be seen in all of these ways. In doing so, they presented a version of the classical Mahāyāna that foregrounds the importance of the visual in relation to Buddhist philosophy, cosmology, soteriology, meditation, devotion, and ritual. For contemporary Buddhist studies scholars, Borobudur offers the opportunity for a new look at the material. In the history of religions, a field traditionally dominated by textual study, Paul Mus’ classic study of Borobudur stands out for its early treatment of the ways in which Buddhist images, stupas, and other architectural forms have served not only as material presentations of religious ideas but also as foci for royal ritual practices.3 His work has had a profound effect on Buddhist studies as a discipline, and without Mus’ direct and indirect influence, it is doubtful that the present work would ever have taken shape. With regard to the interpretation of Borobudur specifically, Mus discusses at length several of the matters that I take up here, including Borobudur as a mandala, purified Buddha fields, the three bodies of the Buddha, and so forth. But he does so with reference to texts that have no secure connection to Borobudur, to Central Java, or even in some cases directly to Buddhism.4 It is interesting to note in this connection that despite Mus’ strong and positive influence on Buddhist studies, his work is usually not considered to be particularly relevant by iconographers, who are primarily concerned to establish a convincing relationship between text and image. Drawing primarily on the Gan.d.avyūha, a text that is clearly of paramount importance in the

Introduction 3 design of Borobudur, the present study makes many ideas that are discussed in a general way by Mus more convincing in their application to Borobudur by establishing a much stronger and more detailed interpretation of the visual evidence. The present work draws on textual studies and is indeed itself partly a study of Buddhist texts. But it also provides a view of embodied Buddhist practice in relation to material and visual forms that does not always emerge from the analysis of doctrine alone. This work is indebted to scholars who specialize in the analysis of doctrine, including especially Paul Griffiths. It is my hope that it will repay their kindness by adding to our knowledge about the nature of the material and visual Buddhist “habitus” that shaped the lived experience of those who composed and used doctrinal texts.5 Although the architects of Borobudur worked in the solid material of stone, they used it in part to “realize” images more usually constructed through the practice of visualization meditation and/or through the related illusion-making powers of the Buddha and advanced bodhisattvas. Thus their “conception of the visual” included images in “virtual space[s]” and as “phantasmatic projection[s].”6 Long before “late global capitalism,” they were active participants in a widespread Buddhist visual culture. In his recent study of Chinese Buddhist paintings called “transformation tableaux,” Eugene Wang makes the same observation while wondering aloud why we all did not see it sooner. “Inherently integral and vital to Buddhism, ‘visual culture’ is a long overdue analytic construct that should have arisen from within the study of Buddhist art itself . . . where it naturally finds solid footing.”7 Borobudur offers a particularly comprehensive and programmatic opportunity to study the workings of Mahāyāna Buddhist visual culture in a way that also enriches the theoretical discussion. Most previous iconographic studies of Borobudur have treated its vast array of relief panels as “illustrations” of texts, with the strong implication that they are (or, in the case of “jumbled” relief panels, ought to be) utterly subordinate and “faithful” to the text.8 This study addresses what Wang has called the “gap between textual and pictorial representation”9 and begins from the premise that interpretive activity can take place visually. The relief panels of Borobudur do not passively illustrate but rather creatively picture selected passages from texts, juxtaposing them with pictured passages from other texts to constitute a new and coherent visual program that reflects and engenders fresh understanding. In an original argument, this study demonstrates that in extended and prominently located sequences of relief panels, the method of picturing the text parallels the mental picturing process that occurs in meditative visualization. Thus the relief panels “refer” to the meditative practice as much as they do to the text. Visualization meditation is at once a meditational and a devotional practice. It is an activity that points, on the one hand, to material culture, the everyday world, and compassionate activity in it; and on the other, through its dream-like quality, to a sophisticated doctrinal understanding of emptiness. In practice and in the visual program of Borobudur, meditative visualization mediates between what the relevant scholastic literature calls conventional and ultimate truth. The visual program of Borobudur as a whole was not designed precisely to

4

Introduction

be “viewed,” but rather to be contemplated in the context of ritual, devotional, and possibly meditative practice. The relief panels, Buddha images, and stupas of Borobudur present the Buddha as he appears in a variety of forms for the benefit of all sorts of beings: the visual rhetoric of the architects mirrors the visual rhetoric of the Buddha. As practitioners followed the ritual circumambulation pathways, they were presented with multiple opportunities to commemorate the Buddha and to internalize his qualities. Rather than viewing the Buddha as an abstract object, practitioners recollected him in order to become more like him. * * * In 1814, during the brief period in which the British colonial government controlled Java, Lieutenant Governor-General Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles heard that there was a large, antique stone structure in the island’s interior. Raffles had a keen interest in Javanese antiquities.10 Earlier, he had charged Colonel Colin MacKenzie, an engineer and surveyor who had completed similar projects in India,11 with forming a team to survey Java and draft a report on its monuments.12 MacKenzie had since returned to India, so Raffles sent an engineer and member of the survey team, H. G. Cornelius, to investigate. When Cornelius arrived at the site, he found that the large structure was partially buried in volcanic ash and soil, and so overgrown with scrub and trees that “it took 200 men a month and a half to cut and burn vegetation around it, and to remove dirt cloaking the stones to reveal the outline of the monument.”13 What they unearthed was Borobudur, one of the largest and most impressive Buddhist architectural feats in the world (Figure 0.1).

Figure 0.1 General view of Borobudur. Photograph by John C. Huntington, Courtesy of the Huntington Photographic Archive at The Ohio State University.

Introduction 5 The Javanese had known that the building existed and it is therefore incorrect to say that Borobodur was “discovered” by Europeans in the nineteenth century. But it is clear that the building had not served as a venue for Buddhist practice for centuries, and that its earlier religious significance and uses had been long forgotten by a population that had since become predominantly Muslim. Founded in the late eighth or early ninth century14 under the auspices of the Śailendra dynasty of Central Java, Borobudur stands as a testament to an era in which the Javanese kingdom held a prominent place in a vibrant cosmopolitan “interregnal Buddhist world.”15 Situated as they were near a critically important entrepot on the maritime trade route from India to China, the Śailendras had access to trans-oceanic transportation that allowed them to cultivate and maintain economic, political, and religious ties with a variety of Buddhist polities and institutions overseas. As I will show, the available evidence indicates that Javanese Buddhists of the Śailendra period were not only conversant with contemporary developments in Buddhist doctrine and practice but were also active participants both at home and abroad in the cultural currents that shaped them. The archaeological record clearly demonstrates that the Śailendras aspired literally to build the island into a center for Buddhist learning and culture: between 778 and 860, the period during which epigraphic evidence indicates that the Śailendras were at the peak of their power in Central Java,16 many of the 35 Buddhist temples now known to have existed were built.17 The crowning architectural accomplishment of this extraordinary building boom, the center of the new Śailendra Buddhist center, was Borobudur. Borobudur is both enormous and enormously complex. Over 370 feet (33 meters) square at its base, Borobudur is approximately 115 feet (35 meters) high18 and encases an entire natural hill in stone. In general, the building is a broad and low-slung terraced pyramid that is oriented so that each side of its reticulated square base faces a cardinal direction. In the center of each side is a staircase that leads from the building’s base to its various higher levels and eventually to its top. At the top of the structure is a reticulated square platform surrounded by a low balustrade. From the platform rise three levels of nearly circular terraces that support a total of 72 small stupas. Each of these small stupas has multiple geometric openings through which a Buddha figure can be glimpsed. Crowning the structure is a much larger and completely closed stupa. From the air, the building’s pattern of concentric circles within concentric reticulated squares gives it the general appearance of a mandala (Figure 0.2). Between the base and the top are four levels of relatively narrow gallery walkways that are enclosed on the inner side by main walls that abut the hill, and on the outer side by balustrades. On the outer surfaces of these four balustrades and of the fifth one that surrounds the upper platform are 432 niches that house Buddha statues. The gallery walkways are lined on both the main walls and on the balustrades with 1300 panels of spectacular relief sculpture depicting scenes from various Buddhist texts (Figure 0.3). Foremost among them is the Mahāyāna Buddhist Gan.d.avyūha Sūtra. Scenes from the text appear on the relief panels of the second gallery main wall, and on all of the panels of the third and fourth galleries. In all,

6

Introduction

Figure 0.2 Plan of Borobudur. Based on a diagram by Gunkarta Gunawan Kartapranata.

Figure 0.3 Borobudur cross-section. Drawn by Richard Polt, based on a diagram in N. J. Krom and T. van Erp, Beschrijving van Borobudur, vol. 1 (’s-Gravenhage: Nijhoff, 1920). Reproduced by permission of Richard Polt.

Introduction 7 scenes from the Gan.d.avyūha occupy 460 relief panels – far more than are devoted to any other single text. (The Lalitavistara comes in a distant second with 128 panels on the upper register of the first gallery main wall.) Clearly the architects of Borobudur considered the Gan.d.avyūha to be an important source of inspiration both for their design and for the devotees who would use the building. In the nearly two centuries since Borobudur was unearthed, scholars have produced a truly prodigious number of interpretive studies.19 Yet there is still no scholarly consensus about how the architectural program and religious function(s) of the building might have been related during the Śailendra period. In part this is because the historical evidence for the Śailendra era is so thin. No court records exist and no dedicatory inscription has ever been found at Borobudur. Thus there is no written record of the building’s date or of which Śailendra king(s) sponsored the construction. There are several Central Javanese and Indian inscriptions from the period on stone, copperplate, and gold which do provide some information about the Śailendras, the political structure of their polity, their systems of taxation and of ceremonial gift exchange, their method of establishing religious foundations, and, to a lesser extent, their religious practices. Archaeological finds provide some information about Śailendra Buddhism, as do Chinese court records, the diaries of Chinese pilgrims, and Arab travel accounts. But while the epigraphic record, archaeological evidence, and written accounts establish some basic historical parameters for the interpretation of Borobudur, they do not provide anything like a definitive interpretive key. Furthermore, due to the ravages of the tropical climate, no Javanese Buddhist manuscripts survive from the late eighth or early ninth centuries. Thus the only texts that can be connected directly and with complete confidence to Borobudur are the ones that are actually pictured on the building. Because it plays such a key role in the design of Borobudur’s upper galleries, the most obvious text to consult is the Gan.d.avyūha.

The Gan.d.avyūha and the religious world of the Śailendras As is the case with many Mahāyāna Buddhist texts, we do not know precisely when the Gan.d.avyūha was composed. We know that the entire text existed by the early fifth century CE because the monk Buddhabhadra and his associates trans20 lated it into Chinese as part of the larger Avatam . saka sūtra in 420 CE. On the basis of quotations appearing in the Upadeśa and related historical evidence, Luis Gómez concludes that the Gan.d.avyūha was composed no later than the second half of the third century CE.21 As to its earliest possible date, Gómez speculates that it could have been composed as early as the first century CE.22 The Daśabhūmika sūtra, which was also eventually incorporated into the Avatam . saka, circulated independently and was probably closely associated with the Gan.d.avyūha at a fairly early date.23 The Gan.d.avyūha was translated into Chinese two more times – first by the Khotanese monk Śiks.ānanda and his team between 695 and 699 CE, again as part of the Avatam . saka sūtra, and second by the Kashmiri monk Prajñā in 798 as a stand-alone text.24 As part of the Avatam . saka sūtra, the Gan.d.avyūha was also

8

Introduction

translated into Tibetan. According to Douglas Osto’s recent and thorough account, the “modern scholarly consensus” is that “the Tibetans translated the Avatam . saka sūtra during the early period of Buddhist transmission (seventh to ninth centuries), possibly during the ‘Great Revision’”25 that took place in the first four decades of the ninth century. Later versions of the text that exhibit variations stemming from centuries of textual transmission in different lineages are extant in various . versions of the Kanjur.26 Inscriptions on the walls of the gTsug-lag-khan at Tabo include selections from the Gan.d.avyūha dating from 1040–42 CE, and accompany beautiful paintings of various scenes from the text.27 Nepalese manuscripts of the Gan.d.avyūha are extant in Sanskrit, the earliest of which is dated by its colophon to 1166 CE.28 The Gan.d.avyūha was almost certainly composed in India,29 where it clearly circulated as an independent text even after it had been incorporated into the Avatam . saka sūtra. The Chinese translation by Prajñā, for example, is based on a stand-alone Sanskrit manuscript of the Gan.d.avyūha given to the Chinese emperor by the king of Orissa (Ud.a) in 795.30 The Prajñā version of the Gan.d.avyūha does include, for the first time in a Chinese translation, the Samantabhadracaryāpran.idhāna as its final section,31 which almost certainly indicates that by the late eighth century the vows of Samantabhadra were considered to be an integral part of at least some Indian versions of the text. Although the Borobudur architects clearly did have access to some version(s) of the Gan.d.avyūha and/or commentaries on the text, no Javanese manuscripts survive from the period in which the monument was planned and built. Thus, identifications of the relief panels and discussions of the Gan.d.avyūha’s reception in Central Java must necessarily rely on versions of the text that have survived in other locations. Of the versions listed above, the Chinese translation by Prajñā may prove to be the closest match for the relief panels on the upper galleries. As the Prajñā translation does, the relief panels present the Gan.d.avyūha in isolation from the rest of the Avatam . saka, but with the Samantabhadracaryā-pran.idhāna incorporated at the end. Furthermore, the date of the translation (798 CE) coincides nicely with the most probable dates of construction for Borobudur. Hudaya Kandahjaya has recently argued that the Samantabhadracaryā-pran.idhāna relief panels correspond more closely to Prajñā’s version of the text, which preserves an otherwise lost recension, than they do to extant Sanskrit versions.32 While his arguments regarding the visual details of some individual panels are convincing, his methods of associating multiple verses, often from different parts of the text, with single relief panels is sometimes unnecessarily complex and the correspondences he attempts to establish to the visual evidence in these cases can be much less convincing. Although I have not had the opportunity to read the manuscript, it is my understanding that Jan Fontein is working out a new set of iconographic identifications for the relief panels of galleries three and four, based on the Prajñā translation. Just how the relevant version(s) of the Gan.d.avyūha might have been received and interpreted in Java is also uncertain. In China, by the sixth century, the Avatam . saka had become the principal text of the Huayan (Wade-Giles: Hua-yen)

Introduction 9 school.33 Leading figures in the Chinese Huayan school, and later in the Korean Hwaôm and Japanese Kegon schools, generated sophisticated interpretations of the Avatam . saka corpus and complex systems of doctrinal classification that posited its superiority to all other Buddhist texts. What is not entirely clear is the degree to which Huayan materials can be considered relevant to the later reception and interpretation of the Gan.d.avyūha in India or Java. Although it is clearly inspired in part by texts that were composed originally in India, Huayan is generally considered to reflect a process of “Sinification,” in which the Indian materials were incorporated and transformed into a distinctively Chinese adaptation and synthesis.34 While this does not, in the academic approach to the study of religion, subtract anything from the “authenticity” of Huayan teachings, it does point to significant historical and methodological problems with any approach that would simply assume that Huayan doctrinal interpretation provides a transparent window on the reception of the Gan.d.avyūha in India or Java. To make the case that Śailendra Buddhists used a text similar to the Prajñā translation would not be enough to show that they also participated in Huayan “interpretive communities”35 or used Huayan doctrinal categories to interpret the Gan.d.avyūha. Because the translation is based on a text extant in India at the time Borobudur was built, it would also be possible that the Śailendras had formed their understanding of the text by participating in interpretive communities in India and using doctrinal categories preferred there. With this in mind, it will be useful to consider the many links between the cosmopolitan Śailendra kingdom and other polities of the time. The Śailendras enjoyed a strong alliance with the neighboring kingdom of Śrīvijaya, the capital of which was probably located near modern Palembang on the Musi River in southeastern Sumatra.36 Śrīvijaya controlled the lucrative trans-oceanic shipping lanes through the Malacca and Sunda Straits, and was therefore the most powerful maritime polity in the region. Ships traveling between India and China, carrying trade goods from as far away as the Middle East, stopped there to await favorable winds, and paid taxes to the rulers for the privilege of navigating the Straits. Through their alliance with Śrīvijaya, the Śailendras participated in the lucrative shipping trade and amassed their own store of luxury goods.37 The same ships that carried silk, ceramics, and myrrh also carried Buddhist texts, images, and pilgrims. The Śailendras clearly maintained strong ties to the Pāla kingdom of northeastern India, and particularly to the monastic university at Nālandā. Some of the most important Śailendra inscriptions are written in a script never before used in Java, which was also used by Pāla kings.38 By the mid-ninth century, a Śailendra king39 had funded a monastery at Nālandā, which probably included residences for local monks who studied there.40 If the possibly exaggerated Plaosan inscription is to be believed, visitors from “Gurjaradeśa,” perhaps in Kanauj or modern Gujarat, streamed to Java to worship at the Buddhist Plaosan temple.41 A “guru” from “Gaud.īdvīpa,” possibly in modern Bengal, became a special advisor to one of the Śailendra kings42 and Sri Lankan monks built a second Abhayagiri Vihāra in Java.43 Several Chinese monks, including Yi Jing (Wade-Giles: I-tsing), mention Java as a significant location on the route to

10

Introduction

and from India.44 The South Indian Tantric master Vajrabhodhi spent time in Java, and by one account met his disciple Amoghavajra there. Both men spent years in Java and Sumatra before going to China, where they became ritual specialists in the emperor’s court, and Amoghavajra returned to Java at least once.45 In the final quarter of the eighth century, a Javanese monk named Bianhong traveled to China to become the disciple of Huiguo, who was in turn the disciple of Amoghavajra.46 At the beginning of the ninth century, the Śailendras appear to have exercised political power in the Khmer kingdom, located in what is now Cambodia.47 The Central Javanese kingdom, then, was anything but isolated. Given the wide-ranging contacts of the Śailendras and the cosmopolitan nature of the Buddhist world in which they were full and active participants, it is quite possible that the architects of Borobudur drew on and contributed to multiple Buddhist interpretive communities. Yet on balance, the evidence for Śailendra participation in Indian and Sri Lankan Mahāyāna Buddhist interpretive communities is the strongest. Although the Śailendras certainly had extensive contacts with China, they used Sanskrit in their inscriptions and presumably read Buddhist texts in the same language. Moreover, while Bianhong did travel to China to study, a whole community of Javanese monks studied in India. As I discuss more fully in Chapter 1, although great Tantric masters did spend time in Java, the traces of their influence there are much thinner in the relevant period than the rich history of their influence in China. This is not to suggest that studies of Borobudur’s relationship to Chinese Buddhist texts and/or artifacts cannot be instructive, or that the monument cannot possibly be Tantric, but merely that given the weak nature of the historical evidence, the burden of proof in such studies must currently rest primarily on demonstrating a high degree of comparative similarity. For example, I do make use of Chinese texts and East Asian artifacts to discuss the imagery of and procedures for meditative visualizations that help to illuminate the design of Borobudur’s third gallery. But I also make it clear in these cases that the methodological approach is predominantly comparative rather than diffusionist. Although the precise nature of Śailendra participation in Indian interpretive communities is not as clear as one would like it to be, the evidence that they did participate is sufficiently strong to warrant a broadly diffusionist approach. According to Yi Jing, the full range of scholastic learning was already available in the late seventh century in the kingdom of Śrīvijaya, which probably had its capital in Sumatra. He reports that Śākyakīrti, one of the five most distinguished Buddhist teachers of his day, lived in Śrīvijaya and, like the other four, was an . expert in logic, the Yogācāra texts of Asanga, Nāgārjuna’s works on emptiness, . and the teachings of Sanghabhadra on existence.48 As we have seen, the Śailendras maintained strong contacts with Nālandā, and the Javanese monks who lived there would almost certainly have studied Indian Buddhist scholastic literature.49 Central Java was also home to a branch community of the Sri Lankan Abhayagiri monastery.50 Although it did maintain a Sthaviravāda identity sometimes associated with the exclusive study of “Hīnayāna” texts, the Abhayagiri Vihāra chose, along with many of its contemporary Sthaviravāda institutions, to take a more ecumenical approach that included the study of Mahāyāna texts.51 In the seventh to the ninth

Introduction 11 centuries, Abhayagiri monks stayed at Nālandā and presumably pursued a course of study that included (though perhaps was not limited to) Mahāyāna scholastic literature. Furthermore, the Abhayagiri was itself a cosmopolitan Buddhist institution, attracting visiting monks from all over South Asia and even from Tibet.52 It is reasonable to suppose, then, that the Central Javanese branch of the Abhayagiri was equally cosmopolitan in its outlook and that its monks were conversant with the interpretive categories found in the doctrinal digests. Even the clearly Tantric Sang Hyang Kamahāyānikan, a text composed probably in East Java and apparently after Borobudur was built (c. tenth century),53 provides evidence for the influence in Java of the doctrinal digests when it names Dignāga as its authority for the classification of yoga.54 It seems clear that this is the famous Indian Yogācārin logician Dignāga, active at Nālandā during the sixth century,55 whose disciple, after having taught at Nālandā, went to Suvarn.advīpa,56 or Sumatra. Thus the East Javanese Buddhists who propagated the Sang Hyang Kamahayanikan appear to have thought that a proper Tantric Buddhist pedigree ought to be rooted firmly in the Indian Mahāyāna scholastic tradition. It seems quite likely that the East Javanese inherited this notion of what would constitute a proper lineage from the earlier Śailendras of Central Java. Thus the Indian Mahāyāna scholastic texts seem to have informed the study of Buddhism in Central Java and its environs before, during, and after the construction of Borobudur, providing at least some continuity in a religious and political world that was in other respects quite fluid. It is highly likely, then, that the Śailendras in general and the Borobudur architects in particular, interpreted the Gan.d.avyūha in light of Indian scholastic literature. While there is, to my knowledge, no evidence to show that the Borobudur architects drew on any particular scholastic text, it is nearly certain that welleducated Śailendra Buddhists would have been familiar with the corpus. In India, the Gan.d.avyūha appears never to have become the focus of a distinct school of Buddhism, as it did in the Chinese Huayan school. Furthermore, I am not aware of any Indian commentaries devoted solely to its exegesis. What we find, rather, are references to the text and quotes from it in various Indian scholastic texts. Śāntideva, who is associated with Nālandā, refers to the Gan.d.avyūha multiple times in both his Bodhicaryāvatāra and Śiks.āsamuccaya.57 Furthermore, chapters two and three of Śāntideva’s Bodhicaryāvatāra “form a text for an important and widespread Mahāyāna liturgy, known as the anuttara-pūjā or ‘Supreme Worship’,” which, as one can surmise from his mention of the text in the Śiks.āsamuccaya, derives from the Samantabhadracaryā-pran.idhāna.58 Kamalaśīla (c.740–795), who was a disciple of Śāntaraks.ita and, according to Tibetan sources, a preceptor at Nālandā,59 also refers to the Gan.d.avyūha several times.60 What these references begin to suggest is a peak of interest in the Gan.d.avyūha in scholastic circles at Nālandā beginning perhaps in the seventh century and lasting at least through the eighth. It seems clear that the text was widely read during this period and formed part of the monastic curriculum at Nālandā and other major monasteries.61 In these contexts, the text would have been read in light of general interpretive categories62 presented in scholastic

12

Introduction

Buddhist treatises composed in Sanskrit between the third and ninth centuries CE, a group of texts that Paul Griffiths calls the “doctrinal digests.”63 It is through these categories that Indian Buddhists are most likely to have interpreted both the rich visionary imagery of the Gan.d.avyūha and its vivid tales of the miraculous powers of the Buddha and of advanced bodhisattvas. Therefore, because it is the least speculative historical approach available, I have drawn whenever possible on Indian sūtras composed in Sanskrit that can be clearly related to the Gan.d.avyūha, together with Indian scholastic texts and categories to interpret the Gan.d.avyūha on Borobudur. With these points in mind, it will now be useful to provide a more general theoretical orientation to the interpretation of Borobudur.

Rhetoric, ritual, and commemoration in monumental architecture To this point, I have described Borobudur in terms specific to Buddhism. But in much of the scholarly literature on Borobudur, the building is called a “monument” and it will be fruitful to ask why this is so. In part, the term is intentionally nonspecific. As I discuss in Chapter 1, Borobudur as a whole has been variously identified as a stupa, a mandala, Mount Meru, a prāsāda, a Javanese can.d.i, or some combination of these. There is some merit in each of these interpretations but, to date, none has been seen as sufficiently persuasive to displace all others definitively. Thus, “monument” is often used as a “neutral” term that either precedes an argument for a particular interpretation or brackets the question of the overall form of the building in favor of another line of inquiry. In recent years, a number of scholars have asserted that Borobudur is multivalent: it is both all and none of the above. In these works, “monument” often serves as an umbrella term designed to encompass the persuasive aspects of narrower interpretations, and it is partly in this sense that I use the term here. Even when used as an umbrella term, however, the word “monument” is not in fact neutral: it has connotations that imply a general interpretive framework. When these connotations are made explicit, though some caution is required, the term “monument” turns out to have previously underemployed methodological utility for interpreting Borobudur. Monuments are memorials:64 they define spaces in the cultural landscape in which one is called to commemorate persons or events of particular significance. As memorials, monuments may refer to a past that is in some senses irretrievable. Nowhere is this more apparent than when contemplating a monument that is also a gravestone. At the grave of a family member or at a public monument to, say, fallen soldiers, one feels the finality of death and the permanent absence of particular people even as one is called upon to remember them. Yet even a funereal public monument points to the past in the service of the present and future. Although there are exceptions – most notably, in the post-Second World War era, Holocaust monuments – most public monuments are built as memorials to people or events considered worthy of praise. They point to and put on display culturally endorsed patterns of excellence that are to be appreciated attentively in the present and that can serve as sources of inspiration for the future.

Introduction 13 In this sense, monuments are material instantiations of the form of rhetoric that Aristotle called “epideictic.” In epideictic forms of address, such as the encomium, the speaker directs the audience’s attention to the subject’s praiseworthy qualities and then heightens that attention through amplification.65 In Aristotle’s formulation, the primary point of epideictic praise is to produce this heightened attention to and appreciation of excellence. The audience, for its part, is called upon to recollect the praiseworthy and to contemplate it in the present time afforded by the communal occasion of the epideictic speech.66 As Lawrence Rosenfield explains: “Epideictic’s understanding calls upon us to join with our community in giving thought to what we witness, and such thoughtful beholding in commemoration constitutes memorializing.”67 While Aristotle discusses epideictic primarily as a rhetorical form that is focused on the present and that evokes contemplative thought, he also notes that epideictic shares something with deliberative discourse, a rhetorical form that explicitly calls on the audience to make a practical decision about future action. He says: Praise and deliberations are part of a common species [eidos] in that what one might propose in deliberation becomes encomia when the form of expression is changed. . . . [W]hen you want to praise, see what would be the underlying proposition; and when you want to set out proposals in deliberation, see what you would praise.68 While epideictic rhetoric usually does not argue explicitly for a particular course of action, it implicitly encourages people to adopt culturally approved patterns of behavior by inspiring them with outstanding examples. As epideictic speeches do, a monument calls on one to recollect qualities culturally defined as praiseworthy, to attend to them in a way that deepens one’s memory of them, and to be inspired by the people or events that exemplify them. While a monument shares many of the rhetorical features of an epideictic speech, it differs with regard to its medium, which turns out to be part of the message. As an aspect of material culture, a monument addresses the body as well as the mind and one’s interaction with it is always partly physical: one approaches, enters, ascends, descends, walks around or through or by, sees from various vantage points, touches, bows, leaves things there, takes other things home, and so forth. Perhaps in most cases, but particularly when the monument praises patterns of excellence that are overtly religious, the bodily responses it calls for are often ritual practices. As Lindsay Jones explains, an encounter with a monument – or any form of religious architecture – is a “ritual-architectural event”69 in which religious understanding accompanies and is partly constituted by ritual activity. Religious monuments may be especially compelling architectural foci for ritual behavior because their epideictic qualities deepen their call for a ritual response. George Kennedy notes the historical connection between epideictic oration and ritual occasions in ancient Greece,70 while Michael Carter argues that “epideictic may be understood as ritual, indeed that epideictic is successful insofar as it achieves the qualities of ritual.”71 As material instantiations of epideictic,

14

Introduction

monuments provide occasions not only for the mental contemplation of excellence but also for its bodily recognition in the performance of commemorative ritual. They mark spaces in the communal built environment at which, to borrow a felicitous phrase from Jonathan Z. Smith, culturally formed and formative memory “takes place.”72 Monuments also tend to be constructed of durable materials and their continued presence in the built environment strengthens their rhetorical claim on memory. A monument that persists over time can be contemplated on potentially limitless occasions. A speech act, by contrast, is inherently fleeting. While a speech may be preserved in rote memory, written form, or an audio recording, it may also dissolve into the river of Lethe almost as it is spoken. A monument, by contrast, is often an attempt literally to set one’s praise in stone. One might say that the very form of a monument has rhetorical content: not only is the subject to be praised now but it is also to be praised far into the future. The manifest intention of monument builders is not only to celebrate but also to preserve culturally defined patterns of excellence so that they may provide repeated occasions for people to recollect what is praiseworthy and to become inspired by it. By their enduring presence, monuments provide repeated occasions for commemoration and thus have the potential to serve as foci for the transmission of cultural paradigms from generation to generation. But it is important to note that that potential is not always fulfilled because although the material form of a monument may be relatively stable, responses to it and understandings of it may not. Drawing on the work of reader-response critics such as Wolfgang Iser, Hans Robert Jauss, and Stanley Fish, scholars of religious material culture have shown that there is no one-to-one correspondence between the formal features of an artifact and the understandings that may arise in response to it. Jones argues that religious architecture is “superabundant” and inherently productive of multiple responses over time, among different communities, and even simultaneously within the same community.73 Although his “ritualarchitectural priorities” would seem to be an account of ways in which a religious structure may shape response,74 he insists throughout his work that various responses are always possible and that scholars should consider all actual understandings, no matter how idiosyncratic, to be worthy of attention.75 Working in a similar theoretical vein but with a slightly different emphasis, Richard Davis shows that patterns of response to the same religious image may change over time and/or differ among various “communities of response” or “dispensations.”76 In his formulation, the relationship between call and response within a given dispensation is relatively strong, though certainly not dictatorial. Although idiosyncratic responses may exist, they are not a focus of sustained interest for Davis, who is more concerned to highlight the ways in which the typical responses of one community differ from the typical responses of another. Both Jones and Davis provide valuable correctives to interpretations that argue, or more often assume, that a monument has a single meaning that arises at the time it is built and is thereafter permanently fixed. They urge scholars to write reception histories that account for the range of responses that emerge over the “life” of a religious image or structure.

Introduction 15 But Jones and Davis also recognize the value of interpretations that, in Davis’ terms, focus on the dispensation that produces the object and shapes the understandings of its initial community of response, and that is the approach I take in this analysis of Borobudur. Whereas a reception history would take a diachronic approach to the interpretation of Borobudur, my approach here is more synchronic. It is not my intention to suggest that early uses of Borobudur are the only legitimate ones. But a better description of the monument’s initial uses is worth pursuing, if for no other reason than that it will contribute to better reception histories. Reception histories derive much of their interest and impact from the sometimes stark contrasts among successive communities of response. But to draw these contrasts well, each historically situated communal response must be well described synchronically. And while there may be no inherent reason to privilege the original community of response in the interpretation of religious architecture generally, no serious scholar has, to my knowledge, suggested that there might be an interpretive advantage in ignoring it completely. Of course, a reconstructive effort such as the one I undertake here is possible only from the perspective of one’s own time and place. The work of scholars such as Shelly Errington who, in the spirit of reception histories, have studied nonBuddhist, post-Śailendra responses to Borobudur is quite useful in this regard, not only for developing critical distance but also for distinguishing current practices from those likely to have been obtained in the ninth century.77 Particularly helpful are Errington’s observations about Borobudur’s current functions as an international tourist destination and as a symbol for a Java-centered conception of the Indonesian nation-state. With these caveats in mind, my project here is to arrive at a better understanding of the Buddhist patterns of excellence presented on Borobudur by Śailendra Buddhist architects for commemoration by their contemporaries within the local Central Javanese community and the larger cosmopolitan Buddhist world. It is also to describe the pre-existing Buddhist contemplative and ritual procedures that informed the design of the monument and, for at least some members of the target audiences, shaped both commemorative acts at Borobudur and the broader lived enactment of the Buddhist path.

Memory and vision in the upper galleries of Borobudur In the design of the third and fourth galleries of the Borobudur monument, visual imagery, epideictic praise of Buddhas and celestial bodhisattvas, ritual action, and commemorative contemplation are all linked by pre-existing Mahāyāna Buddhist forms of meditative visualization called buddhānusmr.ti, or “recollection of the Buddha(s),” in which the practitioner forms a vivid mental picture of one or more purified fields. The buddhānusmr.ti relief panels rhetorically present patterns of excellence associated, by the time Borobudur was built, with a Buddha or advanced bodhisattva as he manifests in his sambhogakāya, or body of communal enjoyment. Due to their past accumulation of merit and wisdom, and out of their limitless compassion, sambhogakāya Buddhas and bodhisattvas are able to

16

Introduction

manifest purified fields in which conditions for enlightenment are optimal. Although there are many purified fields located throughout the cosmos, each generated by a unique Buddha or advanced bodhisattva, they all have the same general structure and many of the same visual features as does Amitābha’s purified field of Sukhāvatī. The textual sources agree that entry into a purified field has extraordinarily positive epistemological as well as soteriological consequences. In the visionary imagery of the purified field, one “sees” the dharma in a new and more genuine way, thereby advancing on the bodhisattva path, moving closer to the perfection of wisdom required for full Buddhahood. Assemblies of bodhisattvas who dwell in these fields enjoy the dharma together while they make rapid progress on the path. As Chapters 3 and 4 show, the sequential arrangement of the relief panels on these galleries often reflects the step-by-step procedure for producing a vision sufficiently vivid to produce the desired soteriological and epistemological effects. For participants in the Buddhist dispensation that gave rise to Borobudur, the buddhānusmr.ti relief panels prioritize two general and potentially overlapping types of commemorative response. As the translation “recollection” implies, anusmr.ti is a form of memory, but it is not a memory of past events that one has personally experienced, or even necessarily of the past in general. Furthermore, the Buddha(s) envisioned in the types of buddhānusmr.ti under discussion are not confined to the historical past, but are “buddhas of the present” whose purified fields are currently accessible.78 Paul Harrison argues that in buddhānusmr.ti, the meditative practitioner recollects the Buddha(s) in the sense of commemorating them. Using categories drawn from Edward Casey’s work on memory,79 he argues: “buddhānusmr.ti appears to lie halfway between Casey’s ‘overt ritualistic commemoration’ and ‘intrapsychic memorialization’ and to contain elements of both.”80 Overt ritualistic commemoration is a “necessarily communal” form of memory that is “intensified by the use of text and ritual,” and Harrison takes special care to show that although buddhānusmr.ti is a meditative practice that is usually performed alone, it still involves teachings, texts, and rituals that are maintained and transmitted by a religious community.81 The Borobudur relief panels that picture images and techniques for buddhānusmr.ti clearly do call for commemoration that is communal and overtly ritualistic. The relief panels picture scenes from the Gan.d.avyūha, they line the walls of galleries clearly designed for the ritual of circumambulation, and the monument as a whole was part of the built environment of a monastic community. It was also almost certainly a pilgrimage site for a wider community of monastic and lay Buddhists in Java and abroad, and may have been an important ritual site for the Śailendra royal family as well. While a general knowledge of the patterns of excellence associated with the sambhogakāya would have been necessary for a circumambulation of the upper galleries to become a ritual commemoration of the Buddha as he appears in that form, a detailed knowledge or personal practice of buddhānusmr.ti would not. Members of the laity unfamiliar with the practice of meditation, but familiar with the imagery of the purified fields would thus have been able to engage in overt ritual commemoration in the third and fourth galleries.

Introduction 17 Intrapsychic memorialization is a private “refashioning of identity by means of identification with the other,” and Harrison points out that the meditative practice of buddhānusmr.ti is a technique for transforming oneself into an advanced bodhisattva and eventually into a Buddha by visualizing the appropriate figures and incorporating their excellent qualities.82 Here, the deliberative aspect of the epideictic comes to the fore: the point is not only to envision patterns of excellence but also to emulate and incorporate them until there is no discernible difference between the seer and what is seen. While it is likely that some karmic shadow of intrapsychic memorialization attended any ritual circumambulation of the upper galleries, its deliberate cultivation would have required meditative practice. It is possible that qualified practitioners combined the actual practice of buddhānusmr.ti with ritual circumambulation in a walking version of visualization meditation. It is also possible that ritual circumambulation at Borobudur and meditative buddhānusmr.ti were performed separately and on different occasions, but were seen as mutually reinforcing practices. In any case, regardless of whether any inner transformation actually took place for particular celebrants, the upper galleries provided a ritual venue in which intrapsychic memorialization could be symbolically enacted. While this argument requires considerable unpacking, which I will undertake in Chapters 3 and 4, I present it in skeletal form here to point out that the third and fourth galleries of Borobudur feature most, but critically not all, of the characteristics that are implicitly freighted in when one refers to the building as a monument. The relief panels present an epideictic call for the commemoration and emulation of culturally defined patterns of excellence, while the general structure of the galleries prioritizes contemplative attention to the panels in conjunction with ritual circumambulation. Indeed, as will become clear, all of the galleries, together with the top of the monument, share the general epideictic, commemorative, and ritual characteristics of monuments. But the particular epideictic call of the third and fourth galleries presents patterns of excellence associated with the Buddha or advanced bodhisattva in his sambhogakāya and is designed to elicit a response related to the structured meditative commemoration found in buddhānusmr.ti. As I have mentioned above, in the forms of buddhānusmr.ti under discussion, the practitioner recollects and commemorates the Buddhas or celestial bodhisattvas of the present who currently “reside in” their purified fields. In contrast to the historical Buddha Śākyamuni, the Buddhas and celestial bodhisattvas of the present are not considered to be deceased. The third and fourth galleries of Borobudur thus do not exhibit one of the common characteristics of monuments because although they do call for commemoration, they are not funereal. Indeed, as I will argue in Chapters 3 and 4, they are the antithesis of funereal because they emphatically assert the continued availability of the living Buddha(s) despite the at least apparent passing of Śākyamuni at death into final nirvana (parinirvān.a). The new analysis of galleries three and four has important implications for the interpretation of the monument as a whole. Significantly, the buddhānusmr.ti relief panels occupy a space on Borobudur between the Lalitavistara relief panels of the first gallery that picture scenes from Śākyamuni’s biography and the top of the

18

Introduction

monument with its crowning stupa. Just as the monument as a whole is geographically locative, “placing” Java in the Buddhist world, so the particular epideictic call of the third and fourth galleries is architecturally locative: it matters that patterns of excellence associated with the sambhogakāya are presented for commemoration there. In the overall design of the monument, the buddhānusmr.ti relief panels mediate between the biography and the terraces and orient practitioners toward a nonfunereal, distinctively Mahāyāna understanding of stupas as symbolic of the Buddha’s ultimate gnosis rather than of his (merely apparent) parinirvān.a.

Chapter outlines Chapter 1 argues that Borobudur as a whole is best described in Buddhist terms as an architectural mandala that incorporates a hierarchically organized version of the bodhisattva path. I situate my argument in the broader scholarly discourse on the topic, and explain how the strongest points of potentially competing theories – for example, that Borobudur is best understood as a stupa – can be accommodated within a sufficiently nuanced account of the monument as an architectural mandala/bodhisattva path. Most scholars who have advanced theories of Borobudur as a mandala have focused their interpretive energies almost exclusively on the monument’s various Buddha statues. In the book as a whole, I show that in its expanded form, the mandala principle applies not only to the Buddha statues, but also to its relief panels. Chapter 2 begins to analyze the sequential composition of the relief panels in general by focusing on those that have received the most scholarly attention: the 128 reliefs on the main wall of the first gallery that picture scenes from the biography of the historical Buddha Śākyamuni as it is told in the Lalitavistara. Scholarly interpretations of the biographical series uniformly and correctly assert that it is a premier example of narrative art, and it is on this basis that the Gan.d.avyūha relief panels on the upper galleries are often assumed also to be narrative. But this assumption rests on a rather vague notion of narrative art that would define any work that depicts a scene from a text as narrative. Drawing on the work of Paul Ricoeur and of several art historians, the chapter provides a more precise definition of narrative art that emphasizes its temporal structure: narrative art entails the arrangement of scenes in space to indicate a sequence of events unfolding in time. According to this definition, many of the Gan.d.avyūha relief panels of the upper galleries are not narrative and Chapters 3 and 4 offer an alternative model for understanding them. But if it is necessary to explain why some relief panels at Borobudur are not narrative, it is equally necessary to explain why some of them are. Chapter 2 thus goes on to argue that the Lalitavistara series conveys the sense of temporality exceptionally well because temporality is precisely what it serves to problematize. Chapter 3 begins by showing that several sequences of Gan.d.avyūha relief panels located on the third and fourth galleries are not narrative art, but rather what I call “panoramic art.” Although they do picture scenes from a text, they do not depict a sequence of events unfolding in time. Instead, long sequences of panels

Introduction 19 picture visually descriptive passages of the text nearly word for word, so that each panel depicts one part of a larger visual tableau. What the text describes and the tableau pictures is a soteriologically privileged realm called a purified buddha field (buddhaks.etra) which is an integral part of the “body” that the Buddha manifests for the benefit of relatively advanced practitioners: the body of communal enjoyment of the dharma (sambhogakāya). To “enter” the purified field, one recollects the Buddha (buddhān.usmr.ti) by meditatively visualizing his spectacular realm, creating a mental picture of it that is so vivid as to be a virtual reality: one “zooms in” on a small part of the picture until one sees it in glorious detail, then “zooms out” to the whole while maintaining the same degree of clarity. The chapter argues that the word-by-word technique of illustration in the Gan.d.avyūha relief panels replicates this meditative procedure by presenting the purified field in small, vividly realized parts that must be mentally assembled to arrive at the whole. Chapter 4 demonstrates that in addition to picturing the purified field, the Gan.d.avyūha relief panels of galleries three and four also depict the compassionate and devotional acts of wonder-working bodhisattvas who “dwell in” the purified field, but are also simultaneously present in other realms of the cosmos. While remaining “in” a particular purified field, the advanced bodhisattva practices compassionate multilocation by simultaneously projecting multiple illusory bodies throughout the cosmos in order to teach and liberate myriad sentient beings. The bodhisattva also practices devotional multilocation by simultaneously projecting multiple illusory bodies to other purified fields throughout the cosmos in order to worship myriad Buddhas and accumulate a vast store of merit that will “fund” his compassionate activities. Drawing on relevant Mahāyāna texts, the chapter demonstrates that one cultivates the capacity for compassionate and devotional multilocation through meditative visualization and argues that both the Gan.d.avyūha passages and the Borobudur relief panels refer ultimately to mnemonic techniques of contemplative practice strongly related to purified field visualization. Chapter 5 argues that in keeping with Indian Buddhist scholastic literature, the architects of Borobudur subject the visions cultivated in buddhānusmr.ti to the critique of emptiness. The critique is presented in visual form by the architectural program on the terraces at the top of Borobudur. There, the multiple cosmic Buddhas, represented by 72 Buddha statues, are obscured by the latticed stupas that allow them only to be glimpsed. It is as if the Buddhas are in the process of disappearing – which is exactly what they do at the conclusion of some forms of buddhānusmr.ti, in which the practitioner deliberately dissolves the vision into emptiness. The large and completely opaque stupa at the center of the Borobudur mandala represents the successful and complete dissolution of the vision, which would ideally result in the full realization of emptiness characteristic of the Buddha in his most subtle, unified, and nonprovisional form, the body of ultimate truth (dharmakāya). Chapter 5 also reconstructs ritual procedures of commemoration and transformation for which Borobudur appears to have been designed. The monumental mandala articulates a ritual venue within which a hierarchically ordered series of transformative encounters may take place. By following the circumambulation

20

Introduction

path around and up through the galleries, the practitioner makes his or her way from the bottom/periphery to the top/center of the Borobudur mandala, encountering, commemorating, and ideally incorporating the qualities of increasingly sophisticated manifestations of the Buddha. On the upper galleries, ritual circumambulation allows the practitioner to achieve at least symbolically the goals that would ordinarily be achieved through meditative visualization. At the top/center of the monument, the practitioner symbolically dissolves the self and incorporates the Buddha to a degree that enables him or her to act as the Buddha’s proxy in the world. By descending one of the monument’s four stairways, the practitioner reverses the process of dissolution, re-emerging first into the purified realms and then into the everyday world. Thus the practitioner ritually simulates the process of producing an illusory body and emerges from the mandala symbolically empowered to act compassionately as an embodied agent of the Buddha. I conclude by considering how the ritual procedure would have signified had the ritual been performed, on special occasions, by the Śailendra king.

1

Borobudur Monumental mandala and bodhisattva path

Borobudur has been described as, among other things, a stupa, a multi-storied palace (prāsāda), the cosmic Mount Meru, and a mandala. Each of these theories has its strengths, and many scholars now agree that the monument is multivalent and therefore best described using a combination of interpretations that have previously been perceived as competing. Although he expresses it in the essentializing and gender-biased language that was unfortunately for a time the scholarly norm, A. J. Bernet Kempers offers perhaps the best general account of the monument as a whole: “Borobudur represents the Holy, its descent into the Universe, the Universe being pervaded, and the ascent of Man.”1 As he unpacks this statement, it becomes clear that, in general, he thinks that the “ascent of Man” is represented by the relief panels,2 while the “descent” of “the Holy” is represented by the Buddha figures on the terraces and in the niches.3 To put his theory in Buddhist terms, the spiraling circumambulation route around and up through Borobudur represents the bodhisattva path by which the devotee ascends toward enlightenment and full Buddhahood. The Buddha figures represent the descent of the already enlightened Buddha, whose manifestations radiate outward and downward in a mandala pattern. In its general outline, there is much to admire in Bernet Kempers’ interpretation, particularly in his interpretation of the terraces. Although he does not put the matter in quite this way, the logic of his argument is that if in the design of Borobudur, the Buddha and the universe are interpenetrating, then it must also be the case that the mandala and the bodhisattva path are mutually interpenetrating. To expand on Bernet Kempers’ formulation, at Borobudur, the bodhisattva path is conceived as a series of encounters in which the devotee meets increasingly subtle and soteriologically efficacious manifestations of the Buddha. The monument bodies forth these manifestations precisely so that someone following the circumambulation path may ritually encounter the Buddha, commemorate his excellent qualities, and symbolically incorporate them. Although Bernet Kempers provides an excellent general framework for understanding the monument, he leaves a number of issues unresolved. First, although his characterization of the bodhisattva path as an ascent gives the general impression that the galleries are a hierarchically ordered series, he does not explain just how the hierarchy is expressed. Second, in his description of the Borobudur mandala, he draws on accounts that do not use the most convincing available sources

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Monumental mandala and bodhisattva path

of evidence. Third, he does not make it quite clear how the devotee is to encounter the descending manifestations of the Buddha in the galleries. This chapter takes up these issues and offers an alternative account of the Borobudur mandala that takes as its primary textual source the prologue of the Gan.d.avyūha and that considers the relief panels of the galleries as a fully functioning part of the mandala program.

Borobudur as a representation of the path Accounts of Borobudur as a representation of the path often begin with the theory that the monument as a whole is a stupa. Beginning in 1905, when Foucher first advanced the theory,4 many scholars have argued that Borobudur is a stupa. As Hiram W. Woodward so colorfully puts it: “Borobudur is a stupa, just as a soupedup, hoodless car with gleaming engine parts is an automobile.”5 Certainly, the stupa that is the central and crowning feature of the monument is of critical importance to its overall design. The fact that the crowning stupa rises from a multi-tiered reticulated square structure invites one to compare it to Himalayan stupas such as Boudhanath, which may have been constructed before or at roughly the same time as Borobudur, or to the much later Kumbum at Gyangtse. Furthermore, the fact that this central stupa is surrounded by circumambulation pathways studded with scenes from the biography and previous lives of the historical Buddha invites one to compare Borobudur to earlier Indian stupas such as Bhārhut and Sāñcī. But if Borobudur as a whole is a stupa, it is a stupa unlike any other, and this fact has had a somewhat disquieting effect even on those who ultimately embrace the theory. The first problem is that even though the central stupa seems large when seen from the platform at the top of Borobudur, it is too small in proportion to the rest of the monument to impress one looking at it from the ground as the dominant architectural element. The monument as a whole therefore creates an overall impression that is quite different from the impressions created by Boudhanath or the Kumbum. Because its circumference and height are relatively small when compared to the “base” of the galleries and terraces, and because of the general flatness of Borobudur that so amused Foucher,6 the crowning stupa can only be seen from the ground if one stands at a certain distance from the monument. As one approaches, the stupa gradually sinks below the horizon created by the uppermost balustrade. This fact has struck many as odd, as is demonstrated by the fact that in artistic renderings, the central stupa at Borobudur is often “fixed” so that it looks larger and/or higher.7 Some scholars have argued that the design for Borobudur was modified over time and that the crowning feature in the hypothetical original plan was quite different from the terraces that were eventually built. Henri Parmentier, for example, supposed that the top of Borobudur – including the parts now occupied by the latticed stupas of the three terraces – was originally intended to support a single stupa much larger and taller than the extant crowning stupa.8 Although he does not posit a change-of-design theory, it is clear that Woodward has a mental picture of the monument quite similar to that of Parmentier. He writes, “on the terraces we

Monumental mandala and bodhisattva path 23 can imagine ourselves inside the dome of a traditional stupa, one having the form, for instance, of the stupas on the Borobudur terraces.”9 That the imagined large dome is not in fact there provides the inspiration for Woodward’s comparison of Borobudur to a car without a hood. Current archaeological evidence suggests that Parmentier may have been correct: encased beneath what is now the first quasicircular terrace is a large lotus platform that may have been designed to support a stupa of roughly the same circumference as the extant terrace.10 If such a stupa had in fact been constructed, then in its overall outline, Borobudur would resemble mandala-stupas such as Boudhanath and the Kumbum much more strongly. But even given the archaeological evidence, the theory remains somewhat speculative because we cannot be sure what the buried lotus platform was intended to support. Even if we could be sure that the design for Borobudur at one point called for the construction of a large crowning stupa, the question would remain: how does the earlier abandoned design relate to the design of the monument as it stands? Clearly, the fact that Borobudur is crowned by a stupa, albeit a relatively small one, indicates some continuity. But just as clearly, the architects of Borobudur eventually decided on a design in which, from the vantage point of the upper platform, the stupa is the dominant feature of the monument, while from other vantage points, the stupa is not nearly as prominent and is in fact often invisible. To the extent that change-of-design theories ignore these facts in favor of a hypothetical monument that would look more like a Himalayan mandala-stupa, they fail to interpret the design of the monument that the architects of Borobudur finally decided to build. In what follows, my approach is somewhat different. While I take note of known and possible changes of design, I do so in the service of interpreting what we might call the revised final draft of Borobudur. In its extant form, Borobudur does not, in my opinion, give the overall visual impression of a stupa. As Soekmono puts it: “It is quite possible for a stupa to be erected on a multiple base, but hardly in such a way that it is wholly dwarfed in size and importance by that base.”11 In another version of the stupa theory, Foucher argues that the general outline of the whole monument – base, galleries, and top – is dome-like, and that for this reason Borobudur as a whole should be considered to be a stupa.12 But visually, the resemblance is vague at best. While the hill that forms the foundation of Borobudur has the general shape of a stupa, the monument that encases it obscures rather than enhances the similarity, as Foucher himself notes. Borobudur is more square than round, it is too squat to give the overall impression of a dome, and the pointy tops of the niches give its silhouette a jagged appearance. Still, even if Borobudur does not give the overall visual impression of a stupa, the monument still functions at least in part as a stupa. As Woodward points out, “it is not the outer form of stupas which provides the greatest number of clues for our understanding of these matters but the inner workings.”13 Early accounts of the central stupa agree that it had two hollow spaces inside, one above the other.14 Although nothing of the sort has ever been found, it may be that these spaces were designed to house a relic or some other enlivening item such as a plate engraved

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Monumental mandala and bodhisattva path

with a text. Alternatively, the “unfinished” Buddha statue found in the central stupa, if it was installed there in the Central Javanese period, might have been intended to help establish the Buddha’s presence in the structure. If the central stupa did contain something like a relic, then the great probability is that that item was intended to establish the Buddha’s presence in the entire building. Given this, one cannot discount the possibility that, despite appearances, the entire structure might have been designed to be a stupa in the sense that it contained enlivening stupa deposits. One of the greatest advantages of the stupa theory is that it provides a way to interpret at least one of the ritual functions of Borobudur. The pathways through the galleries of Borobudur are designed so that by following the relief panels in order, the devotee also performs a ritual clockwise circumambulation of the monument (pradaks.in.ā). The Lalitavistara relief panels, for example, begin on the southern side of the eastern stairway, continue clockwise around the entire building, and end on the northern side of the eastern stairway. Similarly, scenes from other texts are also arranged so that they can be contemplated in their proper order while moving clockwise through the galleries. This has led Vidya Dehejia, among others, to propose that the gallery walkways at Borobudur serve a purpose similar to the pradaks.in.ā pathways of earlier Indian stupas such as Bhārhut and Sāñcī.15 The railings, gateways (toran.as), and other architectural features that define the pradaks.in.ā pathways around these stupas are, like the first gallery of Borobudur and part of the second, adorned with relief sculptures depicting scenes from the Buddha’s biography and from his previous lives. And while Robert L. Brown has argued convincingly that the relief sculptures on the cross-pieces of the toran.as at Sāñcī are too high to be seen clearly from the ground with the naked eye,16 the relief sculptures located lower down may well have been contemplated by devotees during the performance of ritual circumambulation. But, while at least some of the Bhārhut and Sāñcī sculptures may have signified in the performance of the pradaks.in.ā at these sites, the focus of the ritual in each case is clearly the stupa itself. At each of these Indian sites, the stupa looms large as the devotee follows the pradaks.in.ā pathway, reminding him or her of the presence (and absence) of the Buddha established by the relics deposited in it. By contrast, the central stupa at Borobudur cannot be the immediate focus of the pradaks.in.ā through the galleries because one cannot even see the central stupa from any of the gallery walkways. Although symbolically, the central stupa may be the ultimate referent of the pradaks.in.ā, its immediate referent must be something else – something that commands the devotee’s attention in the galleries. In the galleries, the visual element that, above all others, captures one’s gaze is the elaborately carved program of relief panels. To make sense of the pradaks.in.ā at Borobudur, then, one must explain how the relief panels might be the focus of the devotional reverence expressed by circumambulation. Here, two initial observations about the differences between Borobudur and the Indian stupas prove helpful. First, the pradaks.in.ā pathways through the Borobudur galleries cannot serve precisely the same purpose as those at Bhārhut and Sāñcī because three of

Monumental mandala and bodhisattva path 25 the galleries depict scenes from the Gan.d.avyūha, a text that does not figure in the design of either Indian stupa. Second, the pradaks.in.ā pathway at Borobudur is divided into several levels, each of which is invisible from the vantage point of any other. These two features indicate that the pradaks.in.ā program of Borobudur is both deeply informed by Mahāyāna sensibilities and much more elaborate than the programs at either Bhārhut or Sāñcī. To explain why the monument in general and program of relief panels in particular is divided into many levels, Foucher advanced another influential theory about the overall design of Borobudur: in addition to being a stupa, the monument is also a prāsāda, or multi-storied palace, the various levels of which correspond to various stages of the path.17 Versions of this proposal were later adopted by W. F. Stutterheim and Paul Mus, who, drawing on different sources, incorporated it into two distinct accounts of Borobudur as a combined stupa and prāsāda.18 Although Mus’ account of Borobudur as a stupa-prasāda has perhaps had more influence, Stutterheim’s account also continues to be cited in the scholarly literature. As Gómez and Woodward point out: The kind of prāsāda the scholars concerned had in mind is perhaps best epitomized by the description in the Sri Lanka chronicle, the Mahāvam . sa, of the Lohapāsāda, a tower in Anurādhapura on whose seven stories stand monks who have reached various stages of the path.19 In time, it was recognized that the version of the bodhisattva path presented by the Theravāda Buddhist Lohapāsāda was not likely to be the best model for understanding the clearly Mahāyāna Buddhist Borobudur. But scholars continue to find attractive the general theory that the architecture of the monument reflected a hierarchically organized representation of the bodhisattva path. Accordingly, J. G. de Casparis argues that Borobudur was designed to reflect the Mahāyāna version of the bodhisattva path found in the Daśabhūmika sūtra.20 The Daśabhūmika sūtra and the Gan.d.avyūha are closely related texts that, although they also circulated independently, were incorporated into the larger Avatam . saka sūtra.21 Even if one does not assume, as I do not, that the architects of Borobudur were familiar with the whole Avatam . saka sūtra, there is still good reason to believe that they did know about the Daśabhūmika sūtra because this text clearly did circulate in areas of India with which the Javanese are known to have conducted religious exchanges.22 In this sense, then, Casparis’ argument is an improvement over those that compare Borobudur to the Lohapāsāda. But as Fontein points out, if Borobudur represents the bodhisattva path as it is described in the Daśabhūmika sūtra, one would expect the structure to be clearly divided into ten stories, each of which would represent one of the ten stages of the path. Fontein goes on to say that the only way he sees to get ten stories out of Borobudur is to count both the processional walkway atop the added foot, and the square platform which supports the upper terraces, and that this would be “too artificial.”23 Other ways of extracting the number ten from the design of Borobudur exist. One might propose that devotees circumambulated the entire building

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before ascending, then circumambulated the processional walkway, then the four galleries, the three terraces, and finally the central stupa for a total of ten circuits. Alternatively, if devotees circumambulated the galleries attending to each register of relief panels individually, there would be four circuits on the first gallery, and two circuits on each of the other three galleries, for a total of ten. But these ways of arriving at the number ten also strike me as too artificial because there is, to my knowledge, no way other than a vague numerology to connect the various levels of Borobudur with the stages of the path. For example, at the top of the monument, are the first and second terraces sufficiently iconographically distinct to reflect the difference between the seventh and eighth stages of the bodhisattva path? Or again, how would the circuits devoted to the two levels of the first gallery balustrade, the lower level of the first gallery main wall, and the balustrade of the second gallery – all of which depict scenes from jātakas and avadānas – reflect the distinctions between four levels of the path? In sum, while the Daśabhūmika sūtra is a valuable resource for interpreting some of the relief panels of Borobudur, its ten-fold presentation of the bodhisattva path does not seem to have inspired the overall design of the monument in any definitive way. To approach the question of just how the bodhisattva path is represented on Borobudur, it is much more fruitful to begin with Fontein’s suggestion that “the architects based themselves on the principle of Upāya-kauśalya according to which the Bodhisattva exercises skillfulness or wisdom in the choice and adoption of the means or expedients for converting others or helping them to attain the Ultimate Truth.”24 In order to unpack this suggestion, it will be necessary to discuss the development of the Mahāyāna principle of upāya kauśalya. According to the earliest Mahāyāna texts,25 one of the defining features of a Buddha or advanced bodhisattva is his pedagogical skill. Upāya kauśalya (“skillful means”) is the ability to compose a dharma lesson in such a way that it is maximally effective for its intended audience.26 In the course of teaching the dharma, Buddhas and bodhisattvas encounter people and other beings at all stages of spiritual development, and with widely varying capacities for advancement. Clearly, someone who has nearly achieved full Buddhahood is almost always ready for a much more advanced dharma lesson than is a dog or a denizen of hell. More subtly, people of roughly the same degree of advancement may have very different temperaments, and therefore respond best to different dharma lessons. Despite these rather challenging pedagogical conditions, Buddhas and advanced bodhisattvas are always able to compose a lesson that is perfectly appropriate. They can determine the abilities of any particular audience precisely and, using upāya kauśalya, compose a lesson that will lead to the greatest possible degree of soteriological progress. Because Buddhas and advanced bodhisattvas use upāya kauśalya, dharma lessons composed for audiences of limited capacities may be “ultimately false but provisionally true”: according to Donald Lopez, this is a fundamental principle of Mahāyāna Buddhist hermeneutics.27 Confronted with a wealth of texts, some of which were at least apparently mutually contradictory, Mahāyāna exegetes tended

Monumental mandala and bodhisattva path 27 to accept all of them as the genuine word of a Buddha or advanced bodhisattva, but to discriminate between them on the basis of their proximity to or distance from ultimate truth. At the top of these hermeneutic hierarchies were teachings that the exegetes claimed were delivered for the most advanced audiences, and that were therefore superior, literal, and as close to ultimately true as the limits of language allow. Teachings that differed from this first group were declared to be inferior, in need of interpretation, and only provisionally true. As Donald Lopez has forcefully argued: “Upāya does not . . . simply provide the basis for a hermeneutics of accommodation, but also establishes one of appropriation and control, for to declare a teaching to be expedient is to declare knowledge of the Buddha’s intention and, hence, his final view.”28 A few examples will suffice to show how this control was deployed. Early in the development of the Mahāyāna in India, the principle of upāya kauśalya is used to assert the superiority of the newer Mahāyāna Prajñāpāramitā sūtras, or Perfection of Wisdom texts, over the traditional teachings of Nikāya Buddhism.29 According to the Mahāyānists, the superior “second turning of the wheel of dharma”30 is addressed to bodhisattvas intent upon achieving full Buddhahood and compassionately assisting others to achieve salvation. The inferior first turning, or Nikāya Buddhism, is addressed to people who, out of a lack of compassion for others, strive only for their own salvation. Due to their limited capacities, this latter group choose what is pejoratively labeled the “Hīnayāna,” or small vehicle, which carries only one person at a time to Nirvana, while the bodhisattvas choose the Mahāyāna, or great vehicle, which is large enough to carry potentially everyone. Later, the same principle is employed to assert that one or another of the various strands of the Mahāyāna is superior to the rest. In India, for example, the Sam . dhinirmocana sūtra asserts that its newer Yogācāra Mahāyāna teaching is superior to the teachings contained in the older Prajñāpāramitā literature.31 The Sam . dhinirmocana presents a three-tiered hierarchy. In addition to the initial, inferior “Hīnayāna” teaching, and the better, but still provisional Mahāyāna teaching of the Prajñāpāramitā literature, there is now a third turning of the Dharma wheel – 32 the superior, final Mahāyāna teaching of the Sam . dhinirmocana. Even more elaborate are the various Chinese Buddhist systems of p’an-chiao, or doctrinal classification. Textual interpretation and classification in China was complicated initially by the ad hoc manner in which Indian Buddhist texts arrived there, and later by the fact that new texts espousing new teachings began to be composed in Chinese. But as in India, the initial warrant for sorting the vast corpus into a set of hierarchically ordered categories is the Buddha’s practice of upāya kauśalya. And as in India, to deploy such a system is also to attempt a doctrinal hegemony. Although Chinese exegetes generated numerous p’an-chiao systems – including systems that valorized the Lotus Sutra or one of various esoteric texts – one example will suffice to convey the general nature of the enterprise. Fazang (Wade-Giles: Fa-tsang, 643–712 CE), the third patriarch of the Chinese Huayan tradition, divides the Buddha’s teachings into five hierarchically organized categories. Beginning at the bottom of the ladder, these five categories are: 1) the Hīnayāna, 2) the elementary Mahāyāna, 3) the advanced Mahāyāna, 4) the sudden

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teaching, and 5) the perfect teaching.33 According to Fazang, the superior perfect teaching is found in only one text – the Huayan Sutra (Skt: Avatam . saka sūtra), which is, of course, the central text of the Huayan tradition.34 By the late eighth century, then, hierarchical systems of doctrinal classification based on the principle of upāya kauśalya were common in at least two parts of the Buddhist world with which the Javanese are known to have had extensive contact – India and China. It is therefore a near certainty that at least some of these systems of textual classification, and the logic by which they were generated, were known in Java at the time Borobudur was built. Accordingly, Fontein suggests that a hermeneutics based on the principle of upāya kauśalya may have been used to plan the distribution of relief sculptures in the galleries of Borobudur: “According to this principle each text may have been chosen so as to correspond to the level of perception of the Ultimate Truth to which the spectator had attained at the moment when he saw these illustrations.”35 Although Fontein puts it rather more cautiously, his suggestion is that Borobudur – or at least the lower part consisting of the base and the galleries – is a system of textual classification in stone. The Borobudur architects conveyed the hierarchical structure of a textual classification system by designing a stepped pyramid with distinctly separate levels. They then selected texts that record inferior teachings for illustration on the lower levels and texts that record superior teachings for illustration on the higher levels. Although he does not state it directly, the logic of Fontein’s suggestion is that the base and each of the four galleries presents a distinct teaching which is superior to the one(s) below it and inferior to the one(s) above it. One level equals one teaching. On the face of it, it seems that something like this must be the case. But Fontein does not explain fully how each teaching can be distinguished from the others. What, other than a set of stairs, signals the shift from one teaching to the next? In this formulation, Fontein offers only one way to recognize transitions – the relief panels stop illustrating one text and start illustrating another. One level equals one teaching; one teaching equals one text. With one important caveat, the relief panels of the base and the first two galleries do signal transitions in just this way – one level equals one teaching, and each teaching is represented by one text, or at least by a group of tales of the same general type. The transition from the original base to the first gallery is clearly marked by a change in textual material. Scenes from the Mahākarmavibhan.ga appear on the relief panels of the original base, while scenes from entirely different texts appear on the main wall of the first gallery. The fact that this main wall is divided into two distinct registers of relief panels – an upper and a lower – presents something of a problem. Did the Borobudur architects intend to indicate one level or two? If a change in textual material marks a transition from one level to the next, then the first gallery main wall presents us with two distinct levels: various jātaka and avadāna tales appear on the lower register, while the upper register depicts scenes from the Lalitavistara. The transition from the main wall of the first gallery to the main wall of the second is also clearly marked by a change in textual material: the Lalitavistara scenes end on the main wall of the first gallery, and scenes from the Gan.d.avyūha begin on the main wall of the second.

Monumental mandala and bodhisattva path 29 Now for the important caveat: those familiar with the monument will note immediately that the schema I have just presented loses some of its clarity when one considers not only the relief panels of the main walls, but also those of the balustrades. Indeed, Fontein has turned his attention to the problems presented by the balustrades on more than one occasion.36 To avoid a long detour here, I will save a full discussion of these problems for Chapter 4. For the moment, it will perhaps suffice to say that, although I do not have a complete solution, I will argue that the best approach given the available evidence is to treat the main walls of galleries one and two as the primary indicators of the hierarchical design of the monument. Thus, despite some residual difficulties, the general schema remains the same. On the original base and the first two galleries, in accord with Fontein’s suggestion, one level does seem to equal one teaching and one teaching does seem to equal one text. But as Fontein is well aware, the situation changes significantly when one turns to the third gallery. The relief panels on both the main wall and the balustrade of this gallery depict scenes from the same text that is pictured on the main wall of the second gallery: the Gan.d.avyūha. In this case one must choose: either one level equals one teaching or one teaching equals one text. That is to say, either the steps of the Borobudur pyramid are not the basic structure for a hierarchical order of teachings, or the hierarchy of teachings is not straightforwardly a hierarchy of texts. Because the preponderance of the evidence offered by the base and the first two galleries supports the hypothesis that one level equals one teaching, I will assume for the time being that the main wall of gallery three presents a teaching distinct from and superior to the teaching found on the main wall of gallery two. But if one text does not equal one teaching – or to put the matter more clearly, if materials from a single text are used to picture two or more distinct teachings – then what, other than the beginning of a new level, marks the transition from one teaching to the next? One possible way to approach this problem is to begin with the text: is the Gan.d.avyūha divided into discrete units of text that could be construed as separate teachings? At first blush, this approach looks promising. The Gan.d.avyūha recounts the pilgrimage of Sudhana, a young man who travels through South Asia to visit a series of kalyān.amitras, or spiritual friends, each of whom offers him instruction. Thus the text is composed of a number of related but discrete teachings, each of which is associated with a particular kalyān.amitra. One might suspect, then, that on the upper galleries of Borobudur, one level equals one teaching and one teaching equals one kalyān.amitra. But the monument does not in fact present us with such a tidy correspondence. On the one hand, a single kalyān.amitra episode may appear on two or more distinct levels of Borobudur. The section of the Gan.d.avyūha that recounts Sudhana’s visit to one of the most important kalyān.amitras – the bodhisattva Maitreya – is pictured on relief panels located on three different levels. The series begins at the end of the second gallery main wall, continues on the entire main wall and balustrade of the third gallery, and ends on the balustrade of the fourth gallery. On the other hand, two kalyān.amitra episodes that one might reasonably expect to be arranged hierarchically may appear on the same level of Borobudur. Sudhana’s

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visit to Samantabhadra is the final episode of the Gan.d.avyūha, in which, one presumes, Sudhana receives the most advanced teaching presented in the text. On the monument, this episode begins on the fourth gallery balustrade – after the Maitreya sequence, but on the same level with it. Thus, the fact that the text is clearly divided into sections does not help us to understand the hierarchical design of Borobudur because the architects have divided the material in a different way. I submit that the hierarchy of texts on Borobudur is secondary to and nested in, as it were, a governing hierarchy that is thoroughly visual. My discussion to this point of upāya kauśalya as the basis for textual interpretation and systems of doctrinal classification may create the impression that Buddhas and advanced bodhisattvas deploy their rhetorical skill to compose lessons solely in the medium of language. But this is not the case. They also use upāya kauśalya to create appearances – manifestations of themselves that, like the linguistic lessons, are tailored to the capacities of particular audiences. By manifesting the form appropriate for a particular audience, a Buddha or advanced bodhisattva allows that audience to make the maximum possible progress toward salvation. To persuade various sorts of beings of the truth of the dharma, the Buddha uses not only linguistic but also visual rhetoric. The Buddha’s deployment of visual rhetoric is often pictured in the form of a mandala; therefore it will be useful to consider to what extent the mandala paradigm applies to Borobudur.

Theories of Borobudur as a mandala One of the most popular, pervasive, and persistent theories about the design of the Borobudur monument as a whole is that it is a mandala. Heinrich Zimmer was the first to propound a version of this theory in 1926;37 N. J. Krom’s version, which appeared in 1927,38 and W. F. Stutterheim’s version, which first appeared in 1929,39 are also still regularly cited. Since then, numerous versions have appeared, including relatively recent contributions by J. E. van Lohuizen-de Leeuw,40 Lokesh Chandra,41 Alex Wayman,42 Adrian Snodgrass,43 and John C. Huntington.44 Although the accounts these scholars offer differ in important respects, they all focus their interpretive attention on the same two elements of Borobudur: 1) the plan of the building as seen from the air, and 2) the program of Buddha statues. To begin with the first point, in aerial photographs or in schematic drawings of its plan, the geometrical configuration of Borobudur makes it look generally like a two-dimensional representation of a mandala. Although there are many varieties of mandala configurations, a pattern common in Tibet and Nepal is the “palacearchitecture” mandala, which consists in part of “an inner circle containing a principal deity (or deities), enclosed in a multilevel square palace with openings at the four cardinal directions.”45 As seen from the air, Borobudur’s crowning stupa looks like the central circle in which the principal deity would appear. The three upper terraces form a series of three concentric “rings,”46 each of which is marked by the smaller circles of the latticed stupas in increasing multiples of eight: 16 circles on the uppermost terrace, 24 on the middle terrace, and 32 on the lower terrace. In a mandala painting, such as the twelfth- or early thirteenth-century

Monumental mandala and bodhisattva path 31 Mandala of Sarvavid-Vairocana at Alchi in Ladakh,47 these circles might be occupied by deities emanated by and closely related to the central deity. The terraces in turn are surrounded by the concentric reticulated squares of the galleries and the base, which are a more complex form of the square shape that in a palacearchitecture mandala painting would indicate the multilevel palace. Finally, the stairways of Borobudur, which lead from the midpoints of its four sides toward the center, look like the standard four entryways into a palace-architecture mandala. In the geometrical configuration of its plan, then, Borobudur gives the general impression of the central areas of a palace-architecture mandala. The second and by far the more intense focus of interpretive attention for proponents of the Borobudur mandala theory is the program of Buddha statues located in the stupas of the terraces and in the niches on the outer surfaces of the balustrades. To begin this time at the bottom of the monument, the first four balustrades feature a total of 368 niches, each of which houses a Buddha statue. In the niches on the eastern side of the building, the Buddha statues display the bhūmisparśa mudrā, or gesture of touching the earth.48 On the southern side, the Buddha figures display the varada mudrā, or boon-granting gesture of generosity; on the western side they display the dhyāna mudrā, or meditation gesture; on the northern side they display the abhaya mudrā, or “fear not” gesture. Most theories of Borobudur as a mandala begin by pointing out that the mudrās displayed by the Buddhas in the niches of the four directions correspond to the mudrās of the four directional Buddhas of the pañcajina man.d.ala. In the pañcajina, or Five Jina mandala, the four directional Buddhas are: 1) Akśobhya in the east, displaying the bhūmisparśa mudrā, 2) Ratnasambhava in the south, displaying the varada mudrā, 3) Amitābha in the west, displaying the dhyāna mudrā, and 4) Amoghasiddhi in the north, displaying the abhaya mudrā. At the center of the Five Jina mandala is the Buddha Vairocana, who displays the dharmacakra(pravartana) mudrā, or gesture of setting in motion the wheel of the dharma. On Borobudur, the 72 Buddha figures in the latticed stupas of the terraces also display this gesture. In some versions of the Borobudur mandala theory, the Buddhas are given different names, but the structure of the argument is the same: the mudrās displayed by the five Buddhas of the pañcajina man.d.ala match those displayed by the Buddha statues on Borobudur; therefore the Borobudur statues represent the same five Buddhas and the monument as a whole is a variant of or more elaborate version of the pañcajina man.d.ala. While this set of correspondences is indeed striking, so too are the ways in which the design of the monument departs from the Five Jina pattern. Marijke Klokke presents a rather thorough critique of the mandala theories, and while I do not agree with every aspect of her argument, many points are telling.49 The first issue is that, to put it simply, Borobudur has too many Buddhas.50 In addition to the figures in the niches of the four gallery balustrades, there are also Buddha images in each of the 64 niches located on the outer surface of the low balustrade that surrounds the platform near the top of the monument. These statues, on all sides of the monument, display a variant of the vitarka mudrā, or gesture of disputation or instruction. Thus there are six hand gestures and six different Buddhas in a mandala that is only supposed to have five.

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Furthermore, it is possible that the central stupa once housed the Buddha statue that now sits in front of the small museum built on the grounds of the Archaeological Park created around Borobudur during the restoration sponsored by the Indonesian government and UNESCO that began in the 1970s. Because the statue has a well-carved face, but is otherwise rather roughly hewn, it is usually referred to as the “unfinished” Buddha. Although the hands of the statue are not fully carved – in fact its right hand looks rather like a squared-off mitten – it was clearly meant to display the bhūmisparśa mudrā. The original location of the statue has been a matter of dispute, and though it now appears that the statue probably was originally in the stupa, it might not have been established there as a religiously significant item. Some scholars argue that the statue is unfinished because it was deemed flawed and that, rather than destroy a Buddha statue, the supervisors of the project may have “interred” it in the central stupa. Others who argue that the statue was established in the crowning stupa as the central figure of the Borobudur mandala also argue that its unfinished quality is symbolic.51 It is probably not possible to resolve this issue definitively on the basis of the archaeological evidence that we have, which poses a vexing problem for those who focus their interpretive energies on Borobudur’s program of Buddha statues. If one accepts the unfinished Buddha statue as a representation of the central Buddha of the mandala, then either Vairocana Buddha displays an uncharacteristic mudrā or the central Buddha is not Vairocana. If one does not accept the unfinished Buddha, then the mandala has no figurative representation at its center, and one must explain why the “central” Buddha Vairocana has been displaced.52 In any case, the program of Buddha statues on Borobudur does not match the Five Buddha mandala pattern perfectly because it includes at least six and possibly seven different Buddhas. The second issue is that Borobudur has too few statues. Although the figures of the Five Buddha mandala do appear by themselves in various artifacts from countries such as India and Nepal, they are accompanied by a host of other figures in the two Japanese Shingon mandalas to which Borobudur is more frequently compared. These two – the Vajradhātu man.d.ala and the Garbhadhātu man.d.ala – include a variety of bodhisattvas, deities, and guardian figures, each with its own distinctive iconographic features.53 The three-dimensional images at Borobudur present nothing similar. In most versions of the mandala theory, this issue is never addressed. An exception to this general rule is Snodgrass’ version of the mandala theory, in which, drawing on the work of Japanese scholar Toganoo Shoun, he asserts that the 72 Buddha figures in the latticed stupas actually represent the same qualities of the Buddha that are personified as distinct figures in the Vajradhātu man.d.ala.54 But the Buddha figures in the latticed stupas are not iconographically distinguished from one another, nor do they bear any visual resemblance to the divinities with which Snodgrass identifies them. His argument rests almost completely on a numerological correspondence. According to Toganoo, the Buddha has 36 qualities; Snodgrass asserts that all 36 are represented in each of two aspects, resulting in 72 figures. Drawing on different sources, Wayman makes a similar argument.55 But the argument is not very convincing because the Buddha figures on the

Monumental mandala and bodhisattva path 33 terraces are not placed in a way that suggests 36 by 2. Rather, they are arranged in a sequence of increasingly large multiples of eight: 16, 24, and 32. It is possible that more evidence could surface which would support Snodgrass’ theory, but until it does, I remain particularly skeptical of the mandala theory in this form. To suggest that Borobudur is a variant of the five-Buddha mandala or of one or both of the Japanese Shingon mandalas is also to suggest that the monument is a product of a Tantric or Vajrayāna strand of Buddhism. Certainly, the Śailendras of the late eighth and early ninth centuries were not ignorant of the Tantric innovations in literature and practice that were unfolding among subgroups in Mahāyāna Buddhist communities and institutions. Tantric forms of Buddhism were known in neighboring Śrīvijaya as early as the seventh century.56 In the first decades of the eighth century, the Tantric master Vajrabodhi (670–741) traveled from India to China by the sea route and spent some time in what is now Indonesia on his way. He may have met his foremost disciple Amoghavajra (719–774) in Java, and after years of living in China, the latter returned for a time to Java after Vajrabodhi passed away in 741.57 Later, the Javanese monk Bianhong traveled to China to study with Amoghavajra’s disciple Huiguo, with whom Kukai (774–835), the founder of the Japanese Shingon tradition, also studied.58 What is not known is whether Vajrabodhi and Amoghavajra were as influential in Java during the years that the design of Borobudur took shape as they were in China. Vajrabodhi and Amoghavajra brought the Tantric Tattvasam . graha sūtra to China,59 and it is clear that the text eventually also became important in Java, though the Javanese may have acquired their knowledge of it from another source. A large number of bronze statuettes found cached at Nganjuk in East Java, which date from the tenth or eleventh century, have been identified as figures of the Vajradhātu man.d.ala as it is described in a commentary written in the same period 60 by an Indian monk on the Tattvasam . graha. But the Nganjuk bronzes postdate Borobudur and thus it is not clear whether the Tattvasam . graha sūtra was known in Java early enough to have inspired the design of the monument. This brings us to one of the most significant problems with the mandala theory: the texts used to elucidate Borobudur were not clearly extant in Java at the time the monument was designed and built. Stutterheim argues that Borobudur should be understood in light of an East Javanese Tantric text called the Sang Hyang Kamahāyānikan,61 which dates from the tenth century.62 Not only does the text postdate the monument, it also shows a strong Śaiva influence that is not in evidence at Borobudur. Lokesh Chandra and Huntington both base their interpretations at least in part on texts classified by the Tibetan Gelugpa school as Yoga and Caryā Tantras, including the Tattvasam . graha sūtra, the Vajraśekhara, the Mahāvairocana sūtra, and the Sarvadurgatipariśodhana tantra. The initial warrant for choosing these texts is that they present Mahāvairocana as the paramount Buddha and describe mandalas that place him at their centers. The initial warrant is strengthened considerably by the fact that Vairocana is also the paramount Buddha in the Gan.d.avyūha.63 But as we have seen, though the Tattvasam . graha sūtra eventually became influential in Java, the earliest evidence dates from the tenth century; the existing evidence for Javanese familiarity with the other texts during the relevant

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time period is equally thin.64 Wayman’s interpretation draws on a commentary by Vajravarman on the Sarvadurgatipariśodhana tantra, which he suggests, but does not insist, may have been composed in Śrīvijaya.65 The date of composition is not known, but the text was translated into Tibetan in the eleventh century. As Wayman implies, even a text composed well after Borobudur was built might preserve ideas and practices reflected in its design and therefore be of considerable help in interpreting the monument.66 But for this kind of argument to be convincing, the match between the text in question and the iconography of Borobudur should be fairly close. In my opinion, although it is informative in other ways, Wayman’s piece as it stands does not demonstrate a convincing correspondence. To date, Huntington’s version of the mandala theory establishes the most convincing explanation of the Buddha statue program of Borobudur. Although he does claim that Borobudur is a variant of the Five Jina mandala and that its architects drew on what he calls the “Mahāvairocana cycle of Tantras,” he also cites the Mahāyāna Avatam . saka sūtra (which contains the Gan.d.avyūha) as an important source of inspiration and his claims about the Tantric texts in relation to Borobudur are actually quite limited.67 One of his central points is that in Mahāyāna Buddhism generally, “Vairocana Buddha and Śākyamuni Buddha are not separate Buddhas but are always an identity even when they are, for didactic and/or grammatical purposes, discussed independently.”68 Having claimed that Vairocana and Śākyamuni are interpenetrating, Huntington goes on to identify the Buddha figure in the central stupa as Śākyamuni, the Buddhas in the latticed stupas as Vairocana, and the Buddhas in the niches on the fifth balustrade as Śākyamuni/Vairocana.69 Although I am not entirely persuaded by all aspects of his argument, Huntington’s version seems more likely than some others because he does not introduce a sixth Buddha, nor does he claim, as some versions do, that some of the Buddha figures really represent figures usually depicted as bodhisattvas.70 He also suggests, quite helpfully, that the Buddha statues of the terraces and those in the niches of the uppermost balustrade are so closely connected as to be differentiated manifestations of the same Buddha. Still, Huntington’s argument would be stronger if he could connect the Tantric texts on which he relies more firmly to Borobudur, or give an example of a clearly Tantric mandala representation that depicts the Buddhas he names in the same arrangement. To be clear, I do not wish to argue the negative proposition that Borobudur is not connected with Tantric ideas or practices. Arguments based on absence are dangerous in a situation in which a whole category of highly relevant evidence – that is, manuscripts – has not survived. Such arguments become even more dangerous when one is tracing an early period in the transmission of a teaching that is well known to have been passed along, at least in part, orally and in secret from master to disciple. Although I agree with Klokke that most of the available evidence for the late eighth and early ninth centuries suggests that Śailendra Buddhism was primarily Mahāyāna, and that clear indications of distinctively Tantric developments become more plentiful only in the late ninth and tenth centuries,71 I do not wish to rule out the possibility that the design of Borobudur was influenced in part by Tantric doctrines, practices, and/or visual culture. Rather, I wish merely to point out that the available evidence does not conclusively support a connection with any particular Tantric text

Monumental mandala and bodhisattva path 35 or with the two Shingon mandalas. While it is likely that Tantric texts and materials existed in the area at the time, we simply do not know for certain which ones, or how widely they circulated. It is therefore dangerous to rely too heavily on the content of any particular Tantric text to explain the significance or function of Borobudur. Thus far, the texts and mandalas that I have mentioned are generally accepted as distinctively Tantric, or in the Shingon tradition, as distinctively esoteric. But in general, how do Tantric texts and practices differ from Mahāyāna Buddhist ones? In other words, how might one define Buddhist Tantra? This is a notoriously difficult question, and Hugh Urban has argued that the texts do not provide an answer to it: “In sum, it would seem that the Buddhist literature provides us neither with a clear definition of tantra nor with a simple or consistent classification of all the many texts called tantras.”72 He argues that the term tantra, as it is used not only in Buddhist literature but also in Hindu, colonial, postcolonial, scholarly, and popular Western works, “is a highly variable and shifting category whose meaning may differ depending on the particular historical moment, cultural milieu, and political context.”73 For the wide range of contexts he wishes to explore, Urban asserts that no general definition of Tantra is possible, but for each of the historically situated contexts he investigates, he does offer a characterization that counts as a narrower definition for that case. David White also argues that the definition of Tantra “must be modified according to its contexts,” and then offers a working definition that is broader than anything Urban formulates, but also applies to a relatively narrower set of phenomena than Urban treats: Tantra is that Asian body of beliefs and practices which, working from the principle that the universe we experience is nothing other than the concrete manifestation of the divine energy of the godhead that creates and maintains that universe, seeks to ritually appropriate and channel that energy, within the human microcosm, in creative and emancipatory ways.74 In the current context, as White points out, his definition must be modified in order to reflect the nontheistic orientation of Buddhism. One might replace “the divine energy of the godhead that creates and maintains that universe” with “the enlightened and enlightening presence of the Buddha that suffuses that universe” and “channel that energy” with “channel his enlightening power.” Given this definition of Tantra, the Gan.d.avyūha, which is typically identified as a Mahāyāna text, is clearly “Tantric.” Its prologue describes a drama that reflects the logic of a mandala that, while much less iconographically defined than the Shingon mandalas, has the virtue of a secure historical connection to Borobudur.

The mandala principle and the prologue of the Gan.d.avyūha Robert A. F. Thurman states that the “mandala principle” is clearly present in many Mahāyāna texts, including the Gan.d.avyūha.75 He defines the Mahāyāna mandala principle as follows:

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Monumental mandala and bodhisattva path For the Universal or Messianic Vehicle [i.e., the Mahāyāna], the mandala principle expresses the ideal of “the perfection of the buddhaverse.” Such a cosmic transformation is possible because of the infinite nondual presence, in every atom and subatomic energy, of the truth- and beatific-bodies [dharmakāya and sambhogakāya]; it is actualized by the activities of countless emanation-bodies [nirmān.akāya] of the Buddha, ceaselessly helping beings throughout the universes.76

In Thurman’s formulation, the Mahāyāna mandala principle is rooted in the trikāya, or “three-body” theory of Buddhahood. It should be noted at the outset that, as it stands, Thurman’s claim is somewhat anachronistic because although its date of composition is uncertain, the Gan.d.avyūha appears to predate the development of the trikāya theory. Early accounts of the trikāya theory appear in Yogācāra Buddhist texts77 that probably date from the fourth century CE,78 while the Gan.d.avyūha was probably composed no later than the third century.79 Furthermore, although the Gan.d.avyūha does describe purified fields, it does not to my knowledge use the trikāya-theory term “sambhogakāya” for the Buddha-body that emanates the purified field and dwells within it. Despite these observations, Thurman’s account of the mandala principle is still useful because in the current context, I am not primarily interested in the state of Buddhist thought at the time that the text was composed, but rather in how it was interpreted in the eighth century when the architects of Borobudur formulated their design. By that time, the trikāya theory had become so widely accepted throughout the Mahāyāna world that it had ceased to be identified with any particular school, and was regularly employed in the Indian scholastic literature to interpret descriptive sutra texts that predate it.80 According to the trikāya theory, Buddhas have three types of bodies: the dharmakāya, the sambhogakāya, and the nirmān.akāya. According to Paul Griffiths, the Indian scholastic literature posits the dharmakāya as the “real body” of the Buddha. In metaphysical terms, this real body is “eternal, changeless, pure, omnipresent, and so forth.” In epistemological terms, the real body is the perfect awareness that is the completion of the path to salvation and full Buddhahood.81 The dharmakāya is also the ultimate unity of Buddhahood; it is the underlying identity of the three bodies, and of all individually named Buddhas.82 The other two bodies are generated out of compassion through the use of skillful means (upāya kauśalya) to address the soteriological needs of two groups with differing capacities. The nirmān.akāya, or “body of magical transformation,” is the form that the Buddha manifests in order to respond to the needs of sentient beings who are not advanced practitioners of the path. It is the Buddha body that appears in the world as a geographically and historically situated person. The paradigmatic nirmān.akāya is the Buddha Śākyamuni, whose biography is reinterpreted in the trikāya system as an illusory projection emanated through the use of upāya kauśalya for the sole purpose of compassionately leading others toward enlightenment.83 The sambhogakāya is the form in which the Buddha appears in order to respond to the needs of “advanced practitioners of the path, practitioners who are

Monumental mandala and bodhisattva path 37 themselves almost Buddha.”84 The bodhisattvas, who form an assembly around the Buddha, are the community that enjoys the dharma together with him; thus Griffiths translates the term “sambhogakāya” as “the body of communal enjoyment [of the dharma].”85 The sambhogakāya appears in, or better, generates, a heaven-like purified Buddha-field (buddhaks.etra) within which conditions are optimal for achieving enlightenment.86 I will describe the particular features associated with purified fields in some detail in Chapter 3. For now, it will suffice to say that the purified field is splendid in every way, but particularly because there it is possible to see the Buddha face to face and learn the dharma directly from him under optimal conditions. In the cosmology of the developed Mahāyāna, innumerable (asan.khyeya) Buddhafields exist throughout the universe, each overseen by its own Buddha.87 As Griffiths explains: “In Buddhalogical terms a Buddha-field is the gocara or sphere of influence of some particular Buddha, who may be manifest in it either as a body of magical transformation or as a body of communal enjoyment.”88 While it is true that a buddhaks.etra may be overseen by a nirmān.akāya Buddha, in the literature that most concerns me here, the buddhaks.etras are described as purified fields overseen by Buddhas, each of which presides in the midst of an assembly of advanced bodhisattvas. In other words, these Buddhas exhibit the features characteristic of the sambhogakāya, and indeed, aside from this one remark, that is in fact how Griffiths describes them in his own account. Although the buddhaks.etras and the Buddhas in them are innumerable, they are often “summarized” as the Buddhas of the ten directions (daśadigbuddhas), whose Buddha fields exist in the four cardinal and the four intermediate directions, as well as the zenith and the nadir.89 This is precisely the sort of cosmos that is described in the prologue of the Gan.d.avyūha and that the Buddha reveals and transforms in a way that is consistent with Thurman’s description of the mandala principle: the Buddha reveals the presence of innumerable sambhogakāyas in the ten directions throughout the cosmos and transforms this and other worlds into purified buddhaks.etras.90 Randy Kloetzli gives a more thorough account of the process of transformation that occurs in the prologue of the Gan.d.avyūha. He argues convincingly that the asan.khyeya cosmology, as it appears in a number of Mahāyāna texts, is accompanied by a characteristic “drama,” or “mytheme.”91 The details of this drama vary from text to text, but according to Kloetzli, the various versions do have a common structure. He says: Clearly, there are four discrete moments to this mytheme: (1) the entrance of Śākyamuni into concentration (samādhi), (2) the exercise of the miraculous powers, particularly that of illumination, (3) the honoring of Śākyamuni by the Buddhas of the ten regions (daśadigbuddhas), and (4) the transformation of Sahā into a “pure” land.92 Before an assembly of bodhisattvas, arhats, and perhaps others, in a seemingly ordinary setting such as the Jeta grove, Śākyamuni enters into a meditational state through which he accesses the power to illuminate the cosmos. When he emits

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this miraculous light, Śākyamuni renders all the other Buddhas and Buddha fields throughout the cosmos visible for those bodhisattvas in his assembly who have the spiritual capacity to see them. Not only can the members of Śākyamuni’s assembly see the cosmic Buddhas, but also those Buddhas and the advanced bodhisattvas in their assemblies can see Śākyamuni and one another. This mutual visibility becomes the occasion for the cosmic Buddhas, summarized as the daśadigbuddhas, to honor Śākyamuni by dispatching advanced bodhisattvas to offer pūjā to him. Śākyamuni then transforms the ordinary world into a purified field. In a slightly different order, all four elements of this cosmic mytheme occur in the prologue of the Gan.d.avyūha.93 As the text opens, a Buddha sits in the Jeta grove at Śrāvasti. Although the Buddha is not named, the text begins in the traditional way – “Thus have I heard” – and the Jeta grove is the setting of many other texts in which the historical Buddha Śākyamuni is the central figure. Surrounding the Buddha is an assembly of bodhisattvas, “Hīnayāna” disciples (śrāvakas), and world rulers (lokendras). To the bodhisattvas in the assembly, the following thought occurs: It would not be possible for the world of humans and the gods to understand . . . the domain of the tathāgata, . . . the body of the tathāgata, or the knowledge of the tathāgata, without the power (adhis.t.hāna) of the tathāgata, the miraculous action of the tathāgata, his cultivating roots of merit under the previous buddha, . . . his purification of the bodhisattva’s resolve, and his setting out with a vow toward resolve and omniscience.94 The bodhisattvas recognize that in order to achieve enlightenment, unenlightened beings need the compassionate intervention of one who is “thus come” or “thus gone” (tathāgata). They need an enlightened Buddha to exercise miraculous powers to assist them. Because he has the superknowledge (abhijñā) that allows him to know the thoughts of others, and because he is motivated by great compassion, the Buddha responds to this collective thought by entering into a meditative state (samādhi) called “the coming forth of the lion,” which is a “world-illumining manifestation.”95 The Buddha’s actions here – entering into a special meditative state and illuminating the cosmos – correspond to the first two moments of the Mahāyāna cosmic mytheme as described by Kloetzli. The Buddha’s meditative concentration expands the Jeta grove and transforms it into a vast and fantastically ornamented palace. The Gan.d.avyūha explains that “the Jeta grove was in this way purified as a buddha-field.”96 This is the fourth element of the Mahāyāna cosmic mytheme. As the text explains at great length, only the bodhisattvas in the assembly were able to perceive the transformation; the disciples did not see it. According to the trikāya theory, this is consistent with the fact that the sambhogakāya appears in a purified field for the benefit of advanced bodhisattvas. In addition to purifying the Jeta grove, the Buddha’s concentration also purifies other world systems throughout the cosmos and makes these worlds coextensive with the Jeta grove.

Monumental mandala and bodhisattva path 39 [A]s the Jeta grove was in this way purified as a buddha-field, so were all worlds in the ten directions, throughout the space of the cosmos, likewise purified, appearing adorned, decorated, with the body of the Buddha clearly manifest therein, all together in the Jeta grove.97 Once the buddhaks.etras in the ten directions are rendered visible, the Buddha whose field is located in a very distant eastern part of the cosmos gives his permission for a vast contingent of bodhisattvas in his assembly to leave his field, go to the Jeta grove, and offer pūjā to the Buddha there.98 The Buddhas of the other nine directions also dispatch large groups of bodhisattvas to offer pūjā to the Buddha in the Jeta grove.99 This is the third element of the Mahāyāna cosmic mytheme. The Gan.d.avyūha version of the Mahāyāna cosmic mytheme thus demonstrates the aspect of Thurman’s “mandala principle” by which the Buddha purifies and perfects the cosmos. It also, I argue, demonstrates the “nondual presence . . . of the truth- and beatific-bodies [i.e., of the dharmakāya and the sambhogakāya].”100 In the Gan.d.avyūha, the Buddha’s illumination and purification of the cosmos and his revelation of the Buddhas in the buddhaks.etras of the ten directions is called “the miracle of Buddha’s pervasion of all worlds with one body.”101 In this passage, the Buddhas who appear in the buddhaks.etras are not entirely differentiated from the Buddha in the Jeta grove or from each other, but are all aspects of the “one body” that pervades all worlds. Yet according to other passages, the Buddhas are not entirely identical either: each of the Buddhas of the ten directions has his own name and distinct assembly of bodhisattvas.102 Paradoxically, the Buddhas are all unified by one body and also remain differentiated as nondual, yet at least apparently distinct, bodies. The nonduality of the Buddhas is also expressed in spatial terms as a nonduality of their Buddha-fields. Despite the fact that all the cosmic Buddhas and their purified Buddha-fields have become coextensive with the Jeta grove, they are also still somehow in their “proper” places: when bodhisattvas from those assemblies wish to leave them in order to come to the Jeta grove, each one obtains permission from “his own” Buddha to travel to “our Buddha’s” world system.103 Paradoxically, the Buddhas of the ten directions are both in the Jeta grove and in their customary cosmic locations. According to the trikāya theory, these apparent paradoxes can be explained by the fact that the dharmakāya is the ultimate “ground” and unifying principle of all sambhogakāya and nirmān.akāya manifestations.104 The dharmakāya is the “one body” that pervades all the worlds, and is the truest nature of the Buddha in the Jeta grove and the Buddhas in the ten directions. But in their sambhogakāya aspect, which they generate out of compassion in accordance with the needs of sentient beings, they appear to be differentiated. In White’s view, nonduality despite differentiation is the sine qua non of the “energy grid” that is a mandala. This grid . . . locates the supreme deity . . . the source of that energy and ground of the grid itself, at the center and apex of a hierarchized cosmos. . . .

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Monumental mandala and bodhisattva path Because the deity is both transcendent and immanent, all of the beings located at the various energy levels on the grid participate in the outward flow of the godhead, and are in some way emanations or hypostases of the deity himself (or herself).105

In a mandala configuration, as White explains, the paradox of nondual appearance is made possible by the fact that the central figure – in this case, the Buddha – is “both transcendent and immanent.” In terms of the trikāya theory, the transcendent aspect of the Buddha is the dharmakāya that is the underlying unity of all immanent sambhogakāya and nirmān.akāya manifestations. The Buddha in the Jeta grove and the Buddhas of the ten directions thus form a basic mandala with only one “layer” of nondual emanation. In a more complex mandala, one would expect to find more figures emanating nondually either directly from the central figure, or from the subsidiary figures. Toward the outer limits of the mandala, one would expect the figures to be apparently more highly differentiated because they would be adapted to the specific needs of sentient beings who are literally farther away from the full Buddhahood that emanates from the center. To understand how the more highly differentiated figures in a complex Buddhist mandala might be related to the center, it will be useful to give a fuller account of the Buddha’s nirmān.akāya, or body of magical transformation. Although the paradigmatic nirmān.akāya is the historical Śākyamuni, the Buddha may generate a nirmān.akāya that has some other human appearance and biography, or even a nonhuman appearance – for example, the Buddha may manifest as an animal. In his nirmān.akāya the Buddha “can appear as whatever is most salvifically beneficial in a particular case.”106 David Eckel describes the soteriological efficacy of the nirmān.akāya as follows: A Buddha’s manifestation (nirmān.a) is the equivalent, etymologically and ontologically, of a person who is “magically created” (nirmita). From one point of view, the manifestation is an illusion, but, in a world where everything finally is an illusion, a manifestation can work just as efficiently as anything else to bring about a “real” effect.107 It is important to note that not only Buddhas but also advanced bodhisattvas have the ability to generate nirmān.akāyas.108 As Eckel puts it: manifestations do not have to come from the Buddha. Manifestations of the Buddha are only a part of a larger body of speculation about the illusionmaking powers of a saint. These powers are also represented by the bodhisattvas’ ability to create multiple bodies, transform their bodies into Buddhafields, and miraculously adapt their teaching to the needs of their listeners.109 Because nirmān.akāyas are generated in response to the needs of sentient beings who are not very advanced on the path and who may even be hungry ghosts or the like, they may exhibit a greater degree of variation than sambhogakāyas do.

Monumental mandala and bodhisattva path 41 Because their audience is more varied, they must be more highly adapted to suit the particular needs and capacities of those they wish to help. The Gan.d.avyūha presents a narrative account of a complex mandala that includes highly differentiated bodhisattva nirmān.akāyas. The mandala of the Buddha in the Jeta grove includes not only the Buddhas of the ten directions but also the assembly of bodhisattvas who perceive the miraculous transformations wrought by his meditative concentration. Because they can perceive the Jeta grove as a purified field and see the Buddha’s miraculous transformations, the bodhisattvas receive and begin to participate in the wisdom and compassion that are at the core of the Buddha’s meditative concentration. Thus empowered, they are then able to “participate in the outward flow” of the Buddha’s enlightening power by producing manifestations designed to help beings in the world. At that point, each of those enlightening beings, illuminated by the light of the concentration of Buddha, entered as many gates of great compassion as atoms in untold buddha-lands, and attained even greater capability to treat all beings beneficially. Thus concentrated, from each of their pores came forth . . . many multitudes of phantom enlightening beings . . . bodies appearing to all beings, bodies adapted to the development of all beings.110 Although the ability to generate these bodies clearly derives from the Buddha’s world-illumining manifestation, the manifestations of the bodhisattvas are distinctly more mundane: they appear as people in all social classes and occupations, as well as in all places.111 Having participated in the Buddha’s illuminating and transformative cosmic revelation, the bodhisattvas in the Jeta grove acquire the power and the motivation to generate highly differentiated nirmān.akāyas to serve the needs of what we might call soteriological “niche markets.” They appear in all walks of life and in all places in order to make the dharma available and appealing to all sorts of people. And yet it is clear that these highly differentiated bodhisattva nirmān.akayas are also nondual with the Buddha in the Jeta grove and with the dharmakāya. Just before the bodhisattvas in the assembly emanate their nirmān.akaya manifestations, the Buddha in the Jeta grove emits a beam of light from the whorl of fine hair between his eyebrows (ūrn.ā) that illuminates the cosmos to reveal adapted manifestations of Buddhas and bodhisattvas that are already teaching the dharma in various worlds like our own. These already manifested forms appear all over the world, “teaching the truth by means of . . . various modes of conduct, various embodiments . . . in various congregations . . . in various words and expressions.”112 The text explicitly states that as part of the vision, the bodhisattvas in the assembly see that all of these manifestations are ultimately nondual with the dharmakāya, here given the name Vairocana: “All of them were united by the blessed Vairocana Buddha.”113 Because the dharmakāya is the underlying unity of all Buddha bodies, advanced bodhisattvas who are capable of manifesting nirmān.akāyas are also ultimately to be understood as part of the unity that is the real Buddha. Thus, I refer to the nirmān.akāyas of the bodhisattvas in the assembly as “proxy manifestations” of the Buddha.

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As the passage also makes clear, the Buddha Vairocana is the dharmakāya and the usually unperceived central figure of the Gan.d.avyūha mandala. Thanks to the illuminating concentration of the Buddha in the Jeta grove and their own roots of goodness, the bodhisattvas in the assembly were able to see the transformations brought about by Vairocana’s meditative concentration and became able to replicate the power of manifestation that is ultimately grounded in him. Although the Buddha in the Jeta grove is not identified explicitly as Vairocana – or, for that matter, as Śākyamuni – the sense of the passage is that he is nondual with Vairocana, for it is only through him that the bodhisattvas can access the states of mind necessary to perceive Vairocana. Luis Gómez, writing of the whole Avatam . saka corpus, makes a keen observation that also applies more narrowly to the Gan.d.avyūha. He says: “throughout the Avatam . saka Śākyamuni Buddha is the central figure. Yet Vairocana Buddha is constantly in the background . . . as the source of the power and virtue of all Buddhas and bodhisattvas.”114 To put this in another way, the Buddha Vairocana is the name the Gan.d.avyūha uses when it wants to refer specifically to the Buddha’s dharmakāya. The Buddha Vairocana is nondual with the Buddha in the Jeta grove and also with all Buddha and bodhisattva manifestations everywhere: logically, he is at the center of the Gan.d.avyūha mandala. Thus, although the prologue of the Gan.d.avyūha may not describe the unique features of the various Buddhas and bodhisattvas in a way that would easily allow one to picture them precisely in a mandala painting or other visual representation, it does convey quite concretely the general principles by which a Buddha might emanate a mandala. The mandala constituted by the Buddha’s samādhi includes multiple Buddha figures manifesting as sambhogakāyas or as nirmān.akāyas, as well as advanced bodhisattvas and the proxy manifestations that they in turn generate. Because the Gan.d.avyūha figures so prominently in the design of the Borobudur galleries, it is reasonable to postulate that it also informs, at least generally, the program of the Borobudur mandala.

Mandala and path: meeting the embodied teaching While this is not yet the place to give a full account of the Buddha statues of the terraces, it will be useful to reconsider the Buddha statues in the niches of the balustrades in order to ask a question that, to my knowledge, has not yet been adequately addressed in the scholarly literature. What is their function in the program of the Borobudur mandala? In Bernet Kempers’ formulation, the Buddha statues in the niches are the lower figures in the “descent of the Holy into the Universe and the absorption into itself of the Holy from the Universe.”115 The Buddha statues in the niches, particularly those in the niches of the first gallery balustrade, mark the sphere in which “the Holy for the first time is met by Man, in the shape of the believer, devotee, and potential initiate.”116 The encounter that Bernet Kempers describes is partially consistent with White’s account of how mandalas function as mediating foci for “strategies of embodiment” in which practitioners try “to ritually appropriate and channel” the enlightened and enlightening power of the Buddha.117 While

Monumental mandala and bodhisattva path 43 concrete procedures vary widely (and wildly), the general goal of mandala practice is to enter the mandala and move toward its center, encountering and internalizing increasingly sophisticated embodiments of the dharma along the way, until one merges with the Buddha at the center. As White puts it: [A]t each level, one is gnoseologically transformed into a higher, more divine, more enlightened being, until one becomes the god or buddha at the center. . . . [M]ovement toward the center, effected through a combination of external ritual and internal meditative practices, entails harmonizing one’s own energy or consciousness level with that of the (deities of the) circle in which one finds oneself.118 According to White, then, mandala practice is a progressive procedure of intrapsychic memorialization in which one internalizes the qualities of the differentiated manifestations one encounters, cumulatively incorporating them until one merges with the Buddha at the center. If, as Bernet Kempers claims, the Buddha statues in the niches represent deities emanated outward and downward from the center, as in a mandala, then just where in the mandala does one encounter them? In keeping with the contextual approach to the study of art, I argue that one can meaningfully encounter a particular manifestation of the Buddha on Borobudur only when one can see that manifestation. The monument presents the Buddha visually; to encounter him, the devotee must be in a position to see him. The encounter with a particular manifestation will be most powerful when the devotee is standing in a place from which that manifestation not only can be seen but is also the primary focus of visual interest. There are two vantage points from which the Buddha statues in the niches are the primary focus of visual interest. The first is the approach to the monument (see Figure 5.3, p. 165). One certainly cannot assume that the early ninth-century approach to Borobudur “framed” the monument in the way in which the current approach through the Archaeological Park, completed in the early 1980s, does. Still, Borobudur is sufficiently elevated above the immediately surrounding area that it is difficult to imagine a situation in which the Buddhas in their niches would not be visible to a person approaching the monument. From this position, the clearly delineated and lushly multiple Buddha figures in the niches are perhaps the most visually impressive aspect of the monument. This is the best place to encounter these manifestations of the Buddha collectively, and probably the vantage point Bernet Kempers has in mind when he says: “the mystery is not merely enacted in the meeting place provided by the sanctuary. Rather the sanctuary itself represents the mystery.”119 From the ground, and at a little distance from the monument, one sees the entire program of Buddha niches, arranged so that the niches of one balustrade appear between the niches of the balustrades above and below. This pattern of offsetting leads the eye diagonally from one niche to the next and creates the sensation of “a pulsating movement” of emanation and reabsorption to which Bernet Kempers refers.120 The second vantage point from which one can easily see the Buddha niches is the broad walkway atop the added foot of the

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monument. The Buddha statues in the niches on the outer surface of the first gallery balustrade are too high to be seen face to face, as it were, and also too high for people to place devotional offerings very near them. But one can get a decent view of these images from the outer edges of the walkway atop the added foot, because from this angle the Buddha statues do not appear in distorted perspective. Thus the approach to the monument and the added foot are the best places to stand if one wants to encounter the Buddha’s manifestations as they are bodied forth by the statues in the niches. From other vantage points on Borobudur, it is difficult to see the Buddha statues clearly. For example, from the platform and terraces at the top of the monument, one cannot see the statues in the niches at all; therefore, an encounter with the manifestations of the Buddha represented by them cannot possibly take place there. While this may seem like an obvious point, it is obfuscated when Borobudur is compared to – and sometimes even represented in schematic drawings as – a two-dimensional mandala in which all of the figures are visible at once. Even if, using technology unavailable in the ninth century, one views Borobudur from the air, the Buddhas in the niches are not visible from that vantage point. The monument is unlike two-dimensional mandalas in that it does not present all of its many elements in a comprehensive picture that can be scanned as a whole from a single point of view. To experience the monument as a mandala, one must mentally construct the whole from individual impressions seen from many different vantage points. Still, the fact that the Buddha figures in the niches cannot be seen from the terraces does not pose much of a problem for the theory that the Buddha statues in general body forth the Borobudur mandala, because there one encounters the Buddha statues in the latticed stupas. These figures, together with the central stupa and the surrounding landscape, are the focal points of Borobudur’s upper levels. An encounter with these manifestations is, according to the logic of hierarchy inherent in the design of the monument, superior to an encounter with the manifestations represented by the Buddha statues in the niches. The fact that one can no longer see the niche figures from the vantage point of the upper platform and terraces is a reflection of the fact that the practitioner has literally moved on to higher things. What is more problematic is that, as Klokke points out, one cannot see the Buddhas in the niches very well from the vantage point of the gallery walkways. Standing on the gallery of one terrace, the images on the balustrade of that terrace will be completely invisible because they are facing outwards, while those on the balustrade of the next terrace can be seen only in a distorted perspective due to the fact that the galleries are narrow and the niches are located high up. With the exception of the Buddhas on the side walls of the projections, it is not possible to gain enough distance to see the images properly.121 There are only a few occasions when it is possible to see one of the niche statues clearly from the vantage point of the gallery walkways – that is, when one stands at a certain distance from the next bend in the corridor (or, if one turns around, the previous bend) and looks up at an angle. But even from this vantage point, the

Monumental mandala and bodhisattva path 45 niche images are not usually the natural focal point. It might happen that the eye would naturally fall on one of these Buddha statues as one turns a corner in one of the galleries, or perhaps if one were “spacing out.” Otherwise, it seems a bit artificial to focus on these statues, not only because one must crane one’s neck but also because one must tear one’s eyes away from the most arresting and visually immediate aspect of the galleries: the fantastically detailed and seemingly endless panels of relief sculpture that adorn the walls. Thus, if the statues in the niches were the only manifestations of the Buddha represented on the gallery levels of Borobudur, it would be very difficult to encounter the Buddha there. And if it were difficult and artificial to encounter the Buddha in such a large and significant portion of Borobudur, then Bernet Kempers’ theory of a neatly interpenetrating ascent and descent – a continual and graduated encounter between practitioner and Buddha – would be considerably undermined. Furthermore, at least from a functional standpoint, the theory that Borobudur is a mandala would also be seriously undermined because in the galleries the devotee would not be encountering Buddha manifestations and would therefore presumably not be engaged in a process of incorporating their qualities. But I do not believe that this is the case. In my view, the descent of the Buddha and his various manifestations are represented not only by the Buddha statues but also by the relief panels. Although the relief panels are usually almost completely ignored in interpretations of Borobudur as a mandala, I submit that they are a critical feature of the mandala design because in the galleries the Buddha’s manifestations are pictured for the devotee primarily in the sequential art of the relief panels. Although this interpretation has never been applied in a systematic way to all of the relief panels of Borobudur, it has been suggested in bare outline by Lewis Lancaster and other scholars who claim that the Lalitavistara relief panels of the first gallery main wall picture the Buddha in his nirmān.akāya.122 More recently, Brown has argued that the panels that depict scenes from various jātaka tales also represent manifestations of the Buddha. With regard to the jātaka depictions at Borobudur and those on other Buddhist monuments, he says: “in part the Buddha manifests himself in terms of a history, a biography (and this includes the jātaka tales).”123 Thus, according to Brown, “the visual representations of the jātakas . . . are there with an iconic function.”124 In Chapters 2, 3, and 4, I will expand on these points in order to provide a more comprehensive explanation of the Buddha’s manifestations on the relief panels, including particularly the Gan.d.avyūha reliefs. For the moment, it will be useful to point out that if the relief panels of Borobudur represent manifestations of the Buddha, then they fulfill at least some of the same functions that images more conventionally described as icons do. When the Buddha’s manifestations are represented figuratively in a mandala, they appear as two-dimensional icons that face the viewer, inviting direct engagement on the part of the devotee. Just as a devotee may worship and offer pūjā to a threedimensional image of the Buddha, so she might also worship and offer pūjā to a two-dimensional iconic representation. Functionally, either can serve as an object of devotion, and as a locus of the Buddha’s presence that makes possible a

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modified Buddhist version of the visual exchange that is darśan.125 But although they do represent manifestations of the Buddha, the relief panels do not share all of the formal features of icons and this may have an important bearing on their ritual function. Wu Hung gives the following definition of a two-dimensional iconic scene: In an iconic scene, the central icon, portrayed frontally as a solemn image of majesty, ignores the surrounding crowds and stares at the viewer outside the picture. . . . the openness of the composition is based on the assumption that there is a worshiper who is engaged in direct relationship with the icon.126 With a few important exceptions, the key figures in the relief panels of Borobudur do not face outward toward the devotee; they do not meet one’s gaze and invite interaction as icons generally do. One can meet the Buddha on the relief panels, but usually not precisely face to face. In this respect, the panels do not generally offer the opportunity for darśan, nor do I think it likely that they received pūjā. But to the degree that the relief panels establish the Buddha’s presence, they allow the practitioner to enact a devotional relationship with his various manifestations by circumambulating them. The pradaks.in.ā is, after all, itself a devotional act. Consider, for example, the following words of the Buddha from the opening of the Lalitavistara: This night, O Bhikshukas, when I was comfortably seated, . . . there came unto me Maheśvara, Chandana, . . ., and a myriad of other such Devaputras, – sages bright with immaculate splendour, illuminating the grove of the Jetas by their beauty. Approaching, they saluted my feet, circumambulated my person, and seated themselves around me.127 Here, Śiva and other Hindu gods, playing a subordinate role in a Buddhist text, worship the living Buddha in part by circumambulating him. This passage, as well as countless others similar to it throughout Buddhist literature, demonstrates that the living Buddha is the paradigmatic item around which the pradaks.in.ā is performed. Of course, other items are circumambulated too, such as the major disciples of the Buddha, other famous teachers, stupas, and, in some cases, statues. What these things have in common, what makes them proper foci for the performance of the pradaks.in.ā, is that each of them is, in some sense, akin to the living Buddha. What I am suggesting is that the relief panels of Borobudur, as manifestations in a mandala configuration, are also akin to the living Buddha and that this makes them a proper focus for the performance of the pradaks.in.ā. The pradaks.in.ā is a simple practice that can be performed by any able-bodied practitioner. The practice does not require any special training, although if one knows what effect the performance of a particular pradaks.in.ā is intended to have, it might help one to achieve that effect more readily. While a few have suggested that access to the upper levels of Borobudur might have been restricted,128 most

Monumental mandala and bodhisattva path 47 scholars who think that the monument served as the venue for the performance of a pradaks.in.ā also hold that this ritual was probably performed by a wide variety of people. We might call this the inclusivist theory of Borobudur practice. But to say that devotees worshiped manifestations of the Buddha at Borobudur by circumambulating them is not to exclude the possibility that at least some ritual celebrants also engaged in practices requiring special training and perhaps initiation. If Borobudur is a kind of mandala, then it is reasonable to suspect that its design was inspired by and/or used for some type of visualization meditation. As Thurman explains, only through the relatively difficult practice of visualization meditation can one really see the soteriologically efficacious realm represented by the artistic rendering of a mandala. This real alternative mandala world exists in a realm of divine substance within the realities perceived by all buddhas, and can only be perceived in the trained holographic imaginations of tantric adepts.129 Here, Thurman refers to Tantric mandalas, but as I will show in Chapters 3 and 4, one also needs the “trained holographic imagination” to perceive directly the “perfection of the buddhaverse” that he identifies as the Mahāyāna mandala principle. Although his understanding of the types of meditation commonly practiced in connection with mandalas was not nearly as sophisticated as those of Thurman, Stutterheim thought that the relief panels of Borobudur served as foci for the practice of meditation. He also thought that this function was utterly incompatible with the theory that devotees might have performed devotional rituals at the monument. He says: No “sightseeing” Malays or Javanese or inhabitants of other islands or countries from the buddhist world of southern and eastern Asia, either as pilgrims measuring the monument with their bodies, or sauntering along the reliefs following the explication of a monk, and finally, on having reached the top, admiring the view and appreciating the formlessness of the terraces, but a population of meditating monks, future buddhas, from all over the world. [sic]130 This is perhaps the clearest statement of the exclusivist theory of religious practice at Borobudur. By re-examining the ways in which the relief panels represent the Buddha’s manifestations, it is possible to go some distance toward bridging the gap between the inclusivist and exclusivist views. Particularly on the third and fourth galleries, where the relief panels picture the imagery of and part of the procedure for meditative visualizations, the strong distinction that Stutterheim draws between ritual circumambulation and meditation begins to break down. While the contemplative responses of various practitioners would almost certainly have differed according to their level of meditative expertise, the pradaks.in.ā itself may have been a symbolic performance of the visualization procedure. More immediately, we turn now to a consideration of the Lalitavistara relief panels of the first gallery.

2

Carving out time The narrative relief panels

Although he was not the first to formulate it, in the late sixth century Gregory the Great offered a succinct theory of the function of religious art: “Images are to be employed in churches, so that those who are illiterate might at least read by seeing on the walls what they cannot read in books.”1 In theory, religious art, and particularly narrative art, although it was certainly seen by literate religieux, was primarily directed toward a popular audience of the illiterate. Narrative art transformed the architectural space of the medieval church into a Biblia Pauperum – a pictorial substitute for the written word. By “reading” this architectural “book,” the illiterate were expected to obtain a less sophisticated version of the religious education available to the literate. To the extent that the medieval church served as the venue for narrative art, then, the purpose of the edifice was edification. A similar understanding of the function of narrative art has informed much of the scholarship on the relief panels of Borobudur. With the exception of the relief sculptures on the outer surface of the first gallery balustrade, nearly all of the relief sculptures of Borobudur – 1,460 panels in all – depict scenes from Buddhist texts. With some recent exceptions,2 scholarly works on these relief panels have asserted that they are all examples of narrative art, and have usually argued that their function is didactic. In a relatively early formulation of this theory, N. J. Krom states: “The reliefs represent texts that were intended to impress lessons of wisdom on the believer’s mind as he ascended the stūpa.”3 In 1990, John Miksic still writes that the “stone panels have been carved to tell stories about Buddhism” and asserts that in the galleries, the religious practitioner is engaged in “reading the reliefs.”4 This theory about the function of the relief panels of Borobudur suffers from two central problems. First, it presupposes a definition of narrative art that is insufficiently precise, in part because it fails to consider how narrative itself might be defined. Here, I begin by defining narrative art as art that conveys the temporality of narrative events by establishing a clear relationship between temporal sequence and spatial sequence. I then argue that, given this more precise definition, only some of the relief panels of Borobudur are narrative art. In the next chapter, I show that many of the relief panels of the third and fourth galleries are not narrative and offer an alternative model for understanding them. In this chapter, I treat some of the relief panels that do fit the more precise definition of narrative art. The relief panels of the first gallery main wall that

The narrative relief panels 49 depict scenes from the Lalitavistara are narrative art par excellence, as are some sequences of relief panels that depict scenes from various jātaka tales. But my approach here differs from previous scholarship because I do not take the narrativity of these panels for granted. If it is necessary to explain why some relief panels at Borobudur are not narrative, it is equally necessary to explain why some of them are. I argue that because narrative art conveys the sense of temporality, it is a form particularly well suited to the task of these relief panels, which is to picture a model of and for salvation that is inherently and deeply temporal. These panels picture the Buddha in his nirmān.akāya manifestations – manifestations that are, or at least appear to be, temporally situated and appear to achieve enlightenment over the course of a very long period of time. This brings me to the second problem with the usual interpretation of the relief panels of Borobudur: it reduces narrative art to a poor relation of the written text, and as a corollary, presumes that what one does with narrative art must be an elementary version of reading. In my view, it is quite reasonable to suppose that a ninth-century devotee would, in the course of looking at the Lalitavistara relief panels, either recollect or learn about the life story of the Buddha Śākyamuni. But he or she would be doing so in the particular context of a built environment that makes it possible not only to understand but also to encounter and ritually worship Śākyamuni. At the same time that the first gallery affords an opportunity to worship the historical Buddha, it also places both the worshipper and Śākyamuni in a ritual space that articulates a hierarchy of the Buddha Vairocana’s manifestations. The narrative relief panels contribute to an enduring and programmatic ritual venue that demands to be encountered in part through bodily movement. This is something that architecturally situated narrative art does better than written texts can. Thus, I argue that while at least some of the relief panels of the first and second galleries probably were, in some loose sense, to be “read,” their more fundamental function was to articulate a venue within which the ritual worship of the Buddha Vairocana’s nirmān.akāya manifestations could “take place.”5

Narrative art and temporality In the broadest sense, religious narrative art is art that has something to do with a religious story. But this general observation does not help much to distinguish narrative art from any other sort of religious art. It is difficult to imagine how any form of art could have a religious significance within its tradition of origin for someone who is completely ignorant of the central narratives of that tradition.6 To arrive at a more precise definition of narrative art, it is necessary to provide an account of its formal features and to consider what sort of response these features invite. Some scholars define the formal features of narrative art in part by opposing them to the formal features of iconic art. Icons are often three-dimensional statues of the Buddha, a bodhisattva, or a deity. But iconic art is not limited to sculpture in the round; there are also two-dimensional icons, such as Tibetan thangka paintings or Indian popular posters of Hindu deities. How then might the formal features

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of iconic art be defined? According to some scholars, an icon is, by definition, a composition designed to invite the viewer to enter into a direct relationship with the figure(s) it depicts. Wu Hung, again, states the matter succinctly: In an iconic scene, the central icon, portrayed frontally as a solemn image of majesty, ignores the surrounding crowds and stares at the viewer outside the picture. The composition is thus not self-contained; although the icon exists in the pictorial context within the composition, its significance relies on the presence of a viewer or worshiper outside it. In fact, the openness of the composition is based on the assumption that there is a worshiper who is engaged in direct relationship with the icon.7 In Buddhist and Hindu cultures, an icon may serve as the focal point for a broad range of potentially overlapping religious activities, including petitions, processions, contemplation, and devotional offerings. Although these activities differ from one another in important respects, they have in common the fact that they engage the devotee in a “direct relationship with the icon.” In contrast to the open composition of the icon, narrative compositions are selfcontained and do not call on the viewer to engage in a direct relationship with the figures in the picture. Wu says: In a narrative painting the principal figures are always engaged in certain events, acting and reacting to one another. The composition is thus essentially self-contained; and the significance of the representation is shown in its own pictorial context. The viewer is a witness, not a participant.8 In this formulation, the formal features of a religious narrative composition invite the viewer to witness at least one religiously significant event. One might add that the event such a composition pictures is an event from an oral or written version of a religiously significant story. But can a work of art be genuinely narrative if it pictures only one event? To address this question, it will be necessary to provide a definition of narrative itself. As Paul Ricoeur has taught us, narrative is a form that is intimately related to the human experience of time. He says: I take temporality to be that structure of existence that reaches language in narrativity and narrativity to be the language structure that has temporality as its ultimate referent. Their relationship is therefore reciprocal.9 Although Ricoeur has much more to say about the relationship between time and narrative,10 my interest here is in what he calls “the first temporal structure of narrative [which] is that of time as that ‘in’ which events take place.”11 A narrative tells time in the this-after-thatness of a sequence of unfolding events. After our mother left, a cat wearing a hat came to our house. He made one mess after another until the whole house was a shambles. Our fish told us we were going to

The narrative relief panels 51 get in big trouble, but we didn’t because the cat cleaned up the mess just before our mother got home. Even this stripped-down version of The Cat in the Hat is a set of events that follow one another in time.12 This brings us back to the question: can a work of art be narrative if it pictures only one event? Some art historians say that it can. Vidya Dehejia identifies the “monoscenic mode of narration” as a type of narrative art in which “a single, easily identifiable scene [is] excerpted from one of the episodes of the narrative.”13 As an example of monoscenic narrative art, she points to a relief sculpture at Bhārhut that pictures an event from the Vessantara Jātaka – the moment at which Prince Vessantara gives away the kingdom’s rare, white, rainmaking elephant.14 This example fits Wu’s definition of the formal qualities of a narrative scene: it pictures an event, and the characters interact with one another while the viewer looks on. But the scene does not fit Ricoeur’s definition of narrative because it does not picture the temporal structure of existence. Without a sequence of events to convey the sense of the passage of time, this single scene does not, on its own, qualify as a narrative. For Dehejia, the narrativity of the scene is not only to be found in the formal qualities of the composition alone but also – indeed, primarily – in the viewer’s response to the scene. In her view, a monoscenic narrative “is presented to stimulate the viewer’s recognition of the story.”15 Regarding the Vessantara scene, she says: Having given enough information to identify the tale, the artist leaves the viewer to narrate the story himself, and to recall that most important of the ten Buddhist virtues or paramitas, charity.16 In this formulation, the temporal aspect of the narrative is not really “in” the artistic composition, but in the viewer’s memory. The picture is a kind of mnemonic device that invites the viewer to retrieve from a pool of known religious stories one particular one, then mentally review its major events, and finally extract its moral message. Although she does not develop it, Dehejia’s assertion that Buddhist narrative art facilitates the process of recollecting the Buddha and his teachings is quite helpful, and I shall return to it later. For now, I wish to emphasize that a monoscenic composition is narrative only to the degree that the viewer recalls a temporal sequence of events and uses them to supplement the one event that is actually pictured. The composition alone does not picture the temporality that is intrinsic to narrative. To picture the temporal structure of existence, then, it is necessary to depict two or more events from the same story. But as Wu strongly implies, even this is not enough. In his discussion of several paintings in the caves of Dunhuang that picture the “Subjugation of Demons,” Wu points out that researchers generally identify, with the help of the explanatory cartouches, each event in the scene with an event in the corresponding literary text. Ironically, it is in part this very procedure that reveals that the paintings were probably not intended to be “read” as narratives. If their intent is to guide the viewer through a mental recollection of the

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story, the composition of these paintings is “illogical because it does not suggest any ‘sequence’ or ‘order’ of visual images.”17 Wu goes on to explain: To read these scenes . . . it is necessary to shift our gaze from one corner to another, to cross the whole width of the painting (which could be forty feet across), or to “scan” the complex composition to search for a minute detail. Our eyes and mind would spin until we got totally dizzy and finally gave up.18 To state Wu’s point affirmatively, if a composition is to guide the viewer through the sequence of events that constitutes a story, it must picture these events in a spatial order that reveals the temporal order of the narrative. One must be able to follow the unfolding of events in time by following their sequence in space. To be considered narrative, then, a visual composition must have the following characteristics. It must picture more than one event from a story, and it must organize these events into a spatial sequence that captures the temporality inherent in narrative. A perhaps less necessary, but still expected feature of narrative art is that the figures in a narrative scene will be shown interacting with one another in a way that invites the viewer to be a witness to the action, rather than a participant in it. With this definition of the formal features of narrative art in mind, I turn now to the relief panels of Borobudur.

Narrative art and the life of the Buddha on Borobudur The clearest and most extended example of narrative art on Borobudur is the series of 120 relief panels that depict various scenes from an account of the Buddha Śākyamuni’s life called the Lalitavistara. Composed sometime around the first century CE, the Lalitavistara is a Sanskrit text, the older portions of which are attributed to the “Hīnayāna” Sarvāstivādins.19 But in extant versions, the text refers to itself as a vaipulya-sūtra, a term commonly used to refer to Mahāyāna texts, and it contains many distinctively Mahāyāna elements.20 Furthermore, in the centuries since its composition, it has been incorporated into the Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna traditions of Tibet and East Asia. As the visual evidence of Borobudur shows, by the ninth century, the Lalitavistara had also been incorporated into the Śailendra Buddhist tradition of Java. There is more than one way to compose a visual narrative,21 but the Lalitavistara reliefs picture the temporal structure of existence by using a specific mode called “cyclical” or “linear” narrative. In this mode, narrative art pictures multiple events from the same story by creating a series of framed spaces, each of which contains a separate scene. To help create the sense of continuity, the protagonist and other characters are represented in multiple scenes. To differentiate between events, each scene is not only framed but also pictures the protagonist in a particular pose, in a particular setting, interacting with particular objects, and/or relating to other particular figures. As Otto Pächt puts it, “it is the very essence of continuous narrative22 to render changes visible by comparing the same person in

The narrative relief panels 53 different movements or states.”23 By arranging the framed scenes consecutively, linear narrative creates a spatial order that conveys a temporal sequence of events. Perhaps the most familiar forms of visual linear narrative today are the comic strip and some pictorial stories for children, such as Good Night, Gorilla.24 Although these forms usually contain at least a few words, they also exhibit the visual properties of linear narrative art. Each relief panel in the Lalitavistara series has a strong rectangular frame of plain stones, which is sometimes augmented with an additional decoratively carved frame. These frames are particularly emphatic because the scenes within them are slightly recessed. Within each frame is a scene that pictures a single event from the story. The figure of the Buddha (or, prior to the enlightenment, the bodhisattva) appears in most of these scenes, engaged in the acts that lead up to the moment at which he establishes the dharma in the world by delivering the First Sermon. These scenes are pictured in the order that they occur in the Lalitavistara, and they are arranged in a long continuous horizontal band on the upper register of the first gallery main wall. This particular instance of linear narrative also makes use of an additional device that makes the temporal sequence of events even clearer. The scenes in this band run from right to left, beginning on the southern side of the eastern stair, and continuing all the way around the main wall of the first gallery. To follow the visual narrative, one begins at the eastern stair, then follows the first gallery walkway in a clockwise direction around the monument, looking over one’s right shoulder at the succession of scenes until, having walked the entire circuit, one finds oneself back at the eastern stair. This is also precisely the procedure one follows in order to perform a ritual circumambulation of the monument at the level of the first gallery. Thus, the temporal order of events pictured in the linear narrative and the ritual order of the pradaks.in.ā are mutually reinforcing. There is no need to prove that the Lalitavistara relief panels use the linear mode of visual narration to picture the life story of the Buddha because there is no controversy about the matter. Therefore, a single example will suffice to convey the flavor of the whole series. A major episode in the Buddha’s biography – and a favorite subject of Buddhist art – is the Great Departure, when prince Siddhārtha leaves his luxurious home and loving family in order to go forth and seek enlightenment. This episode is pictured in great detail on Borobudur, occupying as many as ten separate relief panels (I a 60–9).25 I will briefly describe just a few scenes here.26 According to the text, although the bodhisattva’s father, king Śuddhodana, gives his son permission to depart, he later reneges and places an armed guard outside the apartment in which the prince sleeps with his harem. The panel that depicts this scene (I a 62) features a palace-like structure on the right-hand side of the composition, inside which one sees the bodhisattva surrounded by several women. On the left-hand side of the composition, outside the entrance to the palace, sit a number of armed guards. Again according to the text, the prince finds himself awake after the women of the harem, tired from a festive evening, have all fallen asleep. He looks at them, as they lie drooling in various drunken and unflattering poses, and realizes that the

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body is inherently disgusting, and that physical pleasure is a fleeting distraction on the way to certain death. This moment of insight galvanizes his resolve to go forth in search of enlightenment and salvation. On the next relief panel (I a 63), the bodhisattva sits in a palace that occupies three-quarters of the composition. Although the facial features of this figure are not identical to those of the bodhisattva figure on the previous relief, the context and the use of certain visual conventions – such as the fact that each figure wears a royal crown – indicate that both figures must represent the same person. This is true of the relief panels in general; no attempt is made to standardize the facial features of any particular person, but the sculptors do use a fairly standardized set of visual conventions to picture their subjects.27 This practice makes it harder for modern Western viewers to recognize that the same figure is repeated in consecutive scenes, as linear narrative requires. But it is not at all clear that this was also a problem for ninth-century Javanese viewers, who may have been more finely aware of visual signs indicating social status. Around the bodhisattva lie several female figures in various states of disarray. The remaining quarter of the relief panel pictures an outer court with several guards who, because they are also asleep, present no obstacle to the bodhisattva’s fresh resolve to leave. The text then says that the bodhisattva left his sleeping apartment, woke his trusted servant Chandaka, and asked him to saddle up and bring around his princely steed, Kan.t. haka. To reinforce the bodhisattva’s request, the Lokapālas, or divine guardians of the four directions, appear and urge Chandaka to get the horse. On the right-hand side of the next relief (I a 64) the armed guards still sleep in an outer court; one rather comical figure uses a water jar for a pillow. The bodhisattva stands outside the palace on a lotus flower in the middle of the relief. He holds out his right hand, perhaps to touch the head of the man who kneels to the left, worshiping the bodhisattva. Just behind the kneeling figure stands a horse; this makes it clear that the figure must be Chandaka, and that he is in the act of presenting Kan.t. haka to the bodhisattva. At the far left-hand side of the composition stand four figures which, given the information in the text, must represent the Lokapālas. Even without resorting to the written text, certain visual conventions make it possible to discern that these must be deities. Each figure wears a crown and jewelry very similar to the ones worn by the bodhisattva. To distinguish the bodhisattva from these deities, the sculptors clarify the situation by placing the bodhisattva at the center of the scene and by elevating him on a lotus pedestal. The rest of the sequence (I a 65–9) continues to depict the events associated with the Great Departure in the same stunning degree of detail. They show, in order, the bodhisattva riding his horse as it is carried through the air by supernatural beings (Figure 2.1), taking leave of his divine escort, cutting off his hair and dismissing Chandaka, accepting monk’s robes from new deities, and finally, having donned the robes, receiving the approbation of the gods. Using the pictorial techniques of linear narrative, these panels order a number of events in space in such a way that they appear to be unfolding in time. In addition, each individual panel in this series fits Wu’s definition of a narrative composition because the figures in these scenes interact with one another in a way that invites the viewer to witness the pictured

The narrative relief panels 55

Figure 2.1 Great Departure (I a 65). Photograph by John C. Huntington, Courtesy of the Huntington Photographic Archive at The Ohio State University.

events. With a few important exceptions, which I will discuss below, the other individual relief panels in the Lalitavistara series are also narrative compositions as Wu defines them. Not only do scholars agree that the Lalitavistara panels exemplify the linear mode of narrative art but some scholars also positively gush about how unusually well they do so. Dehejia writes: “The most spectacular instance of linear narrative may be seen in the friezes . . . at Borobudur.”28 Miksic calls the Lalitavistara relief panels “the most elaborate depiction of this drama on any monument in the world.”29 Mus even compares these panels to a film, which is a form of linear narrative that breaks each event – indeed, each gesture – into so many separate scenes that when the film runs, the eye elides the frames and runs the images together so that the illusion of motion is achieved. For Mus, the Lalitavistara panels present the events of the story in such detail that one can achieve something of the effect of watching a motion picture by walking along through the gallery while looking at these scenes.30 While one can certainly celebrate the Lalitavistara sequence as an exceptionally fine example of visual linear narrative, one might also notice that its very excellence has a defamiliarizing effect. The exceptional is also the odd. Why did the architects of Borobudur plan such a long and detailed visual sequence that expresses the temporal structure of existence with such unusual clarity? I argue

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The narrative relief panels

that this series does such a good job of representing temporality because temporality is precisely what it serves to problematize. The biography of Śākyamuni presents a temporal model of and for31 salvation. As I will soon show, Mahāyāna Buddhists reinterpreted both aspects of this temporal model. In the resulting schema, the entire biography of the Buddha is understood to be an exercise of upāya kauśalya, a provisionally useful, but ultimately false teaching aimed at an audience as yet incapable of understanding the dharma in its truest form. But to explain the force of this Mahāyāna reinterpretation of the temporal model of and for salvation, it will first be necessary to explain how much time is involved, and to show how the full temporal model is represented on Borobudur.

Narrative art and the previous lives of the Buddha on Borobudur Although it contains many mythical elements, including important events that occur just before Gautama’s birth, the Lalitavistara is the story of one (extraordinary) man’s life. In this sense, the text fulfills modern Western expectations of the genre of biography. But as it has been understood from a very early point in Buddhist history,32 the full biography of the Buddha is the story of many lives during which Gautama-to-be develops the qualities necessary to achieve Buddhahood in his final existence. In some of these previous lives, the Buddha-to-be is a human being, but in others he is an animal, or, much more rarely, a god. The stories of these previous lives are told in jātaka tales, versions of which have been and still are important in nearly every Buddhist culture. Visual representations of many jātakas appear on the relief panels of Borobudur. Some of these panels are located on the lower register of the first gallery main wall, below the Lalitavistara series. Others are located on the upper and lower registers of the first gallery balustrade, and on the balustrade of the second gallery. One hundred and thirty-five relief panels on the upper register of the first gallery balustrade picture scenes from a collection of 34 Sanskrit jātaka stories called the Jātakamālā.33 Although scenes from many other jātaka stories are pictured on Borobudur, these scenes have been difficult to identify because scholars have found no other text that contains a series of stories arranged in the same order in which they appear on the monument.34 According to Bernet Kempers, scholars have found versions of 25 individual jātaka stories in various texts that are depicted here and there on the first and second galleries, on a total of 136 relief panels.35 But many of the relief panels that could potentially picture scenes from jātaka stories remain unidentified.36 Until recently, the jātaka scenes on Borobudur have generally been considered to be examples of narrative art. In a recent and cogent article, Brown challenges this theory, arguing that the jātaka representations on Borobudur are iconic, rather than narrative. But Brown does not address the formal composition of these panels, nor does he define “narrative” and “iconic” in the ways in which I have here. Instead, he focuses on the response these panels were designed to elicit, and on how they function in the context of the monument as a whole. For these reasons,

The narrative relief panels 57 I will address his argument in the final section of this chapter, when I take up the question of viewer response. In terms of their formal composition, most but not all of the jātaka representations that have been identified fit the definition of linear narrative art offered above. In the Jātakamālā series, for example, all but two of the stories are pictured on more than one panel, each panel depicts a separate event, and these scenes are arranged in chronological order.37 Furthermore, nearly all of the other jātaka relief panels that have been identified picture events from the stories in the mode of linear narrative. In general, then, the sculptors picture the jātakas as visual narratives. But there are some exceptions. One story out of 34 in the Jātakamālā series is pictured in what Dehejia calls the monoscenic mode, which, according to my definition here, makes it nonnarrative. Considered story by story, then, the jātaka representations on Borobudur are not consistently narrative. But taken together, and in conjunction with the Lalitavistara series, even the monoscenic jātaka representations could be considered narrative because the very idea of a jātaka story entails temporality. By definition, a jātaka story tells the tale of one of the Buddha’s previous lives; it is necessarily prior to the life in which Gautama achieves Buddhahood. Furthermore, while it is not always clear just where a given life fits on the chain, the jātakas are conceived as a long sequence of temporally ordered lives in which the bodhisattva’s character gradually develops until he is finally ready to achieve Buddhahood. Within the plot of this extended biography, each “life” can be seen as a single crucial action. For example, in a jātaka entitled “The Antelope,” the bodhisattva demonstrates compassion by forgiving a man who betrayed him.38 In that life, the bodhisattva was a golden antelope with jeweled antlers who lived alone in the forest to avoid detection by greedy hunters. He came out of hiding to save a drowning man, who promised not to reveal his whereabouts. But then the queen of the realm had a prophetic dream in which she saw that a golden antelope would sit upon the throne and preach the dharma. The man who had been saved heard a proclamation offering a reward for the golden antelope, and decided to betray the bodhisattva who had previously saved him. These facts and events create a context for the moment at which the bodhisattva performs the crucial act that is the next step toward the perfection of all virtues, which is in turn the necessary basis for Buddhahood. But it is this one crucial act that makes the story an event in the larger narrative of the temporal model of and for salvation.39 Thus, in a pictorial representation, even if each jātaka were to be pictured on only one panel, stringing multiple jātaka panels together could convey the idea of a sequence of actions. Although each panel would depict only one event from a story, these events would fit together in the larger narrative of the extended biography of the Buddha. The key to understanding such a series as a visual narrative is that one must be able to recognize the deer in one scene as the “same”40 character that one sees as a king in the next scene. That is to say, one must recognize both deer and king as the Buddha-to-be. Once one is able to do this, then even monoscenic representations of jātakas, when arranged together in a sequence, “render changes visible by comparing the same person in different movements or states.”41

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I will come back to this point at the end of this chapter, when I will consider how devotees at Borobudur might have used these and other narrative panels in galleries one and two. For the moment, I want to underscore the point that the jātaka panels serve to extend the temporality already emphasized in the hyper-narrative formal presentation of the Lalitavistara. Their presence on the first and second galleries makes it clear that Buddhahood is not achieved in a single lifetime, but over the course of a series of lives unfolding over a very long period of time. In the context of the Mahāyāna interpretation of Buddhahood and of the bodhisattva path represented on Borobudur, they help to problematize the temporal model of and for salvation by picturing the enormous length of time involved.

The problem with time The biography of the Buddha presents a model of and for salvation that is inherently temporal. As a model of salvation, the biography presents Buddhahood as a series of events, as something that comes to be in time. Before Gautama sits down under the bodhi tree, he is not fully enlightened; after he meditates there through the night, he is. Before Gautama teaches the dharma for the first time, he is not yet a Buddha; after he teaches, he is. Before Gautama dies, he has not yet achieved complete and final nirvana (parinirvān.a); after he dies, he has. The jātakas extend the coming-to-be of the Buddha into the distant past by positing a long series of lives over which the Buddha-to-be must perfect various virtues and thus acquire the necessary store of merit. Before Gautama-to-be perfects the virtue of generosity by giving away his children in his (ante)penultimate42 life, he has not yet acquired sufficient merit to become a Buddha; after he gives them away, he has. As a model for salvation, the biography presents a pattern of actions that one must follow if one wishes to achieve enlightenment and Buddhahood. In the Mahāyāna view, it is not enough to achieve enlightenment followed by parinirvān.a, as “Hīnayāna” arhats do. To follow the pattern properly, one must not only achieve enlightenment and escape sam . sāra, but also reveal the dharma to others in order to help them to achieve enlightenment and escape sam . sāra. For Mahāyānists, the biography is a model for the salvation of self and others, and thus calls for all practitioners to strive to become full-fledged Buddhas. Like the model of salvation, the model for salvation has an inherently temporal structure. To implement the biographical model, one must perfect virtues and accumulate merit in a long series of births as a Buddha-to-be. In one’s final birth, one must achieve enlightenment, then turn the wheel of the dharma, and then continue to teach, until finally at death, one enters parinirvān.a. But according to the temporal model of and for salvation, the Śailendras were not in a position to begin this process in earnest because it is necessary to meet a living Buddha in order to become one. As Frank Reynolds notes, from a very early point in the tradition, the Buddha Gautama (Pali: Gotama) was considered to be only one of a number of Buddhas who had taught the very same dharma.43 According to the Buddhavam . sa, Gautama-to-be made his original vow to become

The narrative relief panels 59 a Buddha countless eons ago during the time of and in the presence of a Buddha named Dīpan. kara. The Buddha Dīpan. kara responded by predicting that Gautamato-be would eventually fulfill his vow and become a Buddha.44 Although Gautama-to-be must have had a considerable store of merit in order to meet Dīpan. kara in the first place, his earnest practice of the path as this is presented in the jātakas logically occurs only after he meets the living Buddha and makes the vow. To follow this model for Buddhahood, it would be necessary to meet a living Buddha, make the appropriate vow, and receive the proper prediction. But according to the temporal model of salvation, by the time Borobudur was built, Gautama had been in parinirvān.a for over a millennium. The next Buddha, Maitreya, would be born in the distant future. The ninth century CE was, as our present time is, an untimely time between Buddhas. One of the attractions of the Mahāyāna for the Śailendras seems to have been that it purports to make this untimeliness less relevant. As I will show in Chapter 3, the Mahāyāna offers a temporal shortcut – a way to meet a living Buddha now. For the moment, I will focus instead on the ways in which the Mahāyāna devalues the temporal model of and for salvation. Already by the third century CE, Mahāyāna scholastics had begun to re-evaluate the temporal model of and for salvation. Over the next five hundred years, in literary texts and philosophical “digests,” they articulated and refined a new doctrine of the nature of Buddhahood that recast the temporally ordered biography as a provisionally useful, but ultimately false, teaching. Griffiths puts the matter this way: [I]f the Buddha-legend is taken as the frame governing the construction of buddhalogical doctrine, that doctrine will inevitably be soteriologically, and so also temporally, ordered. That the buddhalogical doctrine of the digests is largely not so ordered is one of the reasons why the Buddha-legend has not only to be explained by them, but also explained away.45 The authors of the digests describe the true nature of Buddhahood (insofar as it can be described) in partly metaphysical and completely atemporal terms. The Buddha’s true nature, or dharmakāya, is “not earlier or later than anything, not temporally related to anything in any way.”46 If Buddhahood is not temporally ordered, then, according to Ricoeur, it cannot be conveyed in a biography or any other sort of narrative. In his true form, the Buddha has no story. According to the medieval Indian scholastics, the life of Gautama is an elaborate illusion that the real Buddha generates in response to the needs of unenlightened beings. It is not a model of salvation because the real Buddha is already enlightened before he appears in this world. But it is a model for salvation for unenlightened beings whose capacities are still relatively limited. These beings cannot fathom the Buddha in his true atemporal form, but can understand and benefit from an exemplary life story such as that of Gautama. Therefore, the Buddha uses upāya kauśalya, or skillful means, to project a nirmān.akāya, or illusory body. This illusory body appears to the unenlightened to change over time – it appears to perfect virtues and to accumulate merit over a long series of rebirths,47 to achieve

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enlightenment, to teach the dharma, and to enter parinirvān.a. Although the real Buddha does not change in any way, the temporally unfolding nirmān.akāya is a thoroughly convincing illusion that looks and sounds real to those who need it. It is a rhetorical device perfectly designed to persuade unenlightened beings to practice the beginning stages of the Buddhist path. According to the Daśabhūmika sūtra and related accounts of the Mahāyāna path,48 the usefulness of the temporal model for salvation is temporary. It is the very best model for those near the beginning of the Buddhist path who need to practice the virtues and accumulate merit. By following the example of the Buddha’s extended biography, a practitioner may accumulate enough merit to generate bodhicitta, or the aspiration to achieve Buddhahood. The arising of this aspiration is the first step on the Mahāyāna bodhisattva path. In the early stages of the path, the bodhisattva continues to earn merit by practicing virtues such as generosity, morality, and patience.49 In this initial phase, it is appropriate and indeed necessary for the bodhisattva to do what the Buddha appears to do in his nirmān.akāya form. At this point, the bodhisattva follows the temporal model for salvation. But unless it is abandoned at the appropriate stage of spiritual development, the temporal model for salvation can also be limiting and even dangerous in no small part because the ultimate goal it presents is itself illusory. Even when, in proper Mahāyāna fashion, the biography is taken as a model for full-fledged Buddhahood, it still characterizes the ultimate goal of the path as parinirvān.a, or complete liberation from sam . sāra. But according to the authors of the digests, this understanding of the final goal of the path is ultimately false because it is based on an incomplete understanding of Buddhahood. In his illusory nirmān.akāya, the Buddha appears to enter into parinirvān.a, but in his true dharmakāya, he does not actually do so. If the Buddha were to enter parinirvān.a before saving all others, then he would be completely liberated, but not infinitely compassionate. But in the Mahāyāna view, the Buddha is by definition both completely liberated and infinitely compassionate. This is possible (though not without logical tension) because sam . sāra and nirvana are ultimately nondual. Thus the true goal of the path, and the real state of the Buddha, is apratitis.t. hita nirvān.a, or nonabiding nirvana. In this state, the Buddha is paradoxically both completely unconditioned and active in the conditioned awarenesses of unenlightened beings in 50 sam . sāra. Despite the fact that it does not convey the ultimate truth of the dharmakāya, the nirmān.akāya is a perfectly skillful provisional teaching because it is the best way to persuade some beings to practice the beginning stages of the path. Because ordinary unenlightened constructive consciousness is characterized by dualities, it is easier for beginners to grasp a useful fiction based on the duality of sam . sāra and nirvana than it is for them to understand the more abstruse but ultimately true doctrine of nonduality. Furthermore, the prospect of parinirvān.a, or complete disengagement from the dissatisfactoriness of sam . sāra, is attractive enough to some people to motivate them during the early phases of the path.51 Therefore, the Buddha uses skillful means to project a nirmān.akāya that embodies this elementary teaching appropriate for beginners.52

The narrative relief panels 61 But by the sixth stage of the path at the very latest, one must abandon the temporal model for salvation if one is to complete the Mahāyāna bodhisattva path and become a full-fledged Buddha. At this stage, a bodhisattva achieves the degree of insight that would allow him to achieve parinirvān.a if he chose to do so. Only if he has also developed great compassion for those still mired in sam . sāra will he choose to remain involved in the world in order to save others.53 Paradoxically, if he chooses to remain involved in the world and complete the path to Buddhahood, then in the seventh stage he will no longer be karmically bound to the cycle of rebirth, but will abide in apratis.t. hita nirvān.a. It is at this point that he becomes able to assist others by projecting nirmān.akāyas of his own.54 Ideally then, the bodhisattva should try to achieve the final four stages of the path as quickly as possible and then continue to help others until all beings can achieve salvation. Despite the fact that a bodhisattva ideally practices the later stages of the path for an enormous length of time, he does not experience that time in the way in which those who are not advanced bodhisattvas do. In these stages, the bodhisattva has already achieved apratis.t. hita nirvān.a, and is much closer to becoming a Buddha who, in his real form, is “not temporally related to anything in any way.” This is not the place to attempt to solve the complex logical puzzle of just how a bodhisattva can develop from a temporally situated being into an atemporally abiding Buddha. It is difficult at best to explain how change can change into the changeless. What is clear is that, whether or not this pans out in a rigorously logical way, the Daśabhūmika sūtra presents certain states of awareness that are available to advanced bodhisattvas as states that mediate between the ordinary experience of time and the Buddha’s transcendent awareness. For example, when a bodhisattva reaches the seventh stage of the path, he “comprehends immense entrances to numbers of world-ages and comprehends immense synthetic, inclusive understanding of past, present and future by Venerable Buddhas.”55 Thus, advanced bodhisattvas must abandon the narrative model for salvation not only because it is incompatible with infinite compassion but also because the type of awareness that characterizes the temporal structure of existence is incompatible with full Buddhahood.

Picturing the Nirmān.akāya As Lewis Lancaster has suggested, the jātaka and Lalitavistara relief panels represent the Buddha in his “body of transformation,” or nirmān.akāya.56 I add that the linear narrative form is a particularly appropriate mode of representation for the Buddha’s nirmān.akāya because it shares the temporal structure of this type of manifestation. It is the best artistic form to convey the content of this Buddha-form. Although all of the biographical relief panels depict the temporal structure of the nirmān.akāya, the Lalitavistara series does this particularly well because it depicts the events of Gautama’s life in such fantastic detail. The architects underscore this by giving the Lalitavistara series such a prominent place in the first gallery. As one climbs the staircase and enters the first gallery, the panels of this series come

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into one’s natural line of vision: they face the viewer at eye level. As one circumambulates the first gallery, the Lalitavistara relief panels remain the natural focus of attention. Again, they are at eye level, and can be seen by looking over one’s right shoulder, which is the proper procedure for performing the pradaks.in.ā. To picture the nirmān.akāya, the architects of Borobudur designed the Lalitavistara series in such a way that the visual narrative not only shows that the nirmān.akāya has a temporal structure but also indicates that this time-bound body is not ultimately real. The architects indicate that the nirmān.akāya is not ultimately real in two ways. First, they show that the Lalitavistara relief panels present an elementary teaching by placing them on the lowest gallery. If the nirmān.akāya is generated for the benefit of relative beginners, it is appropriate for devotees to encounter it early on in their ascent of the monument. Second, at three key points in the visual presentation of the biography, the Lalitavistara series partially disrupts the temporal flow of the narrative by inserting one or more scenes that, according to Wu’s definition, are at least partly iconic. That is to say, although the larger sequence is clearly narrative, these individual compositions exhibit formal features characteristic of iconic scenes. These scenes occur primarily at three crucial junctures: 1) when the bodhisattva descends from Tus.ita heaven to take birth as Gautama, 2) when Gautama achieves enlightenment, and 3) when the enlightened Gautama teaches the dharma and becomes the Buddha. Although these scenes do picture events that fit into the larger temporal sequence, they do not consistently follow the conventions of narrative composition that, according to Wu, cast the viewer as a witness. In these scenes, Gautama is pictured iconically. He appears in the center of the composition, facing the viewer in a way that invites direct interaction. Furthermore, although other figures in these scenes are engaged in physical actions, Gautama is represented statically. He is engaged in a temporal event, yet he is somehow also in a state. As Meyer Schapiro has shown, frontal, iconic representations indicate “being in a state” rather than “being in action” and tend to be used when the primary aim of the composition is to convey a theophany.57 I argue that these semi-iconic intrusions into an otherwise hyper-narrative presentation are intended to hint at the nature of the real Buddha who projects the nirmān.akāya. If the nirmān.akāya is a kind of magic show, the semi-iconic scenes in its representation are the barely discernible black threads that lead from the illusion to the magician. To see why this is so, it is perhaps best to begin with the scenes that depict Gautama’s enlightenment (I a 93–9). All of these scenes share the same basic semi-iconic composition; a single example will thus suffice to demonstrate their general characteristics. Pictured on I a 94 is the moment at which Māra’s army attacks the about-to-become-enlightened Gautama. In this scene, Gautama sits under the bodhi tree on the seat of enlightenment in the center of the picture, facing the viewer. This picture would be perfectly at home on an altar, receiving flowers, incense, and other offerings. Although there is no altar in front of the relief panel, the Buddha figure in the picture engages the viewer directly – it invites one to become involved. Surrounding this central iconic representation are the soldiers in Māra’s army, who energetically attack the meditating Gautama. In keeping with

The narrative relief panels 63 the conventions of narrative composition, these figures act in relation to another element within the frame of the picture – that is, the central iconic Buddha figure. Thus, the picture uses the conventions of both iconic and narrative representation, which results in a type of mixed composition that I call semi-iconic. It is not at all surprising to find semi-iconic compositions in the sequence of Lalitavistara relief panels that picture Gautama’s enlightenment. The enlightenment is both an event that radically changes the rest of Gautama’s life and a moment at which he is in a transcendent meditational state. Furthermore, the enlightenment together with the compassion that leads the Buddha to preach the First Sermon constitute Gautama as a figure worthy of the devotional worship accorded to him, and later to icons of him. This is true even for Mahāyānists who argue that the Buddha’s biography is an elementary teaching, because even in his nirmān.akāya manifestation, the Buddha’s enlightenment is still fully authentic: enlightenment is the common denominator that all bodies of the Buddha share.58 Semi-iconic compositions depicting the historical Buddha at the moment of enlightenment can easily be found in Theravāda Buddhist art,59 and in a nonMahāyāna context, this compositional style would require a slightly different interpretation. But in a Mahāyāna context, when the historical Buddha, understood as the provisional nirmān.akāya, manifests enlightenment, he opens a window on the ultimate, nonnarrative nature of the Buddha. To convey this point, the Borobudur architects and sculptors depict Gautama’s enlightenment in a composition that mixes narrative and iconic modes of representation. They also depict the moment at which Gautama preaches the First Sermon in a semi-iconic scene. This scene, found on the last panel of the Lalitavistara series (I a 120), pictures the Buddha seated on a throne in the center of the composition. Even though it is absolutely clear from the preceding relief panels that this picture must represent the First Sermon, the Buddha does not display the dharmacakra mudrā, the gesture that is usually associated with turning the wheel of the dharma. Because the right hand is damaged, it is impossible to be absolutely sure which gesture the Buddha does display, but given evidence found elsewhere on the monument, it is highly probable that the sculptors carved the vitarka mudrā.60 The moment at which Gautama begins to teach is the moment at which he becomes a full-fledged Buddha. Although Mahāyānists argue that in his true form, the Buddha does not use language, and therefore does not teach the First or any other Sermon,61 they also argue that the real body of the Buddha is characterized by infinite compassion.62 The logic of the trikāya system is that even if the teaching is provisional, the Buddha’s compassion is real. Therefore, when the Buddha preaches the First Sermon in his nirmān.akāya form, he again opens a window on the dharmakāya by demonstrating genuine compassion for the as-yet unenlightened. Again, the atemporal, iconic representation of the Buddha hints at something beyond the narrative model of and for salvation. The semi-iconic scenes that depict Gautama’s conception draw on elements of the Lalitavistara that suggest that the bodhisattva is already fully enlightened before he is even born. Although the Sarvāstivādins who produced the text are considered to be “Hīnayānists,” they developed what might be called proto-Mahāyāna

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doctrines, including “an exhaustive theory about nirmān.a,” or the ability of a Buddha to generate multiple bodies magically.63 Although these developments predate the formulation of the trikāya theory, it is easy to see how they might have helped to inspire the Mahāyāna concept of nirmān.akāya. It is also easy to see how Mahāyānists could reinterpret the Lalitavistara in light of the trikāya theory. The Lalitavistara, in both its textual form and its visual form on Borobudur, includes events that occur while Gautama-to-be is still living in the Tus.ita heaven before he is conceived. When it is time, Gautama-to-be deliberately descends from the Tus.ita heaven to take birth in the womb of Queen Māyā.64 Just before he descends, the bodhisattva miraculously illuminates the cosmos and relieves the sufferings of beings in all parts of the world system, including the hells. The Lalitavistara passage reads in part: Now, the Bodhisattva, seating himself, in the presence of all the gods, on the most virtuous throne of Śrīgarbha, in the great tower, surrounded and followed by Bodhisattvas, Devas, Nāgas and Yaks.as without number, issued forth from the abode of Tushita. When proceeding on, he caused a light to issue forth from his person. By that most extensively spread, far-expanding, unperplexed, glorious light, transcending all other light, these three thousand great thousands of regions became resplendent. . . . All who were in hell and all creatures in the region of Yama were, at that time, free from all suffering, and full of pleasure. No being was at that time afflicted by disease, or hatred, or delusion, or envy, or vanity, or conceit, or hypocrisy, or haughtiness, or anger, or malice, or anxiety.65 The entire cosmos is miraculously illuminated in many other texts, including Theravāda works such as the Dhammapāda Commentary.66 But in these stories, the miracle is nearly always performed by a fully enlightened Buddha. Indeed, the awakening would seem to be the wellspring of the miraculous light that the Buddha shines throughout the cosmos. The fact that Gautama-to-be can perform a miracle characteristic of a fully enlightened Buddha before he has even been conceived strongly implies that the life he is about to lead will have little if any effect on his own soteriological status. Though he is already enlightened, the Buddha will nevertheless descend and appear to become enlightened for the benefit of others. Thus, the text is an account (vistara) of the (Buddha’s) play (lalita). Here, the Lalitavistara presents the Buddha in a way that makes it easy for those who would later formulate the trikāya theory to interpret the biography as a nirmān.akāya manifestation. The relief panel that pictures the bodhisattva’s descent from Tus.ita heaven into Queen Māyā’s womb (I a 12) is composed in the same semi-iconic way as the scenes that depict the enlightenment and the teaching of the First Sermon (Figure 2.2). The bodhisattva is pictured iconically in the center of the composition, seated on a throne, displaying the dhyāna mudrā to indicate that he is in a meditative state. The throne on which he sits – the Śrīgarbha, or Glorious Embryo throne – is inside a tower, which is in turn nested inside a larger tower. This matryoshka-style

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Figure 2.2 Descent from Tus.ita (I a 12). Photograph by John C. Huntington, Courtesy of the Huntington Photographic Archive at The Ohio State University.

double shell of towers will protect the bodhisattva from defilement and create a thoroughly pleasant environment inside the womb.67 On either side of the composition, deities appear. Some carry the double tower down from the heaven toward some clouds, while others hold parasols, banners, incense, fans, and the like.68 These figures are rendered in the narrative style; they interact with the bodhisattva in a way that casts the viewer as a spectator. I argue that the architects decided to picture the bodhisattva’s descent in a semi-iconic composition because they wanted to convey the sense that here, too, a window on the ultimate Buddha is opened. By depicting the descending bodisattva in a state of meditation and in a formal style that presents him as an icon, the architects attempt to show that he is already enlightened, and that his nirmān.akāya, in which he will only apparently achieve enlightenment, is illusory. The next two scenes strengthen the argument. The next panel (I a 13) depicts Queen Māyā as she dreams of a white elephant – a prophetic dream that signals she has conceived Gautama. This scene is composed in a fully narrative style. All of the figures interact with one another while the viewer looks on; the bodhisattva appears in profile as an elephant floating on clouds in the upper left-hand corner of the composition. The placement of this scene makes it clear that the following panel (I a 14) depicts the bodhisattva after the conception, while he is inside the womb. In this scene, which is semi-iconic, the bodhisattva, whose body looks thoroughly adult, sits on a lotus cushion inside the two nested palaces, facing the viewer. On either side of the nested towers, bodhisattvas and deities worship the bodhisattva inside. While it may seem unlikely at best that such a scene could take place even in a very special womb, the text does say that the palace houses the bodhisattva while he is gestating, and that divine beings are able to perceive him there.69 Again, the semi-iconic composition appears to be designed to convey the idea that the nirmān.akāya is illusory. Even as a fetus, Gautama’s body is fully formed, and he is worthy of the worship of bodhisattvas and deities. How then could his infancy, during which he appears in the body of a child who must

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learn even ordinary things, be anything other than an illusion?70 By showing that Gautama’s impending infancy must be illusory, this scene also opens a window on the true nature of the Buddha. The “window” effect is achieved in part because the semi-iconic scenes are sufficiently rare that when they do occur, they surprise. Less than a quarter of the Lalitavistara relief panels are semi-iconic, and a decisive majority of these picture events that occur at or after the time of Gautama’s enlightenment. Before the enlightenment, only a few scenes from the Lalitavistara, and even fewer scenes from the jātakas, can be considered semi-iconic. The overwhelming majority of these compositions are fully narrative: they picture characters interacting with one another, not looking directly out at the viewer, and they picture actions, not states. The compositional style of these individual scenes “fits” with the linear narrative mode of the whole sequence because the actions they portray create the temporal structure of the visual story. The semi-iconic scenes partially disrupt the temporal flow because they picture events that are also states. They portray those moments at which the Buddha reveals himself to be “[a]t the still point of the turning world.”71

Narrative art, ritual, and commemoration What did religious practitioners at Borobudur do with the narrative art that pictures the extended biography of the Buddha? As we saw at the beginning of this chapter, the usual interpretation is that devotees “read” the narrative relief panels in order to learn a moral lesson. But scholars have differed about just how well narrative art can convey a story. At one end of the continuum are those who argue – or more often, assume – that narrative art tells stories. This implies that the viewer is attentive to the visual “telling” but is otherwise fairly passive. When he advances this interpretation of the relief panels of Borobudur, Miksic echoes an argument made in greater detail by Ananda K. Coomaraswamy in relation to eighteenthcentury Kandyan narrative paintings. Writing in 1908, Coomaraswamy states that the “primary object” of these paintings “is to tell an edifying story in an attractive way.”72 To evaluate this interpretation of narrative art, it will be useful to return to Ricoeur’s definition of narrative. When Ricoeur speaks of narrative, he clearly has in mind either oral or written stories – indeed, he insists that narrative is a “language structure.”73 If we take this part of his definition seriously, then in order to be considered narrative, a work of visual art would have to be a kind of language structure. This is just the direction that Coomaraswamy takes. He argues that narrative art is best understood in the context of the evolution of writing, which is in turn best understood on the model of the historical emergence of Egyptian hieroglyphs.74 In this model, signification occurs first in the form of pictures. Eventually, pictures are supplanted by hieroglyphs, which are simpler and more abstract forms of representation such as pictograms or ideograms. The telos of this process of abstraction is the phonetic sign, which, with the exception of the rebus, is a form of communication completely severed from the picture.75 When considered as a form of writing in this evolutionary schema, narrative art falls toward the “primitive” end of the scale.

The narrative relief panels 67 In the modernist worldview, this dovetails nicely with the medieval Christian theory that narrative art serves as a book for the (nearly “primitive”) illiterate. For Coomaraswamy, the “primitive” character of Kandyan narrative paintings is confirmed by the fact that they lack that visual hallmark of modernity, perspectival realism.76 In this form, the argument that narrative art is a language structure is open to the cogent postmodern and postcolonial criticisms aimed at the modernist evolutionary paradigm, which are by now so well known that it is unnecessary to rehearse them here.77 Even shorn of its evolutionary component, the argument that narrative art is a language structure is still less than completely persuasive. Despite recent criticisms of the “cryptographic” work of Erwin Panofsky,78 I do think that narrative art is often created with the partial intent of conveying meaning. But figural art does not convey meaning in precisely the same ways that verbal or written language does, and to privilege the latter as the paradigmatic medium of significance is to foreground the “inadequacies” of the visual.79 There are some things that oral or written stories can do quite well that visual narratives cannot. Robert Brown gives an excellent summary: Images do not “tell” stories. . . . There is no way anyone could ever, even after seeing all the visual depictions extant of any particular jātaka story, be able to tell what the names of the characters are, what their exact relationships are, the exact sequence of their interactions, and the sometimes surprising moral point being made, without having read the text or heard the story; in other words, no one could look at the images and sit down and write a story that would be close to the actual word text.80 At minimum, the differences between verbal and visual modes of communication indicate that in order to “read” a visual narrative, one must supply those components of the story that the visual medium cannot convey. At the other end of the continuum from those who think that visual narratives “tell” stories are those who think they are intended to “illustrate” verbal narratives that are told or read by an expert/teacher while the novice/pupil views the art. Although he is clearly not entirely comfortable with this interpretation, Fontein nevertheless advances a (heavily qualified) version of it. He says: “certain aspects of the Gan.d.avyūha reliefs cannot have been self-evident and can only have become comprehensible after having been explained by some sort of explicateur.”81 He then proposes – again, very tentatively – the possibility that “oral explanation was part of the ritual for the performance of which the monument was created.”82 Victor Mair, in his later work on Dunhuang paintings of “transformation scenes,”83 makes a much stronger version of this argument, claiming that these “narrative”84 cave paintings served to illustrate oral recitations of the stories. Ultimately, Mair thinks that the cave paintings were inspired by storyboards used by itinerant religious teachers in India to illustrate their narrative sermons.85 Here, too, the listener/viewer plays a rather passive role – all he need do is attend to the storyteller.

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At Borobudur, this is in fact the way in which present-day tourists usually encounter the Lalitavistara relief panels. The practice of the tour guides who work at the monument is to lead tourists around the first gallery and point to selected relief panels while telling a version of the life story of the Buddha. For the nonBuddhist tourists who visit Borobudur, this experience can indeed be edifying because it is likely to be the first time that they have heard the story in detail, and because the accompanying visual “illustration” is impressive. But there are at least two good reasons to doubt that Śailendra Buddhists always, or even usually, used the narrative relief panels of Borobudur in this way. The first is that the life story of the Buddha almost certainly was then, as it is now, familiar to virtually any practitioner of Buddhism. I can recognize virtually all of the scenes in this series without having them explained to me, and I think it likely that most Śailendra Buddhists knew at least as much of the Buddha’s life story as I do. Unless one assumes that Borobudur was built as part of a missionary program to spread Buddhism in Java, it makes little sense to think of the Lalitavistara relief panels as illustrations for teaching the life story of the Buddha. This brings me to the second reason to doubt that the narrative relief panels of Borobudur were intended primarily to be used as illustrations for didactic sermons: the monument makes a very expensive and inconvenient visual aid. Just at the level of common sense, if one could do the whole job with a painted placard or scroll, why go to the trouble of encasing an entire natural hill in elaborately carved stone? And if one’s primary intention was to missionize, wouldn’t one want a portable device that could be taken anywhere potential converts could be found? In a more theoretical vein, this theory simply does not account for the ways in which a monument such as Borobudur places the visual narratives carved on it. In response to Mair’s argument about the function of Dunhuang “transformation scene” paintings, Wu says: A general principle in studying religious art, including Buddhist cave-paintings, is that individual pictures and statues must be observed in their architectural and religious contexts: they are not portable objects that can be carried around and appreciated independently but are components of a larger pictorial program designed for a particular ritual structure for religious worship.86 Even if one supposes that ritual practice in the first two galleries of Borobudur involved listening to stories while looking at the narrative scenes, one must still explain why it was important to do this there. Why listen to stories while walking through the galleries at Borobudur rather than while sitting in a local temple? Why listen to stories on the first two galleries, but not at the top of the monument? Dehejia’s interpretation of the function of narrative art falls somewhere in the middle of the continuum, and begins to address these questions. She generates her theory to explain the function of scenes from the Buddha’s extended biography that appear on railings and other structures that surround early Indian stupas such as Bhārhut and Sāñcī. According to Dehejia, these scenes are situated so that devotees could “read” them while ritually circumambulating the central stupa. While

The narrative relief panels 69 the practitioner is engaged in the ritual, the function of the visual narratives is “to stimulate the story-telling process in the mind of the observer.”87 In this formulation, the purpose of narrative art is to provide an occasion for the viewer mentally to reconstruct a story, and then to extract from that story its moral. Here, the viewer is not passively hearing the story, but actively supplying it and its meaning from memory. Thus, the visual narratives are designed to encourage the devotee to join the bodily act of ritual circumambulation with the mental process of commemorating the Buddha. Although she does not develop this line of argument, one might suggest a relationship between this essentially commemorative function of visual narrative and the meditative practice of a particular type of buddhānusmr.ti, or recollection of the Buddha. The Vimuttimagga, a Theravāda text, describes a form of buddhānusmr.ti that may be relevant to the narrative art of Borobudur. Although the Śailendras did have significant contacts with Sri Lankan Buddhists, I am not suggesting here that the Vimuttimagga played any significant role in the design of the monument, but merely that this particular practice or some similar one may have been known to the architects of Borobudur. The meditation consists in part of recollecting the previous lives of the Buddha, along with key events from his final life.88 According to the text, this type of buddhānusmr.ti can result in an elementary meditative state called “access-meditation.”89 Although this is not an advanced state of concentration, it does produce the benefit of transporting the practitioner into “the state of living near the Teacher.”90 As we will see, this dovetails nicely with Brown’s theory that the jātaka relief panels of Borobudur help to make the Buddha present for the devotee to worship. In relation to the Lalitavistara relief panels of Borobudur, Dehejia’s argument that narrative art invites the viewer to “read” the visual story by recollecting known events from a linguistic version of the story makes good sense. The life story of the Buddha is so well known that one could reasonably expect a devotee to be able to recall the events pictured in many, if not quite all, of these scenes. Furthermore, Dehejia’s argument that the process of “reading” takes place during the performance of ritual circumambulation also makes sense in relation to these panels. They are positioned at eye level on the main wall of the first gallery, which is just where the devotee’s gaze would fall as he walked around the gallery while looking over his right shoulder. Although they are not at eye level and are therefore not the more natural focus of attention,91 the jātaka relief panels of the lower register on the first gallery main wall may also have served to facilitate the devotee’s recollection of the extended biography of the Buddha.92 In this case, the ritual procedure may have called for two circumambulations of the first gallery – one to recollect the aspects of the extended biography presented on the lower register and one to recollect the events in the life of the historical Buddha presented on the upper register. But Dehejia’s interpretation does not seem to work as well for some of the jātaka scenes on Borobudur – or, indeed, for some of the scenes at Sāñcī. As Brown points out, the visual narrative of the Buddha’s Great Departure, located on an architrave over the eastern gateway at Sāñcī, is too high to be seen clearly

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from the circumambulation pathway with the naked eye.93 Thus, ritual practitioners at the stupa could not possibly have used this visual narrative to facilitate a commemoration of the Buddha. Brown argues that similar problems arise in connection with the jātaka relief panels at Borobudur. While it is possible to see all of these panels without resorting to binoculars, to see some of them it is necessary for an adult to crouch, stoop, or otherwise lower the body. The relief panels on the lower register of the first gallery balustrade, for example, are so low that they “are impossible to see clearly without bending or kneeling down.”94 In order to “read” these panels, one would have to perform the pradaks.in.ā on hands and knees, or perhaps as a continuous series of prostrations. While it is possible that practitioners were expected to perform the pradaks.in.ā in this way, it is also possible, as Brown argues, that this series of relief panels was not designed to be “read” in the way in which Dehejia proposes. Brown’s argument is supported by architectural evidence that demonstrates that the first gallery balustrade was not part of the original design for the pradaks.in.ā pathway. The outer edge of the path was originally bounded by a very short wall or curb. The balustrade was formed later by placing niches atop the curb and then filling the spaces between them with blocks of stone. Both the niches and the stone blocks were set “cold” on the original curb – that is to say, there are no stonework joints to help anchor them, as there are beneath the balustrades of the other galleries. The fact that it is less technically advanced and therefore less structurally sound suggests that the first gallery balustrade was added before the upper gallery balustrades were designed. The upper series of relief panels on the first gallery balustrade was carved on the backs of the niches and block walls, while the lower series was carved on stones set to fill the concave space between the pathway and the decorative cornice of the original curb.95 While the architects certainly planned this addition in a way that they thought made sense in the context of the rest of the monument, it is nevertheless significant that the events pictured on the first gallery balustrade were not part of the original program for recollecting the Buddha’s story during the performance of the pradaks.in.ā. In any case, as Fontein points out, only the panels on the main wall are naturally positioned for viewing during the performance of the pradaks.in.ā because the ritual is usually performed while looking over one’s right shoulder at the person or object one is circumambulating.96 In a clockwise circumambulation of the monument, the panels on the main walls are to one’s right, while the panels on the balustrades are to one’s left. Furthermore, on every gallery, the relief panels on the main walls are larger and more visually impressive than the ones on the balustrades; thus the main walls are the natural focus of visual attention. I will consider the issue of how the relief panels on the balustrades of the upper galleries might relate to the performance of the pradaks.in.ā more fully in Chapter 4. For the moment, it will suffice to say that, particularly on the first gallery, the evidence suggests that the balustrade reliefs may not have been designed to be the focus of sustained attention during the performance of the pradaks.in.ā. This is not by any means to suggest that the relief panels on the balustrades serve no meaningful purpose. On the contrary, Brown offers a convincing

The narrative relief panels 71 explanation of the function of the jātaka relief panels that, in my view, can be expanded to cover all the textually inspired relief panels in the galleries, including those on the balustrades and those on the main walls. According to Brown, the jātaka relief panels of Borobudur “function more as icons than as narrative illustrations.”97 It is important to note from the outset that Brown defines the word “icon” differently from Wu. He says: “I intend it in a specifically Indic religious sense, simply as a form of the deity that is the focus of reverence and worship.”98 Here, Brown defines an icon almost entirely in terms of the devotee’s response of “reverence and worship.” Although an icon is the “form of the deity,” it need not have any specific formal features – it need not, for example, face the devotee. To make matters even more complicated, it is not entirely clear whether Brown means that each individual jātaka is an icon, or that, collectively, the jātakas help to mark the entire monument as an icon. To differentiate between these two possibilities, I will call the first the iconic function (small i) and the second the Iconic function (capital I). I begin with the iconic function. Brown states that “the jātakas on the monuments worked as icons,”99 which seems to imply that each jātaka representation is a form of the Buddha that serves as a focus of worship. I agree with Brown on this point, but I think it is important to state clearly what sort of worship is involved. To do this, it will be useful to attend to formal features that Brown does not discuss. It is possible to picture a jātaka as an icon in Wu’s formal sense. No matter how many events it relates, each jātaka story is the story of a single life during which the bodhisattva has a particular body. Furthermore, a given story may describe the wonderful qualities of the bodhisattva’s body – his is not just any antelope body but a shining golden antelope body with bejeweled antlers. It is therefore possible to represent one of the bodhisattva’s “lives” as an icon in the formal sense – that is, as a statue or picture of the body the bodhisattva has in that life. This is just how Faxian (Wade-Giles: Fa-hien) reports that the bodies of Śākyamuni-tobe are represented along the processional route during the yearly ritual in which Śākyamuni’s tooth is paraded to the Abhayagiri vihāra. The king exhibits, so as to line both sides of the road, the five hundred different bodily forms in which the Bodhisattva has in the course of his history appeared: – here as Sudāna, there as Sāma, now as the king of elephants, and then as a stag or a horse. All these figures are brightly coloured and grandly executed, looking as if they were alive.100 These jātaka images still refer to stories, but they are clearly iconic in Wu’s formal sense: they are open compositions that call for the worshipper to interact directly with them. Furthermore, they are iconic in the functional sense that Brown describes because they are clearly intended to make the incarnations of Gautama-to-be present for devotees who attend the procession. These images are “manifestations” of the Buddha which are so convincing that they appear to be alive.

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But as we have seen, the vast majority of the jātaka relief panels on Borobudur are not iconic in this formal sense. The panels almost always have the closed composition that Wu identifies as a characteristic of narrative art. That is to say, the jātaka relief panels almost always picture characters that attend to events unfolding within the frame of the composition; they do not usually “look at” or invite direct interaction from the viewer. Of all the relief panels that depict the extended biography of the Buddha, only the few semi-iconic scenes invite an exchange of the gaze. But just as Faxian’s jātaka statues do, the jātaka panels on Borobudur line both sides of a processional path. Simply to walk past them during the ritual of circumambulation is to worship them. This form of worship becomes possible, as Brown argues, because the jātaka relief panels “manifest the presence of the Buddha.”101 This aspect of Brown’s argument can be expanded to account for all of the relief panels. They all articulate a venue within which processional worship of the Buddha can take place. Here, bodily encounter and movement are the primary devotional acts. And, just as turning a Tibetan prayer wheel is ritually effective whether or not the practitioner can read the text, so taking a turn past the relief panels is ritually effective whether or not the movement is accompanied by a detailed understanding of the visual “text.” Thus, the relief panels of the balustrades help to articulate the ritual space by making the Buddha present, even though they are not “read” during the performance of the pradaks.in.ā. In addition to serving this iconic function, the relief panels on the main wall of the first gallery also serve to encourage the practitioner to recall the stories they depict. In places, Brown argues that the jātaka relief panels are always functionally iconic rather than functionally narrative,102 and with this, I disagree. As I have shown, the Lalitavistara and most jātakas are pictured on Borobudur in a way that does clearly convey the temporal quality of narrative by portraying a sequence of events from the story in a clear spatial order. These sequences fit the strictest definition of the form of narrative art. And, they are the natural focus of attention during the performance of the pradaks.in.ā. Here, as Brown comes very close to doing,103 I agree with Dehejia that the visual narrative of the extended biography encourages the practitioner to recollect the Buddha’s story. These panels are both functionally iconic and functionally narrative: on the first gallery main wall, “the Buddha manifests himself in terms of a history, a biography.”104 This brings me to the Iconic function. Brown says that the jātakas are “units of meaning and reverence, expressions of an aspect of the Buddha’s nature and life that is (more) fully expressed by the entire monument.”105 At minimum, this means that the significance of individual jātakas is conveyed in no small part by the ways in which they are juxtaposed with other visual elements in a particular monumental program. This is analogous to saying that the significance of a particular statue of the Buddha is conveyed in part by the position it occupies in a temple or other architectural space that also contains other statues. At maximum, it means that the monument as a whole embodies the Buddha in a single, though complex, Icon. In this formulation, the individual jātakas are Iconographic marks that serve to constitute the particular form of the Buddha represented by the monument as a

The narrative relief panels 73 whole. This is analogous to saying that, although they are far less standardized, the jātaka representations are like the 32 major and/or the 80 minor laks.an.as or bodily marks that identify the Buddha. When he considers “Borobudur as a manifestation of the Buddha,”106 Brown strongly implies that the jātaka relief panels function as parts of the larger Icon that is Borobudur. This, I think, is a brilliant insight that applies equally well to all of the textually inspired relief panels of Borobudur and helps to explain how they are integral parts of the Borobudur mandala. The relief panels serve to mark the various ways in which the Buddha manifests in order to present the dharma to audiences of differing capacities. Although the relief panels picture manifestations that are apparently individuated, they also constitute the single Buddha that encompasses the whole. In keeping with the mandala principle, the Buddha is nondual with his various emanations. The narrative relief panels that picture scenes from the extended biography of the Buddha mark those places on the monument in which the Buddha manifests as a nirmān.akāya. Because these panels picture the temporal structure of existence so well, they are particularly well suited to represent the temporal model for salvation that is the nirmān.akāya. The prominent visual narratives on the main wall of the first gallery invite the ritual practitioner to contemplate the nature of the temporal model of and for salvation as he recollects the life story of the Buddha. They carve out a ritual space for time.

3

Piecing together space The panorama of the purified field

In 629 CE, the famous Chinese monk Xuanzang (Wade-Giles: Hsüan-tsang) set out on a pilgrimage to India to study the dharma and to collect Sanskrit Buddhist texts that he and a team of scholar monks would later translate into Chinese. Along the way, he visited many sacred sites, leaving an invaluable record of seventh-century Buddhist culture in Central and South Asia. According to his biographer, Huili, he also ran into a spot of trouble now and again – dehydration in the desert, captivity in the palace of a troublesome king, and various instances of Silk Road robbery.1 In one particularly dramatic case, Xuanzang was sailing down the river Ganges when his boat was attacked by pirates.2 As it turned out, these particular pirates were after more than money: they were looking for a particularly fine specimen to serve as a human sacrifice to their goddess and they decided that Xuanzang was the man for the job. At first, Xuanzang did what anyone might do: he tried to reason with the pirates. He explained that he was on his way to see the site of the Buddha’s enlightenment and that it would not be auspicious for them if they were to kill him while he was on such a virtuous mission. The pirates, as one might have anticipated, found this argument unpersuasive. It is what Xuanzang did next that interests us here. He agreed to serve as a sacrificial victim, but asked for a moment to prepare himself mentally for death. He used this time to perform a meditative visualization of the future Buddha Maitreya and his paradisial realm in Tus.ita Heaven. Hsüan-tsang began by calling to mind the scene to be visualized: he “concentrated his mind on the palace in Tus.ita Heaven and reflected on Maitreya.”3 After performing a set of devotional exercises, Hsüan-tsang “sat mindfully”4 and began a meditation session that culminated in a detailed vision of Maitreya and his heavenly surroundings. In this vision, he: saw the palace in Tus.ita Heaven with Maitreya bodhisattva sitting on a dais made of marvelous gems and surrounded by heavenly beings. With that he became so enraptured, both mentally and physically, that he was no longer aware of being on the sacrificial altar and had forgotten all about the pirates.5 Xuanzang became so absorbed in the vision that it became a kind of virtual reality, replacing his awareness of the pirates and his own apparently imminent death

The panorama of the purified field 75 with a vivid experience of being in the presence of Maitreya in Tus.ita. While he sat calmly in meditation, completely unaware of what was going on around him, a storm suddenly arose with high winds that uprooted trees and wrecked the pirates’ boats. Now this the pirates did find persuasive: thoroughly in awe of Xuanzang, they not only decided to spare him but also to convert to Buddhism by taking the five precepts from him. As for Xuanzang, not only on this occasion but also in general and finally in 664 on his actual deathbed, he sought to be reborn in Tus.ita with Maitreya.6 Faced with the pirates, he entered a meditative vision so vividly real that he in a sense jumped the gun: while still alive, he experienced a virtual rebirth in the presence of Maitreya.7 Xuanzang’s visionary experience, achieved through meditative practice, provides a context for understanding many of the relief panels on Borobudur’s third and fourth galleries. Until now, scholars have generally assumed that, like the Lalitavistara series, the Gan.d.avyūha relief panels are narrative art designed to stimulate the recollection of a story.8 Here, I offer a new interpretation that begins with the observation that, in stark contrast to the narrative panels of the Lalitavistara series, many of the Gan.d.avyūha relief panels on the third and fourth galleries do not depict a sequence of events unfolding in time. Instead, long sequences of panels picture visually descriptive passages of the text nearly word for word, so that each panel depicts one part of a larger visual tableau in a technique that I will call “panoramic art.” The relief panels in question select and amplify passages of the Gan.d.avyūha in which narrative action is suspended. The text as a whole does have a narrative structure: it tells the story of a young, exemplary Buddhist pilgrim named Sudhana, who is so dedicated to learning the dharma that he travels all over India, visiting over 50 kalyān.amitras, or spiritual guides. In some ways, then, the text has the narrative structure of a quest not unlike the quest of Xuanzang: Sudhana wants to learn the dharma, and he is willing to take a long and potentially dangerous journey to do it. But while the text does have the general structure of a travel narrative, it does not really read like an adventure story. Rather, the narrative structure serves as a kind of organizing framework within which the teachings of the various guides are nested. And as it turns out, some of the spiritual guides, including the future Buddha Maitreya, do not teach by telling stories. Instead, Maitreya teaches by causing Sudhana to have a visionary experience that is in some ways quite similar to Xuanzang’s vision of Tus.ita. While the description of Sudhana’s vision is part of the Gan.d.avyūha story, it also interrupts the flow of narrative action. This, too, is consistent with Huili’s account of Xuanzang’s visionary experience. When Xuanzang enters his meditative concentration, he “exits” the story: while he is “in” Tus.ita, the story of his imminent death unfolds, as it were, without him. As a significant part of his vision, Sudhana sees images that are characteristic of a soteriologically privileged realm called a purified buddha-field (buddhaks.etra). A purified buddha-field is an integral part of the “body” that the Buddha or advanced bodhisattva manifests for the benefit of relatively advanced practitioners: the body of communal enjoyment of the dharma (sambhogakāya). While the sambhogakāya

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presents a teaching that is still provisional, it is superior to the teaching presented by the nirmān.akāya, in part because it overcomes some of the problems inherent in the temporal model for salvation by substituting a model that is primarily spatial. The sambhogakāya emanates and resides in a paradisial realm that he has purified of anything that would hinder the process of achieving enlightenment and that contains everything that would help. By entering a purified field, one can overcome the untimeliness of the current era here, meet the Buddha face to face there, and pursue one’s own Buddhahood in a perfectly optimized environment.9 The space provides “a wrinkle in time”10 that allows those who enter it to “skip over” the ages before the birth of the next Buddha Maitreya and to achieve much sooner a state in which they are liberated from the worst fears of sam . sāra and empowered to pursue the bodhisattva path much more quickly and efficiently. To enter a purified field, one may be reborn there in one’s next life, or, as Xuanzang’s experience shows, one may “enter” it meditatively in this life. In the meditative procedure, one recollects the Buddha (buddhānusmr.ti) by visualizing his spectacular realm, creating a mental picture of it that is so vivid as to be a virtual reality. This meditative craft requires the practitioner to imagine each small part of the picture in detail, and then mentally assemble them into a uniformly vivid whole. I argue that the word-by-word technique of representation in the Gan.d.avyūha relief panels replicates this meditative procedure by presenting a purified field in small, clearly realized parts that must be mentally assembled to arrive at the whole panorama. Thus, although they do picture passages from a text, these sequences were not designed to encourage the devotee to recollect a story about the Buddha, but rather to encourage him to recollect the panorama of a purified field emanated by the Buddha. While the precise response would depend in part on the individual devotee’s level of meditative attainment and/or general knowledge of the purified field, it seems clear that the word-by-word sequences were designed to create a ritual space in which one could at least symbolically achieve some of the benefits of visualization meditation.

The word-by-word method of picturing the Gan.d.avyūha In 1929, when F. D. K. Bosch first published his identifications of the Gan.d.avyūha relief panels of Borobudur’s third and fourth galleries,11 he introduced the modern world to one of the most unusual features of the monument. On these upper galleries there are several long sequences of relief panels that visually “quote” passages of the text – that is to say, each word of a sentence is the topic of a separate panel. Such sequences occur in the long stretches of relief panels that picture Sudhana’s visits to the bodhisattvas Maitreya and Samantabhadra, and in the Samantabhadracaryā-pran.idhāna series. To begin, it will be useful to focus on the relief panels that picture the long episode of the Gan.d.avyūha in which Sudhana meets the bodhisattva Maitreya.12 This episode is clearly one of the most important sections of the Gan.d.avyūha text. Sudhana visits a total of approximately 54 teachers (kalyān.amitras, or “virtuous friends”), but his visit to Maitreya is recounted at the greatest length by far.

The panorama of the purified field 77 In the earliest extant Chinese translation, Sudhana’s visit to Maitreya is the final section of the text, and even in the later translations, it could be argued that it remains the climactic episode.13 In the version of the Gan.d.avyūha that informed the architects of Borobudur, Sudhana’s visit to Maitreya is the antepenultimate episode – his brief visit to the bodhisattva Mañjuśrī and his visit to the bodhisattva Samantabhadra follow. It is clear that the Borobudur architects considered Sudhana’s visit to Maitreya to be of central importance not only to the Gan.d.avyūha but also to the Śailendra Buddhism they wished to (re)present on Borobudur. A truly extraordinary amount of wall space in the galleries is devoted to picturing this episode. The series begins on the main wall of the second gallery, where the last three panels (II 126–8) picture Sudhana’s arrival at Maitreya’s kūt.āgāra, or multi-tiered palace.14 The Maitreya series continues on the entire main wall of the third gallery (III 1–88), then on the balustrade of the third gallery (III B 1–88), and finally on the first 42 or so relief panels of the fourth gallery balustrade (IV B 1–42[?]). Altogether, approximately 221 relief panels, located on three of the four galleries,15 are devoted to scenes from the Maitreya episode of the text. In the textual account of this episode, Sudhana arrives at a kūt.āgāra, which he recognizes as the abode of advanced bodhisattvas. He worships the palace and forms the desire to meet the bodhisattva Maitreya. Soon, Maitreya, coming from somewhere else with a large retinue that includes deities and supernatural beings, arrives at the kūt.āgāra.16 When Sudhana asks Maitreya to teach him about the practices of advanced bodhisattvas, Maitreya invites him to enter the kūt.āgāra. Inside the palace, which opens at the snap of Maitreya’s fingers, Sudhana sees a brilliantly lit and gem-studded miraculous world. As suddenly as it appears, this world vanishes when Maitreya snaps his fingers a second time.17 Although Maitreya does give an expository talk before Sudhana enters the palace and again after he leaves, for the most part, the vision, in all its splendid detail, is Maitreya’s teaching. On Borobudur, a few of the relief panels that picture the Maitreya section of the Gan.d.avyūha appear in sequences that are narrative – that is to say, they do depict a sequence of events unfolding in time.18 For example, five panels near the beginning of the Maitreya series (III 3-III 7) picture the events surrounding Sudhana’s entrance into the palace. On III 3, Sudhana makes a gesture of worship toward Maitreya; this scene represents the moment in the text when Sudhana asks the bodhisattva to open the palace. On III 4, Maitreya snaps his fingers and the door of the palace opens (Figure 3.1). On III 5, Maitreya invites Sudhana to enter the kūt.āgāra, and on III 6, he does. But soon after Sudhana enters the palace, the relief panels cease to picture events. Indeed, nearly all of the relief panels that depict Sudhana’s experiences inside the kūt.āgāra occur in sequences that picture descriptive passages of the text nearly word by word. For example, at least 19 panels (III 20-III 39) picture a single sentence of the text. This sentence explains that Sudhana, already inside the kūt.āgāra, saw that same kūt.āgāra covered with an astounding variety of adornments. In the Sanskrit sentence, the word kūt.āgāra is modified by a very long string

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Figure 3.1 Maitreya opens the palace (III 4). Photograph by John C. Huntington, Courtesy of the Huntington Photographic Archive at The Ohio State University.

of compounds – 52 in number – each of which begins with the word asam . khyeya, or “innumerable,” then names one or more decorations, and ends in the word . alankāra or “adornment.”19 In the following selective translation, I include many of the compounds that list adornments pictured on the relief panels of Borobudur. He saw that kūt.āgāra which was adorned with . . . innumerable umbrellas, flags, and banners, innumerable gems, . . . innumerable garlands of various cloth streamers hanging down, . . . innumerable sweet-sounding bells, innumerable nets of gem-like chimes that made pleasing sounds when they stirred, innumerable divine flowers pouring down like rain, innumerable divine flower garlands hanging down, . . . innumerable mirrors, . . . innumerable clouds of gem-like garments, innumerable gem-like trees, innumerable gem-like railings, . . . innumerable gem-like maidens, . . . innumerable flocks of birds singing a variety of pleasing birdsongs, innumerable gem-like lotuses, . . . [and] innumerable lotus ponds.20 On Borobudur, each relief panel in this series depicts a single compound, or in some cases perhaps two closely related compounds, by picturing the palace festooned with multiple (if not innumerable) examples of one type of adornment.21 In this word-by-word series, most of the relief panels share the same general composition: a multi-tiered structure representing the kūt.āgāra appears in the center or on the left-hand side of the panel, while Sudhana can be seen on the righthand side admiring the adornment of the palace. On III 21, for example, Sudhana stands under the parasol on the right-hand side of the palace looking at the “innumerable sweet-sounding bells” with which it is festooned (Figure 3.2). More bells hang from the trees at the far left and far right, under which Sudhana’s followers

The panorama of the purified field 79 sit. The composition of III 31 is quite similar, except that Sudhana is kneeling and the palace is decorated with “innumerable flags and banners,” or perhaps “innumerable cloth streamers” (Figure 3.3). On III 38, Sudhana and his followers sit or kneel to the right, while on the left-hand side of the composition, lotuses blossom forth apparently from the palace itself, as if its very stones were “innumerable lotus ponds.” A few panels in this series depart from the standard composition in that they do not represent the palace at all, but only a particular

Figure 3.2 Palace with bells (III 21). Photograph by John C. Huntington, Courtesy of the Huntington Photographic Archive at The Ohio State University.

Figure 3.3 Palace with banners (III 31). Photograph by John C. Huntington, Courtesy of the Huntington Photographic Archive at The Ohio State University.

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adornment conceived as part of its immediate environment. On III 29, for example, the entire upper portion of the picture is filled with a roiling “cloud” interlaced with lengths of cloth from which “gem-like garments” rain down. But all 19 relief panels in the series clearly picture the adornments of the palace as listed in the relevant sentence of the Gan.d.avyūha. If one looks at this series and others like it with the expectation of finding an illustration of narrative action, as previous scholars have, then the word-by-word method of rendering the text is puzzling indeed. In this passage of the text, there is only one action: Sudhana sees. The relief panels add at least one action to this because they sometimes show Sudhana worshipping while he sees. But although these actions are crucial, they are not the real “news” of any panel in this series, with the possible exception of the first. The main point of this section of the text and of the relief panels that depict it is to give a detailed description of just what is seen. If one looks at the relief panels expecting to find the unfolding of a series of narrative actions, one may experience this descriptive passage as a digression – a long and potentially boring stretch of nouns interrupting what ought to be an orderly succession of verbs. The question then becomes: why did the planners of Borobudur insert this and other similar “digressions”? Bosch’s theory is that the designers of Borobudur used the word-by-word method to stretch a short passage of the text to fit a long section of wall space.22 In 1967, relying heavily on Bosch’s formulation, Fontein puts the matter this way: Facing an acute shortage of textual material which could be rendered into stone on the higher galleries of the monument, all the artists could do was to fall back on those repetitions and cliche phrases which act as such a severe deterrent to any reader who judges the Gan.d.avyūha by our literary standards. Long enumerations of gifts and verbose descriptions of the splendour of the residences which Sudhana visited seem to have been looked upon as something like a godsend, for they gave the sculptors an opportunity to create long series of reliefs in which each word of such passages is rendered into stone.23 In a more recent formulation, Fontein distances himself from Bosch’s disparaging assessment of the Gan.d.avyūha but still asserts that the sculptors had to stretch a short text to fit a long wall space. He says: The concluding chapter of the Gan.d.avyūha in which Sudhana’s visits to Maitreya and Samantabhadra are described, is relatively brief, but the number of reliefs devoted to the illustration of this part of the text is large. Summarizing the situation in statistical terms, this chapter accounts for fifteen percent of the length of text, but for seventy-two percent of the wall length available for its illustrations on the third and fourth gallery of the monument. As a result the sculptors, already facing textual material that largely did not lend itself well to visual representation, were more or less obliged to focus on words or sentences that could be rendered into stone.24

The panorama of the purified field 81 Underlying this theory are two hypotheses. The first is that the amount of wall space to be filled with the Maitreya episode was determined before it was decided how the passage would actually be pictured. Given the near-certainty that Borobudur as a whole exhibits a vertical hierarchy, presenting elementary Buddhist ideas near the bottom of the monument and more advanced ideas closer to the top, this hypothesis is quite reasonable. The designers seem to have reserved a higher space on the monument for Maitreya – gallery three and parts of galleries two and four – because they considered his teaching to be superior to those of the various kalyān.amitras whom Sudhana meets earlier. To the extent that these earlier teachings are pictured at all,25 they appear on the main wall of the second gallery, one level below the vast majority of the Maitreya panels. While the fact that three Maitreya panels do appear on the second gallery may appear to undermine the hierarchical order, it is important to note that the content of Maitreya’s teaching is entirely segregated on the higher levels. It is therefore reasonable to suppose that the designers of Borobudur may have determined that the Maitreya episode should occupy at least the entire third gallery before they decided just how to picture it. The second hypothesis that underpins Bosch’s theory is that the Maitreya episode in the version of the Gan.d.avyūha used at Borobudur was too short to fit the pre-determined amount of space without resorting to some sort of visual “filler.” It should be said immediately that this hypothesis is as impossible to falsify as it is to prove. Since no Javanese manuscript of the Gan.d.avyūha – or, indeed, of any text – survives from the period in which Borobudur was built, there is no way to be absolutely sure just how long or short the relevant text was. But it is important to note that neither Vaidya’s Sanskrit version (amalgamated from several manuscripts) nor Cleary’s translation of the late seventh-century Chinese version is short enough to support Bosch’s theory. In fact, the Maitreya episodes in both of these texts contain lengthy passages – in many cases closely parallel – which have no visual counterpart on Borobudur. In comparison with these two versions of the text, the relief panels picture a text that has not been stretched at all, but rather dramatically cut. There are two possible explanations for this fact. On the one hand, Bosch could turn out to be correct: the Maitreya episode in the lost text which inspired the Borobudur relief panels may have been only about one-fifth as long as the two versions I have mentioned.26 This is certainly possible, but until such a text is found, this first explanation remains a guess. On the other hand, the planners of Borobudur may have used a version of the text substantially similar to these two. If so, then it is clear that instead of copying the text slavishly, they actively selected only a few passages from the text to render into stone. These passages they pictured nearly word by word, while skipping over other passages entirely. Again, without a copy of the relevant text, it is impossible to show beyond doubt that this second explanation is the correct one. But it rises above the status of a guess because it is possible both to identify the principle by which these passages were selected and to provide a reason why the chosen passages were pictured in such minute detail. Although these long descriptive passages, and the relief panels that picture them, do not make “narrative sense,” they do make sense in the context of

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visualization meditation aimed at recollecting the Buddha (buddhānusmr.ti) in his sambhogakāya. If the architects of Borobudur focused on certain passages of the Gan.d.avyūha to the exclusion of others, it is because these parts of the text describe a meditative visualization of a purified Buddha field. The word-by-word method of illustration is used to select and amplify those portions of the text that describe the standard features of a purified field. Not only do they depict the visual elements found in a purified field, the word-by-word relief panel sequences also recapitulate the meditative procedure by which the practitioner builds up a complex mental picture of a purified field from a series of vividly imagined parts.

The purified field and the body of communal enjoyment According to various Mahāyāna texts and the medieval Indian Buddhist scholastic literature, a purified field (buddhaks.etra) is an optimal environment in which to achieve enlightenment. It is a realm produced out of wisdom and compassion by a Buddha or advanced bodhisattva in response to the needs of those sentient beings who have the capacity to benefit from it. Although it shares some of the visual features and benefits of the heavens in sam . sāra, a purified field exists in order to liberate beings from sam sāra: every aspect of it is radiated from the wis. dom and compassion of the Buddha and is completely conducive to enlightenment. The various features of a purified field are fundamentally manifestations of a Buddha’s excellent qualities. By emanating the realm, a Buddha transfers a vast store of his merit, making it available to others in the form of a purified environment and enhanced capacities. Those who enter the purified field and become part of the assembly there enjoy optimal conditions in which to pursue and achieve enlightenment. Although it may not be immediately obvious, one can easily infer that in the Gan.d.avyūha, the interior of Maitreya’s palace is a purified field. Both the interior of the palace and the transformed Jeta grove of the prologue are described as the dharmadhātu, or “realm of reality.” The text also explicitly says that the transformed Jeta grove is a purified field.27 What is clear is that in the Gan.d.avyūha, the dharmadhātu is a purified field, even though the later scholastic literature might not describe every particular purified field as the dharmadhātu. Since the dharmadhātu is a purified field, clearly the interior of Maitreya’s palace is a purified field. This logic is borne out by the fact that, as I will show, the section of the text that describes the interior of Maitreya’s palace includes standard images associated with purified fields. But it does so in an allusive fashion that implies an audience already familiar with the imagery, soteriological doctrine, and visionary meditational states associated with purified fields. To reconstruct the knowledge of the purified fields presumed by the Gan.d.avyūha, it is necessary to turn to preexisting or roughly contemporaneous Mahāyāna texts that provide more systematic descriptions of them. Of principal importance are the Larger and Smaller Sukhāvatīvyūha sūtras, which, as David L. McMahan has noted, treat visionary themes also prominent in the Gan.d.avyūha.28 The Larger Sukhāvatīvyūha must have been composed

The panorama of the purified field 83 sometime before the second century CE, when it was translated into Chinese.29 The date of the Smaller Sukhāvatīvyūha sūtra is more problematic. The earliest extant Chinese translation dates from the early fifth century,30 and thus some scholars have argued that the text is not as old as the Larger Sukhāvatīvyūha. But translations establish only the date before which the text must have been composed, not the approximate date at which the text was composed. Thus it is completely possible that the Smaller Sukhāvatīvyūha existed for some time before it was translated into Chinese and may in fact have been composed earlier than the longer sutra. Julian Pas provides an excellent account of the complex issues involved, and concludes that while the Smaller Sukhāvatīvyūha is probably the earlier of the two, both texts were composed in the first or second centuries CE.31 Thus both Sukhāvatīvyūha sūtras either predate the Gan.d.avyūha or were composed at roughly the same time. Both texts describe the features of Sukhāvatī, the purified field of the Buddha Amitābha, who is also called Amitāyus. While a comparison with the Sukhāvatīvyūha sūtras helps to show that the author(s) of the Gan.d.avyūha used images also associated with Sukhāvatī, it is important to note that the architects of Borobudur interpreted the Gan.d.avyūha at least five and a half centuries after the text was first composed. In this connection, it is worth emphasizing that although the Sukhāvatīvyūha sūtras became central to the development of distinctive Pure Land schools focused on Amitābha/Amitāyus in China and Japan, there was apparently no lasting parallel development in India, nor, I would argue, in Java. There were contacts between Java and China before and approximately at the time Borobudur was built, and it is not impossible that Śailendra Buddhists in general and the architects in particular could have been familiar with at least some of the doctrines and portable images associated with East Asian Pure Land practices. But the evidence for Javanese ties with Buddhist institutions in India, particularly Nālandā, is much stronger. And as Gregory Schopen has shown, by the sixth century CE in India, and perhaps as early as the second, rebirth in Sukhāvatī had become a generalized Mahāyāna goal. That is to say, Buddhists aspired to be reborn in Sukhāvatī even in the context of practices centered on Buddhas other than Amitābha, and did not necessarily consider Amitābha to be the paramount focus of their devotion in general. Schopen postulates that there was at one time a distinct cult of Amitābha in or near India, and that this cult gave rise to the Larger Sukhāvatīvyūha sūtra. But he also states: “there was probably not a large time gap between the appearance of the latter [i.e., the Larger Sukhāvatīvyūha] and the beginning of the process of generalization.”32 He goes on to say that if true, this would explain “why traces of a specific cult of Amitābha in India are, apart from the Sukhāvatīvyūha and literature directly related to it, very difficult to find in both the literary and the archaeological sources, and why reference to a cult of Amitābha is totally lacking in the Chinese travel literature.”33 In the Indian context, references to Sukhāvatī occur in Mahāyāna texts that are clearly not related to a distinctive cult of Amitābha. To give a particularly pertinent example, verse 57 of the Samantabhadracaryā-pran.idhāna reads: “When I reach the time of death, all obscurations removed,/ seeing Amitābha face to face, may I go to the [Buddha-] field of Sukhāvatī.”34 This verse, or one of two

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subsequent verses that also treat themes related to Sukhāvatī, is probably pictured on the fourth gallery main wall of Borobudur (IV 50). The upper portion of the composition features a triad that is iconographically similar to the triad one would expect to see at the center of Sukhāvatī: in the center is a Buddha displaying the dhyāna mudrā characteristic of Amitābha in the pañcajina man.d.ala, to the left is Avalokiteśvara, and to the right a second bodhisattva.35 But neither the text nor the monument is, as a whole, centered on the Buddha Amitābha. In the text and on the relief panels, the Samantabhadracaryā-pran.idhāna is appended to the Gan.d.avyūha, which makes no other reference to Amitābha or to Sukhāvatī. If the architects of Borobudur did not understand the Gan.d.avyūha images of the purified field in a context that paralleled the development of East Asian Pure Land schools focused on Amitābha, then what interpretive framework did they use? It should be admitted at the outset that this is a difficult question. Not only is the Javanese evidence thin but our knowledge of the reception of the Gan.d.avyūha and the Sukhāvatīvyūha sūtras in India is also less than optimal. While passages from these texts are sometimes quoted and interpreted, and more frequently simply referred to in the Indian scholastic commentarial literature, there are, to my knowledge, no stand-alone Indian commentaries devoted solely to their exegesis.36 Still, given the available evidence, it is most likely that the Borobudur architects understood the purified field passages in light of the interpretive categories37 presented in scholastic Buddhist sutras and commentaries composed in Sanskrit between the third and ninth centuries CE, a group of primarily Mahāyāna texts that Paul Griffiths refers to collectively as the “doctrinal digests.”38 The scholastic treatises advance interpretive categories designed to apply not only to Sukhāvatī but also to other purified Buddha-fields. By the middle centuries of the first millennium CE, a number of texts in use in various parts of the Buddhist world described, or at least referred to, purified fields emanated by figures other than Amitābha. The Buddha Aks.obhya presided over a purified field in the east called Abhirati,39 while the Buddha Bhais.ajyaguru or Bhais.ajyarāja presided over his own purified field.40 Not only Buddhas, but also celestial bodhisattvas such as Avalokiteśvara emanated purified fields.41 Most relevant for the interpretation of Borobudur, Tus.ita, the heavenly abode of the bodhisattva Maitreya, is presented in some contexts as a purified field. As a whole, the Tus.ita heaven is not a completely purified field. Unlike Sukhāvatī and other buddhaks.etras of the ten directions, Tus.ita heaven is located in this world system in the realm of desire: it is a paradise, but not all parts of it are purified so as to provide an environment optimal for achieving enlightenment. The outer portions of Tus.ita are heavenly, but the gods who dwell there are still subject to rebirth in sam . sāra according to their karma. By contrast, the inner part of Tus.ita – particularly the palace in which Maitreya resides – looks like and functions as a purified field.42 On Borobudur, a relief panel that depicts Maitreya in a heaven (III 65) conveys the sense that the palace of an otherwise impure paradisial realm may function as a purified field (Figure 3.4).43 On the left side of the composition, under a pavilion outside a palace, various deities appear to be having a heavenly party that features dancing goddesses. Just to the right of center is the palace,

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Figure 3.4 Maitreya in a heaven (III 65). Photograph by John C. Huntington, Courtesy of the Huntington Photographic Archive at The Ohio State University.

in which Maitreya sits on a throne, his right hand in the gesture of instruction (vitarka mudrā) as he teaches the dharma to a considerably more sedate crowd. Outside the palace is the impure area in which the inhabitants of the heaven are using up the merit that led to their heavenly rebirth by indulging in sam . sāric sense pleasures. Inside the palace, the inhabitants use their fortunate rebirth to see Maitreya face to face and learn the dharma directly from him. Similarly, in the Gelugpa lineage of Tibetan Buddhism, Maitreya’s paradise in Ganden, or Tus.ita, is said to feature a purified area inside and very near the palace where Buddhist saints are reborn to enjoy the dharma. As we have seen, Xuanzang’s vision puts him in a parallel situation: he envisions himself in inner Tus.ita, directly in front of Maitreya’s throne where he can enjoy the dharma face to face with the future Buddha. According to Griffiths, the digests give two sorts of accounts of how a purified field comes into existence: a metaphysical account and a soteriological account.44 In the metaphysical account, the purified field is emanated by, and indeed intrinsic to, the sambhogakāya of a Buddha. By definition, a Buddha always already has the capacity to manifest a sambhogakāya. The fact that he does so has nothing to do with any spiritual development on his part; the sambhogakāya is purely a response to the needs of others. According to the digests, the purified field is: nothing other than representations (vijñapti) or mental images designed to have desired salvific effects upon the minds of those who experience them: there are no mind-independent objects of any kind in them.45 Thus, the sambhogakāya has no independent existence, but is a capacity of the Buddha that remains latent until the needs of particular unenlightened beings

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activate this capacity because it is the form of upāya kauśalya that will have the most beneficial effect for them. In the soteriological account, a Buddha or advanced bodhisattva acquires the capacity to manifest his compassion as a purified field only after diligent (and usually lengthy) practice of the bodhisattva path. According to the digests, a practitioner acquires the ability to project a purified field only after he has attained the eighth ground (bhūmi) of the path and, indeed, this capacity is not actualized until an even later stage.46 Here, the sambhogakāya is an achievement of a Buddha or advanced bodhisattva, and the particular qualities of this body and its purified field are the fulfillment of vows taken at a much earlier stage of the path. Amitābha’s sambhogakāya, which entails the whole of Sukhāvatī, is the fulfillment of vows taken by a monk named Dharmākara who “practiced the conduct of the bodhisattva, during measureless, countless, inconceivable, incomparable, immense, limitless, and inexpressible hundreds of thousands of millions of trillions of cosmic ages.”47 The purified field of the Lapis Lazuli Radiance Tathāgata (Bhais.ajyarāja) is also the result of vows taken by that Buddha when he “first set out on the Bodhisattva Path.”48 In what ways, then, is a buddhaks.etra purified and optimized for its inhabitants? First, the field is purified in the sense that gross physical and mental impediments to Buddhist practice have been removed. The inhabitants of Sukhāvatī do not experience the sufferings of hell-beings, hungry ghosts, animals, or jealous gods, nor are they subject to rebirth in the lower realms where they would.49 They do not experience privation of any kind, nor do they even think of nonvirtuous acts or of personal property.50 There is no misfortune there, no pain, no distress, and no obstacle of any sort.51 Furthermore, the inhabitants of Sukhāvatī need not worry that they will ever experience misfortune again because, except for those bodhisattvas who intentionally take rebirth elsewhere in order to help sentient beings, everyone in the purified field is “only one more birth away from unsurpassable, perfect, full awakening.”52 In other words, their current life in Sukhāvatī will last until they achieve complete and perfect enlightenment. Second, the field is purified in the sense that all things conducive to Buddhist practice are present in maximum quantity and quality. Most importantly, the Buddha or highly advanced bodhisattva who has purified the field is present in it so that the fortunate members of his assembly may see him and learn the dharma directly from him. Because the inhabitants of Sukhāvatī may live there until they achieve complete and perfect enlightenment, they are no longer subject to “untimely births”53 in periods or places in which there is no living Buddha. They have therefore overcome the most salient problem of the temporal model of and for salvation: despite the fact that the historical Buddha Śākyamuni has (apparently) passed into parinirvān.a, the inhabitants of Sukhāvatī are able to see a living Buddha and learn the dharma directly from him. The present, living Buddha confers tremendous benefits that facilitate the awakening of others – benefits symbolized in the texts in part by radiant light. In Sukhāvatī, Amitābha, whose name translates as “Infinite Light,” emits rays of salvific light that not only illuminate his own purified field but also radiate beyond

The panorama of the purified field 87 it immeasurably, illuminating other buddhaks.etras in all directions throughout the cosmos.54 As we saw in Chapter 1, the prologue of the Gan.d.avyūha presents a strong parallel: the Buddha enters into a meditative state (samādhi) that purifies the Jeta grove and transforms it into a buddhaks.etra. The Buddha’s samādhi also illuminates the cosmos, making other buddhaks.etras in the ten directions visible from and coextensive with the purified Jeta grove.55 The effulgence of Amitābha produces physical and mental happiness for all human and supernatural beings in its radiant path,56 granting them the state of uncontaminated bliss that gives Sukhāvatī its name. Indeed, the emotions of pleasure, joy, and bliss are inherent in the term for the body of the Buddha or advanced bodhisattva who emanates the field – sambhogakāya – which Griffiths translates as “the body of communal enjoyment.”57 Furthermore, due to the compassionate vows of Dharmākara that, when fulfilled, establish the qualities of his purified field, the inhabitants of Sukhāvatī have extraordinary mental powers. They can recollect their previous lives, they are clairvoyant and clairaudient, and they know the thoughts and deeds of beings throughout the cosmos.58 The Gan.d.avyūha again provides a strong parallel. When Sudhana entered Maitreya’s palace, he “was flooded with joy and bliss. . . . Stripped of all delusion, he became clairvoyant without distortion, and could hear all sounds with unimpeded mindfulness.”59 In the kūt.āgāra, Sudhana feels the joy characteristically felt by inhabitants of a purified field. He also acquires new powers – particularly, clairvoyance and clairaudience. The excellent qualities of the Buddha or bodhisattva in his sambhogakāya – the accumulations of merit that he bestows on others through the compassionate emanation of a purified field – are symbolized in part by the beautiful visual features and adornments of the field. Drawing on cognitive metaphor theory as articulated by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, David L. McMahan argues that the visual imagery of the Gan.d.avyūha is informed by the cognitive metaphor “Knowing is Seeing.”60 While cognitive metaphors can certainly be found in literature, Lakoff and Johnson attend primarily to metaphors embedded in everyday speech that frame an abstract and ill-defined area of inquiry – a target domain – in terms that are familiar from a concrete set of bodily experiences – the source domain. Citing multiple ocular metaphors from Buddhist texts, McMahan argues that while not all knowledge is understood in terms of visual experience, Buddhist discourse does include “a coherent system of metaphors for understanding knowledge in terms of seeing.”61 With regard to the Gan.d.avyūha, McMahan is particularly concerned to show that the text uses visual imagery and ocular metaphors to frame the ultimate Mahāyāna doctrinal target domain: the perfection of wisdom of the fully awakened Buddha.62 This is a cogent argument to which I will return later. For the moment, it will be sufficient to advance the more modest claim that in the visual imagery of the purified field, the bodhisattva sees luminous but still relational qualities of the Buddha in his sambhogakāya. Because the purified field is a product of the Buddha’s skillful means, seeing it clearly entails greater “insight” into the dharma and rapid progress on the path. Because the vows of various bodhisattvas differ, the purified fields that eventually result from them are not identical in every respect, but they do share a

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number of visual features in common. The ground of a purified field is perfectly level and smooth, and it is usually made of some precious substance such as lapis lazuli. Just as the even ground presents no stumbling blocks, so the purified field contains no impediments to enlightenment. The trees that grow there are made of precious substances and are adorned with gems, sweet-sounding bells, and other ornaments. Purified fields have pools of water that are completely calm and beautifully clear, so that one can clearly see the golden sand at the bottom. In these pools grow various species of lotuses from which those who dwell in the purified field are born. The air is suffused with the pleasant aroma of incense, the sound of tinkling bells, and a brilliant light that is reflected and multiplied in the facets of the ubiquitous gems. At the center of the purified field on a resplendent throne sits the Buddha or advanced bodhisattva who emanates the field. This central figure is usually flanked by two bodhisattvas who are his main attendants – his right- and left-hand men. Surrounding this triad is an assembly of bodhisattvas and other types of beings who have gained access to the field. Behind them is an ornately decorated multi-storied palace.63 These standard features, described at length in textual accounts, are also pictured in East Asian paintings of purified fields such as the Japanese Taima mandala (Figure 3.5). While I am not aware of any direct historical evidence to show that the architects of Borobudur had access to similar paintings, a structurally comparative approach shows that the architects chose to depict comparable images

Figure 3.5 Taima mandala Drawing by Richard Polt, reproduced by permission of Richard Polt.

The panorama of the purified field 89 in conceptually, if not stylistically, similar ways. The East Asian paintings are therefore quite helpful for understanding the upper galleries of Borobudur because they provide examples of the entire tableau that the relief panels picture piece by piece. The oldest and most famous example of the Taima mandala was originally a silk tapestry imported from China in the eighth century, but after repeated restorations, only fragments of the original tapestry remain.64 Other extant versions of the Taima mandala were produced in or after the thirteenth century.65 The central portion of the Taima mandala pictures Amitābha’s Sukhāvatī in a complex, synoptic tableau. Although I shall be interested shortly in some of the smaller pictures around the border, for the moment I will describe only the central portion of the Taima mandala. In the center of the composition, Amitābha sits on a lotus, flanked by his two principal bodhisattvas, Avalokiteśvara and Mahāsthāmaprāpta. Around the central triad are the smaller figures of the assembly. In front of the assembly is a lotus pond; tiny figures can be seen sitting on some of the open lotuses, while others can be glimpsed through transparent lotuses that have not yet opened. On either side of the central assembly is an elaborately festooned tree. The decorations are divided into seven bands, each of which includes not only gems and flowers but also tiny palaces, some of which appear to house Buddha figures. Behind the assembly is an elaborately decorated palace complex with multiple stories. Inside the many rooms of this palace complex, one can make out various figures of Buddhas and bodhisattvas engaged in meditation, study, or ritual activity. A second, smaller palace complex floats in the sky on light rays that emerge from the heads of the central triad.66 With the exception of the fact that they do not depict this second floating palace, other Japanese representations of Sukhāvatī and paintings of Maitreya in Tus.ita reflect the same basic composition. In addition to the Taima mandala, there are two other relatively early Japanese Pure Land mandalas – the Chikō and the Shōkai. The Chikō mandala “is mentioned in the early ninth-century Nihon ryōiki (Miraculous Stories from the Japanese Tradition) and in the late tenth-century Nihon ōjō gokuraku ki (Japanese Records of Birth into Paradise).”67 Surviving examples of the Chikō mandala date from about the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries. According to legend, a monk received the Shōkai mandala in a vision in the tenth century, but the earliest extant version dates from the late Heian or early Kamakura period.68 Japanese paintings of Maitreya’s abode in Tus.ita survive from the fourteenth century,69 and like the Pure Land mandalas, are based on earlier Chinese prototypes.70 All compositions picture the central figure – Amitābha or Maitreya – in the midst of an assembly, the lotus pond in the foreground, an elaborate palace complex in the background, and trees on either side, which in the more detailed paintings are multi-tiered and/or feature miraculous “fruit” such as tiny palaces. In addition, in all of these compositions, there is a geometric design on the surface of the central platform that makes it appear as though the ground were covered with decorative tiles. Similar paintings of purified fields on cave walls and on a few surviving silk scrolls can also be found at Dunhuang on the Silk Road. Paintings depicting

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Amitābha in Sukhāvatī are particularly common. According to Elizabeth ten Grotenhuis: “Of the combined total of 406 main and side caves, sixty-two contain wall paintings of the Western Paradise.”71 But paintings of the purified fields of other Buddhas and advanced bodhisattvas also survive,72 including, for example, a ninth-century painting on silk of the purified field of Bhais.ajyaguru,73 the “Medicine Buddha.” In general, the Dunhuang compositions are quite similar to the Japanese Pure Land paintings: the figure who emanates the field sits on a throne at its center, surrounded by an assembly, there is a lotus pond in front, jewel trees on either side, and in the back, an ornately decorated palace with multiple stories and rooms. With the general visual features of purified fields in mind, it is now possible to show that long passages of the Gan.d.avyūha describe several of these basic features in great detail and that the architects of Borobudur selected these passages for particularly detailed treatment on the relief panels of the third and fourth galleries.

Images of the purified field on Borobudur As we have already seen, the Maitreya series on the main wall of the third gallery includes a sequence of 19 relief panels that picture the palace structure that is characteristic of a purified field. In this sequence, each panel is inspired by a word or two from the sentence of the Gan.d.avyūha that describes the adornments of Maitreya’s kūt.āgāra. In what follows, I will show that the third gallery balustrade includes a long sequence that pictures a miraculous lotus pond. The Samantabhadra series also includes a short sequence on the fourth gallery balustrade that depicts a miraculous, wish-granting tree. Collectively, these three sequences picture several of the key features of a purified field, creating a ritual space within which the religiously optimized environment generated by a Buddha or advanced bodhisattva in his sambhogakāya could be symbolically entered. In the Gan.d.avyūha, and on the relief panels, the kūt.āgāra is paradoxically both a representation of the entire purified field and an item in that field. Initially, the text suggests that the palace contains the entire purified field: Sudhana is able to see the wonders of the field only after he enters the kūt.āgāra. This is consistent with the prologue, in which the Buddha transforms the Jeta grove into a purified field. Before he enters his illuminating samādhi, the Buddha “was staying in Śrāvasti in a magnificently arrayed many-peaked dwelling (mahāvyūhe kūt.āgāre) in the garden of Anāthapin.d.ada in the Jeta grove, together with five thousand bodhisattvas led by the bodhisattvas Samantabhadra and Mañjuśrī.”74 When he enters his meditative concentration, the kūt.āgāra expands and becomes infinitely vast so as to accommodate not only the entire purified Jeta grove but also the limitless other buddhaks.etras throughout the cosmos that become coextensive with it.75 Just as the expanded mahāvyūha kūt.āgāra contains the purified Jeta grove, so Maitreya’s kūt.āgāra contains the purified field that he reveals to Sudhana. But once Sudhana is inside the palace, he sees the exterior of the kūt.āgāra itself as the first of several items characteristically found in a purified field. This paradoxical

The panorama of the purified field 91 moment is dramatized on the relief panels that picture Sudhana’s entry into the kūt.āgāra. As we have seen, Maitreya opens the door of the kūt.āgāra by snapping his fingers (III 4), then invites Sudhana to enter (III 5). Just after Sudhana does (III 6), he sees the kūt.āgāra within the kūt.āgāra and bows down to it (III 7). After an interlude of 12 panels (III 8-III 19)76 begins the sequence in which Sudhana sees the adornments of the palace (III 20-III 39). Although the relief panels that picture the adornments of the kūt.āgāra are located more prominently on the main wall of the third gallery, two other sequences, located on the balustrades of the third and fourth galleries, also picture standard features of a purified buddha-field. The first and by far the longer sequence pictures a lotus pond in which various sorts of living beings – human, divine, and semi-divine – emerge miraculously from the lotuses. As we have seen, a lotus pond is a standard feature of a purified field. The lotuses that grow in these ponds are remarkable not only for their extraordinary beauty but also because they are the pure “wombs” from which beings are born into the purified field.77 Even though the lotus pond in a purified field is crystal clear and has golden sand at the bottom rather than mud, the lotuses still retain their standard symbolic resonance as flowers that emerge unstained from the mire of sam . sāra into the purity of enlightenment. When the lotuses open to “give birth,” the beings who emerge from them into the purified field are, if not fully awakened, at least assured of becoming fully awakened in their new, thoroughly favorable environment. According to the Larger Sukhāvatī-vyūha: those who . . . are free of doubt, who have cut through uncertainty, and who plant roots of merit in order to be reborn in the Land of Bliss, and trust in the unimpeded knowledge of blessed buddhas, believe in it, and are committed to it, they are reborn miraculously to appear here [in Sukhāvatī] sitting crosslegged in open lotus flowers.78 In keeping with Schopen’s argument that rebirth in Sukhāvatī became a goal for Mahāyāna Buddhists in India who did not worship Amitābha exclusively or even primarily, one finds a similar account of rebirth in Sukhāvatī in the Sūtra on the Merits of the Fundamental Vows of the Master of Healing, the Lapis Lazuli Radiance Tathāgatha, which was translated into Chinese in the seventh century by Xuanzang.79 The relevant passage says that for people who have heard the dharma, but are not quite established in it, hearing the name of the Buddha Bhais.ajyarāja will ensure that: “In that [Western] realm, they will be spontaneously reborn in multicolored jeweled flowers.”80 According to the Larger Sukhāvatī-vyūha, those who are free of doubt are engendered in lotuses that bloom quickly so that the beings emerge from their flowery wombs into the purified field where they can see the Buddha, hear the dharma, and engage in bodhisattva practices. However, those “who entertain doubts about rebirth in the Land of Bliss, but who in spite of their doubts plant the roots of merit, they will dwell inside the calyx.”81 That is, they are engendered in lotuses that do not open, so that they are imprisoned inside the flowers until such time as “their

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previous transgressions have been exhausted,”82 and they can leave the calyx. Life inside the calyx of a lotus is not unpleasant – in fact, the beings who dwell there live in fabulous dwellings and desport themselves like the gods of the heavens of sam . sāra. But they “are deprived of seeing the buddhas, hearing the Dharma, seeing bodhisattvas, speaking about and ascertaining the Dharma, and practicing any of the best virtues taught in the Dharma.”83 Thus, rebirth in the calyx is a very mild sort of purgatory in which the punishment for past transgressions – here, mainly doubt – is that one must wait around in heavenly circumstances until one’s bad karma is exhausted and one can finally experience the profound joy of participating in the assembly in the purified field. The Guan-jing elaborates on this theme in a long passage that explains in detail how long various “grades” of people must wait for their lotuses to open. The lowest of the low are imprisoned in their lotuses, unable to see the purified field or pursue awakening, for 12 greater kalpas.84 In the Taima mandala representation of Sukhāvatī, the lotus pond is a prominent feature of the foreground, located in front of the Buddha’s throne. As we noted, tiny figures can be seen on open lotuses, and other figures can be seen through the transparent petals of flowers that have not yet opened.85 According to Xuanzang, there is a similar lotus pond in Maitreya’s abode in Tus.ita heaven. On his travels through India, he identifies a certain grove in Ayodhya as the place “where Vasubandhu Bodhisattva descended from the Tushita Heaven and beheld Asanga Bodhisattva.”86 To explain the religious significance of the place, . Xuanzang relates a story about the Yogācāra luminary Asanga, his brother Vasubandhu, and his disciple Buddhasim . ha. All three engage in practices designed to lead to rebirth in Tus.ita “so as to enjoy the presence of Maitreya after death.”87 They make a pact that whoever dies and achieves rebirth in Tus.ita first should come down from the heaven and explain the experience to the other two. Buddhasim . ha dies, but sends no word for three years. Vasubandhu then dies, and nothing is heard from him for six months. Just as the critics of the trio are beginning to mock them, . Vasubandhu descends miraculously in a heavenly body and appears to Asanga. . Asanga asks, essentially, “What took you so long?” Vasubandhu replies: At the time of my death I went to the Tushita heaven, to the inner assembly of Maitreya, and was there born in a lotus flower. On the flower presently opening, Maitreya, in laudatory terms, addressed me, saying, “Welcome! thou vastly learned one! welcome . . ..” I then paid him my respects by moving round his person, and then directly came here to communicate my mode of life.88 It is not entirely clear from the translation whether the six-month delay is due to the fact that Vasubandhu’s flower does not open immediately, or to some discrepancy between heavenly and earthly time. In any case, what is clear is that once the flower opens, Vasubandhu is able to see Maitreya face to face, hear him speak, and engage in the meritorious practice of circumambulating him. But when . Asanga inquires about Buddhasim . ha, Vasubandhu reports that the disciple had not been nearly as fortunate. He says: “As I was going round Maitreya I saw

The panorama of the purified field 93 Buddhasimha among the outside crowd, immersed in pleasure and merriment. He exchanged no look with me; how then can you expect him to come to you to communicate his condition?”89 Because outer Tus.ita is a heavenly realm in sam . sāra, Buddhasim ha’s condition is identical to the condition of a person who dwells in . the calyx of a lotus in Sukhāvatī, with one very important exception. The person who dwells in the calyx is assured that when the flower opens, he will emerge into the purified field and achieve awakening in that birth. Buddhasim . ha is not assured of entering the inner assembly and seeing Maitreya in the purified part of Tus.ita, and he may therefore be reborn in considerably less fortunate circumstances when he has exhausted his merit in the enjoyment of heavenly pleasures. According to the Gan.d.avyūha, Sudhana sees a miraculous lotus pond while he is inside Maitreya’s kūt.āgāra. In the pond grow fantastically large and colorful lotuses, in which he sees arrays of various types of human, divine, and mythical beings. The sentence that describes the lotus pond has the same basic structure as the sentence that describes the adornments of the palace: it is primarily a long string of nouns that name specific parts of the visionary panorama that Sudhana sees. It reads: And in those lotus ponds, he saw innumerable blue, red, and white gem-like lotuses, as well as lilies, growing. Some measured a cubit across, some measured an armspan, and some were the size of wagon wheels. And in them, he saw arrays of various forms. That is to say, he saw forms of women, men, boys, girls, Indra, Brahma, world guardians, gods, nāgas, yaks.as, gandharvas, asuras, garud.as, kinnaras, mahoragas, śrāvakas, pratyekabuddhas, and bodhisattvas – bodies in the form and shape of [every type of being in] all worlds, having all sorts of outward appearances, joining their palms and prostrating their bodies in respect.90 Although the passage does not say that the various sorts of beings are born from the lotuses, it does say that they appear in them, and that they are bowing as though they are greeting and worshipping a Buddha or multiple Buddhas. On Borobudur, this sentence is pictured on no fewer than 18 relief panels located on the third gallery balustrade (III B 33–50).91 As in the series that pictures the adornments of the kūt.āgāra, a separate relief panel is devoted to nearly each item listed in the sentence. The panels share the same general composition. On the right is the lotus pond from which several lotuses rise. On the open blooms, one type of figure listed in the sentence is pictured either sitting or standing. On the left are Sudhana and his retinue, while Maitreya usually appears between them and the pond. The bodhisattva gestures at the lotus pond, directing Sudhana’s attention to it. A few examples will suffice to demonstrate that in this series, nearly every type of being mentioned in the sentence is depicted on a separate panel. On III B 33, Maitreya sits on a lotus throne in a building at the center of the composition. Sudhana stands to the left of the building while most of his entourage sits. The lotus pond is pictured on the right-hand side of the composition, and despite the fact that

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the panel is broken near the top, it is clear that at least one of the figures sitting on the lotuses is a woman. This shows that, unlike Sukhāvatī, the purified field pictured here does not exclude women. Another figure seated on a lotus in this scene appears to be male; if this is the case, then the panel pictures two words of the sentence – “women” and “men.” The following relief panel (III B 34) depicts children standing on open lotuses in the pond. Here, too, the panel probably depicts two words of the sentence – “boys” and “girls” (Figure 3.6). But nearly all of the other panels in the series clearly picture a single type of being listed in the sentence. For example, III B 38b shows nāgas seated on the lotuses in the pond. These beings are clearly identifiable on the panels of Borobudur because multiple snakes sprout from their heads. On III B 40, we see gandharvas, or heavenly musicians, seated on the lotus flowers, playing various musical instruments. One more standard feature of a purified field – a miraculous tree – is depicted on the balustrade of the fourth gallery, in the series of relief panels that pictures Sudhana’s visit to Samantabhadra. Although the series provides weaker support for my argument regarding visualization meditation, it is still worth mentioning here for two reasons. First, the series pictures a passage of the Gan.d.avyūha that occurs after Sudhana has left Maitreya’s kūt.āgāra, which begins to suggest that imagery associated with the purified fields is not limited to the Maitreya series, but occurs thereafter as well. This is consistent with the logic of the Mahāyāna path as it is materially instantiated by the gallery walkways: once Sudhana (and by implication, the devotee at Borobudur) has reached the level at which he can perceive the purified field, he retains and develops that capacity as he moves onward and upward. Second, the tree pictured in the series appears to bear miraculous “fruit” in the form of standard devotional offerings such as lengths of cloth for robes. Thus the tree seems to be a “wishing tree” that unites two aspects of the purified field that are discussed separately in the Larger Sukhāvatīvyūha: the jewelled trees made of multiple precious substances and the fact that whatever the

Figure 3.6 Children born from lotuses (III B 34). Photograph by John C. Huntington, Courtesy of the Huntington Photographic Archive at The Ohio State University.

The panorama of the purified field 95 inhabitants of the field desire appears as soon as they think of it.92 Because the tree produces items often offered as pūjā, one might hypothesize that its function is to make it easier for bodhisattvas in the purified field to practice the perfection of generosity by making offerings. The three panels in question depict trees either closely associated with or actually bearing various adornments (IV B 73–5). On IV B 73, numerous braziers burn with incense under a large tree in the center of the panel. The next scene is divided into two half-panels that bookend a stairway door (IV B 74a and b). Each halfpanel depicts one half of a tree that miraculously produces lengths of cloth. On IV B 75, a miraculous tree produces as its “fruit” drums, flutes, and other musical instruments. Bosch explains that the manuscripts he consulted contain no passage that provides a completely satisfactory match for this sequence of relief panels, and I have not been able to improve on his identifications.93 The best textual match for these relief panels contains no reference to a miraculous tree that produces musical instruments. It does, however, contain the phrase “fragrant trees budding with inexhaustible aromatic powders and oils,” which could easily have inspired the design of IV B 73. The same passage then mentions “clouds of all kinds of cloth,” but it does not say that the cloth is produced by a wish-fulfilling tree. Whether or not this particular Gan.d.avyūha passage inspired the compositions, the panels picture wish-fulfilling trees that are either associated with or produce as their “fruit” items that are present in abundance in purified fields such as Sukhāvatī.94 Fragrances, music, and robes are things that the inhabitants of a purified field might wish to use themselves. They are also things that they might wish for in order to offer them to the Buddha who manifests the field. Thus in the vow that establishes the presence of vast quantities of perfume and incense in Sukhāvatī, Dharmākara specifies that the fragrant items should be “fit for the worship of bodhisattvas and Tathāgathas.”95 As I will show in the next chapter, it is particularly appropriate that wish-fulfilling trees that produce offerings as desired should be pictured on the relief panels devoted to Sudhana’s visit to Samantabhadra. While this is not the place for a full discussion of the issue, it must be noted at this point that although the relief panels of the third and fourth galleries do picture the principal environmental features of the purified field, it is not entirely clear whether they picture what one might most expect to see: the central Buddha or advanced bodhisattva who emanates the field. Even the fact that there is room for doubt strikes one as odd. In the Taima mandala and related compositions, Amitābha appears prominently at the center of the field, seated on an elaborate throne, flanked by his two principal attendants, and surrounded by an assembly. The entire composition is so focused on Amitābha that even if one merely glances at the mandala, it would be hard to miss him. One cannot say the same for the relief panels of Borobudur. If the central figure is pictured at all, then he is depicted in a different way. It is necessary to say “if” because even to a certain extent in the Gan.d.avyūha, but especially on the monument, it is not straightforwardly clear just who emanates the purified field inside the kūt.āgāra. On the one hand, both in the text and on Borobudur, the entire vision is the teaching of the bodhisattva Maitreya: he reveals the purified field to Sudhana and

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his magical power sustains the vision. One might begin, then, with the hypothesis that it is Maitreya who emanates the field and is its central figure. Although the Gan.d.avyūha does not say that the interior of the kūt.āgāra is Maitreya’s purified field in Tus.ita heaven, the architects of Borobudur appear to have designed the galleries to suggest visually that it is. As we saw in the last chapter, the Lalitavistara includes episodes from the life of the historical Buddha Śākyamuni that occur before he is born – that is, while he is still in the Tus.ita heaven prior to his conception. The text states that when he announced that he was about to take birth, he “established Maitreya Bodhisattva in the mansion of Tushita”96 and crowned him with his own diadem. He establishes Maitreya as the new teacher of the dharma in Tus.ita, saying: “when I am gone thou shalt instruct these good people in the absolutely perfect knowledge.”97 The coronation of Maitreya is pictured on the main wall of the first gallery (I a 6), leaving no doubt that Śailendra Buddhists understood Maitreya to be presiding over Tus.ita heaven in a palace. Moreover, the presentation of Maitreya in the Lalitavistara series of panels creates a context for the devotee’s later encounter with the Gan.d.avyūha series. In a ritual circumambulation of the galleries, the devotee arrives at the kūt.āgāra, as it were, having been freshly reminded that Maitreya resides in a palace in Tus.ita heaven. The first Gan.d.avyūha panel that pictures Maitreya shows him inside the kūt.āgāra seated on a lion throne; the palace is surrounded by three rows of gods and semi-divine beings, including gandharvas, a nāga, and a garud.a, among others, who attend to Maitreya (II 128). Although the composition is not precisely the same, it is similar to the very first panel of the Lalitavistara series, which depicts Śakyamuni presiding over Tus.ita before the coronation of Maitreya (I a 1). In this panel, Śakyamuni is seated in a palace in the center of the composition, teaching a small group of gods or bodhisattvas who are inside the palace with him. Outside, there are two rows of beings, including gods who attend to Śākyamuni and gandharvas who play their heavenly instruments. Given this visual and conceptual preparation, the natural interpretation is that the kūt.āgāra is Maitreya’s palace and the adornments of its interior are the purified field at the center of Tus.ita. On this interpretation, the relief panels do picture the central figure – Maitreya – in most of the compositions: Sudhana does see Maitreya before, during, and after his vision in the kūt.āgāra. He even sees Maitreya on a throne in the purified field, but the image of the throne on Borobudur is considerably less conspicuous than it is in the Taima mandala and related compositions. The panel I have just discussed (II 128) is one of only a few Gan.d.avyūha panels that could be interpreted as picturing Maitreya in Tus.ita, and of those few, it is the most visually prominent. Located on the second gallery main wall, it is larger than the others, which are on the fourth gallery balustrade. It is also more naturally positioned for contemplation during the performance of the pradaks.in.ā, and as the last panel on the second gallery main wall, might have attracted special attention from devotees preparing to ascend to the third gallery. Even so, the panel does not “place” Maitreya unambiguously at the center of the vision of the purified field because the vision has not yet begun. This panel occurs just after Sudhana arrives at the kūt.āgāra and before Maitreya opens it and invites him to see the wonders inside. Indeed,

The panorama of the purified field 97 the panel seems to suggest that although the viewer can see Maitreya inside the palace, Sudhana cannot. The antepenultimate relief panel on the second gallery main wall (II 126) depicts Sudhana’s arrival at the kūt.āgāra and his initial gesture of reverence. The next panel (II 127) shows Sudhana prostrating himself before the building. On these panels, Maitreya is not depicted: the kūt.āgāra is completely closed, offering no view of its interior. The last panel of the series (II 128) does depict the interior of the kūt.āgāra, but does not picture Sudhana – presumably because he cannot see inside until Maitreya has snapped his fingers to open the doors. The composition seems to be a “cutaway” scene in which the practitioner at Borobudur can see what is still invisible to Sudhana. In the following scenes on the third gallery main wall, Maitreya appears outside the still-closed palace where Sudhana can see and worship him. This is not to suggest that Sudhana does not have soteriologically significant visions of Maitreya inside the kūt.āgāra; he certainly does. But in these visions, Maitreya is not statically seated on a throne at the center of the purified field, as he is in paintings of Tus.ita that echo the composition of the Taima mandala. On the other hand, the Gan.d.avyūha text indicates that it is not Maitreya, but the Buddha Vairocana who is ultimately responsible for emanating the field. The full name of the palace is the Vairocana-vyūha-alam . kāra-garbho Mahākūt.āgāra, or the Great Many-Peaked Palace that Contains the Adornments of Vairocana’s Magical Array.98 According to the text, although Maitreya shows Sudhana the wonders inside the kūt.āgāra, it is ultimately Vairocana who produces them. But although the Buddha Vairocana is responsible for the purified field, he does not appear in it: nowhere in the text does it state that Sudhana had a direct vision of Vairocana inside the kūt.āgāra. This explains, in a fashion, why there is not a lengthy sequence of relief panels on Borobudur that picture the details of the throne and/or the luminous bodily appearance of the Buddha Vairocana. But it does not answer the more fundamental question of why the Gan.d.avyūha should describe a purified field in which one does not meet the Buddha who generates it face to face. In brief, Sudhana does not see Vairocana in the kūt.āgāra because Vairocana represents the Buddha not in his sambhogakāya, which can be seen by Mahāyāna bodhisattvas, but in his dharmakāya, which cannot. I will take up this issue and discuss the ways in which the architects of Borobudur visually deal with it in Chapter 5. For the moment, it will suffice to note that while the Buddha Vairocana is the ultimate source of the wonders within the kūt.āgāra, their proximate source is Maitreya. The text clearly states that it is “by the power of Maitreya”99 that Sudhana sees the miraculous display inside the kūt.āgāra and that the vision ceases when Maitreya relaxes his magical force by snapping his fingers a second time.100 In keeping with the mandala principle that structures the prologue of the Gan.d.avyūha, Maitreya here acts as Vairocana’s proxy. Because he has achieved the tenth and highest stage of the bodhisattva path, Maitreya has already incorporated many of the excellent qualities of a Buddha, and therefore participates to a high degree in the ultimately unified ground of Buddhahood, the dharmakāya that is designated as Vairocana. As a highly advanced nondual proxy of Vairocana, Maitreya is able to manifest the adornments of a purified field that partially

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constitute the Buddha’s sambhogakāya. One might also note that the mandala principle provides a doctrinal rationale by which the cult of Maitreya can be incorporated into a more comprehensive cosmological, metaphysical, and soteriological system centered on Vairocana. As Matthew Kapstein and Todd Lewis have argued, devotion to Amitābha and the wish to be reborn in Sukhāvatī are incorporated into later, synthetic forms of Himalayan Tantra.101 The architects of Borobudur designed a building that reflects a similarly synthetic approach to Maitreya devotion.

Panoramic art, ritual space, and buddhānusmr.ti as meditative craft There are two ways to think about the ontological status of the purified fields and two corresponding ways of thinking about how to enter them. In the first way, one considers the purified fields to be realms that exist prior to and independently of the beings who inhabit them. In this view, Sukhāvatī, for example, is conceived of as a physical place with a specific, if mythological, location in the West. To enter the field, one is reborn from the calyx of a lotus flower in the miraculous pond. That is to say, one dies, leaves behind the physical body that one has here, and takes on a new body there. Although the new body may be, like the bodies of the gods, considerably more subtle and splendid, it is still conceived of as a physical body with a specific location in space. There is ample evidence to show that some Mahāyāna Buddhists, including many Pure Land devotees, conceived of the purified fields in this first way. In the second way, which is characteristic of the Indian scholastic literature, one considers the purified fields to exist only in dependence on the mental states of those who “inhabit” them. In this view, which is part and parcel of the metaphysical explanation of the sambhogakāya, a purified field is the product of the Buddha’s exercise of upāya kauśalya, and thus “exists” in complete dependence on the soteriological status of the beings who benefit spiritually from it. Logically, if all beings were to become completely and perfectly enlightened Buddhas, then the purified fields would cease to exist. Every Buddha would still have the capacity to generate a purified field, but no Buddha would because there would be no one left to benefit from the exercise. The purified fields are only as real as the mental states of those who need them in order to take the next step on the path. As Griffiths puts it, “there are no mind-independent objects of any kind in them.”102 Thus, while the purified fields are understood on the metaphor of physical space, they are actually mental states with no independent physical location. “Rebirth” in such a field is also a metaphor: it is not a change from one body to another, but rather a change from one mental state to another. Although this sort of rebirth is metaphorical, its soteriological implications are real and profound. The change in one’s mental state that occurs upon “entry” into the purified field is understood to be a critical step toward the mental state of complete and perfect enlightenment that is intrinsic to Buddhahood. The Indian scholastic digests tend to insist that this is the only doctrinally defensible and soteriologically efficacious way to understand rebirth in a purified field.103

The panorama of the purified field 99 As Xuanzang’s biography shows, even sophisticated Mahāyāna Buddhists with impeccable scholastic credentials may have held both views, despite the apparent logical tension between them. On his deathbed, Xuanzang behaved in accord with the first view: As he lay dying, surrounded by his disciples, he dedicated the merit he had gained from his life’s work to ensure that those who were present around him would be reborn with Maitreya in Tus.ita Heaven. When one of his disciples asked him whether he thought that he would be reborn in Tus.ita himself, he answered, “Quite certain!”104 When faced with the pirates, however, Xuanzang behaved at least partially in accord with the second view. Clearly, he is still concerned with bodily rebirth because he begins by making a vow to be reborn in Tus.ita, to learn the dharma directly from Maitreya, and when he had achieved enlightenment, to return voluntarily to a human rebirth so as to teach the dharma to others, beginning with the pirates. But the meditative procedure that he employs results in a vision of “the palace in Tus.ita Heaven with Maitreya bodhisattva sitting on a dais made of marvelous gems and surrounded by heavenly beings.”105 For the duration of his meditation, Xuanzang seems to experience a metaphorical rebirth: in his mind, he is vividly “in” Tus.ita before the throne of Maitreya, not “in” this world on a sacrificial altar. Furthermore, when he emerges from his meditative state – when he is metaphorically reborn here – he is able to fulfill his vow to teach the pirates. After hearing his teaching on karmic retribution and the sufferings of beings in hell, the pirates confess their misdeeds, return the property they had just stolen, and take the five basic Buddhist precepts.106 Thus Xuanzang’s metaphorical rebirth has real soteriological effects both for him and for those around him – effects that could be sought at any time, not just at a moment when death seems imminent. With the hope of producing similar effects, some Mahāyāna Buddhists cultivated their visionary capacities by engaging in meditative visualizations classified as forms of buddhānusmr.ti. Although, as we have seen, there are forms of buddhānusmr.ti in which one remembers the exemplary deeds that the historical Buddha performed in the past, here we are concerned with a meditative practice in which one “recollects,” or calls vividly to mind a Buddha or advanced bodhisattva who is currently present in his sambhogakāya, which manifests in – or better, partly as – a purified field.107 To recollect the purified field, one meditatively constructs a mental picture of it that is so vivid in all its details that it becomes a virtual reality in which one feels oneself to be personally present. It is clear that this type of visualization meditation was not only known in India at the time Borobudur was built but was also the topic of doctrinal inquiry and debate. In the Indian scholastic literature, a discussion of this type of buddhānusmr.ti is usually the occasion for describing a purified field in the first place.108 But while the sutras lyrically describe the purified field and the commentarial literature more prosaically lists its features and analyzes the doctrinal implications of buddhānusmr.ti, I know of few Indian Mahāyāna texts that provide detailed

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procedural instructions for performing a meditative visualization of the purified field. The Pratyutpanna-buddha-sammukhāvasthita-samādhi-sūtra, or Samādhi of Direct Encounter with the Buddhas of the Present, does give instructions for visualizing the form of a Buddha as he would appear in the purified field – that is, with the 32 marks of a great being and so forth.109 But it does not provide detailed procedural instructions for visualizing the features of the purified environment, such as the palace or the lotus pond, that appear on the relief panels of Borobudur. At this point, then, the interpretive weight in the methodological approach to Borobudur shifts from the historical to the comparative. In the absence of an Indian “how-to manual,” to document the procedures for visualizing the environmental features of a purified field, it is necessary to turn to texts that are clearly part of the same historical trajectory, but which cannot be connected in any very direct way to the Gan.d.avyūha or its reception in India or Java. From a historical point of view, the architects of Borobudur are less likely to have consulted directly the texts and visual materials that are the best extant evidence of the procedures for meditative visualization of a purified field. Thus, although all of the materials under discussion are clearly part of the general historical development of Buddhist visualization meditation, the sources cited regarding the procedures for visualization meditation are not precisely historical “proof texts” for the interpretation of Borobudur. Rather, they provide points of comparison that are valuable as evidence to the degree that one can demonstrate a convincing “fit” with the relief panels in question. To demonstrate the fit, I have drawn primarily on three texts and one painting. The first two texts are particularly relevant for interpreting the Maitreya relief panels because they describe the goals of and procedures for visualizing Tus.ita Heaven. One is Huili’s account of Xuanzang’s Maitreya visualization, which I have already discussed at some length. The other is a seventh-century text composed by the Korean luminary Woˇnhyo, entitled Doctrinal Essentials of the Sūtra on Maitreya’s Rebirth Above [in Tus.ita Heaven], which is partially translated into English and excellently analyzed in an article by Alan Sponberg.110 Woˇnhyo’s text is particularly helpful because it describes, in nuce, the key element of the meditative procedure – that is, visually inspecting a mental image of the purified field. Although Sponberg cautions against presuming that Maitreya devotions were in all respects the same as Pure Land devotions, it is clear that both practices involved a similar type of visualization meditation.111 Thus, because it provides the most detailed exposition of visualization-inspection meditation, I have also drawn on a third text, the Guan Wuliangshoufo-jing (hereafter, Guan-jing), or Visualization Sūtra, which is a central text in East Asian forms of Pure Land. Although the text is often referred to by its reconstructed Sanskrit title, Amitāyur-dhyāna-sūtra, no Sanskrit version has ever been found and modern scholarship indicates that it was probably composed in Central Asia rather than in India.112 While the text introduces novel narrative episodes, the procedure that it outlines for visualizing the features of Sukhāvatī is clearly consistent with the detailed descriptions of the purified field in the Sukhāvatīvyūha sutras. The Taima mandala, the composition

The panorama of the purified field 101 of which is based on Shandao’s (Wade-Giles: Shan-tao) seventh-century commentary on the Guan-jing, provides an excellent example of how the inspection phase of visualization meditation can be referenced in a visual medium. In addition, I have made occasional reference to instructions for visualizing a purified field – particularly the palace – in later Tantric sādhanas, which according to Harrison describe forms of visualization meditation that clearly develop from Mahāyāna forms of buddhānusmr.ti.113 The corresponding visual representations are particularly helpful in that they convey the critical importance of visualizing the palace of the purified field. Woˇnhyo’s commentary points to the relationships among meditative visualization of the purified field in Tus.ita Heaven, rebirth there, and becoming firmly established on the bodhisattva path: This sūtra rightly takes the means and results of visualization and practice as its doctrinal themes, while having as its intention to cause beings to be born in [Tus.ita] Heaven, there to be forever without relapse [from the bodhisattva path].114 He later explains that “rebirth” can occur in three different ways, depending on the “grade” of the practitioner and the type of practice s/he undertakes. The highest grade of practitioner achieves mind-based rebirth by engaging in visualization meditation and/or meditative confession. As Woˇnhyo puts it, these practitioners are “those who either cultivate the samādhi of Buddha visualization or who take repentance as their method of practice. In their present body they will succeed in seeing Maitreya.”115 As Sponberg points out, the main advantage of this procedure is that it allows the practitioner to see Maitreya and to become firmly established on the bodhisattva path sooner. The middle grade of people, by engaging in visualization and the practice of bodhisattva virtues, achieve bodily rebirth in Tus.ita in their next life. The lowest grade do not engage in visualization meditation but only in merit-making activities, and make a vow to see Maitreya when he is born here as the next Buddha. They are not reborn in Tus.ita at all, but will achieve liberation in this world by listening to Maitreya’s teachings at some point in the distant future.116 According to Woˇnhyo, then, both mind-based rebirth and bodily rebirth in Tus.ita require the practice of visualization meditation; the effect that is actually achieved depends on the merit and capacity of the practitioner. Having established the importance of visualization meditation, Woˇnhyo goes on to give a brief outline of the procedure for meditatively visualizing Tus.ita Heaven: Visualization here is of two kinds. The first is to visualize the majestic adornments (alam . kāra) of [Tus.ita] Heaven as the setting for rebirth, and the second is to visualize the superiority of receiving rebirth [there] as a bodhisattva. One concentrates one’s thoughts in a detailed visual examination and so this [technique] is called samādhi.117

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Woˇnhyo’s description of the first kind of visualization parallels the passage of the Gan.d.avyūha in which Sudhana sees the innumerable adornments (alam . kāra) of the kūt.āgāra. His description of the second kind, which, as Sponberg explains in a footnote, refers to visualizing oneself as actually present in Tus.ita,118 also harmonizes with Sudhana’s experience. As the Gan.d.avyūha states repeatedly, Sudhana perceives himself to be at the feet of Maitreya. Furthermore, the description of the lotus pond points to the auspiciousness of rebirth in the purified field. Woˇnhyo’s last comment is particularly telling; he emphasizes that the meditation involves “a detailed visual examination.” In the Gan.d.avyūha, the long sentences that describe the details of the palace and the lotus pond imply that Sudhana engages in just such an examination. In visualization meditation, the goal of visual inspection is to make the mental picture sharp, clear, vivid, and enduring “whether [one’s] eyes be shut or open.”119 To construct a mental picture this vivid, the practitioner builds up a complex whole by one part at a time. Beginning with the simplest elements of the purified field, such as the smooth and level ground,120 the practitioner concentrates on one constituent part at a time until that part appears before his mind’s eye so steadily and in such detail that it appears to be completely real. Part by part, detail by detail, the practitioner builds up a mental picture of the entire purified field. This procedure is considerably more involved than one might initially imagine because even the “simple,” beginning steps of the meditation demand an extraordinary capacity to envision myriads of details vividly and simultaneously. Consider, for example, the following passage from the Guan-jing, which describes (in part!) the procedure for visualizing the ground of Sukhāvatī: thou wilt see the ground consisting of lapis lazuli, transparent and shining both within and without. . . . Every side of the eight quarters consists of a hundred jewels, every jewel has a thousand rays, and every ray has eighty-four thousand colours which, when reflected in the ground of lapis lazuli, look like a thousand millions of suns, and it is difficult to see them all one by one. Over the surface of that ground of lapis lazuli there are stretched golden ropes intertwined crosswise; divisions are made by means of (strings of) seven jewels with every part clear and distinct. Each jewel has rays of five hundred colours which look like flowers or like the moon and stars. Lodged high up in the open sky these rays form a tower of rays, whose storeys and galleries are ten millions in number and built of a hundred jewels. Both sides of the tower have each a hundred millions of flowery banners furnished and decked with numberless musical instruments.121 In this passage, the meditative practitioner is instructed to visualize the ground, the reflections in it, its jewels, and the rays of those jewels in minute and exhaustive detail. The passage emphasizes the complexity of the picture to be envisioned by mathematically multiplying its details – eight quarters times one hundred jewels times one thousand rays times eighty-four thousand colors equals a mindboggling 67,200,000,000 colored rays. But even though the passage explicitly

The panorama of the purified field 103 says, “it is difficult to see them all one by one,” it is clear that this is the goal. One is to envision this complex scene “with every part clear and distinct.” As if this were not enough, this “elementary” phase of the visualization also demands that the practitioner envision a fantastically complicated palace made of jewel rays. Like the kūt.āgāra in the Gan.d.avyūha, this palace has multiple stories and rooms, and is adorned with myriads of jewels and banners. The kūt.āgāra is not ornamented with musical instruments, and it does have many adornments that are not mentioned in this passage on the palace of rays. But the similarities between the two should be quite clear: each palace is an elaborately detailed element of a meditatively visualized mental picture. In a fully realized vision, each detail of the picture remains so vivid as to be virtually real. This is the case whether the meditator mentally “zooms in” on one of the billions of colored rays, or “pulls back” to view the ground and palace of rays as a whole. In fact, zooming in to inspect minute details is a technique to produce the desired clarity in the mental image as a whole. It is partly to convey the importance of the zoom-in phase of the procedure that Julian F. Pas, in his seminal work on Shandao’s seventh-century commentary on the Guan-jing, expands the phrase “visualization meditation” to “visualization-inspection meditation.”122 The inspection, or zoom-in, phase of the procedure is repeated for each item until the practitioner is able to pull back and maintain an exquisitely detailed picture of the entire purified field of Sukhāvatī before the mind’s eye. The inspection phase of visualization meditation acknowledges that while we may think of seeing as an immediate grasping of the whole, visual perception actually occurs over time and involves at least short-term recollection and mental assembly. As E. H. Gombrich says, this is particularly the case when one encounters, perceives, and tries to understand a complex representational scene. “The reading of a picture happens in time, in fact it needs a very long time. . . . We do it, it seems, more or less as we read a page, by scanning it with our eyes.”123 He goes on to say that when we look at a picture: [W]e build it up in time and hold the bits and pieces we scan in readiness till they fall into place as an imaginable object or event, and it is this totality we perceive and check against the picture in front of us. Both in hearing a melody and in seeing a representation, what Bartlett called the “effort after meaning” leads to a scanning backward and forward in time and in space, the assignment of what might be called the appropriate serial orders which alone give coherence to the image.124 Our ordinary perceptual equipment does not allow us to grasp an entire complex image at once, but only to scan it, hold various impressions in mind, and assemble them into a coherent whole that only seems to appear immediately. The procedure for visualization-inspection meditation works with the perceptual equipment that we have: it acknowledges the processes of visual scanning and mental assembly in the production of visual understandings of complex pictures. Furthermore, the inspection phase acknowledges that what seems to be a clear image can in fact be rather vague: “What we feel we see is a large picture which

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is everywhere as clear in detail as the one favourite spot on which we concentrate our attention. Roughly speaking the area of clear perception includes less than one per cent of the total visual field.”125 In photographic terms, we lack a mental “wide-angle lens” that would automatically produce equal clarity over a whole panorama. Instead, as the early panoramic photographers did, we need first to produce smaller images that can be rendered with clarity given the lenses that we have, then piece the fragments together to form the whole. The inspection phase of visualization meditation produces these smaller images by taking each detail of the panorama in turn as the “one favourite spot” that becomes the focus of meditative attention. Once genuine clarity is achieved, the practitioner can piece the fragments together in a kind of meditative “image stitching.” Although one might begin by visualizing a two-dimensional picture “out there,” the goal is to construct a three-dimensional environment in which the practitioner is fully present, just as Sudhana is present in the visionary world of the kūt.āgāra. In his description of meditative visualizations connected with the Guhyasamaja Tantra, Thurman states: The mandala palace itself is made of diamond, gold, ruby, emerald, and sapphire. It is systematically built up as a square with four gates with intricately decorated arches and doors, with jewel pendants hanging from the eaves. . . . It is precise in its details. One must practice combining one-pointed concentration with artistic vividness until the building can be seen in every detail, and one experiences being within it, opening the doors, walking around, looking up at the ceiling and molding ornaments. . . . The palace has the radiance and glory of the jeweled lotuses, jeweled rays, and jeweled trees in the Land of Bliss Sutra, as it is a manifestation of the same beatific-body [sambhogakāya].126 In a two-dimensional palace-architecture mandala, this palace would be represented at the center of the picture in a plan – that is, schematically from the top. But a mandala palace may also be represented as a three-dimensional model. The three-dimensional Kalacakra mandala in the Potala Palace in Lhasa may be the most famous example, but models also exist of the palace at the center of the Avalokiteśvara mandala,127 the palace of the Bhais.ajya-guru mandala,128 and of Maitreya’s palace in Tus.ita.129 These three-dimensional mandala palaces provide even more complex and detailed models of the environment to be created through meditative image stitching. Thus, visualization meditation is what Mary Carruthers, in her work on medieval Christian monasticism, has characterized as a mnemonic craft.130 In buddhānusmr.ti, one carefully stitches together an image so vivid as to be a virtual reality: piece by piece, one puts oneself there. It is this aspect of buddhānusmr.ti that allows one to “recollect” that one is an inhabitant of the field and thus to achieve a mind-based rebirth. As one mentally assembles the panorama of the purified field, one also envisions oneself in it, re-membering oneself as a member of the assembly that is part of the very body of the sambhogakāya Buddha. As one meditatively enters the body of communal enjoyment, one also begins a process of intrapsychic

The panorama of the purified field 105 memorialization by which one transforms oneself into an advanced bodhisattva and eventually into a Buddha.131 In buddhānusmr.ti, one transforms oneself by incorporating the excellent qualities of the body one has entered. I argue that it is the inspection phase of the meditative procedure prior to image stitching that the word-by-word method of textual “illustration” seeks to articulate on the relief panels of Borobudur. The architects of Borobudur do not picture each word of the Gan.d.avyūha passage that describes the adornments of the kūt.āgāra because they want to stretch the text to occupy a predetermined amount of wall space. Rather, they want to emphasize the importance of visualizing each detail of the palace vividly. Each relief panel presents within its frame a separate alam . kāra of the kūt.āgāra, thereby directing the viewer’s attention to a particular visual detail. These panels are relatively large, and even at the steady pace of a ritual circumambulation (as opposed to a stop-and-go trip through a museum gallery) it takes some time to walk past all 19 panels in this series. The space itself therefore strongly encourages the viewer to acknowledge, or even to linger over, each visual detail of the kūt.āgāra. The other word-by-word sequences, such as the one that pictures the miraculous lotus pond, also recapitulate the inspection phase of the visualization procedure. The Taima mandala provides evidence that artistic renderings of visualization meditations sometimes tried to convey the general procedure for performing the meditation by breaking the whole picture up into smaller parts. Again, I am not suggesting here that there is any historical connection between the Taima mandala and Borobudur. I am simply pointing out that in various parts of the Buddhist world, and at roughly the same time, people who wanted to portray visualizations of purified fields decided to do so in parallel ways. Around the large central scene of the Taima mandala, which pictures Sukhāvatī as one unified vision, there are smaller scenes based on Shandao’s commentary on the Guan-jing.132 Some of these scenes are narrative; they portray the events in the life of Queen Vaidehī that lead her to wish for a vision of Sukhāvatī.133 But the 13 scenes that follow, which run from top to bottom along the right-hand side of the mandala, are not focused on events; rather, they show parts of the purified field in the order that the text says they are to be envisioned. In Japan, these scenes are collectively called the Jōgenzi, or Court of the (Thirteen) Meditational Concentrations (Figure 3.7).134 Similar scenes also appear around the edges of some of the Chinese T’ang dynasty paintings of Sukhāvatī found at Dunhuang.135 The second and third meditation scenes of the Jōgenzi picture the long passage of the Guan-jing quoted above, which explains how one is to visualize the lapis lazuli ground of Sukhāvatī and the palace of rays that arises from its criss-crossing network of jewels. The geometric pattern of the ground may be indicated in the second scene, which pictures a meditation on water that the meditator turns first into ice, and then into the lapis lazuli ground.136 Vertically through this scene runs a river, at the bottom of which “are some angled lines in the foreground where the river ought to continue, which represent ice cracks.”137 The third scene, however, does not continue this theme. Here, the ground of the purified field is represented as a platform that does not appear to have a geometrical pattern. This scene

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Figure 3.7 Jōgenzi detail of Taima mandala. Drawing by Richard Polt, reproduced by permission of Richard Polt.

focuses instead on the palace, picturing it on a cloud connected to the ground of Sukhāvatī by swirls that suggest the rays of light. The structure has multiple rooms and stories, and musical instruments and a banner float above it.138 These two scenes explicitly show a small part of the procedure described in the previously quoted passage from the Guan-jing by which the practitioner builds up a complete mental picture of the purified field. Each element of the purified field is pictured in its own frame, and, as on the relief panels of the third and fourth galleries, these

The panorama of the purified field 107 scenes are organized in space to indicate the successive steps of the visualizationinspection procedure, not successive events in a story. This pattern continues over the next three scenes, which present further elements of the larger tableau pictured in its entirety at the center of the composition. The fourth scene of the Jōgenzi pictures miraculous trees adorned with jewels, banners, and tiny palaces. The fifth scene pictures a rectangular lotus pond divided into eight compartments, each of which is surrounded by tiles. The sixth scene pictures a palace with multiple stories and rooms, within which tiny gods play music. Each of these scenes corresponds to a particular step in the procedure for visualizing Sukhāvatī given in the Guan-jing.139 When the practitioner completes all 13 steps correctly, a composite and vivid mental picture of Sukhāvatī like the one at the center of the Taima mandala will result. The main difference between the Jōgenzi scenes I have described and the wordby-word sequences of relief panels on the third and fourth galleries of Borobudur is that the Borobudur panels picture the visualization-inspection procedure in greater detail. Not only do the panels frame one element of the purified field separately from the next but they also further divide these elements into their constituent parts and frame these parts separately. One might say that the detailed depiction of the meditative procedure on Borobudur indicates a stronger emphasis on the inspection phase of visualization meditation. How, then, did Śailendra-era Buddhist practitioners regard these panels during the process of ritual circumambulation? Although in the absence of first-hand accounts it is impossible to be absolutely sure how various practitioners might have responded to them, the buddhānusmr.ti relief panels prioritize two general and potentially overlapping types of commemorative response. First, it is possible that qualified practitioners engaged in a walking version of visualization meditation during the performance of ritual circumambulation. In this case, the relief panels would provide a series of vividly rendered parts of the panorama while the practitioner’s response would be to engage in the meditative craft of internalizing the details and assembling them in a mental process of image stitching. The bodily practice of circumambulating images associated with the purified field would thus be joined with the meditative activity of cultivating mind-based rebirth in it. In this case, the practitioner would be using the ritual space in part to facilitate a “recollection” of the excellent qualities of the Buddha in his sambhogakāya, as they are manifested in the adornments of the purified field. Not only would he call these qualities to mind, but, according to Paul Harrison, he would also be engaged in a process of intrapsychic memorialization by which he would attempt to incorporate these qualities, creating an ever-greater “overlap” between himself and the sambhogakāya.140 Clearly, this sort of response would be possible only for those who had been educated not only in the imagery of the purified field but also in the procedure for visualization meditation. Although it is not impossible that some lay people would have been educated in this way, most members of this community of response would probably have been monks or nuns. Second, it is possible that people untrained in the techniques of buddhānusmr.ti might have engaged in a less meditative and more purely ritualistic form of

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commemoration. In this case, the responses would vary with the level of knowledge of the practitioner. It is quite possible that some Śailendra Buddhists had a general knowledge of the patterns of excellence associated with the sambhogakāya, derived from stories about or temple paintings of purified fields. They could then consciously commemorate the Buddha in his sambhogakāya during the performance of the ritual circumambulation by simply recognizing the relevant images without engaging in the meditative craft of imagining them vividly and stitching them together. Given that circumambulation is a form of action, or karma, it is even possible that people wholly ignorant of the purified fields might have unconsciously “commemorated” the sambhogakāya by ritually creating the seeds for future knowledge and attainment. In this case, the activity of circumambulation might be compared to the activity of turning a Tibetan prayer wheel: just as the devotee need not have any knowledge of the texts on or inside the wheel in order for the procedure of turning the wheel to be karmically effective, so a knowledge of the purified fields might not have been considered necessary in order for the ritual of circumambulation of the buddhānusmr.ti panels to be karmically effective.141 This sort of response would have been possible for anyone who cared to visit the monument and who knew enough to engage in the simple ritual practice of circumambulation. These two general possibilities are not mutually exclusive. Meditative practitioners would certainly also have derived karmic benefits from the ritual of circumambulation, while ritual celebrants might have contemplated the images in a less structured way. In either case, the upper galleries provided a ritual venue in which the mnemonic craft of buddhānusmr.ti could be symbolically enacted. By physically entering and navigating the monumental place in which the patterns of excellence associated with the sambhogakāya were bodied forth, the practitioner symbolically incorporated them, achieving a ritualized version of mind-based entry into the purified field. Having symbolically entered the purified field, the practitioner would be ritually constituted as one firmly established on the bodhisattva path and ready to undertake the next task: bodhisattva practices designed to benefit others and lead them toward enlightenment.

4

Pervading space Bodhisattva activity in the cosmic panorama

For a Bodhisattva, the ascent of wisdom terminates at the point of nirvān.a from whence the descent of compassion begins. The Bodhisattva is, therefore, characterized by two activities: “going up” or “ascending” and the other “coming down” or “descending.”1 Then he [Atiśa] went to Suvarn.advīpa and thoroughly studied for twelve years the practice of bodhicitta, both pran.idhāna and avatāra.2

On the third gallery of Borobudur, the ritual celebrant encounters the imagery of the purified field as it is revealed in Maitreya’s kūt.āgāra. By circumambulating the relevant segments of the third gallery, the practitioner performatively enters the purified field by symbolically enacting the meditative visualization procedure that gives access to it. At this point, then, the celebrant is ritually constituted as someone who has access to the purified field. One might think that this would be enough work for one ritual to do, since those who have access to a purified field are assured of achieving enlightenment quickly and easily. But at Borobudur, the ritual is clearly far from over at this point – the fourth gallery and the top of the monument remain. What, then, does the ritual circumambulation signify once the ritual celebrant has already symbolically entered the purified field? What is left to do? In the version of the path articulated in the visual rhetoric of Borobudur, the bodhisattva who has entered a purified field eventually acquires the ability to multilocate – that is, to generate multiple bodies so that he can be in several places at the same time. Without ever “leaving” the purified field, the bodhisattva generates multiple bodies with which he can either ascend or descend. To ascend, the bodhisattva generates multiple bodies with which he can worship the many sambhogakāya Buddhas who exist in purified fields throughout the cosmos. To descend, the bodhisattva generates multiple nirmān.akāyas adapted to the needs of various beings throughout the world system so that he can compassionately help them to achieve enlightenment. In both cases, the bodhisattva practices, among other things, the perfection of generosity. Toward the cosmic Buddhas, he practices devotional generosity, through which he earns vast stores of merit that can then be transferred. Toward sentient beings, he practices compassionate

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generosity in general by giving them whatever they need, and in particular, by teaching them the dharma. These are the bodhisattva practices that inform the design of many of the relief panels on galleries three and four. Although it is fairly clear from the relevant texts that one can cultivate both compassionate multilocation and devotional multilocation through the practice of visualization meditation, the texts themselves do not outline the meditative procedure for this kind of cultivation. To provide a point of comparison that helps to elucidate the function of the relief panels, I draw on Sangyé Gompa’s Public Explication, a Tibetan mind-training text that includes a visualization sequence that is strikingly similar to the visionary relief panels of galleries three and four. The comparison helps to suggest not only how the relief panels might have been used by practitioners during the performance of the pradaks.in.ā but also the order in which they might have been contemplated.

Compassionate multilocation: the manifestations of Maitreya In the Gan.d.avyūha, the ability to see a purified field is directly connected to the development of bodhicitta, the altruistic intention to liberate all sentient beings from sam . sāra and lead them to enlightenment. Leading others toward enlightenment also requires wisdom, but the passages that concern us here emphasize the importance of developing the “great compassion” (mahākārun.ā) that motivates one to work to save all sentient beings without exception. In the prologue of the Gan.d.avyūha, when the Buddha transforms the Jeta grove into a purified field, the bodhisattvas in the assembly perceive the miracle, but the disciples (śrāvakas; literally: “hearers”) who are gathered there do not. The text explains that they did not see the miracles of the Buddha because: they did not have that purity of the eye of knowledge whereby they could have seen the miracles of Buddha. . . . That knowledge did not belong to them. . . . Because . . . they had no thought of great compassion and had no pity for the beings of the world; they had accomplished what they had to do for themselves.3 Because they had not developed bodhicitta, they did not have the capacity to perceive the purified field or the many buddhas in their purified buddhaks.etras throughout the cosmos. As the text explicitly says, these things are “discernible only to the range of the vision of developed bodhisattvas, not to the range of the vision of hearers.”4 Analogously, the text emphasizes that before he enters the purified field of the kūt.āgāra, Sudhana has developed bodhicitta. When Sudhana first meets Maitreya, he asks the question to which the vision inside the kūt.āgāra is the eventual answer. He asks Maitreya to explain how to learn and carry out the practice of bodhisattvas, including how a bodhisattva “responds when called upon, rescues sentient beings, . . . [and] comforts and inspires people.”5 Maitreya praises him for having developed the determination for supreme perfect enlightenment for the salvation

Bodhisattva activity in the cosmic panorama 111 of sentient beings — that is, bodhicitta. He then goes on to explain the benefits of bodhicitta in a series of metaphors and similes that runs to twelve pages in translation. He opens by saying that bodhicitta is “the seed of all elements of buddhahood,” and thus the necessary beginning point of the Mahāyāna bodhisattva path proper. He closes the passage by comparing bodhicitta to the vajrāsana, or diamond seat, where all Buddhas achieve enlightenment: Just as the seat of the buddhas sitting on the site of enlightenment . . . cannot be supported by any spot on earth except . . . the adamantine center of the universe, in the same way the . . . power of the roots of goodness of bodhisattvas aspiring to perfect enlightenment . . . cannot be sustained by [any] mind other than the mind set on omniscience, the adamantine core of all vows and knowledge.6 Thus, from its very beginning until its culmination in the achievement of Buddhahood on the diamond seat, the heart of the bodhisattva path is bodhicitta. Only after Maitreya has finished praising Sudhana for having developed bodhicitta and finished explaining its benefits does he begin to answer Sudhana’s question about how to pursue the bodhisattva path. His answer is to invite Sudhana to enter the purified field inside the kūt.āgāra. Like the bodhisattvas in the Jeta grove assembly, Sudhana has developed bodhicitta and attained the “range of vision” that will allow him to perceive the purified field. Maitreya explains that once Sudhana enters the kūt.āgāra and sees its interior, he will then truly understand how to practice the path and perfect the bodhisattva virtues.7 How, then, do the visions that Maitreya reveals show Sudhana how to carry out the aspiration of bodhicitta? It is not immediately obvious what a bodhisattva might do to exercise compassion in the purified field. As we have seen, conditions in the purified field are already optimal. The beings in the purified field are not subject to rebirth in the lower realms – or, indeed, anywhere in sam . sāra – because they are assured of achieving full enlightenment and Buddhahood in their current lives in the purified field. They enjoy an existence that is free from want and hardship because everything they need is provided in great quantity and quality. Most importantly, their conditions are optimal for achieving enlightenment and Buddhahood because they enjoy the dharma together with the other members of the assembly around the Buddha or advanced bodhisattva who generates the field. In the purified field, one learns the dharma directly from a living, fully present Buddha that one can see face to face, and thus inspired, makes maximal progress on the path. Because the previous vows of the Buddha or advanced bodhisattva, made out of great compassion, have come to fruition in the form of the purified field, the needs of the beings there are already fully addressed: with respect to them, compassion has already been exercised to the maximal degree. How, then, can a bodhisattva in the assembly fulfill the altruistic intention to lead all sentient beings to a state of enlightenment? What is a bodhisattva to do? The Larger Sukhāvatīvyūha sūtra provides a partial answer. The text makes it clear that among the inhabitants of Sukhāvatī there are bodhisattvas who,

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motivated by bodhicitta, are intent on engaging in compassionate acts. In his twenty-first vow,8 Dharmākara establishes that anyone who is born in Sukhāvatī will achieve complete and perfect enlightenment in only one birth – that is, in their current birth in the purified field. But in order to “make room” for bodhisattvas who wish to benefit others, Dharmākara makes an exception to the one-birth rule of Sukhāvatī. The vow, with its exception, reads in part: Oh Lord, when I have attained awakening, if those beings who arise in that Buddha field [of mine] should not all be bound to [just] one birth before unsurpassed complete and perfect enlightenment – with the exception of the special vow[s] of those bodhisattvas, those great beings who have made great preparations, who have prepared to meet the needs of everyone, who are intent on the needs of all, who are intent on bringing the whole world9 to complete nirvana . . . – then let me not achieve unsurpassed complete perfect enlightenment.10 While it is not spelled out completely, the clear implication of the vow is that in order to fulfill their own vows to save all sentient beings, bodhisattvas in the purified field have to leave it and go wherever there are beings who need help. The fact that the bodhisattvas leave Sukhāvatī only because they have their own benevolent intentions and have thus made their own vows to save others makes it clear that any rebirth they take elsewhere will be voluntary. Dharmākara’s exception allows bodhisattvas who have developed bodhicitta to take rebirth in impure realms voluntarily in order to lead sentient beings in them to enlightenment and Buddhahood. As we saw in the previous chapter, rebirth into the purified field is generally discussed in two ways: either it is a physical rebirth in which one dies, leaves one’s current body, and takes on a new body in the purified field, or it is mind-based and achieved in the current body by means of visualization meditation. While the Sukhavatīvyūha does not explain just how bodhisattvas exit the purified field to take birth elsewhere, one might suppose that the same two models could apply. Either the bodhisattva in the purified field will die and be reborn physically elsewhere, or he will exit the purified field meditatively while remaining in his current body. Although the Sukhāvatīvyūha does not explicitly say which model the bodhisattva employs to achieve voluntary rebirth in sam . sāra, in the Gan.d.avyūha, bodhisattvas “exit” the purified field in a way that is clearly mind-based. In the prologue, the bodhisattvas of the assembly in the purified field of the transformed Jeta grove produce multiple nirmān.akāyas, with which they “descend” in order to serve the needs of sentient beings. To descend, they do not leave one body by dying, then enter another through rebirth; rather, they produce multiple nirmān.akāyas from the bodies that they already have. After having seen the Buddha’s miraculous display and thereby entered the purified field, the bodhisattvas experience great compassion (mahākarun.ā) and develop an “even greater capability to treat all beings beneficially.”11 At this point, the bodhisattvas emit from

Bodhisattva activity in the cosmic panorama 113 each of their pores innumerable rays of light, and from each ray of light, they issue forth (niścaranti) clouds of nirmān.akāyas (bodhisattvanirmān.ameghā).12 Even as they appear in multiple manifestations in the ordinary world, they also remain “in” the purified field of the Jeta grove.13 The bodhisattvas do not take rebirth in the conventional sense, nor are they limited to one body at a time. Rather, they take many rebirths at a time, all without dying or even moving, by exercising their miraculous power of multilocation. Out of their great compassion, and by using skillful means, the bodhisattvas produce bodies in various forms in order to lead various types of people toward enlightenment. In conformity with the needs and capacities of various people, the bodhisattvas appear as people pursuing various occupations, having various skills, belonging to different social classes, and living in communities of all sorts and sizes: [s]ome appeared in the form of mendicants, some in the form of priests, some in the forms of scholars, scientists, doctors, some in the form of merchants, some in the form of ascetics, some in the form of entertainers, some in the form of pietists, some in the form of bearers of all kinds of arts and crafts – they were seen to have come, in their various forms, to all villages, cities, towns, communities, districts, and nations.14 The emanations that the bodhisattvas in the Jeta grove manifest are perfectly adapted to address the needs of each target audience. They adapt not only their verbal mode of teaching, but also their physical appearances as necessary. With mastery of proper timing, proceeding according to the time, by modification of adapted forms and appearances, modifications of tone, language, deportment, situation, carrying out the practices of [bodhisattvas], . . . they were seen to have come.15 The text emphasizes that the bodhisattva persuades his audiences of the truth of the dharma in large part by generating an appropriate appearance. As Gómez points out, the bodhisattva can do this because he has developed miraculous powers (r.ddhi) – “specifically the power of vikurvan.a, that is, the capacity to effect, by sheer psychic power, the transformation, displacement or multiplication of the human body.”16 Because the bodhisattva’s use of this power is motivated by altruism, he literally shapes himself to the needs of others in order to benefit them by leading them toward enlightenment. By taking on an appearance that conforms to the expectations of his audience, the bodhisattva establishes a sort of visual community, a visual basis of agreement that facilitates persuasion. Thus we might say that the deployment of vikurvan.a is a skillful means designed to help persuade others to adopt habits and ideas conducive to enlightenment – it is visual rhetoric. According to the Daśabhūmika sūtra, bodhisattvas acquire the ability to project multiple nirmān.akāyas when they attain the first stage of the path,17 but they truly perfect the art of visual rhetoric and focus on its practice in the eighth stage:

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Bodhisattva activity in the cosmic panorama He [the eighth-stage bodhisattva] adapts and sustains his own body in accordance with the birth and the attainment of bodies of living beings in order to mature them. He also, having pervaded triple thousand great thousand worlds, produces his own body according to the knowledge of congruous appearance, in conformity with the varieties of birth of the living beings and in proportion to their various mental dispositions.18

Out of compassion, the eighth-stage bodhisattva can, using upāya kauśalya, produce a nirmān.akāya that has the exact appearance that will be most persuasive for his intended audience. Moreover, he can produce myriads of such bodies simultaneously, so as to pervade the universe with soteriologically efficacious, apparently real forms. The Daśabhūmika sūtra gives a long list of examples: In conformity with the variety of bodies (i.e. color, mark, form, length and width) and the variety of intentions and mental dispositions of living beings, so he shows in various places his own body respectively in adaptation to each assembly of Buddha’s realm. He appears as a color and form of a Śraman.a in the assembly of Śraman.as, of a Brāhman.a in the assembly of Brāhman.as, . . . of four great kings in the assembly of four great kings, of thirty-three gods in the assembly of thirty-three gods – thus of a Yama in the assembly of Yamas, of a Tus.ita in the assembly of Tus.itas, . . . of Evil One, of Brahman – until Akanis.t.ha. . . . Thus indeed, O son of the Conqueror, as long as there are various places of birth and locations of mental dispositions (character traits) of living beings in the inexpressible Buddha realms, he shows varieties of his own body respectively in adaptation to them.19 By the eighth stage of the path, the bodhisattva can assume any form that will be helpful to others and can appear with equal facility in all realms of the cosmos, from the lowest hells to the highest heavens. Using visual rhetoric, the bodhisattva generates nirmān.akāyas spontaneously, and in complete conformity to the needs of sentient beings. In the Gan.d.avyūha, immediately after he reveals the purified field inside the kūt.tāgāra, Maitreya then shows Sudhana how advanced bodhisattvas practice perfect visual rhetoric by generating nirmān.akāyas. As a tenth-stage bodhisattva, Maitreya has already acquired the capacities of a bodhisattva on the eighth stage of the path. Inside the kūt.āgāra, Sudhana is able to see that Maitreya manifests multiple nirmān.akāyas simultaneously in various realms of the cosmos. Each of these manifestations and its corresponding world realm appear inside a particular tower among the myriad towers of the kūt.āgāra. In one tower he saw Maitreya as a sovereign king . . . in another . . . as a world guardian . . . in another . . . as Indra, . . . In one tower he saw the underworld and saw Maitreya illumine the great hells with light and relieve the hellish pains of the beings in hell. In another tower he saw the ghost world and saw Maitreya giving much food and drink

Bodhisattva activity in the cosmic panorama 115 to the ghosts, relieving their hunger and thirst. In another tower he saw Maitreya guiding the beings in the animal realm. In one tower he saw Maitreya expounding the Teaching to world guardians in an assembly of celestial kings; in another he saw him in a group of chief gods of the thirty-three-fold heavens . . . [The whole passage is about two and a half pages long.]20 As the passage shows, Maitreya can assume various appearances – king, world guardian, Indra – in order to benefit sentient beings. As the beings in any particular world realm perceive them, Maitreya’s manifestations are actual living entities with an appearance perfectly suited to the expectations and capacities of those beings. As Sudhana, with the help of Maitreya, perceives them, Maitreya’s manifestations are illusory, generated by upāya kauśalya to benefit all sorts of beings and lead them toward enlightenment. With the illusory bodies that he generates, Maitreya generously provides whatever sentient beings need. He provides relief for the hell beings, food and drink for the hungry ghosts, and, most of all, he provides Buddhist teachings that are perfectly adapted to the needs and capacities of the various beings to whom he appears. Maitreya’s generosity with the dharma is particularly important, for it is through understanding and practice of the dharma that all of the various sentient beings can achieve liberation and enlightenment. In some cases, the condition of sentient beings requires the bodhisattva to focus on relieving their suffering, which is so great that it occupies their entire attention and prevents them from being able to listen to the teachings. But wherever possible, the bodhisattva teaches the dharma, which both relieves suffering and gives sentient beings the tools with which to begin forging their own happiness and that of others. On Borobudur, as many as 36 relief panels on the third gallery main wall (III 40?–III 75) picture Maitreya as he pervades the world system with nirmān.akāyas.21 In this series, each panel depicts the bodhisattva, who can be clearly identified by the stupa in his headgear, as he manifests a form perfectly adapted to teach a particular class of beings who dwell in a particular part of the world system. On one panel Maitreya appears for the benefit of beings in hell (III 69), on another for the benefit of hungry ghosts (III 70), and on another for the benefit of animals (III 71) (Figure 4.1). He appears as the gods Indra (III 61) and Brahma (III 62). He also appears in the Yāma, Tus.ita, Nirmān.arati, and Paranirmitavaśavartin heavens in order to teach the dharma to the gods and goddesses who live in these realms (III 63–6). He appears on earth as, among other things, an ascetic (III 47) and a cakravartin, or world-conquering monarch (III 59). In each scene, Sudhana also appears and observes Maitreya’s activities. Just as the Gan.d.avyūha text linguistically emphasizes Maitreya’s generosity with the dharma, the relief panels emphasize it visually. On many of the relief panels, Maitreya displays the vitarka mudrā, a gesture that symbolizes dharma instruction. In the Lalitavistara series, on the panel that pictures the historical Buddha as he teaches the First Sermon, the Buddha almost certainly displays the same gesture. Although the panel is damaged and part of the right arm of the

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Figure 4.1 Maitreya among the animals (III 71). Photograph by John C. Huntington, Courtesy of the Huntington Photographic Archive at The Ohio State University.

Buddha is missing, what remains is consistent with the vitarka mudrā, as is the fact that the Buddha’s left hand rests in his lap (I a 120, damaged). In the Maitreya series, then, the bodhisattva’s teaching activities in the various realms are visually homologized to that most celebrated of teachings – the occasion on which the Buddha first turns the wheel of the dharma. In the Gan.d.avyūha, Maitreya not only pervades space, he also pervades time. In the kūt.āgāra, Sudhana has a simultaneous vision of Maitreya’s actions in the past, present, and future. In one tower that is larger than the rest, Sudhana sees Maitreya carrying out all of the stereotypical acts of a Buddha’s career that, according to the temporal model of salvation, he will exhibit in the future. He sees Maitreya being born in the world, taking his first seven steps, living a luxurious life as a prince, setting out for enlightenment, overcoming Māra, teaching the First Sermon, etc.22 These are, of course, the principal acts of Śākyamuni’s career as they occur serially in the Lalitavistara. In the kūt.āgāra, each of Maitreya’s acts occurs separately, but all appear simultaneously so that Sudhana can see Maitreya’s entire “future” career in the present. In another passage, the text says that Sudhana can also see Maitreya’s entire “past” career, during which he performed virtuous deeds over the course of a long series of lives.23 The Gan.d.avyūha does not precisely tell a series of stories about Maitreya’s previous lives; rather, it includes a long sentence much like the one that describes the adornments of the palace, in which the central virtuous deed of any given life is expressed in a phrase. Like the adornments, these life events are all things that Sudhana sees in great detail as part of a single visionary experience. Maitreya’s acts occur separately but simultaneously, collapsing eons of meritorious conduct into a momentless moment, spreading out his “past” career in a spatial array so that Sudhana can see it in its entirety in the present.

Bodhisattva activity in the cosmic panorama 117 On Borobudur, the passage that lists Maitreya’s “past” deeds is pictured on a long series of relief panels that begins on the balustrade of the third gallery and continues on the balustrade of the fourth (III B 71–IV B 36).24 In several scenes, Maitreya practices generosity, giving away not only material possessions and social status but also various parts of his own body, including his head (III B 71). In two successive scenes, just as the historical Buddha did in his life as Vessantara, Maitreya gives away his wife and children (III B 84–5). In other scenes, Maitreya performs the generous deeds of a royal figure: he gives away the five jewels of a cakravartin (IV B 1), his throne (IV B 2), and a woman from his harem (IV B 3). He also distributes medicines (IV B 19), liberates slaves (IV B 21), and, as a miraculous flying horse like Bālāha, he rescues shipwrecked merchants from bloodthirsty demonesses (IV B 22).25 Although the scenes that picture Maitreya’s “past” lives are, in terms of their subject matter and their compositional form, nearly identical to the narrative relief panels on the lower galleries that picture scenes from jātaka and avadāna tales, it is clear that in the context of Sudhana’s vision in the purified field, they are not to be understood precisely as a temporal sequence. With respect to their subject matter, they should technically be considered to be avadānas because they depict the past virtuous deeds of someone other than the historical Buddha. But in the same way that the future deeds of Maitreya parallel those of the historical Buddha, some of his past deeds also seem to be modeled on jātaka tales such as the story of Vessantara. With respect to their formal composition, the panels are narrative in that they portray figures interacting with one another, rather than facing the viewer. With perhaps two exceptions, the panels in this series are monoscenic: each individual relief panel depicts a “snapshot” of the one critical moment in a past life at which Maitreya performed its defining virtuous deed. If one views these scenes in accord with the temporal model of salvation, then they form a narrative sequence because they picture events from the successive lives of the “same” person, or same karmic continuum. But the fact that Maitreya can “pervade” past times, making himself present in the past and past in the present, indicates that these scenes are not to be understood in light of the temporal model of salvation, but as a “shortcircuiting” of time itself that makes it theoretically possible to do eons worth of virtuous deeds in no time at all. By showing that the advanced bodhisattva can multilocate in time as well as in space, Maitreya demonstrates that at a certain point, the entire project of salvation becomes experientially nonsequential. Employing their own form of visual rhetoric, the architects of Borobudur use two techniques to indicate that they consider compassionate multilocation to be one of the most important functions of an advanced bodhisattva. First, once again, the designers have selected certain sentences of the Gan.d.avyūha and amplified their importance by picturing them in great detail. In the world-pervasion sequence, as in the sequences that picture the adornments of the kūt.āgāra and the various types of beings emerging from the lotus pond, each relief panel depicts a scene that is inspired by a single word or short phrase of the text. And like those sequences, this one is not narrative – the sequence of scenes does not indicate a temporal sequence of events. Rather, each panel pictures one part of Sudhana’s larger vision, in which

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Maitreya simultaneously produces multiple bodies in order to appear in various realms and help various types of sentient beings all at the same time. Second, the architects devote an extraordinary amount of wall space to the world-pervasion and time-pervasion sequences. The sequence that pictures Maitreya’s “past” lives occupies as many as 54 relief panels. The sequence that depicts his pervasion of the world system occupies nearly half of the third gallery main wall – 35 or 36 out of 88 panels (III 40?–III 75). Indeed, this is a conservative estimate. The remainder of the relief panels on the third gallery main wall save one (III 76–87) all picture Maitreya as he manifests himself so as to teach in various assemblies of bodhisattvas. According to the trikāya theory as it is developed after the Gan.d.avyūha was composed, these manifestations might not be considered to be nirmān.akāyas because the assemblies might be composed of bodhisattvas advanced enough to benefit more from a sambhogakāya manifestation. But both types of bodies are “form bodies” (rūpakāya) that are by definition manifested for the benefit of others, and thus they logically form one series, with the more advanced manifestations at the end of the series. If one counts the panels on which Maitreya appears to the bodhisattvas as part of the world-pervasion sequence, then with the sole exception of the last panel, all of the reliefs on the third gallery main wall from III 40 onward picture this theme. The visual argument is that the primary purpose for gaining access to a purified field is to develop the ability to generate nirmān.akāyas so as to act as the Buddha’s proxy in the impure realms. As the Gan.d.avyūha makes clear, Maitreya invites Sudhana into the kūt.āgāra not only to learn that advanced bodhisattvas can multilocate but also to learn how to do it himself: he offers a model for advanced bodhisattva conduct. Having seen the wonders of the kūt.āgāra, Sudhana will “know how to learn the practice of bodhisattvas.”26 But the Gan.d.avyūha does not explain the procedure for cultivating the ability to multilocate any more than it outlines the procedure for visualizing the environmental features of a purified field. Rather, to ensure that Sudhana will be able to perceive his activity properly, Maitreya simply grants him the power to multilocate so that he will be able to observe all of the manifestations simultaneously.27 Yet the fact that the pervasion sequences occur in the purified field as part of a clearly visionary experience strongly suggests that the procedure would be a type of meditative visualization. If mind-based entry into the purified field is accomplished through visualization meditation, then mind-based exit from it could logically be accomplished through the same means. The Amitāyus-sūtropadeśa helps to establish that one can engage in the practice of generating nirmān.akāyas, at least at the aspirational level, through visualization meditation. The text purports to be a commentary on the Sukhāvatīvyūha and is attributed to the fourth-century Indian Yogācāra master Vasubandhu.28 Although it is possible that this text was composed originally in India, it is extant only in Chinese and its attribution to Vasubandhu is possibly spurious. Thus, we cannot be sure whether the text was known in India; however, it does demonstrate that at least in some parts of the Buddhist world, visualization meditation was used to generate nirmān.akāyas. Julian Pas summarizes a crucial part of the text in the following way:

Bodhisattva activity in the cosmic panorama 119 To achieve his aim of rebirth in Sukhavati and of seeing Amita, the devotee is urged to cultivate five kinds (methods) of nien, or anusmriti (mindfulness): 1) worship; 2) praise; 3) resolution, or rather, wish for rebirth; 4) visualizationinspection or investigation; and 5) transfer of merit. The first four are for self-benefit and are also called methods for realizing the merits of entering Sukhavati, whereas the fifth is for benefiting others, also called the method for realizing the merits of exit (from Sukhavati) in order to assume a nirmāna-kāya, and teach those who are still subject to samsāra.29 [sic] This passage establishes three important points. First, beings who have accessed the purified field are able to “exit” that field by assuming a nirmān.akāya form, in which they can compassionately help others to make progress on the path. Second, the method for achieving “exit” from the purified field is a type of anusmr.ti, or meditative recollection. The fact that meditative visualization-inspection of Sukhāvatī is included in this list of five types of anusmr.ti strongly suggests that “exit” from the purified field may also be a recollection achieved through meditative visualization. Third, the passage makes it clear that “exit” is a way of transferring merit. The first Chinese Pure Land patriarch T’an Luan (476–542)30 makes a similar point when he says that Pure Land devotees must properly devote part of their merit to developing the ability to return to the world to help others. This he calls “merit-transference in the aspect of coming-back.”31 To generate a nirmān.akāya in this way, then, one must have accomplished two necessary (but, as will be shown in the next chapter, still insufficient) prerequisites: first, one must have gained entry into a purified field, and second, one must have earned enough merit to be able to transfer it in this particularly effective way. Although merit may obviously be earned by engaging in any virtuous action, the relief panels on the main wall of the fourth gallery, to which we now turn, picture a particularly efficient method.

Devotional multilocation: the offerings of Samantabhadra On the main wall of the fourth gallery begins the series which, following the identifications first offered by Bosch, is usually said to picture scenes from the Samantabhadracaryā-pran.idhāna, also known as the Bhadracarī.32 It must be noted at the outset that Bosch’s identifications of the relief panels on the fourth gallery main wall sparked a controversy in which some scholars argued that they do not in fact picture this text. Although much of the literature in this debate is quite dated, and most secondary works on Borobudur now assert without qualification that the fourth gallery main wall does picture scenes from the Samantabhadracaryāpran.idhāna, the issue has perhaps not been resolved to the satisfaction of all. Luis Gómez, writing in 1981, voices his objections concisely: Even Bosch, who first proposed the identification of the reliefs with the Bhadracarī, was prompt in recognizing how difficult it is to carry through

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Bodhisattva activity in the cosmic panorama the identification relief after relief. In the end he had to propose a different, and as yet undiscovered, recension of the Bhadracarī. In my view, the necessity of proposing such a recension could subtract much from the value of the identification.33

In The Pilgrimage of Sudhana, Fontein expresses the opinion that Bosch’s identifications are generally correct, while also pointing out that they might be refined significantly by making use of a different version or versions of the text.34 Although a complete resolution of the issue is certainly to be desired, it is not necessary here because my argument relies primarily on the first 18 relief panels in the series. As Gómez puts it: “Bosch’s identifications are relatively strong only for the first seven stanzas (first eighteen reliefs); after that his arguments become weaker at every step.”35 Moreover, even if it proves to be the case that the fourth gallery main wall does not, in its entirety, picture the Samantabhadracaryā-pran.idhāna, it is still possible that these early relief panels do. This is possible because the first 12 verses are sometimes “lifted out” of the whole set of vows to form the seven-part anuttara pūjā, or supreme worship, which is quoted in or referred to in other, later texts. For example, by the seventh or eighth century, Śāntideva, who is associated with Nālandā, refers to the early verses of the Samantabhadracaryā-pran.idhāna as the source of the seven-part offering.36 In the eleventh century, Atiśa continues to do so in his Bodhipathapradīpa.37 Thus, I will use Bosch’s identifications of the first 18 relief panels with a high degree of confidence, and refer only rarely to the other relief panels of the fourth gallery main wall.38 The title of the Samantabhadracaryā-pran.idhāna can be translated as “The Vow of Supremely Good Conduct,” or as “The Vow of [the bodhisattva] Samantabhadra’s Conduct.” In the text, the bodhisattva Samantabhadra makes a set of vows that are recorded in verse. The text serves both as a model of the supremely meritorious conduct of the bodhisattva Samantabhadra and as a model for those who aspire to follow his example. As a model of Samantabhadra’s conduct, the text describes the activities of a tenth-stage bodhisattva who demonstrates unsurpassed devotion to the Buddhas, who has extraordinary power to aid others, and who will remain active in sam . sāra indefinitely for the benefit of all sentient beings. As a model for bodhisattva conduct, the vows are not usually descriptive of the current state of the one who takes them, but instead are aspirational. In modern Tibetan Buddhist contexts, for example, the Samantabhadra vows may be taken quite early in the career of an aspiring bodhisattva and the first 12 verses are an almost ubiquitous liturgy, incorporated into numerous ritual, devotional, and meditative practices. From the opening of the text, it is clear that the spatial context for Samantabhadra’s exemplary conduct is the full panoply of innumerable (asan.khyeya) purified Buddha-fields (buddhaks.etras) throughout the cosmos. The first verse of the Samantabhadracaryā-pran.idhāna reads: As many lions among men as there are in the world, in the ten directions, who pervade the three times – I, who am serenely glad, honor them all, everywhere, with my body, speech, and mind.39

Bodhisattva activity in the cosmic panorama 121 As in the prologue of the Gan.d.avyūha, the innumerable cosmic Buddhas in those fields are “summarized” as the daśadigbuddhas, or Buddhas “in the ten directions.” The first verse clearly states that Samantabhadra, as the one who exemplifies the supremely good bodhisattva conduct, offers his devotion to each and every one of these Buddhas. But just how does he honor them? The second verse begins to address this question by stating that Samantabhadra is able to produce multiple bodies for the purpose of bowing to all of the cosmic Buddhas simultaneously. With a mind that is face to face with all Buddhas, by the power of the Bhadracarī vows, and with as many bodies as there are specks of dust in a [buddha-] field, I make prostrations to all [those] Buddhas.40 The verse states that Samantabhadra is in a mental state that is characterized by seeing all of the cosmic Buddhas simultaneously. He has achieved a state of mind in which he can, by his own power, have the same vision of the innumerable sambhogakāya Buddhas that the Buddha in the Jeta grove produces for the bodhisattvas in the prologue of the Gan.d.avyūha. On Borobudur, even without the benefit of having read the Samantabhadracaryāpran.idhāna, and even without prior knowledge of Mahāyāna cosmology, a reasonably attentive observer will be struck by the fact that the relief panels on the main wall of the fourth gallery offer something new – they picture multiple Buddhas within the same visual frame.41 In the opening sequence, nearly every relief panel is crowded with Buddhas – seated Buddhas, standing Buddhas, Buddhas floating in the air on lotuses, and on occasion, behind them, more floating Buddhas. With some knowledge of the Samantabhadracaryā-pran.idhāna and of Mahāyāna cosmology, it becomes clear that these Buddhas represent the innumerable cosmic sambhogakāya Buddhas. The first relief panel, which pictures the first verse, appears to have been composed in part to emphasize this point. The first verse refers to all of the innumerable Buddhas throughout the cosmos as the Buddhas “in the ten directions,” and Bosch bases his identification partly on the fact that the relief panel features ten Buddhas (Figure 4.2).42 On the left side of the composition, there are three seated Buddha figures. These figures are pictured in lower and upper rows, so that one figure appears to be on the ground, while the other two seem to float in the air above him. This same composition is mirrored on the right side of the panel. In the center, there are four Buddha figures: two are seated one above the other, and on either side of them are standing Buddhas. The composition pictures precisely ten Buddhas, which not only echoes the language of the verse, but also visually “summarizes” the innumerable Buddhas of the cosmos as the daśadigbuddhas. The first relief panel depicts not only the daśadigbuddhas but also the bodhisattva Samantabhadra, who is worshipping them face to face. On Borobudur, Samantabhadra can almost always be identified by his characteristic attribute: a flower with multiple (three to seven) round blooms or buds. In this composition, Samantabhadra appears in the lower register to the right of center,

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Figure 4.2 Cosmic Buddhas of the ten directions (IV 1). Photograph by John C. Huntington, Courtesy of the Huntington Photographic Archive at The Ohio State University.

accompanied by a second devotee who is probably another bodhisattva. Although the Samantabhadracaryā-pran.idhāna never mentions Sudhana, the relief panels of the fourth gallery main wall almost always picture him. I will return to this point later, but for the moment, it will be sufficient to note that on Borobudur, Sudhana is the most immediate aspirant for whom Samantabhadra models his ideal bodhisattva conduct. It is sometimes a challenge to identify Sudhana, but he usually has a halo and is sometimes shaded by an umbrella held by his attendants. In this first composition, in the lower register to the left of center, there are two more figures, the more prominent of which has a halo and is probably Sudhana. These figures, following Samantabhadra’s lead, are worshipping the cosmic Buddhas. In verses five through seven of the text, Samantabhadra, still in the mental state of being “face to face with all Buddhas,” continues to express his devotion by making pūjā offerings. In verses five and six, the bodhisattva gives a detailed list of the items he customarily offers: With fine flowers and fine garlands, with musical instruments, fragrant oils, fine parasols, fine lamps and fine incense, I do pūjā to these Buddhas. With fine garments, fine scents and sachets filled with fragrant powder, and all the various sorts of fine things [heaped up] like Mount Meru, I do pūjā to these Buddhas.43 In verse seven, Samantabhadra specifically identifies the practice of offering pūjā to the cosmic Buddhas as a central feature of the supremely good bodhisattva’s conduct.

Bodhisattva activity in the cosmic panorama 123 The [forms of] pūjā that are noble and unsurpassed, those I zealously devote to all the Buddhas. By the power of trust in bhadracarī, I honor and give offerings to all Buddhas.44 In these opening verses, then, Samantabhadra does ordinary merit-making devotional practices in an extraordinary way. Almost anyone can do prostrations, recite praises, and make offerings to an image of the Buddha or to a living teacher, thereby accruing a store of merit. But Samantabhadra can perform these same actions before all of the innumerable Buddhas throughout the cosmos simultaneously, thereby accruing an inconceivably vast store of merit. One might say that the conduct of the bodhisattva Samantabhadra is “supremely good” (samantabhadra), in no small part because it is the most efficient possible way to earn merit. On Borobudur, Samantabhadra’s pūjā offerings as he describes them in verses five and six are pictured on no fewer than 11 relief panels (IV 5–15).45 In this series, the sculptors picture the text nearly word for word by devoting a separate relief panel to each particular type of offering. I will describe just a few of these panels to demonstrate how the word-by-word technique is used in this case. On IV 9, Samantabhadra leads Sudhana in making an offering of parasols. Four Buddha figures float in the air; on each side of the row and between the Buddhas are multi-tiered parasols. Samantabhadra and Sudhana appear beneath the Buddha figures, in attitudes of worship. Panel IV 7 pictures the offering of music. This panel, as a few others in this series do, pictures only one Buddha. The Buddha sits in a palace-like structure at the center of the composition and displays the dhyāna mudrā. It is possible that the sculptor decided to carve only one Buddha figure in order to leave plenty of room for the multiple figures on either side of the palace who play various musical instruments, including drums and horns. Samantabhadra appears to the right of the palace, slightly elevated on a cushion; Sudhana appears next to him on the ground. Panel IV 14 pictures the offering of lamps (Figure 4.3). There are seven Buddha figures in the composition; one stands in the middle, while three float in the air on either side. Just to the right of the standing Buddha, underneath the floating ones, are Samantabhadra and two other bodhisattvas. Sudhana appears to the left of the standing Buddha, together with two members of his entourage. The offerings of light are pictured in various ways: one lamp looks like an oil-filled pot, another looks like a brazier or torch, while a third looks like a large, elaborate candle of the sort that is offered on certain occasions in Thailand today. The other relief panels in this series are quite similar; each pictures a particular type of offering, one or more Buddhas to whom it is offered, and Samantabhadra leading Sudhana in making the offering. Like the sequences that picture the adornments of the purified field and Maitreya’s compassionate pervasion of the world system, this sequence pictures a relatively short passage of text nearly word by word. Although the Samantabhadracaryā-pran.idhāna is not explicit on the matter, both the Gan.d.avyūha and the Larger Sukhāvatīvyūha sūtra indicate that in order to engage in the highly efficient merit-making practice of making offerings to all of the cosmic Buddhas simultaneously, one must first enter a purified field. As

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Figure 4.3 Offering of lamps (IV 14). Photograph by John C. Huntington, Courtesy of the Huntington Photographic Archive at The Ohio State University.

we have seen, in the prologue of the Gan.d.avyūha, the Buddha transforms the Jeta grove into a purified field, and at the same time, illuminates the cosmos, making all buddhaks.etras and all Buddhas visible to the bodhisattvas in his assembly. Although the location of the cosmic Buddhas is ambiguous – they are both in the Jeta grove and in their “proper” places in the buddhaks.etras throughout the ten directions – what is clear is that the bodhisattvas see them only from the vantage point of the freshly transformed purified field. One might form the hypothesis, then, that Samantabhadra also sees the cosmic Buddhas from the vantage point of a purified field. Considerable support for this hypothesis can be found in the Larger Sukhāvatīvyūha, which presents the samantabhadracaryā as the proper conduct of a bodhisattva dwelling in the purified field of Sukhāvatī. As we have seen, in his twenty-first vow,46 Dharmākara establishes that anyone who is born in Sukhāvatī will achieve complete and perfect enlightenment in only one birth. But in order to “make room” for those bodhisattvas who wish to work actively to liberate beings outside of Sukhāvatī, Dharmākara makes an exception to the one-birth rule. The vow, with its exception, reads in part as follows. Oh Lord, when I have attained awakening, if those beings who arise in that Buddha field [of mine] should not all be bound to [just] one birth before unsurpassed complete and perfect enlightenment – with the exception of the

Bodhisattva activity in the cosmic panorama 125 special vow[s] of those bodhisattvas, . . ., who desire to follow the way of a bodhisattva in all world realms, who desire to worship all Buddhas, who cause beings as numerous as the grains of sand in the Ganges river to be established in unsurpassed complete and perfect enlightenment, and who, moreover, are oriented toward the higher way, intent upon the way which is completely good [samantabhadracaryā] – then let me not achieve unsurpassed complete perfect enlightenment.47 The passage clearly refers to the practices outlined in the Samantabhadracaryāpran.idhāna, and perhaps to the text itself. The exception to the one-birth rule of Sukhāvatī is for those bodhisattvas who are “intent upon the way which is completely good,” or “intent upon the way of [the exemplary bodhisattva] Samantabhadra.” Thus, the bodhisattva’s name is used here in the same way that it is in the Samantabhadracaryā-pran.idhāna, which would seem to indicate some sort of intertextuality. In any case, the samantabhadracaryā mentioned in this vow clearly includes the “worship of all Buddhas.” The next vow strengthens the similarity by making it clear that for bodhisattvas in Sukhāvatī, as for Samantabhadra, the worship of all Buddhas entails the practice of offering pūjā to the innumerable cosmic sambhogakāya Buddhas. In fact, this bodhisattva practice is so important that facilitating it is a constituent feature of the fully purified field. In his twenty-second vow, Dharmākara promises to postpone his own enlightenment until he can emanate a purified field that will enable bodhisattvas who dwell in it to offer pūjā to innumerable Buddhas in other Buddha fields. Lord, when I have achieved awakening, if in that Buddha field [of mine] bodhisattvas who are born there should not all be able, having gone to other Buddha fields after their one morning meal, to worship with offerings that completely please many hundreds of Buddhas . . . up to many hundreds of thousands of niyutas of kot.is of Buddhas, . . . then may I not achieve unsurpassed, complete, and perfect awakening.48 . The large numbers used in the text evoke the asankhyeya cosmology and the fact that the bodhisattvas can travel to so many buddhaks.etras in the time available after lunch indicates something unusual about their mode of travel. The main import of the vow is that it is so important for bodhisattvas to be able to offer pūjā to the innumerable cosmic Buddhas that Sukhāvatī – and by implication, any fully purified Buddha field – must, by definition, afford them this opportunity. Dharmākara’s twenty-fifth vow indicates how bodhisattvas in Sukhāvatī can worship so many Buddhas in such a short time: they multilocate. While the bodhisattvas do travel to other Buddha fields to make offerings, they do not have to leave Sukhāvatī in order to do it. Just as the cosmic sambhogakāya Buddhas in the prologue of the Gan.d.avyūha can be “in” the Jeta grove and “in” their own purified fields at the same time, so the bodhisattvas who dwell in Sukhāvatī can be “in” that purified field while also being “in” the purified fields of other sambhogakāya Buddhas.

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Bodhisattva activity in the cosmic panorama Lord, when I have achieved awakening, if in that Buddha field [of mine] bodhisattvas should think, “Let us, while remaining right here in this world realm, worship, honor as preceptors, exalt and make offerings to Lord Buddhas in immeasurable, innumerable Buddha fields with the following items: robes, alms bowls, beds, seats, restoratives, medicines, and furnishings, with flowers, incense, scents, flower garlands, fragrant oils, fragrant powders, robes, parasols, flags and banners, with showers of gems and various sorts of instrumental music, songs and dances,” and if those Lord Buddhas should not receive these things from them as soon as they are thought, out of compassion, then may I not achieve unsurpassed, complete, and perfect awakening.49

As the passage makes clear, a defining feature of the purified field of Sukhāvatī is that the bodhisattvas who dwell there can multilocate for the purpose of making devotional offerings to the innumerable Buddhas in their respective purified fields throughout the cosmos. Not incidentally, the passage also provides a list of customary pūjā offerings that, though it is more extensive, parallels the list in verses five and six of the Samantabhadracaryā-pran.idhāna. According to the Larger Sukhāvatīvyūha, then, the purified field is the bodhisattva’s base of operations – it is the “homefield” from which he can access all other Buddha fields. From the vantage point of the purified field in the transformed Jeta grove, the spatial locations of the cosmic Buddhas are ambiguous: they are both gathered together before the bodhisattvas and dispersed throughout all ten directions of the cosmos. Similarly, the locations of the cosmic Buddhas are not quite clear in the first few verses of the Samantabhadracaryā-pran.idhāna. Can Samantabhadra see them all simultaneously because they have gathered before him, or because he, through the power of multilocation, is present in each of their separate buddhaks.etras at the same time? Verse two seems to point to the second interpretation: it clearly states that Samantabhadra produces multiple bodies in order to bow to all of the Buddhas simultaneously, which shows at the very least that he has the capacity to multilocate. This is not surprising because as a tenth-stage bodhisattva, Samantabhadra would already have perfected the capacity to multilocate. According to the Daśabhūmika sūtra, a bodhisattva acquires this ability at an earlier point on the path, but when he reaches the eighth bhūmi, he focuses on exercising it in a more extensive way. [T]here was formerly a showing (abhinirhāra) of conduct by the showing of one body. But now for the Bodhisattva who has reached this [eighth] stage the power of Bodhisattva-conduct is attained through the diversity (multiformity) of innumerable bodies, . . . [including] the immeasurable production of diversity (multiformity) in circles of assemblies.50 Lest there be any doubt about the sort of assemblies in which the bodhisattva appears with his multiple bodies, the text later explains: He, endowed with such knowledge, well abides in this stage and does appear in borrowed, reflected shape (pratibhāsa) in the assembly of Tathāgata in inexpressible Buddha-realms without moving from one Buddha-realm.51

Bodhisattva activity in the cosmic panorama 127 Thus, an eighth-stage bodhisattva perfects the ability to produce multiple bodies for the purpose of travelling to multiple buddhaks.etras simultaneously and worshipping the Buddhas in them, all without leaving “his own” purified field. As a tenth-stage bodhisattva, Samantabhadra has already perfected this ability, and has the capacity to engage in the most extensive possible version of devotional multilocation. According to the Gan.d.avyūha, Samantabhadra is in fact the paradigmatic practitioner of devotional multilocation. In the prologue, after the Buddha has illumined the cosmos, Buddhas residing in buddha fields in the ten directions each dispatch a contingent of bodhisattvas to worship the Buddha in the Jeta grove. Although the text initially suggests that the bodhisattvas leave “their own” purified fields in order to travel to the purified Jeta grove, it eventually states that the bodhisattvas can simply multilocate. More importantly, the text clearly says that the bodhisattvas derive their ability to engage in devotional multilocation from having taken the vow to engage in the supremely good conduct of Samantabhadra. And all those bodhisattvas with their retinues were completely familiar with the vows and conduct of the bodhisattva Samantabhadra; they had the eye of pure wisdom to see all Buddhas; . . . they were adept at producing bodily manifestations from moment to moment in order to approach all Buddhas; they were in the sphere of those who pervade all regions of the world with a single body; they had resplendent bodies that had gone forth to join the assemblies of all Buddhas.52 Thus, just as the bodhisattvas in Sukhāvatī do not have to leave it in order to worship Buddhas in other purified fields throughout the cosmos, so the bodhisattvas who come to worship the Buddha in the purified Jeta grove do not have to leave “their own” purified fields. Like Samantabhadra, and, indeed, by the power of his vow of supremely good conduct, the bodhisattvas are able to multilocate in order to appear in multiple buddhaks.etras simultaneously. On Borobudur, as I have shown, the sculptors usually convey Samantabhadra’s ability to see all Buddhas simultaneously by carving compositions that include multiple Buddha figures and only one figure of Samantabhadra. This general type of composition, taken by itself, does not visually convey the sense of devotional multilocation, but rather implies that Samantabhadra can see all of the Buddhas simultaneously because they have assembled before him. However, taken as a series, the sequence in which Samantabhadra makes various sorts of offerings might be taken to picture devotional multilocation. Each panel pictures a different number of Buddhas in a unique configuration, which creates the sense that each scene occurs in a different place, and that each offering is made to a different set of Buddhas. If these scenes are considered to be occurring simultaneously, as the Maitreya multilocation scenes clearly do, then they convey the sense of multilocation in an analogous way. But perhaps the best visual evidence for devotional multilocation occurs on IV 65, which I argue pictures the bodhisattva Samantabhadra as he multiplies his

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body in order to worship multiple Buddhas simultaneously.53 On the left side of the panel, there are three figures of Samantabhadra, each of which holds the particular flower that identifies him, and each of which is engaged in worship. Three Buddhas float on lotuses above the heads of the Samantabhadras, while a monk sits on a lotus at ground level on the far left. One might make the argument that these figures are not multiple bodies that appear simultaneously, but rather the same body engaged in a temporal sequence of similar acts of worship. There is some evidence to support such an argument, because there are a very few panels on Borobudur (for example, II 29) that do picture the same person twice to show that he engages in two sequential actions.54 Indeed, a relief panel located very near to IV 65 uses this technique. Perhaps one of the most dramatic relief panels on Borobudur, IV 60 depicts Samantabhadra three times in order to show that he can pass through solid objects and fly through the air. On the right side of the composition, Samantabhadra stands on the ground, gesturing toward a palatial building. To the left of that building in the center of the composition, Samantabhadra stands on a lotus that floats above the ground. Immediately to the left is a second palatial building, which he faces. Past this second building, on the far left side, Samantabhadra floats higher in the air in the position characteristic of flying deities on Borobudur. The composition uses three distinct representations of Samantabhadra to show three distinct moments in a temporally unfolding sequence in which he demonstrates the supernatural powers (r.ddhi) of passing through solid objects (i.e., the palatial buildings) and flying through the air. One might then suppose that the multiple figures of Samantabhadra on IV 65 also signify a temporally unfolding sequence. But in this case, the meaning of the composition as a whole would be rather ordinary – Samantabhadra worships this Buddha, then that Buddha, then that one – and would thus be inconsistent with the focus of IV 60 on Samantabhadra’s supernatural powers. To arrive at an interpretation of IV 65 that is thematically consistent, it is necessary to note that the composition includes a fourth Samantabhadra figure. This figure sits in a niche-like structure to the right of the worshipping Samantabhadras and displays the dhyāna mudrā to indicate that he is engaged in meditation. Sudhana and his retinue appear on the far right of the composition, where they worship and observe the meditating Samantabhadra. When performing the pradaks.in.ā, one encounters this meditating figure of Samantabhadra first, then the three Samantabhadras engaged in worship. The visual import of this panel is that Samantabhadra enters a meditative state that allows him to generate multiple bodies and to “use” these bodies to bow and to make offerings to different Buddhas. On this panel, it is Samantabhadra’s ability to engage in devotional multilocation that he demonstrates for Sudhana, just as on the earlier panel he demonstrated his ability to pass through walls and fly through the air. That IV 65 visually suggests a strong association between meditation and devotional multilocation is also consistent with the fact that purified fields can be “entered” by means of visualization meditation. By meditatively building up a vivid mental picture of a purified field, one can achieve a mind-based “rebirth” in that particular field. By extension, it might also be possible to use a related

Bodhisattva activity in the cosmic panorama 129 visualization procedure to come face to face with multiple Buddhas in multiple purified fields at the same time. The Samantabhadracaryā-pran.idhāna indicates that the power to worship all Buddhas simultaneously is mind-based – verse two states that Samantabhadra has achieved “a mind that is face to face with all Buddhas.” As Griffiths points out, the doctrinal digests also interpret the purified fields in general as mind-based phenomena. [T]he digests are, for the most part, concerned to reject the idea that the gorgeously ornamented heavens in which the bodies of communal enjoyment are active are real places with spatial location. That their existence is dependent upon the mental flexibility of those practitioners of the path who are capable of manifesting them at will strongly suggests that they are mental projections, appearances resulting from modifications of the mental stream (cittasantāna) of such practitioners. The point is driven home when the digests say that Buddha-fields are in fact nothing other than representations (vijñapti) or mental images designed to have desired salvific effects upon the minds of those who experience them.55 If the Buddha-fields are projected mental images, then one might “enter” them by stabilizing those images in one’s own mind-stream through the practice of visualization meditation. Just as one can cultivate a vivid mental image of a single sambhogakāya Buddha in a single purified Buddha-field, so one can cultivate a vivid mental image of multiple sambhogakāya Buddhas in multiple Buddhafields. In this case, the samantabhadracaryā is literally a meeting of the minds in which innumerable cosmic Buddhas project sambhogakāyas in purified Buddhafields while the bodhisattva engages in a visualization that stabilizes those images simultaneously in his own mind. If the mental image is sufficiently vivid, then it has the same effect for the practitioner as being face to face with the cosmic Buddhas. But, because the mental image can also be deconstructed and has no inherent substantial reality, it is also consistent with the realization of emptiness. I will return to this aspect of the visualization procedure in Chapter 5. For the moment, it should be emphasized that by multiplying his body and offering visualized pūjā to the many cosmic Buddhas simultaneously, the bodhisattva can accumulate vast stores of merit very quickly. Through the practice of multilocation and devotional generosity, the bodhisattva in the purified field can “fund” his compassionate transfers of merit, including especially the generation of nirmān.akāyas. Thus the two practices of multilocation – compassionate and devotional – are linked. By engaging in both, the bodhisattva serves as a sort of mediating conduit for the inconceivable positive potential of the cosmic Buddhas, channeling it down from the purified fields to the various levels of the impure world in which sentient beings in need of salvation can be found. In this process, the purified field in which the bodhisattva “dwells” is a pivotal (mental) space: from it he ascends to worship the cosmic Buddhas, and from it he descends to teach sentient beings. But in neither case does he have to leave the purified field: through his miraculous power of multilocation, he is able to practice both

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devotional generosity and compassionate generosity throughout all parts of the cosmos while remaining in “his own” purified field.

Serlingpa, Atiśa, and the cosmic sequence for giving and taking meditation Taken together, the Gan.d.avyūha – including the Samantabhadracaryāpran.idhāna – and related texts indicate that both compassionate and devotional multilocation can, like mind-based rebirth into the purified field, be achieved through the practice of visualization meditation. But they do not give explicit instructions for performing the visualizations. Fortunately, detailed instructions for a strikingly similar pair of meditative visualizations can be found in selected Tibetan lojong, or mind-training texts, including the Public Explication of Mind Training by Sangyé Gompa (1179–1250).56 In what follows, I draw on the Public Explication and related lojong texts to show that the relevant relief panels of Borobudur reflect not only the imagery of compassionate and devotional multilocation but also the structure of a particular meditative visualization procedure used to achieve them. It should be clear from the outset that I am not in any way suggesting that the relief panels of Borobudur “illustrate” or even refer directly to the Public Explication, as this would be absurdly anachronistic. At best, the text preserves a meditative procedure that was already known centuries earlier in Java and passed down through the lineage that eventually produces the lojong texts. But more than a pinch of caution is called for here because, by the standards of contemporary historical-critical scholarship, the case for historical continuity is not conclusive. At worst, then, there is no direct historical relationship at all between Borobudur and the Public Explication, but both happen to treat meditative practices that are quite similar with regard to both their goals and their visual procedures. Thus my argument does not rely on historical evidence alone, but also – and indeed primarily – on establishing independently a convincing comparative correspondence between the lojong visualizations and the Borobudur relief panels. Indeed, if the correspondence is convincing, the comparison may do as much to support the historical validity of traditional Tibetan accounts of the lojong lineage as the latter does to support the former. To begin with the evidence for historical continuity, according to Tibetan tradition, there is a direct connection between the maritime Southeast Asian Śailendra Buddhists of the late eighth through early eleventh centuries and the later appearance of the mind-training literature in Tibet. The primary link between the Buddhism of the snowy Himalayas and the Buddhism of the tropical Malay Archipelago is the relationship between the Indian Buddhist scholar Atiśa (982–1054) and his guru Serlingpa, also known by the Sanskrit name Suvarn.advīpi, the man from the Golden Isle of Suvarn.advīpa. While the exact location of Suvarn.advīpa is not certain, epigraphic evidence, textual colophons, and other sources tend to support the theory that Serlingpa was Indonesian, probably lived in Sumatra, enjoyed the patronage of the Śailendra royal family, and was possibly even born

Bodhisattva activity in the cosmic panorama 131 a Śailendra prince.57 Thus, Serlingpa was strongly associated with and possibly a member of the same royal family that had earlier sponsored the design and construction of Borobudur in Central Java. In about 1012 CE, Atiśa set sail from India for Suvarn.advīpa58 to study with Serlingpa, and according to Tibetan biographical sources, Serlingpa’s influence on Atiśa was profound. Atiśa stayed in Suvarn.advīpa for 12 years and became so devoted to Serlingpa that later in life, whenever he mentioned Serlingpa’s name, tears would flow from his eyes.59 Serlingpa was an accomplished scholar and interpreter of Buddhist texts. Like the seventh-century Śrīvijayan luminary Śākyakīrti before him, he was a full participant and indeed a leading figure in a Mahāyāna Buddhist interpretive community that included not only Sumatran and Javanese monks but also their counterparts in Indian institutions such as Nālandā. The colophons of the Tengyur attribute to Serlingpa six texts, five of which were translated under the direction of Atiśa.60 Serlingpa’s most extensive work is a subcommentary on the 61 Abhisamayālam which he considered . kāra, or Ornament of Clear Realization, . to be the teaching of Maitreya as revealed to Asanga.62 The Abhisamayālam . kāra is a relatively short mnemonic verse text that points to the implicit meaning of the Perfection of Wisdom in 25,000 Verses by presenting it in terms of the Mahāyāna paths and stages.63 While Serlingpa is purported to have given Atiśa teachings on the Abhisamayālam . kāra, he is most noted for imparting teachings on the development and cultivation of bodhicitta that were later written down in the Tibetan mind-training texts. According to Tibetan tradition, Atiśa was the first to disseminate the lojong teachings in Tibet, but he did so orally and did not write them down himself. What Atiśa most famously did write is the Bodhipathapradīpa, or Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment, which he composed within three years of his arrival in Tibet in 1042 CE64 and which came to be considered the foundational paths and stages text. The early verses not only emphasize the development and cultivation of bodhicitta in a way that prefigures the later lojong literature but also refer directly to both the Maitreya chapter of the Gan.d.avyūha and the Samantabhadracaryāpran.idhāna. In verses 5 and 6, Atiśa explains that the text is written for “persons of supreme capacity” who “desire supreme enlightenment” and “truly want to end completely all the sufferings of others”65 – that is, for people whose Mahāyāna aspirations necessitate the development and cultivation of bodhicitta. In verses 7–9, he describes preliminary practices, including image worship, devotional offerings, taking refuge, and making the “seven-part offering from the [Prayer of] Noble Conduct,” which is the Samantabhadracaryā-pran.idhāna.66 Then, in two verses that, as we will see, are consistent with later lojong formulations, Atiśa urges the practitioner to generate bodhicitta: Next, beginning with an attitude/ Of love for all living creatures,/ Consider beings, excluding none,/ Suffering in the three bad rebirths,/ Suffering birth, death and so forth./ Then, since you want to free these beings/ From the suffering of pain,/ From suffering and the causes of suffering,/ Arouse immutably the resolve to attain enlightenment.67

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To underscore the importance of this instruction, Atiśa points to the extraordinary benefits that accrue to one who develops bodhicitta. Although he does incorporate a description of these benefits into his own text, for a full explanation of the qualities of developing bodhicitta, Atiśa refers the reader to a passage from the Maitreya section of the Gan.d.avyūha.68 The passage, already mentioned above, occurs just before Sudhana enters the palace. In the text, Maitreya praises the pilgrim Sudhana for having given rise to bodhicitta, and extols its benefits in a long series of similes and metaphors. In the early verses of the Bodhipathapradīpa, then, Atiśa discusses bodhicitta, one of the main topics of his study with Serlingpa, in terms of the texts pictured on the third and fourth galleries of Borobudur. According to Tibetan tradition, Serlingpa’s teachings on the development and cultivation of bodhicitta are preserved most precisely in selected lojong texts. Although the root lines incorporated into lojong texts are attributed to Atiśa, they appear not to have been written down for about a century after Atiśa passed away. While historical-critical examination might suggest other possibilities, the traditional explanation for the delay is that the lojong teachings were passed orally and secretly from master to disciple during this time. Atiśa passed the teachings that he had received from Serlingpa on to his principal disciple Dromtonpa, who transmitted them to the three brothers, particularly Potowa, who gave them to Sharawa, who gave them to Chekawa, who, in the twelfth century, wrote them down in his Seven-Point Mind Training. Chekawa’s disciple, Sé Chilbu, wrote A Commentary on the Seven-Point Mind Training, which is the textual source for the lineage account just given.69 Drawing on a variant of the root lines passed along through the same lineage, at least two “generations” later than Sé Chilbu, Sangyé Gompa composed his Public Explication of Mind Training.70 I will focus on the Public Explication because, unlike the Seven-Point Mind Training, it includes instructions for a visualization procedure that is strikingly similar to the vision that Maitreya conjures for Sudhana in the Gan. d.avyūha, and that ends with visualized devotions found in the Samantabhadracaryāpran. idhāna. Not incidentally, the lineage presented in the Public Explication begins with Maitreya himself, and claims that the tradition was “transmitted . from Maitreya to Asanga, Vasubandhu, and Sthiramati through to Serlingpa.”71 While this account begins with the nonhistorical figure of Maitreya and thus clearly does not meet the standards of critical scholarship for historical facticity, it does indicate that Sangyé Gompa considered Maitreya to be the primary elucidator of the lojong teachings. In his opening dedicatory verses, he makes it clear that he considers the “exchanging of self with others” – the centerpiece of lojong teachings – to be the blessing of the “teachers descended from Maitreya.”72 In its structure and in its intent, the meditative procedure for exchanging self for others as it is presented in the Public Explication is closely related to the meditative visions pictured on the third and fourth galleries of Borobudur and may in fact be its direct descendant. But to reiterate the methodological point with which I began, the case for historical continuity is open to question. First, there is a significant gap between the probable dates for the construction of Borobudur and the probable dates of

Bodhisattva activity in the cosmic panorama 133 Serlingpa during which at least some elements of Śailendra Buddhism almost certainly changed. Second, while the traditional accounts generally insist on a continuous history of transmission from Serlingpa to those who first wrote down the lojong texts, there are various evidentiary uncertainties and a significant period for which documentation exists only after the fact. Furthermore, as several recent studies have been concerned to demonstrate, traditional lineage accounts are not always completely factual. Indeed, some scholars argue that traditional lineage accounts are sometimes revised, to put the matter politely, in order to suit the political and/or sectarian concerns of the particular time and place. I would therefore like to underscore the fact that the argument that follows is primarily a comparative argument that does not depend on direct historical continuity for its validity but rather on demonstrating a convincing correspondence between the relief panels of Borobudur and a meditative visualization procedure from the Public Explication and related lojong texts. Even if there were no historical connection at all between them, the relevant meditative visualization sequence from the lojong texts would still serve as a useful heuristic device for understanding the relief panels of galleries three and four. According to the lojong teachings, conventional bodhicitta is the compassionate wish to liberate all sentient beings from the sufferings of sam . sāra and lead them to the permanent happiness of full enlightenment, while ultimate bodhicitta is the wish to achieve the perfection of wisdom and enlightenment as quickly as possible so that one will be able to fulfill the compassionate wish in the most effective way. It is conventional bodhicitta that concerns us here. To develop conventional bodhicitta, one must overcome self-cherishing, which is the strong tendency to value the mistakenly perceived self above all else and to act solely on its behalf. On the basis of self-cherishing, one regards other people as beneficial to oneself, harmful to oneself, or neutral, and then identifies them as friends, enemies, or people to whom one is indifferent. One then treats them in self-serving ways, attempting to fulfill one’s own desires, to vent one’s own rage, or to go about one’s own business without a care. To combat self-cherishing, one trains the mind to remove the sufferings of others and to give them happiness, serving them joyfully and remaining impartial in one’s compassion and love for them even if they repay kindness with hostility. Ultimately, one aspires to give all others the complete happiness of enlightenment and Buddhahood. In a form of lojong meditation practice called tonglen – “giving and taking” or “exchanging self for others” – one takes the sufferings, nonvirtues, and bad karma of others onto oneself, giving them one’s own happiness, virtues, and merit. In meditation, one reverses the usual valuation of self and others, holding others more dear than oneself. One also reverses the usual polarity of desire and aversion by voluntarily taking all bad things and giving away all good things, up to and including one’s own body. While there are alternative methods, the usual instruction in the lojong texts – and the one attributed to Atiśa73 – is to begin overcoming self-cherishing by focusing on one’s own mother. The idea is that, next to oneself, one naturally holds one’s mother to be the dearest person, and the most reliable friend that one

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will ever have in this life. In meditation, the practitioner considers the incredible benefits that he has received from his mother; he reflects on her deep lovingkindness toward him, and her innumerable selfless and compassionate acts on his behalf during his gestation and infancy. (Lojong practitioners can be male or female; I use the masculine pronoun here as a convenient way of distinguishing the practitioner from the necessarily female mother.) He realizes that he owes his very life to her and that karmically he is deeply in her debt. He then reflects on the fact that his mother is still caught in sam . sāra and will therefore experience rebirth and suffering according to her own karma. Because he loves her, compassion naturally arises and he generates the strong wish to return her kindness to him by removing all of her sufferings completely and giving her the ultimate happiness of liberation and enlightenment. He acts on this wish by beginning to repay his karmic debt to her through doing tonglen. He takes her current sufferings and the negative karma that would create more sufferings onto himself and gives her his own current happiness and the merit that will create more happiness. He resolves to continue doing this until his mother is fully liberated and enlightened.74 If the practitioner succeeds in generating this sort of loving kindness, compassion, and resolve sincerely and from the heart, then he has exchanged himself with his mother. He has overcome self-cherishing a tiny bit because he now cherishes one other person more than he cherishes himself. To transform the cherishing of one’s mother into conventional bodhicitta, one must extend the same loving-kindness and compassion that one feels for her to all sentient beings without exception. In other words, one must cultivate the capacity to see every sentient being as one’s own mother and to care for each one accordingly. One does this in part by reflecting on the fact that one has been reborn countless times in the past, and that in the course of those countless lives, all sentient beings have at one time or another been one’s mother. Therefore, one owes each and every sentient being a karmic debt equal to the debt that one owes one’s current mother. In addition, one also engages in a gradual extension of care toward all sentient beings in tonglen practice, considering them individually or in groups and cultivating loving-kindness and compassion for them that is as strong as the love one feels for one’s mother in this life. In general, there are two sequences that one can follow to achieve the full extension necessary for conventional bodhicitta. The first, and perhaps the more common approach is to begin giving and taking with others initially considered to be friends, then with others initially considered to be neutral, and finally with others initially considered to be enemies. In this way, one eventually develops perfect equanimity toward all others and the ability to cherish them all as much as one cherishes one’s current mother. The second sequence, which appears in the Public Explication, is to practice giving and taking first with the sentient beings currently in the hells, then with those in the realm of the hungry ghosts, and so on up through all levels of the cosmos. It is the second procedure that I refer to as the “cosmic sequence” for giving and taking meditation.

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The cosmic sequence and the upper galleries The cosmic sequence for giving and taking closely parallels the meditative vision of Maitreya pictured on Borobudur. Lojong texts generally advise the practitioner to train in giving and taking by starting with taking: one takes onto oneself the current sufferings, nonvirtues, and bad karma of others. In the cosmic sequence, one begins taking from the beings currently in the hells and then takes from beings in each of the other five realms in turn. The Public Explication describes this procedure, and explains in more detail just what ought to be taken from beings in each realm. To give two examples: With regard to the suffering of the hells, take those sufferings that arise from fire, weapons, illness, thoughts, and from the blistering hell up to the greatly cracking-open-like-lotus hell. In terms of the origin of that suffering, take the afflictions, such as hatred, and also all acts of grave negative deeds. Take from the hungry ghosts all their sufferings of hunger and thirst and their afflictions, such as attachment, and all their middling negative deeds.75 The practitioner then goes on to take from animals, human beings, and the gods. (This particular account of the sequence leaves out the asuras as a class of beings distinct from the gods of the desire realm.76) But the sequence does not stop there. One should: Take from each and every being until their buddhahood – that is, from the hell beings through to the hungry ghosts, from there to the animals, to the humans, from there to the six classes of gods of the desire realm, then to the seventeen levels of the form realm, then to the four levels of the formless realm, then from disciples and self-realized ones and, in their respective sequence, from the bodhisattvas on the ten levels.77 Although they are arranged in a somewhat different order, the relief panels of the third gallery main wall picture Maitreya in all of the realms and in the company of all of the types of beings listed in the cosmic sequence for taking. The Borobudur sequence begins with scenes that picture Maitreya in various human guises, then moves to scenes that picture him in various heavens, then to scenes that picture him in hell, among the hungry ghosts, and among the animals, then to scenes that depict him in the company of nāgas, other supernatural beings and minor gods, and finally to scenes that picture him in assemblies of bodhisattvas. Moreover, the intention of the lojong procedure is to develop the mental disposition to do what Maitreya actually does: compassionately benefit beings throughout the cosmos. But it must be said that the Borobudur relief panels are not entirely convincing as representations of taking because they do not picture suffering very vividly. Whereas the lojong text urges the practitioner to contemplate the “crackingopen-like-lotus hell,” the Borobudur relief panel pictures a rather modest cook pot (III 69). As Buddhist depictions of hell go, this is fairly dainty. Although the

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Gan.d.avyūha does state that Maitreya removes the sufferings of sentient beings – especially sentient beings in the lower realms – the architects and artists of Borobudur focus more on what Maitreya gives. To practice the giving half of tonglen, one meditatively gives to others one’s body, wealth, and roots of virtue. As one gives, one should “imagine that sentient beings receive the causes and conditions of buddhahood and attain full enlightenment.”78 One gives material and social goods to fulfill the wishes of others and to create positive external conditions for their enlightenment. But one also gives internal propensities for the bodhisattva virtues and a positive environment for religious practice. In particular, one imagines that as one gives, each sentient being receives a teacher and the most suitable dharma instruction.79 Thus, in the giving half of tonglen, one visualizes generosity with the dharma, and imagines that each sentient being receives benefits in the form of a teacher and teachings that are adapted to his or her needs and capacities. The lojong texts particularly emphasize that the practitioner should give away his or her own body. According to the Public Explication, one is not to give the body “[conceived] as ordinary flesh and blood,” nor is one to imagine that by giving away the body, one uses it up.80 Rather, one is to transform one’s body into a wish-fulfilling jewel that provides endlessly for the material needs and religious requisites of others without becoming exhausted. According to the Public Explication, the primary sūtra source for this is the Gan.d.avyūha: “May my body become a wish-fulfilling jewel, a source of daily sustenance for all beings.”81 Although one is to transform one’s body to provide others with mundane happiness, the more important task is to transform one’s body to provide others with the requisites for the ultimate happiness of enlightenment and Buddhahood. The Public Explication states: [J]ust as from one wish-fulfilling jewel emerge whatever things sentient beings may desire, . . . in the same manner imagine that from your single body emerge – for sentient beings equal to the limit of space – . . . preceptors, instructors, and the scriptures and so on. . . . Also, just as a wish-fulfilling jewel grants the wishes of sentient beings through manifestations, such as the king of jewels, imagine that, in the same manner, your body appears in front of each and every sentient being and, as before, (whatever is wished for by each being comes about and that they become fully enlightened).82 Here, one is exhorted to imagine that one’s own body produces multiple bodies – especially in the forms of preceptors and instructors – that manifest to all sentient beings and lead them to enlightenment. The text also states explicitly that meditatively visualizing giving the body in this way will eventually result in the actual power to do so.83 Thus the Public Explication explains how an aspiring practitioner might cultivate, through visualization meditation, the power that Maitreya demonstrates for Sudhana in the Gan.d.avyūha, and the power that is pictured so extensively on Borobudur. In the time-pervasion sequence, Maitreya gives away material goods,

Bodhisattva activity in the cosmic panorama 137 his own political power and social status as king, and even parts of his body, including his head. In the world-pervasion sequence, he provides ideal teachers for all sorts of sentient beings by generating a multiplicity of illusory bodies and through them giving dharma teachings tailored to the needs and capacities of various target audiences. The Borobudur relief panels emphasize the teaching function of Maitreya’s manifestations by portraying him so frequently in the vitarka mudrā, the gesture of dharma instruction. For sentient beings from the denizens of the lower realms to the most advanced bodhisattvas, Maitreya transforms the wish-fulfilling jewel of his body and gives the loving and compassionate gift of the dharma. There is, then, a strong correspondence between the Public Explication instructions for giving and taking meditation – especially for meditation on giving the dharma – and the series of Maitreya relief panels on the second half of the main wall of Borobudur’s third gallery. At this point, it is important to note that the cosmic sequence for giving differs from the cosmic sequence for taking. According to the Public Explication, although one may be at a far lower level of development than those from whom one is taking, it is still appropriate to take sufferings even from bodhisattvas on the tenth bhūmi. Even at this advanced level, bodhisattvas still have “subtle obscurations to knowledge” that differentiate them from fully enlightened Buddhas and thus they are still proper objects of compassion.84 But one is not to take from Buddhas because they “have eliminated all defects and have perfected all higher qualities,” so it would be inappropriate to think that they have any negativities to take.85 In the cosmic sequence for giving, as in the sequence for taking, one begins with the denizens of hell and proceeds upward. But in this case, the sequence does not conclude with tenth-level bodhisattvas. According to the text, it is appropriate to give – or better, to offer – the Buddhas one’s body and wealth.86 Clearly, the Buddhas are already enlightened; therefore in the giving sequence one does not imagine manifesting teachers or scriptures for them. Rather, one imagines making devotional offerings, including prostrations and various pūjā items. According to the Public Explication, one is to “visualize unimaginable multitudes of offering clouds [to these holy beings], as described in the preface to the Flower Ornament Scripture.”87 (It is worth noting that the reference here is to the Avatam . saka sūtra, which, as we have seen, sometimes includes the Gan.d.avyūha, which in turn sometimes includes the Samantabhadracaryā-pran.idhāna.) As before, one imagines one’s body as a wish-granting gem that produces whatever will benefit sentient beings. However, in this case, the main beneficiaries are not the recipients of the offerings – that is, the Buddhas – but the practitioners who visualize making the offerings, for by doing so, they amass large amounts of merit. They can then, in keeping with the love and compassion of conventional bodhicitta, transfer that merit for the benefit of all sentient beings. In the Public Explication, then, the practitioner is instructed to visualize devotional activities such as bowing and making offerings in much the same way that the speaker vows to do them in the first several verses of the Samantabhadracaryāpran.idhāna. On Borobudur, the architects have designed a sequence of relief panels that amplifies the importance of these verses – especially those that describe

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the vow to make pūjā offerings – by picturing them nearly word by word. If the word-by-word technique is used here in the same way that it is used elsewhere on galleries three and four, then the sequence pictures a visualization procedure in which the practitioner focuses on individual elements to make them sufficiently clear and detailed before mentally scene-stitching them into a uniformly vivid whole. In the relevant lojong texts, in order to maximize the amount of merit accrued through offering, one multiplies one’s own body in order to appear before all Buddhas simultaneously and so that one has more bodies with which to prostrate. One also imagines that one’s body, as a wish-granting gem, produces in great quantities anything that one might wish to offer. The instructions for this part of the giving sequence are expressed most succinctly in Mind Training Like the Rays of the Sun: [O]ffer your body . . . to the fully awakened beings residing in the infinite extensive worlds of the ten directions. Imagine creating many bodies before each of them . . . enabling us to offer innumerable prostrations, stimulated by an understanding of the advantages to be gained thereby, due to the process of actions and results. Furthermore, imagine immense heaps of inconceivable offerings emanated from this wish-granting body.88 Here, the text clearly refers to all cosmic Buddhas, summarizing them as the daśadigbuddhas, and emphasizes the merit-making effect of visualized prostrations and offerings. On Borobudur, as we have seen, the first relief panel probably pictures the daśadigbuddhas, and subsequent panels usually depict multiple Buddha figures that refer more loosely to all Buddhas throughout the cosmos. The opening series also emphasizes the importance of devotional activities, especially making offerings, indicating that even at this relatively advanced stage on the Borobudur path, making merit is of paramount importance. Although in the opening series the cosmic Buddhas appear to gather before Samantabhadra, on IV 65, the bodhisattva multilocates in order to bow and make offerings to multiple Buddhas simultaneously. There is, then, a high degree of correspondence between the cosmic sequence for giving and taking meditation on the one hand, and the world-pervasion and cosmic Buddha-pūjā relief panel sequences at Borobudur on the other. Although the relief panels cannot possibly picture scenes from the Public Explication or any Tibetan lojong text, they do picture a meditative visualization procedure that is very similar to the cosmic sequence as it is described later in the lojong literature. Given the high degree of correspondence, one can also use the lojong materials to suggest a solution to one of the knottiest problems in understanding the design of the galleries: the order in which the relief panels were to be contemplated during the performance of the pradaks.in.ā. In this context, it must be emphasized that in tonglen meditation, one does not usually do the whole cosmic sequence for taking, followed by the whole cosmic sequence for giving. Although the Public

Bodhisattva activity in the cosmic panorama 139 Explication initially discusses the sequences for taking and then giving separately, as I have here, the text eventually states that the two sequences are actually one. Since training in either element alone may lead to discouragement, it has been taught that you must “train” or practice “the two alternately.” Within each meditation session, you intersperse taking the suffering and its origin of all sentient beings into the very kernel of your heart with giving your body, resources, and roots of virtue to them.89 In the cosmic visualization sequence, when one arrives finally at the Buddhas, one would stop taking suffering and shift one’s giving into purely devotional offering. With this idea firmly in mind, it will now be useful to consider the order of the pradaks.in.ā at Borobudur.

Ritual circumambulation and the transition from giving to offering To date, there has been no scholarly consensus about the order in which the various sequences of relief panels might have been contemplated during the performance of a formal ritual pradaks.in.ā. Was one to view the relief panels on the balustrade during a first trip around the monument and then perform a second circumambulation of the same gallery in order to view the main wall, or was it the other way around? The relief panels of the third and fourth galleries are particularly perplexing. To view the scenes in these galleries in the order in which they appear in the Gan.d.avyūha, one would begin by viewing the main wall of the third gallery, then make another circuit to view the panels on the third gallery balustrade. The scenes then continue on the balustrade of the fourth gallery, and conclude with the Bhadracarī scenes on the main wall of the fourth gallery. Thus, galleries three and four are designed in such a way that a devotee can either view all of the relief panels in the order in which they appear in the text or perform a consistently ordered pradaks.in.ā, but not both. In addition, the relief panels on the balustrades of galleries three and four are much smaller than those on the main walls and are thus more difficult, though certainly not impossible, for a standing adult to see. The larger relief panels on the main wall are both easier to see while walking and more visually arresting: they are the natural focus of attention in galleries three and four. In line with these and other facts, I argue that the upper galleries of Borobudur were designed for a consistently ordered formal pradaks.in.ā in which the devotee would not contemplate the relief panels on the balustrades but only those on the main walls. While contemplating the scenes in this way does not follow the sequential order of episodes in the text, it does reflect the order in which one performs the cosmic sequence for visualization meditation. In his groundbreaking work on Chinese Buddhist cave paintings at Dunhuang, Wu Hung has shown that the episodes in a textual narrative may be reorganized in visual form so that their spatial arrangement conveys a significant idea or practice. For example, he demonstrates that the spatial arrangement of episodes in Dunhuang murals that picture the Vimalakīrtinirdeśa sūtra do not reflect the temporal sequence of events as they appear in the text. Rather, the episodes are radically reorganized into a spatially

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logical “oppositional composition” that reflects the competitive structure of the debate between Vimalakīrti and the bodhisattva Mañjuśrī.90 In that case, both text and painting presuppose the practice of religious debate. The argument I make here is parallel: the design of the relief panels on the main walls of Borobudur’s third and fourth galleries presuppose the practice of a meditation by which one cultivates compassionate and devotional multilocation in a visualization sequence similar to the cosmic sequence for giving and taking. If this argument is correct, then the Borobudur architects and sculptors were not slavish “illustrators” of texts, but deployed a sophisticated visual rhetoric in their design of the monument. Before turning to the order in which textual passages appear on Borobudur, it will be useful to show that the architects have departed from the text in order to create continuity between the relief panels that picture the Samantabhadracaryā-pran.idhāna and those that picture the portions of the Gan.d.avyūha that precede it. Although the Samantabhadracaryā-pran.idhāna text is written in the first person and does not mention Sudhana, the architects of Borobudur include the pilgrim in these and subsequent scenes as the exemplary practitioner who takes the vows and follows the bodhisattva Samantabhadra in making merit. Relief panels that picture Samantabhadra making devotional offerings show Sudhana making them also. The decision to include Sudhana in these compositions establishes a clear visual continuity between the Gan.d.avyūha relief panels that picture scenes from his pilgrimage and the relief panels that picture the appended bodhisattva vows. It also establishes Sudhana as the consistent model of an aspiring practitioner for those performing the pradaks.in.ā along the bodhisattva path as it is articulated in galleries three and four. These observations do not bear directly on the question of whether one was expected to contemplate the relief panels of the third gallery main wall (my thesis) or those of the fourth gallery balustrade (textual order) immediately before the Samantabhadracaryā-pran.idhāna series during the performance of a formal pradaks.in.ā. The presence of Sudhana would provide visual continuity in either case. But the example does show that the designers did not hesitate to depart from the written text in order to create a visually coherent iconographic program. The order in which sequences of relief panels appear in the pradaks.in.ā around the third and fourth galleries is not dictated by the order of the text, but rather by the order of the meditative visualization practice. The transitional moment in the lojong practice of giving and taking – the moment at which one stops contemplating giving to those in sam . sāra and begins contemplating offering to the cosmic Buddhas – reflects precisely the logic that underlies the transition from Borobudur’s third gallery main wall to its fourth gallery main wall. Prior to the last panel on the third gallery main wall, at least ten and possibly 12 panels picture Maitreya teaching in assemblies of bodhisattvas (III 76–87). Although one might infer that Maitreya takes the sufferings of the bodhisattvas, the visual emphasis is on his generosity with the dharma. The identification of the last relief panel on this wall is uncertain (III 88) (Figure 4.4). It pictures Maitreya, standing with his hands folded in devotion and facing the stairs that lead to the fourth gallery. Sudhana, also with hands folded, rests his left knee on the ground and raises his

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Figure 4.4 Transition from giving to offering (III 88). Photograph by John C. Huntington, Courtesy of the Huntington Photographic Archive at The Ohio State University.

right. John Miksic proposes that the scene depicts a phrase from the Gan.d.avyūha in which Sudhana sees Maitreya practicing the yoga of walking ceaselessly for hundreds of thousands of years.91 Although this identification is possible, neither Miksic nor the Gan.d.avyūha phrase to which he points explains why Maitreya’s hands should be shown folded in worship and devotion, or why Sudhana kneels in such a distinctive way. Thus one might entertain an alternative hypothesis that here the architects have inserted a scene that has no source in the text, for it is clear that they have done so elsewhere. For example, six scenes on the second gallery main wall depict Sudhana and his retinue in procession from one spiritual guide to the next. These scenes have no clear analogue in the Gan.d.avyūha. This is not to suggest that the panels are visual filler with no function on the monument, but rather that the function is not to be found in the text. I argue that part of the function of the Maitreya scene is to indicate that the bodhisattva has completed the cosmic sequence for giving, up through giving to the bodhisattvas of the tenth bhūmi, and is now indicating that one should shift into a devotional mode in preparation for making offerings to the Buddhas of the ten directions. As we have seen, the first panel of the fourth gallery main wall pictures ten Buddhas, Samantabhadra with hands folded in devotion, and figures making offerings. Thus Maitreya’s folded hands anticipate the folded hands of Samantabhadra and create a partial visual segue. The conceptual continuity is that on the fourth gallery main wall, the relief panels continue to picture visualized generosity, but in relation to recipients of a higher spiritual order. The relief panel in question thus signals a transition to this higher order. Finally, it should be noted that Sudhana’s pose on III 88 is precisely the bodily position one assumes in order to take the bodhisattva vows in contemporary Tibetan Buddhist practice.

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One might object that the seemingly abrupt shift from relief panels featuring Maitreya on the third gallery to those featuring Samantabhadra on the fourth gallery visually undermines the sense of continuity between the two main walls. While there is some truth in this, the distinct probability is that the Borobudur architects, as well as other Śailendra Buddhists familiar with the visualization procedure, associated the practice of making inconceivably vast visualized offerings to the Buddhas particularly with the bodhisattva Samantabhadra. The Samantabhadracaryā-pran.idhāna was widely used as part of Mahāyāna Buddhist liturgies, and as we have seen, its first several verses are the inspiration for Śāntideva’s account of the anuttarapūjā.92 Thus it is highly likely that the late eighth- or early ninth-century Śailendras, who clearly valued the text, also used it liturgically. If this is the case, then the association of Samantabhadra with the visualized offerings would have been expected. The change of bodhisattva guides from Maitreya to Samantabhadra would therefore have seemed natural. But the architects appear to have inserted the scene on the last relief panel of the third gallery main wall to provide a smoother visual transition from giving to offering. The scene may also have served another function. As Fontein notes in relation to the traveling scenes, “it is most remarkable that these travelling scenes always appear at a place where the sculptors seem to deviate from our text.”93 If my hypothesis is correct, then III 88 marks the spot at which a practitioner performing the pradaks.in.ā “skips over” the Gan.d.avyūha scenes on the balustrades of galleries three and four and proceeds directly to contemplating the scenes from the Samantabhadracaryā-pran.idhāna on the main wall of the fourth gallery. That is a lot of “text” to skip. The panels that picture the miraculous lotus pond, Maitreya’s pervasion of time, and, later, his dissolution of the vision in and Sudhana’s exit from the kūt.āgāra, Sudhana’s second visit to the bodhisattva Mañjuśrī, and the parts of his visit to Samantabhadra that precede the vows – all are located on the balustrades. If this hypothesis is to make sense, then one must explain how these scenes can be omitted from the contemplative sequence of the pradaks.in.ā without doing excessive violence to the teaching presented in the text. I argue that the sequences that picture the miraculous lotus pond and Maitreya’s pervasion of time can both be “skipped” because they are redundant, lesser examples of themes already presented on the main wall of the third gallery. The sequence that pictures the adornments of the palace is sufficient to convey the whole sense of visualizing the environment of a purified field because in the commentarial literature the palace can stand for the whole field by synecdoche: drawing on relevant sutras and the doctrinal digests, Paul Griffiths observes, “A Buddha-field is often presented descriptively as containing (or even consisting in) a great palace.”94 As for the sequence that pictures Maitreya’s pervasion of the world system, it is sufficient to convey the sense of compassionate multilocation, even if the idea of the pervasion of time would need to be supplied. Furthermore, the world-pervasion sequence, in which Maitreya appears, often in vitarka mudrā, teaching various sorts of beings demonstrates the most important form of compassionate generosity – generosity with the dharma – while the time-pervasion sequence pictures lesser forms such as generosity with one’s royal implements.

Bodhisattva activity in the cosmic panorama 143 As for Sudhana’s second visit to the bodhisattva Mañjuśrī and those elements of his visit to Samantabhadra that precede the vows, the architects apparently felt that to “skip over” them entirely would do excessive violence to the teaching presented in the text. It is perhaps for this reason that they inserted a sequence of scenes on the main wall of the third gallery (III 8–19) that have no known source in the text, but which picture brief versions of Sudhana’s visits to Mañjuśrī and Samantabhadra. Bosch offers the hypothesis that the architects used a version of the Gan.d.avyūha that did include “a few words or sentences, spoken by Maitreya” just after Sudhana enters the kūt.āgāra, in which the bodhisattva explains to Sudhana what will occur after he leaves.95 One might add that whether or not the scenes were inspired by an unknown textual passage, they might picture a vyākaran.a, or certain prediction of future religious success. At this point in the visual sequence, Sudhana has entered the kūt.āgāra (III 6) and made a prostration (III 7). In the next scenes, which are the beginning of the sequence in question, Maitreya is shown instructing Sudhana (III 8–9). Because entry into a purified field is such a positive event on the bodhisattva path, it would be natural for Maitreya to “explain” its benefits by predicting Sudhana’s future success, including the benefits of meeting Mañjuśrī (III 12) and Samantabhadra (III 16–19). In any case, these scenes provide a brief “synopsis” of the most important elements of the text that are to be “skipped” in the pradaks.in.ā. Immediately after this “prediction” series begins the sequence that pictures the adornments of the kūt.āgāra. Intriguingly, if one contemplates the relief panels on the main walls only, one of the textual moments that is “skipped” without compensation is the moment at which Maitreya dissolves the vision by snapping his fingers a second time and Sudhana finds himself back on the outside of the kūt.āgāra. If my hypothesis is correct, then the celebrant at Borobudur who follows the pradaks.in.ā path never sees Sudhana leave the purified field. Because, according to the Sukhāvatīvyūha, bodhisattvas do the Samantabhadra practice without ever leaving Sukhāvatī, the pradaks.in.ā sequence would make perfect sense: the practitioner does the Samantabhadra practice while still in the purified field of the kūt.āgāra. The implication is that in the visualization procedure pictured on Borobudur, the practitioner, like the bodhisattvas in Sukhāvatī, remains indefinitely in the (mental) space of the purified field. The argument that I make here – that the relief panels of the third and fourth main gallery walls are to be viewed as a continuous sequence – is consistent with previous scholarship that suggests several grounds for concluding that the architects of Borobudur did not design the relief panels on the balustrades to be viewed during the performance of a formal ritual pradaks.in.ā. First, the pradaks.in.ā is usually performed while looking over one’s right shoulder, which in the galleries would be toward the main wall, not toward the balustrade.96 Second, the first gallery balustrade was not part of the original design97 and therefore could not have been part of the original conception for the pradaks.in.ā pathway. Third, the relief panels on the balustrades are generally smaller and harder to see than those on the main walls. Indeed, as Robert L. Brown points out, to see the relief panels on the lower register of the first gallery balustrade, an adult must stoop or crouch

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(Figure 4.5).98 Fourth, the sequencing conundrums are not limited to the third and fourth galleries. As Jan Fontein notices, the avadāna and jātaka relief panels of the second gallery balustrade do not seem to fit logically between the Lalitavistara series on the first gallery main wall and the Gan.d.avyūha series on the second gallery main wall, nor do they seem to fit between the Gan.d.avyūha panels on the second gallery and those on the third.99 Fontein provides a positive reason to suspect that only the relief panels on the main walls served as the focus of attention during the performance of the formal pradaks.in.ā by showing that there is a clear visual segue between the main wall of the first gallery and the main wall of the second.100 The last panel of the Lalitavistara series on the first gallery main wall (I a 120) pictures the Buddha delivering the First Sermon. As mentioned above, the relief is damaged and the right hand of the Buddha is missing, but the figure almost certainly originally displayed the vitarka mudrā. The first relief panel of the Gan.d.avyūha series on the second main wall (II 1) pictures the Buddha in vitarka mudrā as he enters the meditative state of concentration that is his revelation to the bodhisattvas in the Jeta grove in the prologue of the Gan.d.avyūha. The transition from the first gallery to the second visually implies that the Mahāyāna teachings of the Gan.d.avyūha are continuous with those of the First Sermon, but are expressed – quite literally – at a higher level.

Figure 4.5 Person standing in first gallery, west façade. From N. J. Krom and T. van Erp, Beschrijving van Borobudur, vol. 1 (’s-Gravenhage: Nijhoff, 1920).

Bodhisattva activity in the cosmic panorama 145 Similarly, the last three panels of the second gallery main wall picture Sudhana’s arrival at Maitreya’s palace, which, I argue, creates a clear transition to the Maitreya panels on the third gallery main wall. The antepenultimate scene pictures Sudhana as he prostrates himself before the closed palace of Maitreya (II 126). In this and the following scene, Sudhana sees only the outside of the palace, not its interior and not Maitreya himself. The last panel pictures Maitreya inside the palace among a host of heavenly and supernatural beings (II 128). But Sudhana does not appear in this scene, as he does in nearly every other Gan.d.avyūha scene, including those on the third gallery intended to show that he participates in Maitreya’s meditative vision inside the palace. There is thus no reason to suppose that Sudhana can see the interior of the palace or Maitreya at this point. In fact, the panel seems to function as a sort of cut-away or cross-section intended precisely to show the viewer what Sudhana can’t see yet. Only on the third gallery – again, literally at a higher level – can Sudhana see Maitreya (III 1), and with his blessing (III 5), enter the palace and see its interior. The fact that the palace appears on the last few panels of the second gallery creates the continuity necessary for the segue, while the fact that Sudhana can see Maitreya and the interior of the palace only in the scenes on the third gallery signals the transition to a higher level of the path. Taken together, these observations suggest the theory that the relief panels of the main walls of all four galleries were planned as a continuous series, to be viewed during the performance of a formal pradaks.in.ā. Thus a thorough reevaluation of the design function of the relief panels on the balustrades seems to be in order. Such a re-evaluation is beyond the scope of the current project, but were someone to undertake it in future, Brown’s argument that some jātaka panels serve to “mark” Borobudur as an iconic whole representing the Buddha would be an excellent place to begin.101 For the moment, it will be useful to re-emphasize that on the third and fourth galleries, the ritual pathway provides an opportunity for the practitioner to review virtuoso demonstrations of the multilocational powers involved in the full exercise of conventional bodhicitta as they are revealed to Sudhana by the bodhisattvas Maitreya and Samantabhadra. These powers can be cultivated through meditative visualization, as they are in the cosmic sequence for giving and taking meditation. By following the pradaks.in.ā pathway and contemplating the relief panels on the main walls only, one encounters a sequence of visual images that strongly parallels the images used in the meditative procedure. While contemplating these demonstrations during the performance of the pradaks.in.ā, the ritual celebrant at Borobudur may have engaged in a walking version of a meditative visualization much like the cosmic sequence for giving and taking. In this case, the practitioner would have been actively engaged in intrapsychic memorialization, meditatively incorporating the patterns of excellence presented on the relief panels and cultivating the ability to embody them for others by generating perfectly adapted nirmān.akāyas. Celebrants who were not able to perform the meditation, but who knew about it may have used the ritual occasion to contemplate the procedure and develop the aspiration to learn it. Even celebrants who were completely unfamiliar with the meditative visualization procedure may have been expected to benefit

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because the galleries provide a ritual venue within which they could “perform” the meditation symbolically. Simply by walking past the relief panels with devotion, the celebrant might have been expected to create a karmic connection with Maitreya, Samantabhadra, and the meditative procedure that they demonstrate – a connection that might have been expected to bear fruit in some future life. Thus the galleries appear to have been designed to constitute the practitioner as one who is, will soon be, or will eventually be an advanced bodhisattva with the ability to generate nirmān.akāyas through which he can more efficiently fulfill his vows to liberate all sentient beings and lead them to enlightenment. As we have seen, Maitreya demonstrates the power of a tenth-stage bodhisattva, which has already been realized to a high degree on the eighth stage, to produce illusory bodies with which he can instruct all sentient beings at his own level and below. He thus “descends” and “appears” in order to teach – that is, he engages in the actions that form the root meaning, though without the Hindu theological import, of the Sanskrit avatāra. Samantabhadra demonstrates the power of a tenth-level bodhisattva to produce multiple bodies with which he can worship all Buddhas everywhere simultaneously, thus fulfilling the devotional aspect of the bodhisattva pran.idhāna, or “vow,” in a way that will earn maximal merit that can be transferred to others. By reviewing these demonstrations on the pradaks.in.ā pathway, the ritual celebrant at Borobudur at least symbolically followed in the footsteps of Sudhana, who participated in the meditative visualizations of the bodhisattvas. One cannot help but wonder whether Atiśa, who later “went to Suvarn.advīpa and thoroughly studied for twelve years the practice of bodhicitta, both pran.idhāna and avatāra,”102 might also have walked through the galleries of Borobudur on his way to full enlightenment.

5

To emptiness and back The transformative work of the terraces

The transition from the galleries to the terraces is dramatic. The zigzagging paths of the gallery walkways are closed in by the balustrades, and after a time, the seemingly endless corridors can begin to feel somewhat claustrophobic. The terraces, by contrast, are open, spacious, and offer a free and fabulous view of the surrounding countryside. While the galleries are crowded with elaborate textually inspired relief panels, the terraces are visually spare. Most of the built forms there are relatively plain: only the central stupa is adorned with relief sculpture that represents decorative offerings (Figure 5.1). These differences are so striking that many scholars have thought that the terraces must represent an entirely new

Figure 5.1 Circumambulation path on the terraces. Photograph by John C. Huntington, Courtesy of the Huntington Photographic Archive at The Ohio State University.

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teaching based on a text other than the Gan.d.avyūha. Often, this view goes hand in hand with some version of the theory that the program of Buddha figures on the terraces and in the niches constitutes a mandala that is based on a distinctively Tantric text and/or is similar to more well-known visual representations of Tantric or esoteric mandalas. While it may turn out that the terraces have a distinctively Tantric dimension as well, one can explain the transition from the galleries and the ritualarchitectural program of the terraces by interpreting them in light of the Gan.d.avyūha, the Perfection of Wisdom literature, and visualization texts such as the Pratyutpanna-buddha-sammukhāvasthita-samādhi-sūtra (hereafter, PraS) that discuss visions of the Buddha(s) of the present in the context of the view that all phenomena are characterized by emptiness. As a group, these texts recount visionary experiences of the Buddhas of the ten directions and their purified fields – whether spontaneously granted or cultivated through buddhānusmr.ti – “in such a way as to undercut any naively materialist or realist view of the cosmology in which this takes place or of the relationships which are engendered.”1 As Harrison points out, the understanding of the purified fields in these texts contrasts sharply with the understanding presented in the Larger Sukhāvatīvyūha sūtra and with at least some later East Asian Pure Land developments. The Sukhāvatīvyūha pays not the slightest attention to the doctrines of the Prajñāpāramitā: the very word śūnyatā occurs only twice, and then only in stereotyped contexts. Further, the encounter with Amitābha is depicted as an actual event, taking place (necessarily) at the hour of death and followed by rebirth in Sukhāvatī. . . . Amitābha’s appearance to the dying man is contingent upon the faithful performance of anusmr.ti, but is not produced by that act.2 Although the Gan.d.avyūha incorporates purified field imagery that is more fully described in the Sukhāvatīvyūha sūtras, it does so in a way that situates that imagery in a larger discourse that critiques its ontological status in terms familiar from the Perfection of Wisdom literature. Furthermore, it presents “entry” into the purified field(s) as a mind-based, meditative experience that, by implication, can be cultivated as part of the bodhisattva path – an approach that is clearly instantiated in the architectural program of the third and fourth galleries. While the terraces of Borobudur are not an “illustration” of the Gan.d.avyūha or of any other text discussed in this chapter, their design clearly reflects the doctrinal concerns of incorporating meditative visualization of the purified field(s) into the bodhisattva path and of understanding that experience in terms of emptiness. While an examination of relevant texts helps to elucidate the doctrinal concerns and meditative procedures that inform the design of the upper terraces, an examination of relevant aspects of Buddhist material culture helps to elucidate at least some of its probable functions as a ritual venue. There are no extant written records of ritual practice at Borobudur, nor has there been a continuous indigenous tradition of Buddhist ritual activity there. In the absence of direct evidence, it is impossible to know with certainty just what Śailendra Buddhists did on the

The transformative work of the terraces 149 terraces. Still, on the evidence of the structure itself, together with Buddhist material culture and ritual practices current at the time, it is possible to reconstruct at least some of the ritual-architectural procedures for which the top of the monument and its staircases appear to have been designed. Particularly relevant are the practices of circumambulation, stupa worship and image worship involving pūjā, and ritual descent of stairways. Using these two bodies of evidence together, this chapter argues that the terraces were designed as a venue for the performance of a ritual that unites devotional generosity toward the Buddhas of the ten directions with the contemplation of emptiness as the final stage of buddhānusmr.ti. The ritual-architectural procedure thus combines merit-making with the cultivation of wisdom, thereby symbolically constituting the practitioner as an advanced bodhisattva who has both the motivation and the ability to transfer merit by “returning” from the purified fields as a nirmān.akāya to engage in compassionate generosity here.

The cosmic Buddhas of the terraces As we have seen, the transitions from one gallery to the next are marked by visual segues that create some continuity between the last relief panel on the lower gallery and the first relief panel of the upper gallery, even as they introduce something new that marks the relief panels on the higher level as a superior teaching. Despite the fact that the transition from the fourth gallery main wall to the terraces is more dramatic, I argue that there is also an element of continuity: the vision of the cosmic Buddhas. In a full ritual pradaks.in.ā, one ascends to the upper platform after having just circumambulated the fourth gallery while contemplating the relief panels of the Samantabhadracaryā-pran.idhāna series. As we have seen, a long sequence of panels in the series pictures the bodhisattva Samantabhadra making devotional offerings to multiple Buddhas of the present. Although the relief panels do not generally convey this pictorially, the Buddhas are well known to “reside” in innumerable buddhaks.etras throughout the cosmos. I argue that the Samantabhadra relief panels create an architectural context within which the Buddha figures in the latticed stupas of the terraces are to be understood: the statues are iconic representations of the Buddhas of the present, while the latticed stupas are, in part, representations of their respective purified fields. The idea that the Buddha figures in the latticed stupas on the terraces of Borobudur represent the cosmic Buddhas in their purified fields is not new, but has been proposed by Jan Boeles, who argues that the terraces represent the Buddha Śākyamuni’s illumination of the cosmos as it is described in chapter XI of the Lotus Sutra.3 I agree with Boeles that the top of the monument reflects the logic of the Buddha’s miraculous illumination of the cosmos that, as Thurman explains, underlies the Mahāyāna mandala principle. But there is no reason to suppose that the Lotus Sutra inspired the design of the terraces. In the absence of any clear evidence to show that the Lotus Sutra is connected with Borobudur – or indeed was even known in Java at the time the monument was built – it is far more

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reasonable to suppose that the terraces were inspired by, though not precisely an “illustration” of, the miracle of illumination in the prologue of the Gan.d.avyūha. In keeping with the miracle in the Jeta grove, the top of the monument represents not only the buddhaks.etras of the asan.khyeya cosmology, but also the fact that they have become coextensive with our particular world system. When the Buddha in the Jeta grove illuminates the cosmos, he makes all of the innumerable buddhaks.etras visible in their own locations and simultaneously present in the purified field of the Jeta grove. On Borobudur, the multiple buddhaks.etras appear together in the “field” of the upper platform, which is in turn atop a structure that suggests the Mount Meru at the center of our world system. Despite the fact that many Western observers have been disappointed by the relative squatness of the monument, it is nevertheless clear that Borobudur was intended to represent, among other things, a mountain. As Bernet Kempers explains, “The terraced construction of Borobudur recalls the fact that an important element of the Universe is Mount Meru, a terraced cosmic mountain.”4 There is ample evidence to show that terraced sanctuaries were built to represent sacred mountains in what later became the Śailendra cultural area centuries before the advent of Buddhism in Indonesia.5 Here we find one of the fortuitous similarities between pre-existing local religious practice and Indian Buddhist ideas that probably facilitated and helped to shape the process of cultural borrowing and integration. The very name of the Śailendra dynasty, the “Lords of the Mountain,” reveals that mountains were still regarded as religiously and politically important sites at the time that Borobudur was built. In addition to its terraced pyramidal form, the location of Borobudur also suggests that it is intended, in part, to represent Mount Meru. In the cakravāla, or single world Buddhist cosmology, the cosmos is conceived as a disk not unlike a painted target: at the bull’s eye is the mythical Mount Meru, which is surrounded by concentric rings of alternating seas and mountain ranges. The outermost of these mountain ranges is, like the entire system, called the Cakravāla.6 Just as Mount Meru is surrounded by a ring of mythical mountains, so the valley in which Borobudur is located is nearly surrounded by a ring of actual mountains. Furthermore, as J. G. de Casparis has pointed out, Borobudur rises from the midst of a plain of rice fields that, during certain parts of the growing season, looks not unlike a vast lake.7 It is possible that in this context, the paddy waters were intended to symbolize the ocean between Mount Meru/Borobudur and the surrounding mountain range. The architects appear to have artfully selected a location that would allow them to use a combination of built form and natural landscape to represent the cakravāla cosmos. This combination of monument and landscape bears a striking resemblance to an eighteenth-century Tibetan ritual object called the Offering Cosmos Mandala, which is known to represent the cakravāla cosmos.8 Etched into the perimeter of this round bronze mandala, approximately 12.25 inches (311 mm) in diameter, are alternating images of mountains and ocean waves. Rising from the center of the disk is a square pyramid with four terraces, which call to mind the four gallery levels of Borobudur, shorn of their balustrades. Above these four square levels of

The transformative work of the terraces 151 the mandala pyramid, there is a flat area on which is mounted a large pearl in the center of eight embossed flower petals. Although this is a much simpler design than that which adorns the top of Borobudur, it might not be amiss to compare the pearl with the monument’s central stupa, and the eight flower petals with the surrounding rings of latticed stupas in multiples of eight. The Offering Cosmos Mandala and Borobudur were made in different cultures, and at opposite ends of a millennium. But both reflect ideas that can be found in the same Mahāyāna textual sources, including Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakośa, which is a comprehensive Indian scholastic account of Buddhist cosmology.9 Thus it is safe to say, I think, that the visual evidence provided by the Offering Cosmos Mandala strengthens the argument that the general shape and location of Borobudur indicate that it is intended in part to represent Mount Meru at the center of the cakravāla cosmos. Atop this Meru, on the upper platform, the Buddhas of the ten directions become coextensive with this world system. The terraces of Borobudur represent the Buddhas in the buddhaks.etras of the asan.khyeya cosmos in a way that is consistent with the prologue of the Gan.d.avyūha and that, in the context of the pradaks.in.ā, continues a theme just elaborated in the fourth gallery relief panels that picture the Samantabhadracaryā-pran.idhāna. But on the terraces, the Buddhas are presented in a radically different way. First, and perhaps most obviously, on the relief panels, the Buddhas are represented pictorially in relatively flat compositions, while on the terraces, they appear as three-dimensional icons. This new “format” opens up the possibility that the Buddhas can now be the focus of new ritual activities, including pūjā offerings. Whereas the relief panels picture Samantabhadra making offerings to the Buddhas of the ten directions and are clearly structured by the practice of meditatively visualized pūjā, the terraces provide a ritual venue in which the practitioner can (also) do material pūjā. The fact that the cosmic Buddhas on the terraces are presented as icons also seems to open up the possibility that they could have been ritually enlivened in such a way as to provide an opportunity for a Mahāyāna Buddhist version of taking darśan.10 Much has been written about the apparent incongruity of Buddhist image worship in modern Theravāda Buddhist contexts, in which the historical Buddha is considered genuinely to have entered parinirvān.a, and thus to be logically unavailable for “installation” in images, yet is worshipped “in” images as though he were present.11 Framed in this way, the concerns about the Buddha’s “presence” in his images are largely irrelevant in Mahāyāna contexts, in which the Buddha’s parinirvān.a is considered to be merely apparent. If the Buddha can generate multiple nirmān.akāyas that appear in the world in order to save sentient beings, why could he not “appear” in an analogous way in images? To account for the Buddha’s presence in consecrated images in terms of the trikāya theory is not wholly unproblematic,12 but this is not the place for a full discussion of the issues. Instead, it will suffice to point out that even if the Buddha images on the terraces were consecrated in such a way as to establish them as emanations, the architectural program still does not, upon consideration, seem to be designed for a Buddhist form of darśan.

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To explain why, it is necessary to turn to the second way in which the presentation of the cosmic Buddhas on the terraces differs from their presentation on the relief panels of the fourth gallery: on the terraces, the Buddhas cannot be clearly seen; on the relief panels, the Buddhas are fully visible.13 The text emphasizes that Samantabhadra is face to face with all the cosmic Buddhas, whether they multilocate to gather before him or he multilocates to appear simultaneously before all of them; either way, he can see them clearly as he makes his offerings. The compositions picture multiple Buddha figures in various configurations, and while the figures often float in the air on lotuses, indicating that their bodies are not subject to the ordinary laws of physics, they do seem to obey the ordinary laws of optics. That is to say, even though their positions in space are ambiguous, since they are both “in” their buddhaks.etras and “in front of” Samantabhadra, they appear clearly as figures in this world do. But on the terraces, the Buddhas are not fully visible: the Buddha statues can only be glimpsed through the diamond- or squareshaped openings in the latticed stupas that encase them (Figure 5.2). Thus, to the degree that darśan is an exchange of the gaze between the devotee and the enlivened icon,14 the architectural program of the terraces is not designed to facilitate the process – indeed, the program seems designed to thwart darśan. The Buddha

Figure 5.2 Buddha statue in latticed stupa. Photograph by John C. Huntington, Courtesy of the Huntington Photographic Archive at The Ohio State University.

The transformative work of the terraces 153 icons are obscured by the latticed stupas to such a degree that from the perspective of the circumambulation pathway, the devotee cannot “catch the Buddha’s eye.” If the “unfinished Buddha” was originally installed in the central stupa as part of the architectural program, then one could say that, at its heart, Borobudur closes off the possibility of darśan completely. If the image was there, it was wholly invisible inside the completely opaque central stupa. The opacity at the center of the Borobudur mandala is anticipated in the panorama revealed on galleries three and four. When one mentally assembles the panorama through the process of meditative scene-stitching, one finds that it includes everything except the one thing that one would most expect: a prominent and detailed representation of the Buddha Vairocana, who, as the text states, is ultimately responsible for emanating the field. The panorama includes the environment of the purified field, Maitreya’s nirmān.akāyas in the various realms of the world system, and the innumerable Buddhas of the asan.khyeya cosmos, but does not clearly picture the Buddha Vairocana on his throne at the center of the purified field. Thus the panorama is like a donut: the periphery is fully represented, but there is an empty hole in the middle. If the mentally assembled two-dimensional panorama simply lacks a clear iconic representation at its center, the three-dimensional program of the terraces seems to progressively obscure the icons that are there, until finally there is a total erasure of iconic representation at the center. The diminished visibility of the cosmic Buddhas on the terraces provides an opportunity to contemplate aspects of Buddhahood that are difficult to “see.” That is to say, they invite one to understand the visionary appearance of the cosmic Buddhas in the context of the perfection of wisdom. Here invisibility serves as a visual analogue to emptiness. This makes sense as a continuation of the themes of the fourth gallery, for in order to fulfill the Samantabhadra vows, one must have not only compassion but also the wisdom that realizes emptiness. Samantabhadra’s ability to course through the cosmos implies not only that he has the compassionate intention to accumulate vast stores of merit for others but also that he has the wisdom necessary to carry out that intention without obstruction. In the Gan.d.avyūha and related literature, the ability to see multiple Buddhas simultaneously and, at a more advanced level, to produce multiple bodies in order to worship them more efficiently is linked to the realization of emptiness. Thus the terraces present the cosmic Buddhas in a way that facilitates the recognition of their common source in the full realization of emptiness that characterizes the dharmakāya.15

“Seeing” emptiness: the dharmakāya and the limits of vision The story of Sadāprarudita at the end of The Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines (As..tasāhasrika-prajñāpāramitā-sūtra) helps to show how invisibility can serve as a metaphor for emptiness, or at least as the occasion for contemplating emptiness. Like Sudhana, Sadāprarudita is an exemplary practitioner who sets out on a journey to seek the teacher(s) who will instruct him and lead him toward enlightenment. In Sadāprarudita’s case, it is clear from the beginning that he seeks

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the perfection of wisdom. On his journey, he achieves a visionary meditative state called “Spectator of all Tathāgatas,” in which “he saw the Buddhas and Lords in the countless worlds in the ten directions.”16 In the vision, the Buddhas assure Sadāprarudita that he is experiencing a soteriologically critical event: when they were bodhisattvas, they had also achieved the same visionary meditative state and had then become “established in the perfection of wisdom and the irreversible dharmas of a Buddha.”17 Sadāprarudita is thus perhaps understandably upset when, having finished their encouraging revelations, the Buddhas promptly disappear. When Sadāprarudita emerges from his meditative state he asks himself, “‘Whence have those Tathagatas come, and whither have they gone?’ Since he could no longer see those Tathagatas, he was worried and pined away for them.”18 When he later meets his teacher (kalyān.amitra), the bodhisattva Dharmodgata, the teaching he receives is tailored precisely to these concerns. Sadāprarudita asks Dharmodgata to demonstrate “the coming and going of those Tathagatas, so that we may cognize it, and so that we may become not lacking in the vision of the Tathagatas.”19 Dharmodgata’s reply is a more thorough version of the teaching that the Buddhas already delivered in the vision: they explicitly tell Sadāprarudita that the soteriological benefit of seeing them is fully realized only if the vision is perceived as ultimately empty.20 Dharmodgata compares the vision to a mirage and says that just as those who look at a mirage and think that they apprehend water are foolish, so those who have a vision of a Buddha and think that they “see” the Buddha himself are also foolish, because in his ultimately real form, the Buddha cannot be apprehended visually. He says, “a Tathagata cannot be seen from his form-body [nirmān.akāya and sambhogakāya]. The Dharma-bodies [dharmakāya] are the Tathagatas and the real nature of dharmas does not come and go.”21 The disappearance of the Buddhas turns out to be as instructive as their appearance is auspicious. Both the vision and the recognition of its ultimate nonreality are necessary for a nonBuddha such as Sadāprarudita to approximate the perfection of wisdom that characterizes full Buddhahood. In order to reveal himself fully as the dharmakāya, the Buddha must disappear. Sadāprarudita’s experience provides a context within which to understand the architectural program of Borobudur’s upper terraces. His meditative vision is a crucial part of the vision that Samantabhadra reveals to Sudhana in the Samantabhadracaryā-pran.idhāna series as it is pictured on the fourth gallery. In both visions, the exemplary practitioners see multiple Buddhas of the present who reside in the buddhaks.etras throughout the cosmos. Such a vision is the necessary condition for the Samantabhadra practice of accumulating merit quickly by making multiple visualized devotional offerings simultaneously. What Sadāprarudita’s story suggests is that for the Samantabhadra practice to be maximally effective – that is, in order to do the practice multilocationally – the vision that makes it possible must be understood as ultimately empty. The Large Sutra on Perfect Wisdom states this directly by revealing the connection between the realization of emptiness and the ability to multilocate. Subhuti asks how the bodhisattva acquires the

The transformative work of the terraces 155 ability to “travel in . . . countless world systems, to honor the Buddhas . . . in those world systems, and demonstrate the Dharma there, to hear the Dharma from them, and to plant wholesome roots in the presence of those Buddhas.”22 The Buddha answers: “Here, Subhuti, the Bodhisattva who courses in perfect wisdom sees all the countless world systems in the East, etc. as empty. And the Buddhas and Lords who are in them are empty of own-being, and they can be described only by way of names and conventional expressions which rely on concepts. All these concepts, however, are empty of own-being. . . . In consequence the Bodhisattva who through his skill in means courses in the perfection of wisdom consummates the perfection of the superknowledges.”23 According to the text, the realization of emptiness is a necessary condition for the development of the “superknowledges” (abhijñā), such as clairvoyance, clairaudience, and, most importantly for our purposes here, what Luis Gómez has called the bodhisattva’s “wonder-working” powers (r.ddhi), including the ability to produce multiple bodies in any form.24 By deconstructing the buddhaks.etras, and indeed the cosmic Buddhas themselves, the practitioner accesses the perfection of wisdom that empowers him to multilocate and thus to engage in the most efficient form of merit-making devotional generosity. In some versions of buddhānusmr.ti, the practitioner engages in a similar sort of deconstruction. After creating a mental image vivid enough to serve as a virtual reality, the practitioner subjects that vision to the critique of emptiness. The PraS describes a meditative procedure in which the practitioner engages in this critique by inquiring into the nature of the vision in a way that, as Harrison notes, parallels Sadāprarudita’s questions to Dharmodgata. when the bodhisattva has developed this samādhi properly, that bodhisattva sees those Tathāgatas with little difficulty. Having seen them he asks them questions, and is gladdened by the elucidation of those questions. Having thought: “Did these Tathāgatas come from somewhere? Did I go anywhere?” he understands that those Tathāgatas did not come from anywhere. Having comprehended that his body did not go anywhere either, he thinks: “These Triple Worlds are nothing but thought.”25 Here the vision is deconstructed discursively, while the practitioner is still engaged in meditative visualization. In Tibetan Tantric forms of visualization, which Harrison argues clearly grow out of earlier forms of buddhānusmr.ti such as the one described in the PraS, the vision is usually deconstructed optically. That is to say, having created the vivid mental image and completed the remaining parts of the sādhana, the practitioner dissolves the vision, making it gradually disappear into emptiness. As Thurman puts it, “The Creation Stage [visualization] meditation sessions always end with the dissolution of whatever visionary realms have been created into the clear light of universal voidness.”26

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By making the Buddha images partially disappear into their latticed stupas, the architectural program of the Borobudur terraces also seems to deconstruct the vision of the cosmic Buddhas optically. The dissolution of the vision prepares the way for “seeing” the necessarily invisible dharmakāya that is symbolized by the central stupa. According to the Indian commentarial literature, the dharmakāya cannot, by its very nature, be represented directly. Although it is the ultimate source of all visible Buddha bodies, the dharmakāya itself cannot be seen. The Buddhas function by: showing [themselves] in various world realms through embodiment in created forms (nirmān.akāya), showing [themselves] among the assemblies through embodiment in communal enjoyment (sāmbhogikakāya), and being utterly invisible with respect to their embodiment of dharma (dharmakāya).27 If the dharmakāya is “utterly invisible,” then it cannot be truly represented in any form, including a nonfigurative form such as a stupa. Of course, the dharmakāya cannot be truly described in language either,28 but that did not prevent good scholastic Buddhists from writing sheaves about it. Good Buddhists have also found visual ways of representing the unrepresentable dharmakāya and the corresponding doctrine of emptiness. As David McMahan has pointed out, the Gan.d.avyūha expresses the doctrine of emptiness in the visionary imagery of multiplication, mutual reflection, and mutual containment. Drawing on cognitive metaphor theory, as it is elucidated by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson,29 McMahan argues that the Gan.d.avyūha presents Buddhist wisdom as the realization of emptiness through the cognitive metaphor “Knowing is Seeing.”30 In the Gan.d.avyūha, then, visibility is the sensory analogue to emptiness. The transparency of all boundaries between things, allowing for their mutual pervasion, is a visual representation of the lack of inherent existence in all things. Just as the realization of this emptiness of fixed identity is tantamount to all-knowledge in the Perfection of Wisdom texts, the transparency and reflectivity of all things in the Gan.d.avyūha is tantamount to the unimpeded visibility of all things.31 The visual imagery of multiplication, mutual reflection, and mutual containment is perhaps best exemplified by the interior of Maitreya’s kūt.āgāra. There, Maitreya reveals all realms of the cosmos within multiple towers that both contain these realms and are contained within the kūt.āgāra. Although none of the cosmic realms is displaced, they are all nevertheless drawn into the single space of the kūt.āgāra. Furthermore, the towers are mutually reflective, so that from a visual standpoint each one “contains” all of the others.32 Maitreya demonstrates that the towers are empty of fixed individual identity in part by showing that, through a process of mutual reflection that results in the infinite multiplication of images, each tower is “full” of all the others.

The transformative work of the terraces 157 Woodward suggests that the terraces of Borobudur may also have been designed originally as a demonstration of multiplication, mutual reflection, and mutual containment because the stupas may have been gilded, making them shiny and mutually reflective.33 He bases his suggestion on the famous demonstration that the third Huayan patriarch Fazang arranged for the Empress Wu. He lined a room with ten mirrors – eight in an octagonal shape, one on the ceiling and one on the floor – and placed in the middle a well-lit Buddha statue. Fazang explains: Your majesty, this is a demonstration of Totality in the Dharmadhātu. In each and every mirror within this room you will find the reflections of all the other mirrors with the Buddha’s image in them. And in each and every reflection of any mirror you will find all the reflections of all the other mirrors, together with the specific Buddha image in each, without omission or misplacement. The principle of interpenetration and containment is clearly shown by this demonstration. Right here we see an example of one in all and all in one – the mystery of realm embracing realm ad infinitum is thus revealed.34 Woodward argues that if the stupas of the terraces were gilded, then the devotee on the terraces would have experienced a similar demonstration of interpenetration through mutual reflection. Woodward provides a vivid imaginative reconstruction of the experience of the gilded terraces: “when walking there we see in the stūpas ourselves, now merged with the Buddhas inside. Hence we have been granted a Buddha-nature.”35 It is certainly possible that the stupas were once gilded. Gilding stupas is a meritorious act, and many gilded stupas exist in the Buddhist world, notably the Shwedagon in Burma and Doi Suthep in Chiang Mai, Thailand. But while this is an intriguing possibility, it is also somewhat speculative. If the central stupa and/or the latticed stupas were at one time gilded, all evidence of their previous splendor is now gone. I suggest that whether or not the stupas were originally gilded, the architects of Borobudur used them visually to convey a sense of emptiness in another way: they drew on the symbolism of the stupa as an inventional resource and reinterpreted it in light of the trikāya theory, so that the stupa symbolizes the dharmakāya.36 In early Indian Buddhism and in modern Theravāda contexts, the stupa symbolizes both the absence of the living Buddha and his continued “presence” in soteriologically powerful relics. As a funerary structure, the stupa emphasizes the Buddha’s absence because it reminds devotees of the Buddha’s death and parinirvān.a. Because the Buddha is fully “nirvan-ized,” he is unavailable to beings in sam . sāra: he cannot be seen. But stupas usually contain a relic of the Buddha – a bodily relic or personal item – that indicates the continued presence of the Buddha through his traces. The relic, which is deposited inside the stupa and cannot be seen, nevertheless “enlivens” the structure, making the absent Buddha present for his latter-day devotees. When stupas are enlivened with relic deposits, they indicate both the absence of a living Buddha and the presence of the soteriological power radiated by the Buddha’s physical remains.

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From the Mahāyāna point of view as it is presented in the Prajñāpāramitā, or Perfection of Wisdom literature, this sort of stupa puts too much emphasis on the legacy of the Buddha’s physical body, and not enough on the legacy of his teachings. In the Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines, for example, one finds the following claim that worshiping a Perfection of Wisdom text produces far more merit than worshiping a stupa does: For the person who honours the perfection of wisdom, in an absolute sense he honours the past, future and present cognition of a Buddha. His merit will be greater even than that of all beings in great trichiliocosms countless like the sands of the Ganges, if each single being in them would build a Stupa, and if each one of them would build all those Stupas, and honor them for an aeon or the remainder of an aeon.37 This passage extols the benefits of the cult of the book: to “honor” the text, one should copy it, put it on an altar, and “honour, revere, worship, and adore it with heavenly flowers, incense, perfumes, wreaths, unguents, aromatic powders, strips of cloth, parasols, banners, bells, flags.”38 The text argues that while many of the forms of stupa worship are properly honorific, their object of worship is mistaken. Rather than performing pūjā to the remains of the Buddha’s physical body (rūpakāya) as it is contained in the stupa, Mahāyāna Buddhists should perform pūjā to the Buddha’s dharma body (dharmakāya) — here defined as the “body of the teachings” — as it is presented in the book. Perhaps partly in response to this critique,39 Buddhists in India and elsewhere begin to enliven stupas with texts, rather than, or in addition to, bodily relics. As Daniel Boucher shows, in this period the cult of the book is synthesized with the cult of the stupa. In this synthesis, the dharma is essentialized in a short text, such as the pratītyasamutpāda, or even a single verse from this text, the pratītyasamutpādagāthā, or so-called “Buddhist creed,” and then inscribed on plates of precious metal, stamped in clay, or otherwise objectified.40 The pratītyasamutpādagāthā may be the most common text to be made into “dharma objects,” but other short texts – especially formulaic dhāran.īs – were also objectified in this way.41 Although these “dharma objects” had other uses too, they were often deposited in stupas,42 sometimes along with bodily relics, and sometimes instead of bodily relics. By treating the dharma as an enlivening object, the architects of these stupas created sites at which practitioners could worship the absent/present Buddha by circumambulating and making devotional offerings to the body of his teachings. In accounts of the Buddha’s multiple bodies that predate the trikāya formulation, this is the meaning of the term “dharmakāya” – the corpus of the Buddha’s teachings.43 In medieval India, then, the stupa cult comes to include, and sometimes to focus solely on, devotion to the dharmakāya in this earlier sense. There is evidence to show that for Śailendra Buddhists, stupa worship was, at least in part, devotion to the dharmakāya defined as the corpus of the Buddha’s teachings. As Xuanzang reports, by the seventh century, it was a common practice to make small votive stupas enlivened by objectified textual deposits:

The transformative work of the terraces 159 It is a custom in India to make little stūpas of powdered scent made into paste; their height is about six or seven inches, and they place inside them some written extract from a sūtra; this they call a dharma-śarīra.44 Here, Xuanzang explicitly identifies the condensed text as a “relic” (śarīra) of the dharma, and thus as a properly enlivening stupa deposit. Small votive stupas, some with and some without textual deposits, have been found not only in India but also in Sri Lanka and in various parts of Southeast Asia, including Sumatra and Java. On occasion, the text is not inserted into the votive stupa, but rather inscribed on its outer surface. In the immediate vicinity of Borobudur, 2,307 votive clay stupas made from various molds have been found. About 5 percent of these have short texts inscribed on their outer surfaces.45 It is also possible that some of these small stupas have impressed “dharma-relic” inscriptions inside them, as some other votive stupas found in Java and Bali do.46 Śailendra Buddhists, then, at least sometimes associated essentialized dharma texts with stupas, and clearly considered such text objects to be enlivening. It is also worth mentioning in this context that when Theodore van Erp supervised the early twentieth-century restoration of Borobudur, it became clear that many of the latticed stupas “had been systematically broken into and damaged by looters who dug as deep as two meters.”47 While we will probably never know for sure what they were after, one reasonable hypothesis is that the latticed stupas had been enlivened with texts objectified on plates of precious metal. Although its original provenance is unfortunately unknown, a version of the Pratītyasamutpāda inscribed on 11 gold plates survives from the Central Javanese period, and de Casparis suggests that it may originally have served as an enlivening stupa deposit.48 In any case, it seems clear that the Śailendras participated in a widespread medieval Buddhist move toward worshiping the dharmakāya as the corpus of texts, in the form of short formulae, as a significant part of worshiping stupas. Jan Fontein has proposed that Borobudur presents the dharmakāya for worship in the same way that the small votive stupas found near the monument do.49 Taking the whole monument as a stupa, he argues that the relief panels serve the same function that the short formulae inscribed on the outer surfaces of the votive stupas do: they present the entire corpus of the Buddha’s teachings in an essentialized form. Furthermore, he argues that, on the same analogy, “the reliefs themselves may have been the relics, the essence of the body of teachings of the Buddha.”50 Leaving aside the theoretical issue of whether the relief panels should be considered simply as texts, there remain two problems with this theory. First, as has been previously noted, one cannot even see the central stupa from the vantage point of the galleries. Thus, from the point of view of a devotee performing a ritual circumambulation, the relief panels are not visibly on the stupa in the same way that the formulae are visibly on the votive stupas. Second, Fontein’s assertion that the relief panels are essentialized texts is not convincing. In particular, his argument that the Gan.d.avyūha relief panels are a condensed version of the Avatam . saka sūtra is problematic given that: 1) selected passages of the Gan.d.avyūha are pictured in great detail, and 2) there is no evidence to show that

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the whole Avatam . saka sūtra was known in Central Java. Still, the relief panels do present a collection or “body” of the Buddha’s teachings, and in this looser sense might be considered to present the dharmakāya as it is defined prior to the formulation of the trikāya theory. But the architects of Borobudur appear also to have designed the central stupa to present the dharmakāya as it is defined in the trikāya theory – that is, as the ultimately real body of the Buddha. In what might be called a reformulation of the stupa cult, the dome of the central stupa symbolizes the ineffability of the Buddha in his dharmakāya by rendering him “utterly invisible.” Whereas early Indian stupas showed that the Buddha was no longer fully present to those still in sam . sāra because he had entered parinirvān.a, the central stupa at Borobudur shows that the Buddha is unavailable to non-Buddhas because they lack the form of awareness that would allow them to know the dharmakāya. Because the dharmakāya is completely beyond vision, no matter how refined through visualization meditation, it cannot be known by being seen. The epistemological limit of vision has been reached. To “see” the Buddha in his dharmakāya, one must know what a Buddha knows – one must be a Buddha. As John Makransky puts it: When showing themselves to others as nairmān.ikakāya or sāmbhogikakāya, the Buddhas appear endowed with many excellences. But dharmakāya, their own inmost realization of purified thusness, cannot be shown to others.51 To indicate the fact that the dharmakāya cannot be seen, the architects of Borobudur paradoxically had to use a visible form. They addressed this problem by using a form that was visible, but concealing and nonfigurative – the dome of the stupa. While this might have been a fairly innovative use of the stupa, it is not without analogue in the Indian religious world of the time. As Richard Davis shows, by the time Borobudur was built, Indian Śaivas were using visible but non-figurative objects to represent Śiva in his highest, ineffable form, and figurative objects to represent emanations from this highest form. Although the Śaiva account of the god’s highest form does not equate the deity with an awareness of emptiness, it is in other respects similar to the Mahāyāna Buddhist account of the dharmakāya. Davis explains: In medieval Śaiva theology, the animated icon or image was a localized, particularized “manifestation” or “incarnation” of the all-pervading, transcendent God Śiva, who at his highest level of being was considered to be beyond all form, but who simultaneously would inhabit a variety of immanent, physical “embodiments.”52 In Śaiva devotional contexts, Śiva’s highest form was indicated, if not truly represented, by the nonfigurative (or at least synecdochic) lin.ga. Davis explains: “Medieval Śaiva texts refer to it as the very ‘root manifestation’ (mūlamūrti) of divinity and the emanating source of all other anthropomorphic images in the

The transformative work of the terraces 161 temple.”53 Figurative images were used, then, to represent Śiva’s many emanations, but nonfigurative images were used to indicate his ineffable highest form. Sometimes, to emphasize the fact that the highest form of the god is the source of his emanations, figurative and non-figurative representations of Śiva are combined in a single form. In mukha-lin.ga representations, the otherwise nonfigurative lin.ga emanates a fully figurative face. In another version of this idea, part of the nonfigurative lin.ga is “cut away” to reveal a fully figurative Śiva image inside.54 Although there are clear differences between Śaiva theology and Mahāyāna Buddhist doctrine, the architects of Borobudur used a similar strategy to represent the invisible dharmakāya and its visible emanations. The nonfigurative central stupa is the ultimate emanating source of the figurative emanations in the latticed stupas, in the niches, and on the relief panels. If the “unfinished Buddha” was a design element of the central stupa, then it was probably intended to serve the same purpose that the figurative elements of mukha-lin.ga representations do – that is, to indicate that the nonfigurative, ineffable form is the source of the figurative, fully visible emanations. Whether or not the central stupa combined nonfigurative and figurative elements in this way, the latticed stupas, which partially reveal fully figurative Buddha images, certainly do. As representations of the Buddha’s descent into the world, they show the Buddha in the subtlest form in which he is visible: the multiple figurative sambhogakāya Buddhas emerging from and nondual with the central, nonfigurative dharmakāya. The latticed domes of the stupas suggest that in this form, Vairocana shows himself in a way that approximates, as closely as is possible, the essence of Buddhahood that is characterized by the direct and unimpeded awareness of emptiness. Paradoxically, in order to show this, Vairocana must emanate a form that approaches invisibility because the essence of Buddhahood, the dharmakāya, is formless.55 Considered in terms of the metaphysical account of the Buddha, then, the terraces represent the process of the Buddha as he emerges from the dharmakāya and becomes increasingly visible, so as to engage sentient beings in need of salvation. Considered in terms of the soteriological trajectory of the path, the latticed stupas serve to deconstruct the vision of the cosmic Buddhas that Samantabhadra reveals on the main wall of the fourth gallery, by hinting that the vision does not reveal the Buddha’s true “form.” In the Gan.d.avyūha, Maitreya similarly deconstructs the vision he grants to Sudhana of the purified field inside the kūt.āgāra. Having revealed the vision of the purified field, Maitreya dissolves it by snapping his fingers and says: Arise. This is the nature of things; characterized by nonfixity, all things are stabilized by the knowledge of enlightening beings, thus they are inherently unreal, and are like illusions, dreams, and reflections.56 Here, Maitreya explains that the purified field – indeed, the whole cosmologically extended vision of the dharmadhātu – is not ultimately real, but is rather a state of mind. Like a vivid dream, this state of mind seems completely real while it is happening, but is not ultimately real. However, the vision is ultimately unreal

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not in comparison with events in the physical world, but in comparison to the ultimately real pure awareness of suchness that characterizes the mental stream of a Buddha. To be fully enlightened is to be awakened from the “dream” of the ordinary false and constructed perception of separately existing things, and to perceive that their true nature is to lack inherent existence. To explain the knowledge of bodhisattvas, Maitreya tells Sudhana where advanced bodhisattvas come from – that is, he explains the nature of the advanced bodhisattva’s close approximation of the Buddha’s completely nondual awareness. [T]he state of enlightening beings is the state of neither motion nor stasis, . . . of no support or abode, . . . of no passing away or rebirth, . . . of no concern or attachment, . . . of no deeds or fruition, . . . of no origination or destruction, . . . of no annihilation or eternity.57 If Sudhana could understand the vision of the purified field as an advanced bodhisattva does, he would see that while it is soteriologically beneficial, it could not impart the full realization of Buddhahood. And yet, if Sudhana can realize that the vision is both soteriologically beneficial and ultimately empty, he will be close to the awareness of a Buddha, as Maitreya already is. Just as Maitreya and Samantabhadra model the practices of advanced bodhisattvas for Sudhana, Sudhana models the behavior of aspiring bodhisattvas for devotees in the upper galleries of Borobudur. I argue that, by implication, Sudhana still serves as a model for devotees on the terraces – the terraces provide a ritual venue within which the practitioner can cultivate the realizations that Maitreya and Samantabhadra demonstrate for Sudhana. What, then, did practitioners do on the terraces?

Wisdom and generosity: ritual practice on the terraces The terraces may have served as the venue for a variety of ritual activities, possibly including Tantric initiations. But given the evidence that we currently have, it is possible to reconstruct only a few of the less esoteric procedures. The structure of the terraces indicates that they were built for the continued performance of the pradaks.in.ā: each terrace has a walkway that devotees could use to circumambulate the Buddhas in the latticed stupas on the next higher level. As we have seen, the terraces present the cosmic Buddhas in a way that builds on the visualized devotions pictured in the Samantabhadra reliefs on gallery four, but also deconstructs that vision in keeping with the perfection of wisdom. I argue that the terraces were designed for a ritual performance of the meditative procedure for making visualized offerings and also for the simultaneous dissolution of the vision into emptiness. Performed in this way, the ritual of doing pūjā becomes a practice that unites the perfection of wisdom with the perfection of generosity. The terraces appear to have been designed not only for circumambulation but also for pūjā. On the terraces the cosmic Buddhas are represented as a combination of icon and stupa; the practice of making devotional offerings to Buddha

The transformative work of the terraces 163 images and stupas is ubiquitous throughout the Buddhist world. Furthermore, Central Javanese temples in the vicinity of Borobudur, such as Can.d.i Mendut, showcase Buddha and bodhisattva icons in an altar-like design – a format that almost certainly indicates that the spaces were designed for pūjā. At Borobudur, then, it would be quite natural for devotees to make actual, material offerings to the Buddhas/stupas on the terraces. Indeed, even in the 1850s, although they were not, presumably, practicing Buddhists, some Javanese people were propitiating these images with devotional offerings of flowers, incense, and the like.58 Today, even though the government officially forbids the performance of religious rituals at Borobudur, one can still observe visitors making offerings to the Buddhas in the latticed stupas. Visitors now often put offerings inside the latticed stupas, and this may have been part of the practice in Śailendra times, or the offerings may have been put on the surface of the terrace outside the stupas. When one stands next to one of the terraces, the Buddhas/stupas on the next level are exactly at the right height to receive material offerings, and there is a space between the bottom of the stupa and the edge of the terrace where they can be placed. Furthermore, the fact that the Buddha statue is higher than the devotee is entirely appropriate in the devotional context. As devotees circumambulated the terraces, then, they would also have made material offerings to the Buddhas/stupas. Just as Samantabhadra makes visualized offerings to the cosmic Buddhas, practitioners on the terraces would have made material offerings, and would thereby have symbolically completed a crucial component of the Samantabhadra practice. As we have seen, the Samantabhadra practice is a hyper-efficient form of merit-making through devotional generosity. By multilocating to become present in all buddhaks.etras throughout the cosmos, the practitioner can make offerings to innumerable Buddhas simultaneously, thereby accumulating a vast store of merit in a very short time. On the terraces, this visualized form of pūjā is partially “re-ritualized,” but the strong implication is that, at least for capable practitioners, the re-ritualized procedure retains its hyperefficiency. In addition to making material offerings, practitioners on the terraces who were familiar with the techniques of visualization meditation may also have made visualized offerings to the Buddha/stupas. This combined ritual and visualization procedure would most likely have been performed, in my opinion, by the monks who lived in the monastery near Borobudur and probably used the monument to perform devotions on a regular basis. In this sort of performance, the material offerings might have been minimal, while the visualized offerings might have been much more abundant. In modern Tibetan Buddhist rituals, material offerings are ideally supplemented with visualized offerings in just this way. But on high ritual occasions, the material offerings were probably both quite abundant and supplemented by visualized ones. Because the latticed stupas that partially conceal the cosmic Buddhas suggest that they are to be understood as ultimately empty, the terraces offer a ritual venue in which devotional generosity can be practiced in conjunction with the perfection of wisdom. Once one has developed bodhicitta and embarked in earnest on the

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ārya bodhisattva path, generosity is best practiced in conjunction with all of the other bodhisattva virtues, including especially wisdom realizing emptiness. From the first thought of enlightenment onwards the perfection of giving is such a wholesome dharma, when it is carried out without false imaginations, and when one does not discriminate with regard to the act of giving that “this is the gift, to him I give, it is I who gives”. In fact one does not imagine any of these three, on account of the emptiness of own-being. Through this perfection he saves himself and rescues also others from the flood of Samsara.59 The best form of generosity is giving with the full consciousness that the giver, the receiver, and the gift do not exist inherently from their own sides, but rather only in mutual dependence. Complete generosity thus requires at least a beginner’s realization of emptiness. The terraces provide an opportunity to practice complete generosity by representing the cosmic Buddhas in a way that emphasizes their ultimate emptiness and unity in the dharmakāya. Having ritually completed the Samantabhadra practice of merit-making generosity in conjunction with the realization of emptiness, the practitioner is now symbolically constituted as an advanced bodhisattva with sufficient merit and wisdom to course through the universe and produce emanations that appear in the world for the benefit of sentient beings. While the merit accumulated through the symbolic performance of the Samantabhadra practice “fuels” the production of nirmān.akāyas, the wisdom accumulated through the simultaneous contemplation of emptiness allows the practitioner to bend physical reality at will. Moreover, having trained in perfect wisdom, having, through the full attainment of just these dharmas, known full enlightenment, the Tathagata, etc. in the ten directions, in endless and boundless world systems, during the whole of time, works the weal of all beings by means of a multi-form cloud of transformation bodies. It is thus that the Bodhisattva, the great being, should train in perfect wisdom.60 Symbolically constituted as one who already has or is actively developing the motivation and ability to produce nirmān.akāyas, the celebrant would now be ready to descend.

The descent of the bodhisattva: the stairs Although the stairs of the monument are almost never considered as a ritual venue, I argue that they could have played a crucial role in the ritual use of the Borobudur mandala (Figure 5.3). The staircases may well have served as a stage for the performance of a ritual in which the celebrant descended from the dharmakāya “realm” of emptiness, through the sambhogakāya “heavens” of the purified fields, and presented himself in an adapted nirmān.akāya form. Having performatively constituted himself as an advanced bodhisattva on the terraces, the celebrant

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Figure 5.3 Stairs. Photograph by John C. Huntington, Courtesy of the Huntington Photographic Archive at The Ohio State University.

returned from the purified fields to the world, bringing the soteriological power of the cosmic Buddhas with him. This is entirely in keeping with the Mahāyāna virtue of compassion, which the bodhisattva demonstrates by remaining in sam . sāra, returning to the world again and again for the sake of saving all sentient beings. In some cases, there may have been a second group of ritual celebrants waiting at the foot of the monument to receive the celebrant, or possibly the group of celebrants, who descended. In these cases, the stairs would also have served as the backdrop for a dramatic presentation of the first group of celebrants, who would have been newly transformed by their trip through Borobudur.

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In South and Southeast Asian Buddhist cultures, descending a set of stairs is a standard motif of art and ritual inspired by a legendary episode from the Buddha’s biography. According to the commentary on the Dhammapāda, after the Buddha performed the Twin Miracle, he ascended to the Tāvatim . sa heaven to preach the Abhidhamma Pit.aka to his mother, who had been reborn as a deity. He stayed there for the three months of the rainy season, during which time his disciple Mahāmoggallāna taught the crowd of monks and laypeople left behind on earth. At the end of the rainy season, the Buddha descended on a bejeweled ladder created by the god Sakka (Indra) from the Tāvatim . sa heaven back to earth. Descending with the Buddha, on ladders made of silver and gold, were various gods and celestial musicians. At the bottom of the ladders, the Buddha was met by a throng of devotees led by his disciple Sāriputta.61 This episode of the Buddha’s life is often pictured in the Buddhist art of India, Southeast Asia, and Tibet. A Gandhāran relief panel from the second or third century CE provides a particularly fine example of this artistic theme. In the center of this panel there is a triple staircase. The Buddha descends the central staircase, Brahmā descends the one on the viewer’s left, and Indra descends the staircase on the right. The artist has represented the trio three times, one above the other, to show three moments in a continuous descent. On either side of the stairways, crowds of deities worship the Buddha as he descends. At the bottom of the stairs, laypeople, including a couple in a horse-drawn chariot, who probably represent the king and queen, wait to greet and worship the Buddha.62 This theme is also represented on other relief panels from the Kushān period in Gandhāra.63 As one of the Eight Great Events of the Buddha’s life, the descent is pictured on steles from the Pāla period in northeastern India. On these steles, a large central Buddha figure is surrounded by smaller Buddha figures intended to represent the Eight Great Events. On a tenth-century stele, a standing Buddha who is flanked by a smaller figure of Indra holding a parasol represents the descent.64 An early nineteenth-century manuscript illustration from Burma treats the same theme. In this picture, the Buddha descends what looks like a long red slide, while deities and heavenly musicians descend flanking yellow and blue slides. At the bottom, disciples in monastic robes kneel and worship him.65 There are also nineteenth-century paintings from Thailand and Tibet that represent the Buddha’s decent from the 66 Tāvatim . sa heaven. In contemporary Theravāda societies, monks perform a ritual based on this episode in the Buddha’s biography. During the rainy season, monks are required to stay in a single monastery and to observe a stricter-than-usual form of discipline. At the end of the rainy season, they are allowed to leave the monastery once again. In Thailand, this is a high ritual occasion, a time for the laity to make merit by giving to the sangha. While not all Thai temples are built in this way, some are located on hills, and have long staircases by which one can ascend to the temple, or descend from it. At some temples, monks mark the end of the rainy season by descending these stairs in a procession, sometimes carrying an image of the Buddha.67 At the bottom of the stairs, laypeople line the procession route to make offerings of food, medicines, and other requisites. As Kenneth Wells notes:

The transformative work of the terraces 167 “When food is given to monks walking in the procession it is an act of merit called Devorohana or ‘Coming down from the deva world.’”68 In this ritual, the rains retreat period of seclusion is homologized to the Buddha’s sojourn in heaven. When they descend from the temple by the staircase, the monks ritually repeat the moment when the Buddha descends from the heavens to this world and becomes present again for his disciples. In South and Southeast Asian Buddhist art and ritual, then, staircases often represent a point of connection between the heavens and earth, by which the Buddha and/or his representatives – in this case, monks – descend so as to become present for their devotees. The Mahāyāna version of stairway descent is not necessarily limited to a particular episode in the life of the historical Buddha; it can symbolically enact the continually repeated descent of the Buddha from the realm of the dharmakāya to the everyday world in which beings in need of salvation dwell. For the devotees, the descent results in a soteriologically auspicious situation because they become able to see the Buddha (or the monks), earn merit by making offerings to him (or them), and receive the teachings directly. It is in this context that the Buddhas in the niches of Borobudur gain their greatest power as a piece of visual rhetoric. Bernet Kempers has argued that these Buddhas, by their very multiplicity, suggest the Buddha’s pervasion of the world.69 Because these figures appear on multiple levels, they could be considered to represent descent in a way that is analogous to the way the Buddha’s descent is represented on the Gandhāran steles. There, the artist represents the Buddha on the stairway three times, so as to suggest downward movement. The designers of Borobudur appear to have employed a similar strategy. The niches draw the eye from one Buddha figure to another, and because the stairs introduce a vertical element, the eye is drawn naturally up and down. When one scans the monument in this way, it creates a visual illusion of movement. This illusion of movement helps the images in the niches function as a representation of the Buddha’s descent. If a second group of ritual celebrants were waiting at the bottom of the stairs to receive the ones descending, then the Buddhas in the niches would be part of what we might call the theatrical set for the drama of the descent. As I have pointed out, one of the best vantage points from which to see these Buddha figures is the ground-level approach to Borobudur. This is just where one would expect people to be standing if they were meeting a procession coming down a stairway, as the Buddha’s disciples meet him when he descends from the Tavatim . sa heaven, and as Buddhist laypeople meet monks when they descend from the temple after the rains retreat. From this vantage point, the Buddhas in the niches flank the stairway, so that they appear to be “in the company” of anyone on the stairs – or better, the person on the stairs appears to be in their company. The fact that the Buddha statues appear to be in motion too enhances the impression that they are somehow akin to the descending celebrant. Which staircase would the celebrant use? While the pradaks.in.ā begins from the eastern entrance, thereby designating it as the entry point to the mandala, the point of exit is unspecified. Neither the structure of the terraces nor the design of the stairways indicates that one stairway was preferred over the others for the

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purposes of descent. If some version of the pañcajina-man.d.ala theory turns out to be correct, and Borobudur does reflect distinctively Tantric teachings, it is possible that practitioners might have descended by a particular staircase in order to indicate symbolically the intention to engage in a particular type of activity in the world. In this case, the differentiated mudrās of the Buddha figures in the niches of the first four balustrades might indicate different bodhisattva activities, such as pacifying, enriching, magnetizing, and destroying.70 During the descent portion of the ritual-architectural procedure at Borobudur, the ritual and the monument work together to make a visual argument: by completing the ritual, the celebrant becomes a representative of the Buddhas. Even for those without a full understanding of the articulation of the path in the galleries, this much would be clear in a ritual context. With an understanding of the relief panels of the galleries, it is possible to be more specific: the celebrant is, or at least will be, a bodhisattva nirmān.akāya. By ascending the monument, the ritual celebrant encounters increasingly sophisticated manifestations of the Buddha and commemorates them through ritual and contemplative means, thereby symbolically incorporating their qualities. When he descends the monument, the celebrant reverses the procedure, symbolically constituting himself as one who can serve the needs of sentient beings at all levels of development and with all sorts of capacities. In order to give a full account of the nature of the descent, I now turn to a reconsideration of the Borobudur mandala as it is represented on the relief panels. Since the chain of emanations in which the celebrant participates is most fully realized by the Buddha, it will be most useful to provide a fuller description of the Buddha’s emanations.

The Borobudur mandala reconsidered To begin at the top and center of the mandala, the Buddha emerges from the nonconceptual awareness that characterizes the dharmakāya and begins to reappear as the unifying principle that is nondual with the Buddhas in the buddhaks.etras of the asan.khyeya cosmos. On the terraces of Borobudur, the underlying unity of the Buddhas in the latticed stupas is indicated by the fact that they all display the same mudrā. As we have seen, nearly all the theories of Borobudur as a mandala identify these statues as the Buddha Vairocana because they display the dharmacakra mudrā, which, in the pañcajina mandala, is his characteristic mudrā. But as Klokke points out, these theories often fail to explain why the single Buddha at the center of the mandala should be represented by multiple figures.71 I argue that the multiplicity of these statues is intrinsic to the design of the terraces because it conveys the multiplicity of buddhaks.etras and sambhogakāya Buddhas throughout the cosmos. But just as important is their underlying nonduality, and in this sense the mudrā of Vairocana is appropriate because in the Gan.d.avyūha he is the underlying nonduality of the apparently multiple cosmic Buddhas that are revealed in the Jeta grove. The 72 nearly identical statues indicate the tension between unity and multiplicity that is inherent in mandala designs and in the kūt.āgāra. To show that the cosmic Buddhas on the terraces “dwell in the state of nonduality of one

The transformative work of the terraces 169 buddha and all buddhas,”72 the architects of Borobudur represent them all in the dharmacakra mudrā. If one considers the Buddha’s further emanations to be represented by the Buddhas in the niches that crown the relief panels of the fourth gallery and form the outer boundary of the upper platform, then he next appears as multiple instances of a Buddha in vitarka mudrā. Contrary to the usual account of the Buddha statues in the niches, which holds that they represent sambhogakāya manifestations, I suggest that they may represent nirmān.akāya manifestations. On the relief panels of Borobudur, the vitarka mudrā is particularly associated with figures that are clearly nirmān.akāyas. The last panel of the Lalitavistara series pictures the paradigmatic nirmān.akāya, the historical Buddha, as he teaches for the first time. The first sermon is called the Dharmacakrapravartana sūtra, or “Setting in Motion the Wheel of the Dharma,” and when the Buddha is depicted giving this teaching, he generally displays the hand gesture that is named after the sūtra – the dharmacakra mudrā. But on Borobudur, the Buddha appears in what was almost certainly the vitarka mudrā. Furthermore, it will be recalled that on the third gallery in the world pervasion sequence, many representations of Maitreya’s nirmān.akāyas also display the vitarka mudrā to show that the bodhisattva’s manifestations are engaged in teaching. If the architects used the vitarka mudrā in the same way for Buddha figures in the round, then the statues in the uppermost row of niches represent nirmān.akāyas. By implication, then, the Buddha statues in the lower rows of niches would also represent nirmān.akāyas rather than sambhogakāyas, because it would violate the hierarchical structure to have manifestations adapted for more advanced audiences appearing below manifestations adapted for less advanced audiences. The hypothesis that all of the Buddha statues in the niches are nirmān.akāyas is consistent with the idea that the lower portions of the monument represent Mount Meru, while the design of the terraces represents the cosmic sambhogakāya Buddhas appearing all together in this world system atop Mount Meru, just as they appear all together in the Jeta grove in the prologue of the Gan.d.avyūha. The Buddha statues in the niches, then, would represent the Buddha’s various nirmān.akāyas pervading this world system in particular to help sentient beings here. In any case, whether the statues in the niches represent sambhogakāyas or nirmān.akāyas, they indicate that the Buddha pervades the world, providing access to the dharma and thus making salvation possible. If one considers the Buddha’s emanations to be continued on the relief panels, which I think is also the case, then the descent also continues on the fourth gallery, where the cosmic Buddhas emerge fully into visibility. There they “meet” practitioners, exemplified by Samantabhadra, who are capable of engaging in at least an aspirational form of visualized multilocational devotion. The descent continues on the third gallery, where the sambhogakāya Buddha appears in part as a purified environment perfectly adapted to the pursuit of enlightenment. There, the Buddha’s compassionate transformation “meets” practitioners, exemplified by Maitreya, who are capable of engaging in an at least aspirational form of compassionate multilocation.

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The descent continues on the main wall of the second gallery, where I argue that the kalyān.amitras represent the proxy manifestations of the Buddha. Although the prologue of the Gan.d.avyūha does not explicitly say so, the strong implication is that the nirmān.akāya manifestations that the bodhisattvas in the Jeta grove produce are the kalyān.amitras that Sudhana meets later in the text. The bodhisattvas emanate bodies that appear in all walks of life, at all levels of society, and in all regions. The variety of their emanations is mirrored by the variety of the kalyān.amitras. In these guises, the Buddha “meets” practitioners, exemplified by Sudhana, who are capable of energetically pursuing enlightenment by seeking out teachers, serving them with devotion, and receiving their teachings. If the kalyān.amitras are nirmān.akāya manifestations of bodhisattvas, then, at first, Sudhana is participating in the mandala at a fairly low level and in a way in which he may not yet fully recognize. Through his devotion to the kalyān.amitras, which the Gan.d.avyūha emphasizes again and again, Sudhana worships the Buddha by proxy, earns merit, and acquires the roots of goodness that will eventually allow him to enter the purified field. Nearly all of the relief panels on the second gallery main wall depict Sudhana’s visits to the kalyān.amitras. As Fontein has shown, very few of these panels depict the content of the teaching; most picture a kalyān.amitra giving instruction, often displaying the vitarka mudrā, while Sudhana listens in an attitude of devotion. While some of these relief panels are narrative compositions showing the kalyān.amitra in three-quarter profile, others are fully iconic, showing the kalyān.amitra facing the viewer in a way that invites direct interaction. The great majority of these scenes focus on the presence of the kalyān.amitra, on the fact that Sudhana can see him or her, rather than on the content of any particular teaching. This is not merely because the teachings are too difficult to picture: East Asian Gan.d.avyūha representations often do at least provide pictorial hints of the content of the teachings. Rather, the composition of the panels seems to reflect a choice on the part of the architects that was carried out to a remarkable degree, though with some exceptions.73 To emphasize the presence of the kalyān.amitra in Gan.d.avyūha representations is not unique to Borobudur, but is demonstrated even more clearly in the Japanese doll festival.74 In this ceremony, a separate doll is created to represent each kalyān.amitra, and one to represent Sudhana. During the ceremony, Sudhana’s pilgrimage is re-enacted by moving the Sudhana doll from one kalyān.amitra doll to the next. Here we see fully iconic representations of the kalyān.amitras and a full suppression of the content of the teachings, at least in the visual representation. The architects of Borobudur seem to have planned something slightly less consistently iconic, but in the same general spirit. Although Sudhana clearly learns the dharma from the kalyān.amitras, the relief panels emphasize his devotion rather than the doctrine. Again and again, Sudhana is shown in an attitude of reverence to the kalyān.amitras, or bowing to them, or making offerings to them. Just as Samantabhadra makes merit by multilocating and traveling to all the buddhaks.etras simultaneously to make offerings to the cosmic Buddhas in them, so Sudhana, at a more elementary level of the path, makes merit by traveling

The transformative work of the terraces 171 to the kalyān.amitras one by one and expressing his devotion, often by making offerings to them. From the second gallery, the Buddha’s descent continues on the relief panels of the first-gallery main wall, where he appears in his temporally bound nirmān.akāya forms as the historical Buddha Śākyamuni and as the protagonists of the jātaka tales that narrate his previous lives. Interestingly, the logic of the Borobudur hierarchy is that the Buddha Śākyamuni is actually inferior to the proxy manifestations that appear as the kalyān.amitras. While this may seem a bit strange at first, I argue that this is because in his historical forms, the Buddha is no longer directly available to practitioners in ninth-century Central Java – or, for that matter, today. While people who encounter the Buddha as he “manifests” in his extended biography do benefit immensely by his example, they cannot receive the teachings directly from him in that form. Thus, because the kalyān.amitras are available in this time and can be seen face to face, they are more effective teachers for people living in the time after the Buddha’s at least apparent parinirvān.a. Furthermore, while they may or may not be equivalent to Śākyamuni with regard to their own level of realization, the kalyān.amitras are nevertheless better teachers for people in the current age, because they are better adapted to the karmic capacities of those who did not have sufficient merit to meet the living Buddha. Following the logic of proxy manifestations, the avadāna panels might be considered to be proxy jātakas. These tales feature the exemplary deeds of persons other than Śākyamuni-to-be, whose exemplary deeds are recounted in the jātakas. Just as the bodhisattva Maitreya reveals his past lives to Sudhana in the kūt.āgāra (III B 71–88 and IV B 1–36), as a temporal analogue to his spatially pervasive manifestations, so here the avadānas can be presumed to be the past lives of bodhisattvas. Like the jātaka tales, the avadānas provide narrative examples of virtue that serve the needs of practitioners, but not as well as a living teacher would. From the first gallery, the Buddha’s descent continues to the foot of the monument, which currently hides a series of relief panels that was originally visible: the Mahākarmavibhan.ga reliefs on the hidden base. The text describes the karmic rewards enjoyed in subsequent lives by those who do good deeds, and the punishments endured by those who do ill. The relief panels visually convey the same idea of karmic tit for tat. First, they show people committing a particular deed; then, they show people (who we infer are the same people reborn) enjoying the fruits of that deed in a heaven or suffering the consequences of that deed in a hell. Now, these panels do not include figural representations of the Buddha, and it is not immediately obvious that they collectively constitute one of the Buddha’s manifestations. But it becomes clear that they may be considered in this way when one compares the hidden base of Borobudur to the lower portions of a type of Buddha statue that Angela Falco Howard calls a “cosmological Buddha.” Twodimensional paintings of cosmological Buddhas have been found on cave walls along the Silk Road that linked Northern India and China, and three-dimensional sculptures survive from medieval China. While I am not suggesting that there is

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any direct historical connection between these images and Borobudur, I am suggesting that a similar understanding of Buddhahood underlies them all. Howard calls these images “cosmological” because they depict the Buddha covered with cosmological symbols and tiny figures of people in various cosmological realms. These images graphically portray the interpenetration of Buddha and cosmos: the Buddha’s body is the world and the world is the Buddha’s body.75 As the Freer cosmological Buddha shows, the workings of karma can be seen as the most elementary manifestation of the Buddha. Carved at the bottom of the Freer Buddha’s robes are a number of scenes that depict beings experiencing karmic reward or retribution. On the left-hand side of the Buddha’s outer robe, a figure sits in judgment over human beings who have apparently just died. Below, on the lower hem of the Buddha’s undergarment, are a number of scenes showing the torments of those condemned to various hells. On the right-hand side of the outer robe, one sees depictions of those reborn as animals, as hungry ghosts, as human beings, and as gods. The relief panels on the hidden base of Borobudur present this elementary manifestation of the Buddha in a similar way, but in greater visual detail. The Buddha manifests in this way for the benefit of practitioners who are capable of understanding morality only in terms of punishment and reward. While this is a very basic teaching, it is also utterly foundational to Buddhism and to Borobudur. I therefore see no sense in the suggestion that the added foot was designed primarily to hide these panels, as though they represented a teaching inappropriate for practitioners at Borobudur. I agree, rather, with scholars who suggest that the foot was added for structural reasons. When the ritual celebrant at Borobudur descended by one of the stairways, he symbolically re-enacted the whole chain of manifestations. Having encountered increasingly rarified Buddha bodies and symbolically incorporated their excellent qualities, the celebrant then reversed the procedure and “emanated” in a particular form, adapted to serve the needs of sentient beings in the world. While the journey upward was labyrinthine and long, the journey downward was straight and short – only the stairs themselves remained. As he descended, bearing in mind his experience of Borobudur, the celebrant would have seen the everyday world below, and may have mentally prepared to act in it as a representative of the Buddha. Any people watching from below, whether or not they had a precise understanding of the chain of manifestations, would still have been capable of understanding the general picture, because they would have seen the celebrant descend in the company of countless Buddhas. Thus the Borobudur mandala at least symbolically transformed the ritual celebrant into an advanced bodhisattva capable of compassionately transforming others.

Conclusion: visual rhetoric and ceremonial diplomacy at Borobudur To assume that the acquisition, maintenance, and expansion of personal political power are the only fundamentally “real” forces that motivate the construction of major Buddhist foundations in general, and of Borobudur in particular, is to deny from the outset the very possibility that they could be intended for genuine

The transformative work of the terraces 173 Buddhist practice. If Buddhist practice is fundamentally about realizing that there is no inherently existent self, then self-aggrandizement cannot, by definition, be a proper motivation for engaging in that practice. My intention here is not to point to the tension between conquest and renunciation that is inherent in Buddhist kingship, a topic that has been treated at length by numerous Buddhist Studies scholars.76 My point is rather a methodological one. It is certainly possible that people who are apparently attempting to cultivate selflessness and compassion may have contrary ulterior motives. Furthermore, as Buddhist stories are often keen to point out, the desire for personal gain through the exercise of worldly political power is one of the most difficult instincts for aspiring bodhisattvas to overcome. One would have to be exceedingly naive to believe that every person who presents himself as an ideal Buddhist king is genuinely and completely motivated by altruism. But by the same token, one would have to be exceedingly cynical to preclude, at the level of theory, the very possibility that a major Buddhist monument built with royal support could ever “really” reflect anything but the passing political concerns of the king. In order to adopt the theory that the pursuit of worldly power is the real “key” to understanding a major Buddhist monument such as Borobudur, one has to assume not only that the king was pursuing selfish ulterior motives but also that the architects who designed the building were solely engaged in facilitating that pursuit. This is a set of assumptions that I am not willing to make. However, it is worth investigating the possible political dimension of practice at Borobudur in order to arrive at a better understanding of how its visual rhetoric might have addressed the broader Śailendra Buddhist society of early ninth-century Central Java. As Paul Mus and others have argued convincingly, there is a general connection between religious and political mandalas: they are mutually reinforcing, and South and Southeast Asian conceptions of ideal kingship focus on the notion that the ruler is the primary link between them.77 But just how this link is forged and how it is played out in any particular historical situation varies widely and has an element of improvisation. In the case of Central Java, many scholars have suggested that Borobudur may have been the venue for Śailendra royal rituals. Given the ritual architectural procedure I have just described, we are now in a position to explore how this procedure would have signified as a royal ritual. I suggest that the architects of Borobudur may well have used the concept of the nirmān.akāya on the one hand, and the exemplary character of Sudhana on the other, as inventional resources with which to improvise the link between the religious mandala centered on Vairocana and the political mandala centered on the Śailendra king. In keeping with general patterns of South and Southeast Asian kingship, the Śailendras conceived of their realm as a political mandala. As Stanley Tambiah has shown, the mandala model of administration, which he calls the “galactic polity,” was common in Southeast Asian kingdoms during the medieval period.78 Conceptually, the mandala layout of these polities reflects a parallelism between the suprahuman macrocosmos and the human microcosmos. The kingdom was a miniature representation of the cosmos, with the

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The transformative work of the terraces palace at the center being iconic of Mount Meru, the pillar of the universe, and the king, his princes, and ruling chiefs representing the [divine] hierarchy.79

The semi-autonomous chiefdoms that surround the royal seat at the center were smaller satellites, each of which replicated the cosmological symbolism, so that the whole was characterized by the “replication of like entities on a decreasing scale.”80 Thus, the galactic polity as a whole was a system of overlapping spheres of power, in which each satellite participates in the power radiated from the center, but also radiates power to its own even smaller satellites. While the actual geographical distribution of regional centers of power in the Śailendra realm was not as geometrically regular as mandala paintings are, the confederation as a whole was conceptualized as a political mandala centered on the kraton, or palatial residence of the king. Inscriptional evidence shows quite clearly that in neighboring Śrīvijaya there existed a mandala pattern of administration in which the king commanded the allegiance of the “autonomous or semi-autonomous principalities and chiefdoms at [the] periphery” through a combination of mutually beneficial economic exchanges and military force.81 In the thinner evidence offered by Central Javanese inscriptions, the general conceptual model of the polity appears to be quite similar. The king resided in a kraton at the center, which, according to the inscriptions, was surrounded by chiefdoms administered by regional authorities who controlled one or more watersheds. How, then, might this political mandala have resonated with the Borobudur mandala? As I have shown, if the pradaks.in.ā up and around the galleries of Borobudur articulates the bodhisattva path, then anyone who performs the ritual can be symbolically transformed into someone who is, or will become, at least a proxy nirmān.akāya of the Buddha. Performed by the king, with the characteristic dramatic pomp and circumstance of what Geertz has called the “theatre state,”82 the ritual would effectively present him as someone who compassionately channels the soteriological power of the cosmic Buddhas down into the world in general, and to Central Java in particular. The Gan.d.avyūha panels would enhance this effect, because their visual rhetoric identifies Sudhana, as the paradigmatic practitioner, with the king. In the Gan.d.avyūha, the social status of Sudhana is unclear. He is described as an “outstanding boy” whose birth was accompanied by the spontaneous appearance of vast wealth, including perfumes, ghee, fine clothing, precious metals, and all sorts of gems. “Because of the great prosperity that appeared in the house by his mere birth, the fortune-tellers and priests and his parents and kin called him Sudhana, ‘Good Wealth.’”83 In the context of the story, the wealth that appears at his birth symbolizes the wealth of merit, the roots of goodness, that Sudhana has accumulated in his previous births and that will allow him in this life to see the various kalyān.amitras and to benefit from their teachings. The primary point of mentioning Sudhana’s wealth, then, is not to indicate that he enjoys an exalted social position, but to emphasize that his was a miraculous birth, and that he possesses extraordinary spiritual capacities. In Chinese and Japanese pictorial renderings of the Gan.d.avyūha, Sudhana appears as a boy with a youthful hairstyle.

The transformative work of the terraces 175 He is usually dressed quite simply, sometimes as a monk, and always makes his journey alone.84 On Borobudur, Sudhana is pictured quite differently. First, as Fontein points out, Sudhana is not a particular person with identifiable features, but rather a “type” with an identifiable, but somewhat inconsistent iconography. Often he has a halo, but sometimes he does not. Often an attendant holds a parasol over him, but sometimes not.85 Such subtle variations in iconography also appear in the depictions of the major bodhisattvas, and may be a result of the fact that the actual sculpting was done by numerous hands. It is therefore significant that Sudhana always appears on the relief panels as a full-grown man in sumptuous raiment. Although there are minor variations, his clothing includes several belts probably made of precious metals, and numerous ornaments, such as jeweled armbands, bracelets, necklaces, earrings, and, often, a sacred thread. He always wears a tall, multi-tiered, fabulously ornamented crown. Except for a few small details, he is indistinguishable from the gods and bodhisattvas who appear on the panels – indeed, when he is missing his parasol, and there are several bodhisattvas or gods in the composition, it is difficult to identify him.86 One might argue, then, that Sudhana’s adornments are intended to picture what his wealth symbolizes in the text: he is a person with extraordinary spiritual capacities who is, from the outset, already endowed with the qualities that will allow him to become an advanced bodhisattva. But, while this interpretation is not wrong, it is incomplete. On Borobudur, Sudhana is pictured with a large military retinue that marks him as a royal figure. Previous scholarship has explained the presence of the retinue in terms of Javanese artistic sensibilities. As Fontein puts it, “The habit of providing Sudhana with a retinue of servants is part of the sculptors’ habit to populate and crowd almost all scenes with a large number of secondary personages and paraphernalia.”87 While it is true that Javanese relief sculpture in general does tend to be rather replete, this does not necessarily mean that the “secondary personages and paraphernalia” function only to fill out the frame. As I have mentioned, an attendant usually shades Sudhana by holding a parasol over his head. The parasol is a standard marker of royalty, and the fact that it is an expected feature of Sudhana’s iconography more than hints that on Borobudur he is a prince or a king. Sudhana’s attendants also carry other royal insignia such as flywhisks and royal standards. On II 92, for example, an attendant carries a staff topped with a wheel – the mark not only of a king but also of a cakravartin, or world-conquering monarch. Furthermore, even a quick look at Sudhana’s followers shows that most of them are not servants. Like Sudhana, most of them are rather sumptuously dressed: they wear crowns that are only slightly less grand than Sudhana’s own, and they also sport armbands, bracelets, necklaces, and earrings. But perhaps most significantly for my purposes here, Sudhana’s retinue is armed. On many relief panels, his followers carry swords, shields, and bows. The “attendants,” then, are not servants but rather a royal army composed of Sudhana’s courtiers, subordinate officials, and allies. While the Gan.d.avyūha panels in general reveal that Sudhana is a king leading a royal army, this is perhaps nowhere more clear than on the six “traveling scenes”

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of the second gallery main wall. These scenes, which picture Sudhana and his retinue on the road from one kalyān.amitra to the next, have puzzled iconographers, who have been unable to find any direct source for them in the text. Indeed, Fontein is moved to defend the designers of Borobudur against the charge that they have inserted scenes that must be “meaningless” because they have no textual referent.88 In order to understand Fontein’s perspective here, it is important to note that his main conversation partner is Hikata, who argues that the relief panels are misarranged or jumbled, and that the designers of Borobudur have generally garbled the text. Fontein’s counterargument is that the designers were exceedingly faithful to the written word, so that everything on the monument has at least some referent in the text, even if that referent is difficult to find, or exists only in a lost version. What these arguments share is the notion that the written text is the final authority, and that the degree of adherence to the text on the part of the designers somehow indicates the degree to which Javanese Buddhism in general and Borobudur in particular can be considered to be authentic. As should by now be clear, I argue instead that the designers actively interpreted the text for their own purposes. If these scenes have no textual referent, then, rather than being meaningless, they may be particularly meaningful in the visual rhetoric of Borobudur. What these traveling scenes show is unmistakably a royal army in procession. On the first panel (II 34), Sudhana walks, accompanied by foot soldiers armed with swords, the handles of which are shaped like the traditional Javanese keris. Deities on clouds attend, making gestures of respect. On the second panel (II 42), Sudhana rides in a palanquin carried by attendants with simple helmet-like headgear that identifies them as lower in status than most members of the retinue. Higher-status attendants with crowns ride horses ahead of the palanquin, and walk behind it carrying swords that again resemble the keris. On the third panel (II 46), Sudhana rides in a splendidly adorned horse-drawn chariot. High-status attendants ride the horses in front, while others walk behind carrying royal insignia and swords. On the fourth panel (II 54), Sudhana rides in an elaborate pavilion-like structure atop a tusker elephant that is decked with jewels and bells. The tusker elephant is the royal animal par excellence, and there can be no doubt that by placing Sudhana on a fully caparisoned one, the designers of Borobudur meant to convey that he is a king. Taken together, these four scenes picture the four divisions of the traditional Indian army: foot soldiers, horses, chariots, and elephants. The remaining two traveling scenes also show Sudhana leading an army. On the fifth panel (II 58), Sudhana again walks with a retinue of high-status, armed foot soldiers. On the sixth panel (II 97), Sudhana also walks, but his army now includes a caparisoned tusker elephant. While the traveling scenes show that Sudhana is a king leading a military procession most clearly, many other panels on the second, third, and fourth galleries also include obviously martial images. Several panels picture a tusker elephant that cannot be associated with the kalyān.amitras, and therefore must belong to Sudhana’s procession. On II 26, for example, one sees not only a tusker elephant but also two horses; the animals cannot belong to the kalyān.amitra Sudarśana, whose dress and hairstyle identify him as a monk. The military theme continues right

The transformative work of the terraces 177 up to the top of the monument. Sudhana’s followers are shown inside Maitreya’s kūt.āgāra, and they are often pictured with weapons. On III 71, for example, Maitreya manifests a nirmān.akāya for the benefit of animals, while Sudhana stands to his right, shaded by a parasol and accompanied by high-status attendants holding swords. Sudhana is also accompanied by his army as he takes the Samantabhadra vows. On IV 53, for example, Samantabhadra sits beneath nine Buddhas while Sudhana worships him; one of Sudhana’s attendants carries a sword. Although as far as I know, there is neither an Indian precedent for nor an East Asian equivalent of the royal depiction of Sudhana on Borobudur, there is ample evidence to show that Indian Buddhist art often pictured rituals that were actually performed by kings acting as paradigmatic lay practitioners. Susan Huntington’s work on early Buddhist art is framed as a rejection of the sweeping theory that this art belongs to an “aniconic period,” in which there was supposedly a prohibition against making figurative images of the Buddha. But for my purposes here, the most interesting aspect of her argument is that relief panels at Bhārhut and Sāñcī picture ideal Buddhist kings engaged in devotional ritual processions modeled on royal processions that actually occurred at important sites.89 For example, a relief panel from Bhārhut that pictures King Prasenajit worshipping an enshrined Dharma Wheel shows a royal procession, including a horse and rider, a horsedrawn chariot, and a tusker elephant. The procession circumambulates the shrine, exiting the walled-in compound through a gate on the lower right.90 Scenes from the gateways at Sāñcī picture King Aśoka leading royal processions that include horse-drawn chariots and/or tusker elephants to venerate the Rāmagrāma Stupa and the Bodhi tree at Bodh Gaya.91 These scenes depict the devotional acts of paradigmatic Buddhist kings, acts that subsequent kings sought to replicate. There is, then, every reason to think that the kings who helped to build, maintain, and modify the stupas also led royal processions to perform devotional activities at these and other important sites. In this way, they demonstrated that they, too, were ideal Buddhist kings. Indeed, the relief sculptures themselves appear to have two referents – the story of the paradigmatic king on the one hand and the festivals held by subsequent kings at the time the panels were carved on the other.92 I am suggesting that the Gan.d.avyūha panels on Borobudur similarly have two referents – the story of Sudhana, a paradigmatic lay practitioner of the bodhisattva path on the one hand, and an actual ritual procession performed by the Śailendra king on the other. It is the second referent – the actual procession – that provides the rationale for picturing Sudhana as a king leading an army. By picturing Sudhana as a king leading a martial procession, the designers of Borobudur set up a homology between the pilgrim who becomes a bodhisattva and the Śailendra king. The Gan.d.avyūha relief panels served to argue, in part, that the model of proper Buddhist conduct – Sudhana – is a king, and that an ideal king would behave in the way that Sudhana does. The designers also set up a homology between Sudhana’s followers and the Śailendra king’s courtiers, subordinates, and allies, whose duties included faithful military service. Not only would the king be able to follow the bodhisattva path to the rarified sphere of the purified fields, but he would also be able to take his political allies along with him. By rendering

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service to the king, who had uniquely strong religious capacities, his subordinates would be able to participate in his spiritual superiority, thereby achieving salvation more quickly than they otherwise might. As members of the king’s inner circle, they could follow him into the inner circle of a sambhogakāya Buddha in a purified field – which, not incidentally, is represented on Borobudur as the interior of the kūt.āgāra, a building that strongly resembles a royal palace. The martial imagery also sets up a homology between the religious pradaks.in.ā of Sudhana’s pilgrimage and the military pradaks.in.ā of the Śailendra king’s digvijaya, or conquering of the quarters. In the digvijaya, practiced in South and Southeast Asia generally, a king of kings leads a military procession through the various regions of his mandala, exacting tribute from his subordinates and from the rulers of kingdoms on the periphery of his sphere of control. If the regional authorities or lesser kings pay the mahārāja due respect and offer the appropriate tribute, then the digvijaya is an exercise in ceremonial diplomacy. If, on the other hand, a neighboring king does not agree that he is “lesser,” and refuses to pay the would-be mahārāja what he sees as his due, then an actual battle may ensue.93 If the king is successful on his military pradaks.in.ā, then he enlarges his political power as he goes. Analogously, when Sudhana leads his retinue to meet the various kalyān.amitras, he makes the rounds of the Borobudur mandala, making offerings and increasing his religious power as he goes. Although the digvijaya and Sudhana’s pilgrimage have very different purposes, they share the structure of the pradaks.in.ā that makes the homology possible. Furthermore, there is a certain symmetry between the offerings that Sudhana makes to the kalyān.amitras and the tribute that the king collects from his subordinates. Rhetorically, the homology unites two key features of a king who would be able to exercise successful ceremonial diplomacy: his superior religious capacity and his superior military prowess. If Borobudur sometimes served as the venue for Śailendra royal rituals, then the king’s performance of the ritual would bring the homology to life and quite possibly be itself an exercise in ceremonial diplomacy. Given the ubiquity of royal processions in South and Southeast Asia, one can easily imagine a royal ritual in which the king leads a procession of his political followers around and up through the galleries, just as Sudhana leads his retinue to the purified fields. Like comparable processions held by the contemporary Rās.t. rakūt. as94 and the later Kandyan kings of Sri Lanka,95 the royal procession at Borobudur would instill obedience and order while making a symbolic link between the political and religious mandalas. But although the royal performance of the ritual, if it in fact occurred, would have had special social significance, I do not mean to suggest that it was the only, or even necessarily the most important, function of the monument. The visual rhetoric of Borobudur may have a historically specific political dimension, but it also, and more emphatically, argues that the Buddha in his dharmakāya transcends any particular time and place. It is this very fact, together with the Buddha’s infinite compassion, that necessitates the production of adapted manifestations, such as the nirmān.akāya, in the first place. As we have seen, in order to produce such

The transformative work of the terraces 179 manifestations or proxy manifestations of the Buddha, the bodhisattva must perfect his own visual rhetoric by mastering the supernatural capacity of vikurvan.a, or compassionate shape shifting. In designing a venue that bodies forth the Buddha and allows ritual participants to encounter his manifestations, the architects of Borobudur might be said to have participated in the mandalic chain of manifestations. By directing the carving, they engaged in a perhaps less miraculous but culturally formative brand of vikurvan.a, shaping a visual form adapted to the needs of their particular audience. In their own way, they practiced the art of visual rhetoric.

Notes

Introduction 1 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd rev. edn, trans. rev. by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York: Continuum, 1997), 156. 2 Malcolm David Eckel, To See the Buddha: A Philosopher’s Quest for the Meaning of Emptiness (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 3–4. 3 Paul Mus, Barabud.ur: Esquisse d’une Histoire du Bouddhisme Fondée sur la Critique Archéologique des Textes (Hanoi: Imprimerie d’Extrême-Orient, 1935). For an English translation of the preface, or vol. 1, see Paul Mus, Barabud.ur: Sketch of a History of Buddhism based on Archaeological Criticism of the Texts, trans. Alexander W. Macdonald (New Delhi: Sterling Publishers Private Limited, 1998). 4 See, for example, J. G. de Casparis, “The Dual Nature of Barabud.ur,” in Barabud.ur: History and Significance of a Buddhist Monument, ed. Luis O Gómez and Hiram W. Woodward (Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, 1981), 54; John C. Huntington, “The Iconography of Borobudur Revisited: The Concepts of śles.a and sarva[buddha]kāya,” in Ancient Indonesian Sculpture, ed. Marijke J. Klokke and Pauline Lunsingh Scheurleer (Leiden: KTLV Press, 1994), 134–5. 5 For the use of Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of the habitus in the interpretation of Buddhist art and culture, see Jacob N. Kinnard, Imaging Wisdom: Seeing and Knowing in the Art of Indian Buddhism (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 1999), 9–11 and passim. For an analogous use in relation to Christianity and visual culture in Europe and America, see David Morgan, Visual Piety: A History and Theory of Popular Religious Images (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 7–8 and passim. 6 “Visual Culture Questionnaire,” October 77 (Summer 1996): 25. 7 Eugene Yuejin Wang, Shaping the Lotus Sutra: Buddhist Visual Culture in Medieval China (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2005), xix–xx. 8 Although I would not characterize it precisely as an iconographic study, Hudaya Kandahjaya’s recent dissertation is a significant exception. Hudaya Kandahjaya, A Study on the Origin and Significance of Borobudur (PhD diss., Graduate Theological Union, 2004), 169–257. 9 Wang, Shaping the Lotus Sutra, xiv. 10 Luis O. Gómez and Hiram W. Woodward, Jr., “Introduction,” in Barabud.ur: History and Significance of a Buddhist Monument, ed. Luis O. Gómez and Hiram W. Woodward, Jr. (Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, 1981), 1. 11 P. G. Robb, “Mackenzie, Colin (1753–1821),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004; online edition, 2006). 12 John Miksic, Borobudur: Golden Tales of the Buddhas, with photographs by Marcello and Anita Tranchini (Hong Kong: Periplus Editions, 1990), 17. 13 Ibid. 14 Gómez and Woodward, “Introduction,” 3.

Notes 181 15 Jonathan S. Walters, Finding Buddhists in Global History (Washington, DC: American Historical Association, 1998), 21. 16 Kenneth R. Hall, Maritime Trade and Development in Early Southeast Asia (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1985), 110–11. 17 For an inventory of Central Javanese temples, see: Véronique Degroot, Candi, Space and Landscape: A Study on the Distribution, Orientation and Spatial Organization of Central Javanese Temple Remains, Mededelingen van het Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde 38 (Leiden: Sidestone Press, 2009). It is important to note that many more Hindu temples than Buddhist ones survive from the Central Javanese period as a whole, and that the Śailendras may have built some of them. But it also seems clear that the grandest structures built during their ascendancy were Buddhist ones. For the dating of Central Javanese temples, see: Marijke J. Klokke, “The History of Central Javanese Architecture: Architecture and Sculptural Decoration as Complementary Sources of Information,” in Anamorphoses: hommage a Jacques Dumarçay, ed. H. Chambert-Loir and B. Dagens (Paris: Les Indes Savantes, 2006), 49–68. 18 R. Soekmono, Chandi Borobudur: A Monument of Mankind (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1976), 14–15. 19 For a recent, annotated, and reasonably complete bibliography, see Soekmono, J. G. de Casparis, and Jacques Dumarçay, Borobudur: Prayer in Stone (London: Thames and Hudson, 1990). For a bibliography of influential interpretations published before 1935, see Paul Mus, Barabud.ur, 85–106. 20 W. S. Karunatillake, “Avatam . saka School,” in Encyclopedia of Buddhism, ed. G. P. Malalasekara, vol. 2 (Colombo: Government Press, Ceylon, 1966), 435. A partial translation was completed by Sheng-chien by 408 CE: Luis O. Gómez, Selected Verses from the Gan.d.avyūha: Text, Critical Apparatus and Translation (unpublished dissertation: Yale University, 1967), lxviii. 21 Gómez, Selected Verses from the Gan.d.avyūha, lxviii. 22 Ibid., lxix–lxxiv. 23 As Gómez points out, the Gan.d.avyūha itself does not refer explicitly to the names of the bodhisattva “grounds” (bhūmis) as they are listed in the Daśabhūmika, and in fact offers an alternate list of stages. But is clear that in the later scholastic literature, the two texts are cited together and the list of bhūmis from the Daśabhūmika has become standard. See: Gómez, Selected Verses from the Gan.d.avyūha, lxxii–lxxiv; Luis O. Gómez, “The Bodhisattva as Wonder-worker,” in Prajñāpāramitā and Related Systems: Studies in Honor of Edward Conze, ed. Lewis Lancaster (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), 248–57. 24 Douglas Osto, Power, Wealth and Women in Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism: The Gan.d.avyūha-sūtra (London and New York: Routledge, 2008), 4–5. 25 Ibid., 5, 130 n. 21–2. 26 Ibid., 5–6. 27 Laxman S. Thakur, Visualizing a Buddhist Sutra: Text and Figure in Himalayan Art (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006), 23–34, 49. The similarities between the . iconographical program of Borobudur and the gTsug-lag-khan are significant and warrant a separate study. Such a study might prove to be a significant contribution to scholarship on the possible historical connections between Śailendra Buddhism and the dissemination of Buddhism in Tibet. 28 Osto, Power, Wealth and Women, 6. 29 Ibid., 108–9 and 113–16. 30 Karunatillake, “Avatam . saka School,” vol. 2, 435–6. 31 Ibid., 436. 32 Kandahjaya, A Study on the Origin and Significance of Borobudur, 169–257. 33 Paul Williams, Mahāyāna Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations (London: Routledge, 1989), 127–8.

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34 Kenneth Ch’en, Buddhism in China: A Historical Survey (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), 313–20. See also: Peter N. Gregory, Tsung-mi and the Sinification of Buddhism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991). 35 Stanley Fish, Is There a Text in this Class?: The Authority of Interpretive Communities (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980), 147–74. Fish argues that the meaning of a text is not fixed, but is negotiated in particular social groups that share interpretive conventions. 36 Kenneth R. Hall, “Economic History of Early Southeast Asia,” in The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia, ed. Nicholas Tarling (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 202–4; Lynda Norene Shaffer, Maritime Southeast Asia to 1500 (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 1996), 39–40. 37 Jan Wisseman-Christie, “Negara, Mandala and Despotic State: Images of Early Java,” in Southeast Asia in the 9th to 14th Centuries, ed. David G. Marr and A. C. Milner (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies and Canberra: Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University, 1986), 80–3. 38 J. G. de Casparis, Prasasti Indonesia II: Selected Inscriptions from the 7th to the 9th Century A.D (Bandung: Masa Baru, 1956), 176. 39 Hall, Maritime Trade, 108–11. The inscription says that the Śailendra king who funded the establishment ruled over Śrīvijaya, and it appears that from about this time on, the rulers of Śrīvijaya refer to themselves as Śailendras. According to J. G. de Casparis, the Śailendras may have lost their hold in Central Java at about the same time. 40 Casparis and Mabbett, “Religion and Popular Beliefs of Southeast Asia before c.1500,” in The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia, vol. 1, 320. 41 Casparis, Prasasti Indonesia II, 189. 42 Ibid. 43 Casparis, “New Evidence on Cultural Relations Between Java and Ceylon in Ancient Times,” 245. 44 J. Takakusu, “General Introduction,” in I-Tsing, A Record of the Buddhist Religion as Practiced in India and the Malay Archipelago, A.D. 671–695, trans. J. Takakusu (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1982), xxxix–xliv. 45 Lancaster, “Literary Sources for a Study of Barabud.ur,” in Barabud.ur, 196. 46 Kandahjaya, Origin and Significance of Borobudur, 94, including n. 277. 47 Michael Freeman and Roger Warner, Angkor: The Hidden Glories (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1990), 63. 48 I-tsing, A Record of the Buddhist Religion as Practiced in India and the Malay Archipelago (AD 671–695), trans. by J. Takakusu (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1966), 184. 49 J. G. de Casparis and I. W. Mabbett, “Religion and Popular Beliefs of Southeast Asia before c.1500,” in The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia, vol. 1, 320. 50 J. G. de Casparis, “New Evidence on Cultural Relations between Java and Ceylon in Ancient Times,” Artibus Asiae 24 (1961), 245. 51 Jonathan S. Walters, “Buddhist History: The Sri Lankan Pāli Vam . sas and Their Community,” in Querying the Medieval: Texts and the History of Practices in South Asia, by Ronald B. Inden, Daud Ali, and Jonathan S. Walters (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 99–124. The inclusive character of the Abhayagiri was a source of consternation to more exclusivist Sthaviravāda institutions such as the Sri Lankan Mahāvihāra, which in its chronicles accuses the monks at the Abhayagiri of studying the “Vetullavāda/Vaitulyavāda, identified with the Mahāyāna canon.” See page 112. 52 R. A. L. H. Gunawardana, Robe and Plough: Monasticism and Economic Interest in Early Medieval Sri Lanka (Tucson: University of Arizona Press for the Association of Asian Studies, 1979), 242–81. 53 Miksic, Borobudur, 23. 54 N. J. Krom, Barabud.ur: An Archaeological Description (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1927), 99.

Notes 183 55 Stephan Schuhmacher and Gert Woerner, The Encyclopedia of Eastern Philosophy and Religion (Boston: Shambhala, 1994), 92. 56 Krom, Barabud.ur: An Archaeological Description, 99. 57 Gómez, Selected Verses from the Gan.d.avyūha, xxxiv–xxxvi. 58 Śāntideva, The Bodhicaryāvatāra: A Guide to the Buddhist Path to Awakening, trans. with introduction and notes by Kate Crosby and Andrew Skilton, with a general introduction by Paul Williams (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 9–10. 59 Sara McClintock, “Kamalaśīla,” in The Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd edn, ed. Lindsay Jones, vol. 8 (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005), 5069. 60 Gómez, Selected Verses from the Gan.d.avyūha, xxxvi–xxxvii. 61 David L. McMahan, Empty Vision: Metaphor and Visionary Imagery in Mahāyāna Buddhism (London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002), 113–14. 62 Paul J. Griffiths, On Being Buddha: The Classical Doctrine of Buddhahood (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), 132. 63 Ibid., xviii, 27–30. 64 James E. Young, The Texture of Memory (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 4. 65 George A. Kennedy, trans., Aristotle on Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 48, 84–87. I rely on Kennedy’s translation throughout, but for those who wish to consult the Greek, I include internal references in the style used by Kennedy. Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1.3.3, 1.9.33, 1.9.38–9. 66 Kennedy, Aristotle on Rhetoric, 47–8. Rhetoric, 1.3.2, 1.3.4. 67 Lawrence Rosenfield, “The Practical Celebration of Epideictic,” in Rhetoric in Transition: Studies in the Nature and Uses of Rhetoric, ed. Eugene E. White (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1980), 133. 68 Kennedy, Aristotle on Rhetoric, 85. Rhetoric, 1.9.35–36. 69 Lindsay Jones, The Hermeneutics of Sacred Architecture: Experience, Interpretation, Comparison, vol. 1: Monumental Occasions: Reflections on the Eventfulness of Religious Architecture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), 41. 70 George Kennedy, The Art of Persuasion in Greece (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), 29, 154, 166–7. 71 Michael F. Carter, “The Ritual Functions of Epideictic Rhetoric: The Case of Socrates’ Funeral Oration,” Rhetorica 9, 3 (Summer 1991): 211. 72 Jonathan Z. Smith, To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). 73 Jones, The Hermeneutics of Sacred Architecture, vol. 1, 21–37. 74 Jones, The Hermeneutics of Sacred Architecture, vol. 2, 1–24 and passim. 75 See especially Jones, The Hermeneutics of Sacred Architecture, vol. 1, 187–208. 76 Richard H. Davis, Lives of Indian Images (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 8–10. 77 Shelly Errington, The Death of Authentic Primitive Art and Other Tales of Progress (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 188–266; see also Miksic, Borobudur, 17. 78 Paul Harrison, “Commemoration and Identification in Buddhānusmr.ti,” in In the Mirror of Memory: Reflections of Mindfulness and Remembrance in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism, ed. Janet Gyatso (Albany: SUNY Press, 1992), 220. 79 Edward S. Casey, Remembering: A Phenomenological Study (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 225–50. 80 Harrison, “Commemoration and Identification in Buddhānusmr.ti,” 229. 81 Ibid., 230. 82 Ibid., 229–30.

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1 Borobudur: monumental mandala and bodhisattva path 1 A. J. Bernet Kempers, “Barabud.ur: A Buddhist Mystery in Stone,” in Gómez and Woodward, Barabud.ur, 112. See also A. J. Bernet Kempers, Ageless Borobudur: Buddhist Mystery in Stone, Decay and Restoration, Mendut and Pawon, Folklife in Ancient Java (Wassenaar: Servire, 1976). 2 Bernet Kempers, “Barabud.ur,” 112. 3 Ibid., 116. 4 For a brief summary of Foucher’s two theories of Borobudur as a stupa, see: Gómez and Woodward, “Introduction,” 7–8. See also: F. D. K. Bosch, “Review of Sivaramamurti,” Le stūpa du Barabud.ur, AAS, 24 (1961), 144. 5 Hiram W. Woodward, Jr., “Barabud.ur as a Stūpa,” in Barabud.ur, 121. 6 Alfred Foucher, “Notes d’archéologie bouddhique,” BEFEO 9 (1909): 4. 7 See, for example, the lithograph by C. W. Mieling, based on an 1849 sketch by F. C. Wilsen, and the nineteenth-century British engraving based on a sketch made in 1814 by Cornelius: Miksic, Borobudur, 16, 26. 8 Henri Parmentier, “Review of Hoenig’s Das Formproblem,” BEFEO 24 (1924): 612–14; Henri Parmentier, “Nouvelle hypothèse sur la forme prévue pour le Borobudur,” in Feestbundel uitgegeven door het Koninklijk Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen bij gelegenheid van zijn 150 jarig bestaan, 1778–1928, vol. 2 (Weltevreden: G. Kolff, 1929) 264–72. 9 Woodward, “Barabud.ur as a Stūpa,” 121. 10 Diagoro Chihara, Hindu-Buddhist Architecture in Southeast Asia (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996), 112–22. 11 Soekmono, Chandi Borobudur, 16. 12 Foucher, “Notes d’archeologie bouddhique,” 4. 13 Woodward, “Barabud.ur as a Stūpa,” 121, 122. 14 Miksic, Borobudur, 50. 15 Vidya Dehejia, “On Modes of Visual Narration in Early Buddhist Art,” The Art Bulletin 72, 3 (Sept. 1990): 388. 16 Robert L. Brown, “Narrative as Icon: The Jātaka Stories in Ancient Indian and Southeast Asian Architecture,” in Sacred Biography in the Buddhist Traditions of South and Southeast Asia, ed. Juliane Schober (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997), 74–5. 17 Alfred Foucher, L’art Gréco-Bouddhique du Gandhāra: Étude sur les origines de l’influence classique dans l’art bouddhique de l’Inde et de l’Extrême-Orient, vol. 1 (Paris: Leroux and Imprimerie Nationale, 1905–51), 80. 18 Mus, Barabud.ur, vol. 1, 105–6, 524. W. F. Stutterheim, Tjan.d.i Barab-boed.oer: Naam, Vorm, Beteekenis (Weltevreden: G. Kolff, 1929). Translated as “Chan.d.i Barabud.ur: Name, Form, and Meaning,” in Studies in Indonesian Archaeology (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1956), 35, 53–8. 19 Gómez and Woodward, “Introduction,” 7. 20 Casparis, Prasasti Indonesia I. I have relied here primarily on Fontein’s summary of the relevant points in The Pilgrimage of Sudhana: A Study of Gan.d.avyūha illustrations in China, Japan and Java (The Hague: Mouton & Co., 1967), 161–2. 21 Yüan-hsing, “Avatam . saka Sūtra,” in Encyclopaedia of Buddhism, ed, G. P. Malalasekara (Colombo: Government Press, Ceylon, 1966), vol. 2, 438. 22 Ibid., 443. 23 Fontein, The Pilgrimage of Sudhana, 162. 24 Ibid., 172. 25 Edward Conze, The Prajñāpāramitā Literature (’s-Gravenhage: Mouton, 1960), 9ff. 26 Williams, Mahāyāna Buddhism, 51. 27 Donald S. Lopez, Jr., “On the Interpretation of the Mahāyāna Sūtras,” in Buddhist Hermeneutics, ed. Donald S. Lopez, Jr. (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1988), 50.

Notes 185 28 Ibid., 55. 29 Here, I adopt Reginald Ray’s solution to a nomenclature problem familiar to scholars of Buddhism. “Hīnayāna” is a pejorative term invented and applied by Mahāyānists; “Pre-Mahāyāna Buddhism,” though not overtly pejorative, still defines the issue in terms of the development of the Mahāyāna; “Theravāda” excludes such groups as the Sarvāstivādins. With the phrase “Nikāya Buddhism,” Ray designates “the sects (nikāya) of the ‘eighteen schools’”: Reginald A. Ray, Buddhist Saints in India: A Study in Buddhist Values and Orientations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 10, n.2. 30 Edward Conze, trans., The Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines and its Verse Summary, Bibliotheca Indo-Buddhica Series 132 (Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications, 1994), 150. The passage cited denies the existence of the second turning of the dharma wheel, but this denial should be seen as entailing a tacit affirmation. The reason that the second turning does not exist is that “emptiness does not proceed nor recede” (151); the teaching of emptiness is, of course, absolutely central to this version of the Mahāyāna. 31 It should be mentioned that historically, the Yogācāra orientation did not supplant the Perfection of Wisdom teachings. “Although they are characteristic of the earliest phase of Indian Mahāyāna, Perfection of Wisdom sūtras, for example, continued to be produced for many centuries alongside scriptures representing a conceptually later phase of Mahāyāna”: Williams, Mahāyāna Buddhism, 78. 32 John Powers, trans., Wisdom of the Buddha: The “Sam.dhinirmocana Sūtra” (Berkeley: Dharma Publishing, 1995), 139–41. 33 Peter N. Gregory, Tsung-mi and the Sinification of Buddhism, 134. 34 Ibid., 128. As I mentioned earlier, the Gan.d.avyūha, although it did circulate independently, was also included in the Avatam . saka corpus. Given this, a comparison of Huayan p’an-chiao systems with the Borobudur relief panels of the base and galleries might prove fruitful. If a high degree of comparative similarity were to emerge, it would point to a stronger relationship between Śailendra Buddhism and Huayan than can currently be demonstrated. 35 Fontein, The Pilgrimage of Sudhana, 172. 36 Ibid., 155–7; Jan Fontein, “Notes on the Jātakas and Avadānas of Borobudur,” in Barabud.ur, 99, 105–6. 37 Heinrich Zimmer, Kunstform und Yoga im indischen Kultbild (Berlin: Frankfurter Verlage-Anstalt, 1926). 38 Krom, Barabud.ur. 39 Stutterheim, “Chan.d.i Barabud.ur,” in Studies in Indonesian Archaeology, 3–90. 40 J. E. van Lohuizen-de Leeuw, “The Dhyāni-Buddhas of Borobudur,” Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land-, en Volkenkunde 121 (1965), 389–416. 41 Lokesh Chandra, “Borobudur as a Monument of Esoteric Buddhism,” The Southeast Asia Review 5 (1980), 1–41. 42 Alex Wayman, “Reflections on the Theory of Borobudur as a Man.d.ala,” Borobudur, 139–72. 43 Adrian Snodgrass, The Symbolism of the Stūpa (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, Southeast Asia Program, 1985). 44 Huntington, “The Iconography of Borobudur Revisited,” 133–53. 45 Denise Patry Leidy, “Place and Process: Mandala Imagery in the Buddhist Art of Asia,” in Mandala: The Architecture of Enlightenment, ed. Denise Patry Leidy and Robert A. F. Thurman (New York: Asia Society Galleries and Tibet House, 1997), 17–18. 46 Actually, the outer two terraces are not exactly circular; rather, they look like circles in the process of becoming squares, or vice versa. Still, they are more rounded than not, so for the sake of convenience, I call them circles here. 47 Leidy, “Place and Process: Mandala Imagery in the Buddhist Art of Asia,” 38–40, figure 35 page 39.

186

Notes

48 Krom, Barabud.ur, vol. 2, 149. It is perhaps relevant to point out that not all of the figures that display the bhūmisparśamudrā actually face east. Because some of the Buddha figures on the eastern side of the monument are located in niches placed on one of the zigzags created by the re-entrant corners, they actually face south or north. The same holds true for the Buddha figures in the niches located on the southern, western, and northern sides of Borobudur. 49 Marijke J. Klokke, “Borobudur: A Man.d.ala? A Contextual Approach to the Function and Meaning of Borobudur,” International Institute for Asian Studies Yearbook (1995): 191–219. 50 Ibid., 194. 51 Miksic, Borobudur, 50. 52 Klokke, “Borobudur: A Man.d.ala?” 195. 53 Ibid. 54 Snodgrass, The Symbolism of the Stūpa, 148. 55 Wayman, “Reflections on the Theory of Barabud.ur as a Man.d.ala,” 154. 56 Robert Heine-Geldern, “The Archaeology and Art of Sumatra,” in Sumatra: Its History and People, ed. Edwin M. Loeb (Vienna: Verlag des Institutes für Volkenkunde der Universität Wien, 1935), 323. 57 Lewis R. Lancaster, “Literary Sources for the Study of Barabud.ur,” 196. See also Gómez and Woodward, “Introduction,” 11. 58 Hudaya Kandahjaya, A Study on the Origin and Significance of Borobudur (PhD diss., Graduate Theological Union, 2004), 65. 59 David Gordon White, “Introduction,” in Tantra in Practice, ed. David Gordon White (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 21. 60 For pictures of a few of these bronzes and a summary of the scholarship connected with them, see Fontein, The Sculpture of Indonesia (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1990), 231–3. The early tenth-century bronzes found in Surocolo in Central Java also appear to represent figures of the Vajradhātu man.d.ala, but these figures differ from the Nganjuk bronzes and their literary source is not clear. Fontein, The Sculpture of Indonesia, 223–30. 61 Stutterheim, “Chan.d.i Barabud.ur,” in Studies in Indonesian Archaeology, 3–90. 62 Klokke, “Borobudur: A Mandala?,” 196. 63 See especially Huntington, “The Iconography of Borobudur Revisited,” 134–5. 64 Klokke, “Borobudur: A Mandala?,” 196–8. 65 Wayman, “Reflections on the Theory of Barabud.ur as a Man.d.ala,” 140–1. 66 Ibid., 141–2. 67 Huntington, “The Iconography of Borobudur Revisited,” 134–5. 68 Ibid., 138–9, 141, 146. 69 Ibid., 144, 140, 142, respectively. 70 N. J. Krom, Beschrijving van Barabud.ur, vol. 1, Archaeologische Beschrijving (’s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1920), 641–4. 71 Klokke, “Borobudur: A Mandala?,” 198–201. 72 Hugh B. Urban, Tantra: Sex, Secrecy, Politics, and Power in the Study of Religion (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 31. 73 Ibid., 7. 74 White, “Tantra in Practice: Mapping a Tradition,” 9. 75 Robert A. F. Thurman, “Mandala: The Architecture of Enlightenment,” in Mandala, 128, 134–5. 76 Ibid., 128. 77 “Particularly important as sources for their schema . . . are the Mahāyānasūtrālam.kāra . and its commentary, and Asanga’s Mahāyānasam.graha”: Williams, Mahāyāna Buddhism, 175. 78 Ibid., 80–1. 79 Luis O. Gómez, Selected Verses from the Gan.d.avyūha: Text, Critical Apparatus and

Notes 187

80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94

95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115

Translation (Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1967), lxviii–lxxiv. See also: Encyclopedia of Buddhism, ed. G. P. Malalasekara (Colombo: Government Press, Ceylon, 1966), vol. 2, 435–6. Paul J. Griffiths, On Being Buddha: The Classical Doctrine of Buddhahood (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), 132–3. Ibid., 147–9. Ibid., 135–6. Ibid., 87–91. Ibid., 128. Ibid., 127–8. Ibid., 127–32. Randy Kloetzli, Buddhist Cosmology: From Single World System to Pure Land; Science and Theology in the Images of Motion and Light (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1983), 91–3. Griffiths, On Being Buddha, 129. Kloetzli, Buddhist Cosmology, 99. Cf. Thurman, “Mandala,” 128. Kloetzli, Buddhist Cosmology, 93–103. Ibid., 98. See Osto’s slightly different, but complementary interpretation of the prologue to the Gan.d.avyūha in Osto, Power, Wealth and Women in Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism, 48–58. Osto, Power, Wealth and Women in Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism, 50, 141 note 9. Cf. Thomas Cleary, trans. Entry into the Realm of Reality: The Text; The “Gandavyuha,” the Final Book of the “Avatamsaka Sutra,” (Boston: Shambhala, 1989), 13; P. L. Vaidya, ed., Gan.d.avyūha sūtra, Buddhist Sanskrit Texts 5 (Darbhanga: The Mithila Institute, 1960), 4. Cleary, Entry into the Realm of Reality, 14. Vaidya, Gan.d.avyūhasūtra, 4–5. Osto translates the name of the samādhi as the “Lion’s Yawn”: Osto, Power, Wealth and Women in Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism, 51. Cleary, Entry into the Realm of Reality, 15. Vaidya, Gan.d.avyūhasūtra, 6. Cf. Osto, Power, Wealth and Women in Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism, 52. Cleary, Entry into the Realm of Reality, 15. Vaidya, Gan.d.avyūhasūtra, 6. Cleary, Entry into the Realm of Reality, 15–6. Vaidya, Gan.d.avyūhasūtra, 6. Cleary, Entry into the Realm of Reality, 16–21. Vaidya, Gan.d.avyūhasūtra, 6–12. Thurman, “Mandala,” 128. Cleary, Entry into the Realm of Reality, 15. Vaidya, Gan.d.avyūhasūtra, 6. Cf. Osto, Power, Wealth and Women in Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism, 52. Cleary, Entry into the Realm of Reality, 16–21. Vaidya, Gan.d.avyūhasūtra, 6–12. Ibid. Griffiths, On Being Buddha, 81–2. White, “Tantra in Practice,” 9. Griffiths, On Being Buddha, 90–1. Eckel, To See the Buddha, 85. Griffiths, On Being Buddha, 137. Eckel, To See the Buddha, 88. Cleary, Entry into the Realm of Reality, 44. Vaidya, Gan.d.avyūhasūtra, 34. Cleary, Entry into the Realm of Reality, 45. Vaidya, Gan.d.avyūhasūtra, 35. Cleary, Entry into the Realm of Reality, 37. Vaidya, Gan.d.avyūhasūtra, 27. Cleary, Entry into the Realm of Reality, 38. Vaidya, Gan.d.avyūhasūtra, 28. Luis O. Gómez, “The Avatam . saka-Sūtra,” in Buddhist Spirituality: Indian, Southeast Asian, Tibetan, Early Chinese, ed. Takeuchi Yoshinori (New York: Crossroad, 1995), 162. Bernet Kempers, “Barabud.ur,” 118.

188 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125

126 127 128 129 130

Notes Ibid., 116. White, “Tantra in Practice,” 9. Ibid., 11. Bernet Kempers, “Barabud.ur,” 110. Ibid., 118. Klokke, “Borobudur: A Man.d.ala?” 195. Lancaster, “Literary Sources for a Study of Borobudur,” 200. Brown, “Narrative as Icon,” 74–5. Ibid., 65. Diana L. Eck, Darśan: Seeing the Divine Image in India, 3rd edn (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 3, 45–51. For a summary of scholarship on Buddhist images and the issue of the Buddha’s presence/absence in them, see: Kinnard, Imaging Wisdom, 56–78. Wu Hung, “What is Bianxiang? – On the Relationship between Dunhuang Art and Dunhuang Literature,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 52, 1 (June 1992): 130. R. L. Mitra, trans., The Lalita Vistara: Memoirs of the Early Life of Sakya Sinha (Chs. 1–15) (Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications, 1998), 4–5. Emphasis added. Miksic, Borobudur, 27. Thurman, “Mandala,” 131. Stutterheim, “Chan.d.i Barabud.ur,” in Studies in Indonesian Archaeology.

2 Carving out time: the narrative relief panels 1 Quoted in David Freedburg, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 163. 2 The best challenge to this theory is Brown, “Narrative as Icon.” As I will shortly make abundantly clear, I have benefited immensely from Brown’s insight. Shelly Errington also challenges the theory that all the relief panels are narrative when she claims that the relief panels near the top of the monument depict “abstract ideas not embedded in narrative.” As will become clear, this is a claim with which I partially agree. But my argument does not rely on Errington’s claim, which is made in passing. She does not provide a definition of narrative art, any evidence to support her claim, or a citation referring the reader to a published source that would provide the needed support. See Errington, The Death of Authentic Primitive Art and Other Tales of Progress, 243. 3 N. J. Krom, The Life of the Buddha on the Stūpa of Barabud.ur according to the Lalitavistara-Text (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1926; reprinted: Delhi: Bhartiya Publishing House, 1974), viii. 4 Miksic, Borobudur, 61. 5 Smith, To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual. 6 In keeping with Jones’ use of reception theory to interpret sacred architecture, I leave open the possibility that a work of art could take on a genuinely religious meaning for people who belong to a religious tradition other than the artwork’s tradition of origin. But in this case, the new audience would care about the work of art primarily in relation to the stories and practices of this second tradition. See Davis, Lives of Indian Images. 7 Wu, “What is Bianxiang?” 130. 8 Ibid. 9 Paul Ricoeur, “Narrative Time,” in On Narrative, ed. W. J. T. Mitchell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 165. 10 Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, trans. Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer, 3 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984– ). 11 Ricoeur, “Narrative Time,” 166. 12 Dr. Seuss, The Cat in the Hat (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957). 13 Dehejia, “On Modes of Visual Narration in Early Buddhist Art,” 374.

Notes 189 14 15 16 17 18

19 20 21 22

23 24 25

26

27 28 29 30 31 32

33

34

Ibid., 374–5. Ibid., 374. Ibid. Wu, “What is Bianxiang?” 136. Ibid. To clarify, Wu does not think that these paintings are simply mistaken attempts to picture narratives. He makes this point in order to clear the way for his argument that these paintings are composed according to an alternative, nonnarrative logic. Because his positive argument does not apply to those aspects of Borobudur in which I am most interested, I do not review it here. E. J. Thomas, “The Lalitavistara and Sarvastivāda,” Indian Historical Quarterly 16 (1940): 240–1. Maurice Winternitz, History of Indian Literature, vol. 2, trans. S. Ketar and H. Kohn (New Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint Corporation, 1977), 31. See Dehejia, “On Modes of Visual Narration in Early Buddhist Art.” As I have already indicated, only some of the modes that Dehejia identifies fit the formal definition of narrative art I have given here. Linear narrative is closely related to continuous narrative because it shares this characteristic. The difference between the two is that linear narrative divides one scene from the next by means of some framing device, while continuous narrative does not. On a few occasions, the relief panels of Borobudur mix the two forms because, while each panel is unmistakably framed, a few of the frames picture more than one event. Otto Pächt, The Rise of Pictorial Narrative in Twelfth-Century England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962), 8, n. 1. Quoted in Dehejia, “On Modes of Visual Narration in Early Buddhist Art,” 385. Peggy Rathmann, Good Night, Gorilla (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1994). I introduce a note of caution for two reasons. First, Krom’s identification of the first scene I mention is only tentative. Second, the definition of “episode” is a bit fuzzy. It is possible that someone else might assign some of the events I have included here to a different episode. For the purpose of this example, I have included in the Great Departure episode all the pictured events up to the moment at which the gods express their approval at seeing the prince transformed into a mendicant. For full descriptions of these scenes, together with the passages of the Lalitavistara to which they correspond, see Krom, The Life of the Buddha, 65–78 and the corresponding plates. Except for my explanation of the “visual rhetorical device” of representing deities, bodhisattvas, and kings in the same garb, my discussion of these relief panels relies almost entirely on Krom’s volume. Fontein, The Pilgrimage of Sudhana, 125, 148. Dehejia, “On Modes of Visual Narration in Early Buddhist Art,” 388. Miksic, Borobudur, 97. Mus, Borobudur: Sketch of a History of Buddhism Based on Archaeological Criticism of the Texts, 269. Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 93–5. Frank E. Reynolds, “Rebirth Traditions and the Lineages of Gotama: A Study in Theravāda Buddhology,” in Sacred Biography in the Buddhist Traditions of South and Southeast Asia, ed. Juliane Schober (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997), 20. The correspondence between the text and these relief panels was first noticed by Serge d’Oldenburg, and was originally published in 1895 in Russian. It was translated into English by L. Weiner as “Notes on Buddhist Art.” For an English translation of the text, see Peter Khoroche, trans., Once the Buddha was a Monkey: Ārya Śūra’s “Jātakamālā” (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1989). To be clear, there is no particular reason to suppose that the architects followed any particular jātaka collection; they may have selected stories from multiple texts or even

190

35 36 37 38 39

40

41 42

43 44 45 46 47

48 49 50 51 52

53

Notes from the oral tradition. My point is simply that the relief panels would be easier to identify if the architects did follow one or more extant collections and if we knew which ones they were. Bernet Kempers, Ageless Borobudur, 107. The same walls that picture scenes from jātaka stories also picture scenes from avadāna tales, about which, more below. Currently unidentified scenes might depict jātakas or avadānas. Brown, “Narrative as Icon,” 84–6. Khoroche, Once the Buddha was a Monkey, 178–85. See page 267 for references to other versions of this story. In some of the longer and more complex jātakas, more than one action might be considered pivotal. The Vessantara jātaka, for example, presents at least two such actions: 1) Prince Vessantara gives away the rainmaking elephant, and 2) the exiled Vessantara gives away his children. But my general point still holds because either of these events could be pictured in monoscenic mode and still be recognized as a moment in the temporally unfolding sequence that is the extended biography of the Buddha. This is not the place to discuss the tension between the Buddhist account of karma and rebirth on the one hand, and the doctrine of no-self on the other. For one approach to this tension as it appears in the Theravāda tradition, see: Steven Collins, Selfless Persons: Imagery and Thought in Theravāda Buddhism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). Pächt, The Rise of Pictorial Narrative in Twelfth-Century England, 8, n. 1. Quoted in Dehejia, “On Modes of Visual Narration in Early Buddhist Art,” 385. I refer here to events recounted in the Vessantara jātaka, which is the last story in the chain of jātakas. But in some versions of the biography, including the Lalitavistara, the bodhisattva is born in Tus.ita heaven after his stint as Vessantara and before he is born as Gautama. In this case, the Vessantara jātaka is technically the Buddha’s antepenultimate life. Reynolds, “Rebirth Traditions and the Lineages of Gotama,” 24. Ibid., 26–7. Griffiths, On Being Buddha, 90. Ibid., 179. Although a nirmān.akāya is usually said to appear to lead a life patterned on Gautama’s life, an illusory body may appear to do anything that will be beneficial for those who perceive it. For example, a nirmān.akāya may not appear to be human, but may appear instead to be an animal or a god. Given this broader definition, the previous lives of Gautama can also be seen as nirmān.akāya manifestations. See Griffiths, On Being Buddha, 88–91. Peter Harvey, An Introduction to Buddhism: Teachings, History and Practices (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 122–4. Ibid., 122–3. John J. Makransky, Buddhahood Embodied: Sources of Controversy in India and Tibet (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 10–12 and passim. Harvey, An Introduction to Buddhism, 92–3. Nirmān.akāyas are as various as the unenlightened beings who need them, and only the type of nirmān.akāya that manifests the last life in the Buddha’s biography appears to achieve parinirvān.a. Although this is clearly considered to be the most advanced type of nirmān.akāya, a bodhisattva can project it in the tenth stage of the path. Indeed, the bodhisattva in this stage can project nirmān.akāyas that manifest all the deeds of the historical Buddha into an immeasurably large number of world realms. Megumu Honda, trans., “Annotated Translation of the Daśabhūmika-sūtra,” in Studies in South, East, and Central Asia, ed. Denis Sinor (New Delhi: International Academy of Indian Culture, 1968), 270. Ibid., 123.

Notes 191 54 55 56 57 58 59

60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75

76 77 78 79

80 81 82 83

Ibid., 124. Ibid., 201. Lancaster, “Literary Sources for a Study of Borobudur,” 97–8. Meyer Schapiro, Words and Pictures: On the Literal and the Symbolic in the Interpretation of a Text (The Hague: Mouton, 1973), 37–49. Complete enlightenment is an essential, defining characteristic of the dharmakāya that makes it the proper basis for the other two bodies: Makransky, Buddhahood Embodied, 86–8. See, for example, John Clifford Holt, The Religious World of Kīrti Śrī: Buddhism, Art, and Politics in Late Medieval Sri Lanka (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), plates 8 and 40. Both semi-iconic compositions were produced in the Kandyan kingdom in the late eighteenth century. Plate 8 depicts the Buddha preaching to his first five converts; Gautama is depicted iconically, and displays the vitarka mudrā. Plate 40 depicts Gautama on the seat of enlightenment as Māra’s daughters try to tempt him. Krom, The Life of the Buddha, 129–131 and plate 120. Griffiths, On Being Buddha, 161–3. Ibid., 67–71. Kloetzli, Buddhist Cosmology, 65 and note 4. Mitra, The Lalita Vistara, 22–88. Ibid., 79–80. Eugene Watson Burlingame, trans., Buddhist Legends: Translated from the original Pali text of the “Dhammapada Commentary,” part 3 (London: Pali Text Society, 1990), 53. Mitra, The Lalita Vistara, 92. In the text, the ratnavyūha palace consists of three nested palaces. Krom, The Life of the Buddha, 13–14, and plate 12. Mitra, The Lalita Vistara, 92–100. For an account of this problem as it appears in the digests, see Griffiths, On Being Buddha, 95–6. T. S. Eliot, “Coriolan,” in Collected Poems: 1909–1962 (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1963), 126. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Medieval Sinhalese Art, 3rd edn (New York: Pantheon Books, 1979), 168. Ricoeur, “Narrative Time,” 165. Coomaraswamy, Medieval Sinhalese Art, 168–71. For a relatively recent account of this model, see W. J. T. Mitchell, Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 26–8. Mitchell presents this model in the context of a discussion of the relationship between writing and painting in general, not just narrative painting. Coomaraswamy, Medieval Sinhalese Art, 168. See Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983). Donald Preziosi, Rethinking Art History: Meditations on a Coy Science (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 80–7, 111–21. As Martin Jay has cogently argued, the “denigration of vision” has been particularly acute in much of postmodern theory: Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). Brown, “Narrative as Icon,” 98. Fontein, The Pilgrimage of Sudhana, 157. Ibid. Wu Hung points out that in his earlier work, Mair is much more reluctant to claim unequivocally that the cave paintings were used to illustrate oral recitation of texts. Wu, “What is Bianxiang?” 114 and note 14.

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84 As Wu shows, these paintings are generally not narrative art in the sense that I have defined it here because the various episodes of the story are not arranged in a way that reflects their chronological order. Wu, “What is Bianxiang?” 136. 85 Victor Mair, “Records of Transformation Tableaux (pien-hsiang),” T’oung Pao 72 (1986): 3–43. 86 Wu, “What is Bianxiang?” 123–4. 87 Dehejia, “On Modes of Visual Narration in Early Buddhist Art,” 378. 88 N. R. M. Ehara, Soma Thera and Kheminda Thera, trans., The Path of Freedom: by the Arahant Upatissa (Colombo: Dr. D. Roland D. Weerasuria, 1961), 144–5. 89 Ibid., 148. 90 Ibid., 141. 91 Brown argues that a standing adult would find it difficult to view the panels of the lower register, but I find this aspect of his argument unconvincing. Granted, the lower register is not at eye level, but I do not recall having any difficulty seeing these panels while standing. It is possible that Brown has more difficulty seeing these panels than I do because he is significantly taller than I am. But I am in turn significantly taller than many Javanese people. Unless the Javanese were much taller in the late eighth century than they are today, I find no reason to suppose that they could not see these panels clearly while standing. See Brown, “Narrative as Icon,” 84–5. 92 Those familiar with the monument will wonder how this theory can work for all of the relief panels on the first gallery main wall given that many of the visual narratives represented on the lower register are avadāna stories about the karmic fates of people other than the historical Buddha Śākyamuni. As I will demonstrate much more thoroughly in Chapter 4, not only Buddhas but also advanced bodhisattvas can project nirmān.akāyas. Indeed, the Gan.d.avyūha contains a lengthy passage that relates how the bodhisattva Maitreya projects multiple nirmān.akāyas simultaneously, some in the form of events from “past” lives; the passage is pictured in detail on the upper galleries of Borobudur. Although this argument will need to be unpacked, it is thus reasonable to hypothesize that on Borobudur, the avadāna relief panels picture the nirmān.akāyas of saints other than the historical Buddha. In keeping with the mandala principle, the needs of sentient beings are served not only by the nirmān.akāyas of the Buddha himself but also by the nirmān.akāyas of his proxies. 93 Brown, “Narrative as Icon,” 68. 94 Ibid., 84. 95 Jacques Dumarçay, Borobudur, 2nd edn, trans. and ed. Michael Smithies (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1991), 25. 96 Fontein, The Pilgrimage of Sudhana, 156. 97 Brown, “Narrative as Icon,” 75. 98 Ibid., 98. 99 Ibid., 99. 100 James Legge, trans., A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms, Being an Account by the Chinese Monk Fa-hien of His Travels in India and Ceylon (A.D. 399–414) in Search of the Buddhist Books of Discipline (New York: Dover Publications, 1965), 106. 101 Brown, “Narrative as Icon,” 99. 102 Ibid., 65. His thesis statement for the article as a whole is: “The jātakas were considered as units, functioning within the context of the monument as a whole and with particular nonnarrative roles defined by their locations and uses.” 103 Ibid., 80. He says: “In sum, the Borobudur reliefs come close to fulfilling Dehejia’s assumption that the visual should be read as if mimicking a verbal narrative.” 104 Ibid., 74–5. 105 Ibid., 99–100. 106 Ibid., 82.

Notes 193 3 Piecing together space: the panorama of the purified field 1 Samuel Beal, trans., The Life of Hiuen-Tsang, translated from the Chinese of shaman Hwui Li (Westport, CT: Hyperion Press, 1973; reprint of 1911 version published in Trūbner’s oriental series). For a retelling of Xuanzang’s journey, see: Sally Hovey Wriggins, The Silk Road Journey with Xuanzang, revised and updated (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2004). 2 For a modern translation of the relevant section of the biography, as well as a more detailed analysis of the visualization procedure it recounts, see Alan Sponberg, “Meditation in Fa-hsiang Buddhism,” in Traditions of Meditation in Chinese Buddhism, ed. Peter N. Gregory, Kuroda Institute Studies in East Asian Buddhism, 4 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1986), 15–43. See also: Eckel, To See the Buddha, 131–7. 3 Sponberg, “Meditation in Fa-hsiang Buddhism,“ 24. I omit the Chinese. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid. 6 Eckel, To See the Buddha, 133–4. 7 As David Eckel has noted, the at least quasi-miraculous facets of this story may not be strictly factual. But even if one discounts those elements of the narrative, the meditative visualization recounted in the story has the ring of truth, not only because it fits with what we know of Xuanzang’s religious orientation but also because one can find similar accounts of visualization meditation in a variety of Buddhist texts. Ibid., 134–6. 8 For two exceptions, see Chapter 2, note 2, this volume. 9 This formulation is partly inspired by Jan Nattier’s useful typology of ways in which a devotee may meet the future Buddha Maitreya. See: Jan Nattier, “The Meanings of the Maitreya Myth: A Typological Analysis,” in Maitreya, the Future Buddha, ed. Alan Sponberg and Helen Hardacre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 25, 28–30. 10 Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1962). 11 F. D. K. Bosch, “De Beteekenis der Reliefs van de Derde en Vierde Gaanderij van Baraboedoer,” Oudheidkundig Verslag, 3e en 4e kwartaal 1929 (published 1930), 179–230. 12 No Javanese manuscript of the Gan.d.avyūha – or, indeed, of any text – survives from the period in which Borobudur was built and thus we do not know which version(s) of the text the architects may have used. For the Sanskrit, I have relied on the version edited by Vaidya and amalgamated from several manuscripts. Because the whole text has not yet been translated from Sanskrit into English, I also make reference to Thomas Cleary’s translation from the Chinese, which for the passages cited is fairly close to the Sanskrit. When I want to make a point about the relationship between the relief panels and Sanskrit grammar and syntax, I translate the passage from Vaidya’s text and provide the transliterated Sanskrit in a footnote. 13 Gregory, Tsung-mi and the Sinification of Buddhism, 9. 14 The word kūt.āgāra, which is first used in the Pali canon, can refer to a building that has either multiple stories or multiple peaks on its roof. See The Pali Text Society’s Pali-English Dictionary, ed. T. W. Rhys Davids and William Stede (London: The Pali Text Society, 1986), s.v. kūt.āgāra. Judging from the depictions on these relief panels, and from the designs of Central Javanese Buddhist temples such as Candi Sari and Candi Plaosan, the Javanese considered both architectural features to be integral parts of a palace for a major religious figure. For a discussion of the architectural features of Javanese candi, see R. Soekmono, “Indonesian Architecture of the Classical Period: A Brief Survey,” trans. Jan Fontein, The Sculpture of Indonesia, 67–95. 15 Since Maitreya’s coronation is also illustrated in the Lalitavistara relief panels on the main wall of the first gallery (Ia 6), the future Buddha appears on every gallery of Borobudur. See Krom, The Life of the Buddha.

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16 Vaidya, Gan.d.avyūhasūtra, 368–77. Cleary, trans., Entry into the Realm of Reality, 328–39. 17 Vaidya, Gan.d.avyūhasūtra, 407–15. Cleary, trans., Entry into the Realm of Reality, 365–74. 18 Bosch, “De Beteekenis der Reliefs van de Derde en Vierde Gaanderij van Baraboedoer,” 198–201. See also: Fontein, The Pilgrimage of Sudhana, 117–18. For a useful list of identifications in English, see Bernet Kempers, Ageless Borobudur, 137. 19 Vaidya, Gan.d.avyūhasūtra, 407–8. 20 Ibid., 407.13–32. Translation mine. So 'drāks.īt tam . kūt.āgāram . . . asam . khyeyacchatradhvajapatākālam . kāram asam . khyeyaratnālam . kāram . . . asam . khyeyavicitrapat.t.adāmābhipralambitālam kāram . . . asam . khyeyaghan.t.hāmadhuranirghos.ālam . kāram. . asam . khyeyaratnakinkin.ījālasamīritamanojñāśabdālam . kāram asam . khyeyadivyapuśpaughābhiravars.an.ālam . kāram asam . khyeyadivyamālyadāmābhilambitālam . kāram . . . asam . khyeyādarśaman.d.alālam . kāram . . . asam . khyeyaratnavastrameghālam . kāram asam .khyeyaratnavr.ks.ālam . kāram asam . khyeyaratnavedikālam . kāram . . . asam . khyeyaman.ikanyālam . kāram . . . asam . khyeyapaks.igan.avicitramanojñarutānuvravitālam . kāram asam .khyeyaratnapadmālam . kāram . . . asam . khyeyapus.karin.yalam . kāram . . .. For a more complete English translation from the Chinese, see Cleary, trans., Entry into the Realm of Reality, 365–6. 21 The existing identifications usually do not supply the corresponding Sanskrit compound, but only a translation of the adornment that is pictured in each case. 22 Ibid., 185–90. 23 Fontein, The Pilgrimage of Sudhana, 117. 24 Jan Fontein, “Sculpture, Text and Tradition at Borobudur: A Reconsideration,“ in Narrative Sculpture and Literary Traditions in South and Southeast Asia, ed. Marijke J. Klokke (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 12. 25 Although there are exceptions, the vast majority of the relief panels that depict this part of the text show Sudhana meeting and greeting a particular teacher; they do not show the content of the teaching. Fontein, The Pilgrimage of Sudhana, 122–46. 26 I arrive at this figure by estimating that a version of the Maitreya episode which included only those passages depicted in the relief panels would be at most about ten pages long, whereas the same episode in both the Vaidya version and the Cleary translation is 50 pages long. If such a dramatically shorter version indeed existed, it may have been one of three types of text. First, it may have been a very early version of the text – its historical and conceptual “core” – that survived alongside the later expanded versions current at the time Borobudur was built. If this were the case, then the Borobudur relief panels and the themes they treat would be a kind of “survival” of the earlier core text. Second, if a short Javanese version existed, it may have been a deliberately abridged version of one of the longer Gan.d.avyūha texts available in the Buddhist world by the eighth century CE. Third, it may have been a selective commentary that quoted only certain passages from the root text and interpolated explanations of these passages in Sanskrit or some vernacular. In either of these last two cases, the problem of selectivity to which I refer below is still relevant. Instead of asking why the planners of Borobudur chose to focus on some passages to the exclusion of others, it would be necessary to ask why the author of the abridged version or commentary did so. 27 Vaidya, Gan.d.avyūhasūtra, 6; Cleary, trans., Entry into the Realm of Reality, 15. 28 McMahan, Empty Vision, 112, 117. 29 Winternitz, A History of Indian Literature, vol. 2, 311. 30 Ibid. 31 Julian Pas, Visions of Sukhāvatī: Shan-Tao’s Commentary on the “Kuan Wu-LiangShou-Fo Ching” (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 8–12. 32 Gregory Schopen, “Sukhāvatī as a Generalized Religious Goal in Sanskrit Mahāyāna Sūtra Literature,” Indo-Iranian Journal 19 (1977): 204.

Notes 195 33 Ibid. 34 Translation mine. Kālakriyām . ca aham . karamān.o, āvaran.ān vinivartiya sarvān/ sam . mukha paśyiya tam . amitābham . , tam . ca sukhāvatiks.etra vrajeyam.// Vaidya, Gan.d.avyūhasūtra, 435. See also: Mark Tatz, “The Vow of Benevolent Conduct,” Studies in Indo-Asian Art and Culture 5 (Dec. 1997), 165; Kandahjaya, A Study on the Origin and Significance of Borobudur, 233; Cleary, trans., Entry into the Realm of Reality, 393. 35 N. J. Krom, Barabud.ur, vol. 2, 109. See also Kandahjaya, A Study on the Origin and Significance of Borobudur, 233. While it does not necessarily undermine the identification here, it should be noted that in East Asian paintings, the convention is to depict Amitābha in Sukhāvatī in the dharmacakra mudrā. 36 For a list of references to the Gan.d.avyūha in Indian Buddhist texts, see: Gómez, Selected Verses from the Gan.d.avyūha, xxxiii–xxxvii. For an account of the Sukhāvatīvyūha sūtras in Indian commentarial literature, see: Tanaka, The Dawn of Chinese Buddhist Pure Land Doctrine, 11–3. 37 Griffiths, On Being Buddha, 132. 38 Ibid., xviii, 27–30. 39 Conze, The Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines, 269. 40 For a list of the Sanskrit manuscripts found at Gilgit, together with a few selected passages, see Schopen, “Sukhāvatī as a Generalized Religious Goal,“ 177–210. For full translations of Chinese texts concerning this Buddha and related bodhisattvas, see Raoul Birnbaum, The Healing Buddha, rev. edn (Boston: Shambhala, 1989), 115–217. 41 Minoru Kiyota, “Buddhist Devotional Meditation: A Study of the Sukhāvatīvyūhopadeśa,” in Mahayāna Buddhist Meditation: Theory and Practice, ed. Minoru Kiyota, assisted by Elvin W. Jones (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1978), 250. 42 Nattier, “The Meanings of the Maitreya Myth: A Typological Analysis,” 28 and note 18. 43 As I will show in the next chapter, this panel is part of a series in which the bodhisattva Maitreya projects illusory bodies throughout the cosmos – including all the heavens of this world system – for the purpose of teaching the dharma to all sorts of beings. The panel may therefore depict a heaven other than the Tus.ita, but the pure/impure structure is the same. 44 Griffiths, On Being Buddha, 131. 45 Ibid. 46 Ibid., 129. 47 Luis O. Gómez, trans., Land of Bliss: The Paradise of the Buddha of Measureless Light, Sanskrit and Chinese Versions of the Sukhāvatīvyūha Sutras (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press and Kyoto: Higashi Honganji Shinshū Ōtani-ha, 1996), 79–80; F. Max Müller, trans., The Larger Sukhāvatī-vyūha, in Buddhist Mahāyāna Texts, ed. Cowell et al. (New York: Dover, 1969), 27. 48 Birnbaum, The Healing Buddha, 152. 49 Gómez, trans., Land of Bliss, 69, 83; Müller, trans., The Larger Sukhāvatī-vyūha, 12, 33. 50 Gómez, trans., Land of Bliss, 70–1, 88–9; Müller, trans., The Larger Sukhāvatī-vyūha, 13–14, 40–2. 51 Gómez, trans., Land of Bliss, 74, 88; Müller, trans., The Larger Sukhāvatī-vyūha, 20, 40. 52 Gómez, trans., Land of Bliss, 71–2, 91; Müller, trans., The Larger Sukhāvatī-vyūha, 16, 51. 53 Müller, trans., The Larger Sukhāvatī-vyūha, 33. (Gómez translates: “unfavorable circumstances,” without reference to time. See Gómez, trans., Land of Bliss, 83.) 54 Gómez, trans., Land of Bliss, 70, 80–2; Müller, trans., The Larger Sukhāvatī-vyūha, 14, 28–30.

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55 Vaidya, Gan.d.avyūhasūtra, 4–6; Cleary, trans., Entry into the Realm of Reality, 14–15. 56 Gómez, trans., Land of Bliss, 81–2; Müller, trans., The Larger Sukhāvatī-vyūha, 30. 57 Griffiths, On Being Buddha, 128. 58 Gómez, trans., Land of Bliss, 69–70; Müller, trans., The Larger Sukhāvatī-vyūha, 12–13. 59 Cleary, trans., Entry into the Realm of Reality, 366. For the corresponding passage in Sanskrit, see Vaidya, Gan.d.avyūhasūtra, 408. 60 McMahan, Empty Vision, 65–82, 137–42. 61 Ibid., 66. 62 Ibid., 130–42. 63 This is a summary of some of the common features of purified fields. In what follows, I document each feature with passages from, or references to appropriate sources. 64 Elizabeth ten Grotenhuis, The Revival of the Taima Mandala in Medieval Japan (New York: Garland Publishing, 1985), 95–104. See also: Elizabeth ten Grotenhuis, Japanese Mandalas: Representations of Sacred Geography (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1999), 122–34, plates 1–5, figures 80–1. 65 ten Grotenhuis, The Revival of the Taima Mandala in Medieval Japan, 27. 66 For a much more complete description of the central portion of the Taima mandala, see: ibid., 42–54. 67 Jōji Okazaki, Pure Land Buddhist Painting, trans. and adapted by Elizabeth ten Grotenhuis (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1977), 38, plates 18–21 and 31. See also: ten Grotenhuis, Japanese Mandalas, 134–7, figure 82. 68 Ibid., 60–4, plates 35–9. See also: ten Grotenhuis, Japanese Mandalas, 137–41, frontispiece, figure 83. 69 Ibid., 75–80; plates 51, 53. 70 Ibid., 29. 71 ten Grotenhuis, The Revival of the Taima Mandala in Medieval Japan, 11. 72 Okazaki, Pure Land Buddhist Painting, 30. 73 W. Zwalf, ed., Buddhism: Art and Faith (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1985), 219 and plate 315. 74 Evam . mayā śrutam/ Ekasmin samaye bhagavān śrāvastyām . viharati smajetavane’nāthapin.d.adasyārame mahāvyūhe kūt.āgāre sārdham . pañcamātrairbodhisattvasahasraih. samantabhadramañjuśrībodhisattvapūrvam Vaidya, . gamaih.. Gan.d.avyūhasūtra, 1. Cleary, trans., Entry into the Realm of Reality, 11. 75 Vaidya, Gan.d.avyūhasūtra, 5. Cleary, trans., Entry into the Realm of Reality, 14. 76 The compositions on these panels have no known textual referent. I describe and interpret them in Chapter 4. 77 From a feminist perspective, one might also note that the insistence on a “pure” mode of birth in the purified field is part and parcel of the sometimes-glaring mysogyny that characterizes some of the literature on purified fields. While some women might welcome a world in which birth does not involve human gestation, blood, or pain, but only pristine lotuses, according to the texts that world might not welcome the women. Some purified fields, including Sukhāvatī, include as one of their marks of purity the complete absence of women. People who are currently female can be reborn there, but only by undergoing a between-lives gender change so that they are reborn as males. See: Gómez, trans., Land of Bliss, 74; Müller, trans., The Larger Sukhāvatī-vyūha, 19. See also Birnbaum, The Healing Buddha, 154. As we will see, the lotus pond in the Gan.d.avyūha and on Borobudur is considerably more inclusive. 78 Gómez, trans., Land of Bliss, 104; Müller, trans., The Larger Sukhāvatī-vyūha, 62–3. The Larger Sukhāvatī-vyūha specifies that the beings born in the lotuses are bodhisattvas, but as we will see, in the Gan.d.avyūha passage and on Borobudur, various sorts of beings emerge from lotuses.

Notes 197 79 Schopen, “Sukhāvatī as a Generalized Religious Goal,” 177–8, 201–5; Birnbaum, The Healing Buddha, 151. 80 Birnbaum, The Healing Buddha, 159. 81 Gómez, trans., Land of Bliss, 104. Müller, trans., The Larger Sukhāvatī-vyūha, 62. 82 Gómez, trans., Land of Bliss, 106. (Müller’s translation does not convey the same sense.) 83 Ibid., Müller, trans., The Larger Sukhāvatī-vyūha, 65. 84 J. Takakusu, trans. “Amitāyur-dhyāna-sūtra: The sūtra of the Meditation on Amitāyus,” Buddhist Mahāyāna Texts, 188–99. For more on the title of this text, see p. 100. 85 ten Grotenhuis, The Revival of the Taima Mandala in Medieval Japan, 45–6. 86 Samuel Beal, Si-Yu-Ki: Buddhist Records of the Western World, vol. 2, translated from the Chinese of Hiuen Tsiang (Delhi: Bharatiya Publishing House, 1980), 248. 87 Ibid. 88 Ibid., 249. 89 Ibid. 90 Translation mine. Vaidya, Gan.d.avyūhasūtra, 412. Cleary, trans., Entry Into the Realm of Reality, 371. Tābhyaśca pus.karinībhyo ‘sam . khyeyāni ratnapadmotpalakumudapun.d.arIkānyabhyudgatānyapaśyat/ Kānicidvitastipramān.amātrān.i kānicidvyāmapramān.amātrān.i kānicicchakat.acakrapramān.amātrān.i/ Tes.u ca nānārūpān vyūhānapaśyat/ Yaduta strīrūpān purus.arūpān dārakarūpān dārikārūpān śakrarūpān brahmarūpān lokapālarūpān devanāgayaks.agandharvāsuragarud.akinnaramahoragarūpān śrāvakapratyekabuddhabodhisattvarūpān sarvajagadrūpasam . sthānaśarīrān vicitranānāvarn.ān kr.tāñjaliput.ānavanatakāyānnamsyato ‘paśyat/ Dvātrim . śanmahāpurus.alaks.an.asamalam . . kr.takāyām . śca tathāgatavigrahān paryankanis.an.n.ānapaśyat// To avoid confusion, I have omitted the last sentence from my translation above. The Buddhas mentioned in the clause are clearly not achieving birth in the purified field because they are by definition already enlightened and can emanate purified fields of their own. But they may be appearing in the purified field as part of the miraculous vision, just as in the prologue of the text the Buddhas of the ten directions appear in the Jeta grove when the Buddha transforms it. 91 For the identifications of these panels, see Bosch, “De Beteekenis der Reliefs van de Derde en Vierde Gaanderij van Baraboedoer,” 210–11. See also: Bernet Kempers, Ageless Borobudur, 138. 92 Gómez, The Land of Bliss, 72–5, 84–5, 88–9; Müller, trans., The Larger Sukhāvatīvyūha, 16–20, 33–6, 40–2. 93 Bosch, “De Beteekenis der Reliefs van de Derde en Vierde Gaanderij van Baraboedoer,” 226. 94 Gómez, The Land of Bliss, 72–5; Müller, trans., The Larger Sukhāvatī-vyūha, 16–20. 95 Ibid., 18–19. 96 Mitra, trans., The Lalita-Vistara, 70. 97 Ibid. 98 Vaidya, Gan.d.avyūhasūtra, xvi. See also: Eckel, To See the Buddha, 20. 99 Vaidya, Gan.d.avyūhasūtra, 407. Cleary, trans., Entry into the Realm of Reality, 366. 100 Vaidya, Gan.d.avyūhasūtra, 415. Cleary, trans., Entry into the Realm of Reality, 374. 101 Matthew T. Kapstein, “Pure Land Buddhism in Tibet?: From Sukhāvatī to the Field of Great Bliss,” in Approaching the Land of Bliss, ed. Richard K. Payne and Kenneth K. Tanaka (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004), 16–51; Todd T. Lewis, “From Generalized Goal to Tantric Subordination: Sukhāvatī in the Indic Buddhist Traditions of Nepal,” in Approaching the Land of Bliss, ed. Richard K. Payne and Kenneth K. Tanaka (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004), 236–63. 102 Griffiths, On Being Buddha, 131. 103 Ibid. 104 Eckel, To See the Buddha, 133–4. 105 Ibid., 133.

198 106 107 108 109

110 111 112

113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120

121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139

Notes Ibid., 132–3. Harrison, “Commemoration and Identification in Buddānusmr.ti,“ 215–38. Griffiths, On Being Buddha, 133. Harrison, “Commemoration and Identification in Buddānusmr.ti,“ 222. See also: Paul Harrison, ed. and trans., The Samādhi of Direct Encounter with the Buddhas of the Present: An Annotated English Translation of the Tibetan Version of the PratyutpannaBuddha-Sam . mukhāvasthita-Samādhi-Sūtra with Several Appendices relating to the History of the Text (Tokyo: International Institute for Buddhist Studies, 1990). Alan Sponberg, “Woˇnhyo on Visualization: Maitreya Cult Practice in Early China and Korea,” in Maitreya, the Future Buddha, ed. Sponberg and Hardacre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 94–109. Ibid., 95, 106–8. Kōtatsu Fujita, “The Textual Origins of the Kuan Wu-liang-shou Ching: A Canonical Scripture of Pure Land Buddhism,” trans. Kenneth K. Tanaka, in Chinese Buddhist Apocrypha, ed. Robert E. Buswell, Jr. (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1990), 149–73. Ibid., 215 and 225. Sponberg, “Woˇnhyo on Maitreya Visualization,” 97–8. Ibid., 99. Ibid., 99–100, 103–4. Ibid., 98. Ibid., 108, note 11. Takakusu, Amitāyur-dhyāna-sūtra, 171. According to the Guan-jing, the meditation on Sukhāvatī actually begins with a visualization of the sun. The solar disc may be even simpler to envision than the level ground, but I offer the latter as my example because it is a feature common to visualizations of purified fields other than Sukhāvatī. Takakusu, Amitāyur-dhyāna-sūtra, 170–1. Pas, Visions of Sukhāvatī, 176 and passim. E. H. Gombrich, The Image and the Eye: Further Studies in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (London: Phaidon, 1982), 50. Ibid., 51. Henry Quastler, “Studies of Human Channel Capacity”, in Control Systems; Laboratory Report, No. R.-71, 33. Quoted in Gombrich, The Image and the Eye, 50. Robert A. F. Thurman, “The Architecture of Enlightenment,” in Mandala: The Architecture of Enlightenment, ed. Denise Patry Leidy and Robert A. F. Thurman (New York: Asia Society Galleries and Tibet House, 1997), 137–8. For photographs of these two three-dimensional palaces, see: Patry and Thurman, Mandala: The Architecture of Enlightenment, 150 and 126, respectively. Birnbaum, The Healing Buddha, 95–102, plate 15. In 2007, I saw a beautiful and exhaustively detailed model at the Choijin Lama Temple Museum in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Mary Carruthers, The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400–1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 1–5. Harrison, “Commemoration and Identification in Buddhānusmr.ti,” 229–30. ten Grotenhuis, The Revival of the Taima Mandala in Medieval Japan, 95–104. See also by the same author: Japanese Mandalas: Representations of Sacred Geography. ten Grotenhuis, The Revival of the Taima Mandala in Medieval Japan, 55–65. Ibid., 65–77. Ibid., 11–13. Takakusu, Amitāyur-dhyāna-sūtra, 170. ten Grotenhuis, The Revival of the Taima Mandala in Medieval Japan, 67. Ibid., 67–9. Ibid., 69–71.

Notes 199 140 Harrison, “Commemoration and Identification in Buddhānusmr.ti,” 229–30. 141 I thank Thomas Kasulis for suggesting this comparison. 4 Pervading space: bodhisattva activity in the cosmic panorama 1 Gadjin M. Nagao, Mādhyamika and Yogācāra: A Study of Mahāyāna Philosophies, trans. and ed. Leslie S. Kawamura (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), 32. 2 From the eighteenth-century religious biography of Atiśa by Sum-pa mKhan-po Ye. śes-dpal-’byor called dPag-bsam-ljon-bzan in: Alaka Chattopadhyaya, Atīśa and Tibet: Life and Works of Dīpam.kara Śrījñāna in relation to the History and Religion of Tibet (published by author, 1967), 378. 3 Cleary, Entry into the Realm of Reality, 23. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid., 350. 6 Ibid., 365. Translation modified by substituting “bodhisattva” for “enlightening being” and “Māra” for “the devil.” 7 Ibid. 8 The number of vows varies from 46 to 48 in different versions of the text. I have followed the numbering system in Sukhāvatīvyūha, ed. Ashikaga, Atsuuji (Kyoto: Librairie Hozokan, 1965). This appears as vow #20 in Cowell’s translation. 9 Or: “intent on bringing all worlds to complete nirvana.” 10 Sukhāvatīvyūha, vow #21(my translation). sacen me bhagavan bodhiprāptasya, tatra buddhaks.etre ye sattvāh. pratyājātā bhaveyus, te sarve naikajātibaddāh. syur anuttarāyām . samyaksam . bodhau, sthāpayitvā pran.idhānaviśes.ām . s tes.ām eva bodhisattvānām . mahāsattvānām . , mahāsam . nāhasam . naddhānām . , sarvalokārthasam . naddhānām . , sarvalo kārthābhiyuktānām . , sarvalokaparinirvāpitābhiyuktānām . , . . . mā tāvad aham anuttarām . samyaksam . bhodhim abhisam . budhyeyam. For alternative translations, see: Gómez, Land of Bliss, 71–2; Müller, The Larger Sukhāvatī-vyūha, 15–16. 11 Cleary, Entry Into the Realm of Reality, 44. Vaidya, Gan.d.avyūhasūtra, 34. 12 The relevant Sanskrit sentence reads: Ekaikasmācca raśmimukhādanabhilāpyabuddhaks.etraparamān.urajah.smā bodhisattvanirmān.ameghā niścaranti sma sarvalokendrasadr.śakāyāh. sarvajaganmukhakāyāh. sarvasattvaparipākānukūlakāyāh.. Vaidya, Gan.d.avyūhasūtra, 34. Cleary, Entry Into the Realm of Reality, 44. 13 Cleary, Entry Into the Realm of Reality, 45. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid. 16 Gómez, “The Bodhisattva as Wonder-worker,” 225. 17 Honda, “Annotated Translation of the Daśabhūmika-Sūtra,” 143. 18 Ibid., 224. 19 Ibid., 224–5. 20 Cleary, Entry Into the Realm of Reality, 366–9. 21 Bosch, “De Beteekenis der Reliefs van de Derde en Vierde Gaanderij van Baraboed.oer,” 203–7. Bosch’s identification of III 61 is somewhat tentative; Indra appears more clearly on III 73 (see p. 206). 22 Ibid., 369. 23 Ibid., 371–2. 24 Ibid., 213–20. Bosch is cautious about identifying IV B 18–36 as works of Maitreya, but I agree with him that there is no reasonable alternative (p. 217). Cleary’s translation also indicates that the protagonist is consistently Maitreya: Entry into the Realm of Reality, 371–2. 25 For brief identifications in English, see: Bernet Kempers, Ageless Borobudur, 138–9. 26 Cleary, Entry into the Realm of Reality, 365. 27 Ibid., 366.

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28 Pas, Visions of Sukhāvatī, 55–6. Pas suggests that despite the Chinese title and the later tradition, which indicate that the commentary is based on a Sukhāvatīvyūha text, it may actually be based on the Kuan ching, or Amitāyur-dhyāna Sūtra. 29 Ibid., 56. I have omitted Chinese terms that Pas includes in parentheses. 30 Harvey, An Introduction to Buddhism, 152. 31 Nagao, Mādhyamika and Yogācāra, 202. 32 Bosch, “De Bhadracarī afgebeeld op den Hoofdmuur der Vierde Gaanderij van den Baraboed.oer,” 241–93. 33 Luis O. Gómez, “Observations on the Role of the Gan.d.avyūha in the Design of Barabud.ur,” Barabud.ur, 184. 34 Fontein, The Pilgrimage of Sudhana, 118. I have recently heard that Prof. Fontein has been preparing a manuscript on just this topic, and although I have not yet seen it, I am confident that his work will add considerably to our understanding of the iconography of Borobudur’s upper galleries. 35 Gómez, “Observations on the Role of the Gan.d.avyūha in the Design of Barabud.ur,” 194, note 49. 36 Śāntideva, The Bodhicaryāvatāra, 9–10. 37 Ruth Sonam, ed. and trans., Atisha’s “Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment”: An Oral Teaching by Geshe Sonam Rinchen (Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications, 1997), 57–8, 149–52. 38 Hudaya Kandahjaya has recently offered an alternate set of identifications. Although he challenges Bosch in general, with regard to the panels under discussion here, his identifications are very similar to Bosch’s. Elsewhere, I find Kandahjaya’s method to be unnecessarily complicated and many of his identifications to be less than convincing. For the identifications of panels that I discuss here, see: Kandahjaya, A Study on the Origin and Significance of Borobudur, 186–97. 39 Vaidya, Gan.d.avyūhasūtra, 428 (my translation). yāvata keci daśaddiśi loke sarvatriyadhvagatā narasim . hāh./tānahu vandami sarvi aśes.ān kāyatu vāca manena prasannah.. “Prasannah.” is very difficult to translate with a single word; it refers to a person who is both pleased and calm, who is pure, and whose actions are correct. Here, I have settled for indicating the speaker’s mental state, since it is clear from the next verse that s/he is behaving correctly. Cleary, Entry into the Realm of Reality, 387–8. For an alternative translation from a Sanskrit version of the text, see: Kandahjaya, A Study on the Origin and Significance of Borobudur, 186. For a translation from a Tibetan edition, with reference to the Sanskrit, see: Tatz, “The Vow of Benevolent Conduct,” 158. 40 Vaidya, Gan.d.avyūhasūtra, 428 (my translation). ks.etrarajopamakāyapramān.aih. sarvajināna karomi pran.āmam . / sarvajinābhimukhena manena. bhadracarīpran.idhānabalena. To make the passage less confusing for nonspecialists, I have translated “Jina” (literally “Victor”) as “Buddha,” for which it is a synonym in this context. Cleary, Entry into the Realm of Reality, 388. Kandahjaya, A Study on the Origin and Significance of Borobudur, 187. Tatz, “The Vow of Benevolent Conduct,” 158. 41 Although these are the first panels that picture several Buddhas within a single frame, there are, on the fourth gallery balustrade, a few panels that picture two Buddha figures in the same frame. See, for example, IV B 62 and 64. If one follows the order of the text, these panels appear before those on the main wall. But in keeping with my theory that the panels on the balustrade were not the focus of attention during the pradaks.in.ā, I argue that during the performance of the ritual, one would first encounter multiple Buddhas on the main wall. 42 F. D. K. Bosch, “De Bhadracarī afgebeeld op den Hoofdmuur der Vierde Gaanderij van den Baraboed.oer,” Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde van NederlandschIndiâ 97, 2 (1938): 255–6. His argument that the Buddha figures are arranged in three groups to represent the three times is, to my mind, plausible, but less convincing. 43 Vaidya, Gan.d.avyūhasūtra, 429 (my translation). pus.pavarebhi ca mālyavarebhi

Notes 201

44 45 46

47

48

49

50 51 52

53

54 55 56

rvādyavilepanachatravarebhih./ dīpavarebhi ca dhūpavarebhih. pūjana tes.a jināna karomi//5 vastravarebhi ca gandhavarebhiścūrn.aput.ebhi ca merusamebhih./ sarvaviśis.t.haviyūhavarebhih. pūjana tes.a jināna karomi. Cleary, Entry Into the Realm, 388. Vaidya, Gan.d.avyūhsūtra, 429 (my translation). yā ca anuttara pūja udārā tān adhimucyami sarvajinānām bhadracarī adhimuktibalena vandami pūjayamī jina sarvān. Cleary, Entry into the Realm, 388. Bosch, “De Bhadracarī afgebeeld op den Hoofdmuur der Vierde Gaanderij van den Baraboed.oer,” 258–61. The number of vows varies from 46 to 48 in different versions of the text. I have followed the numbering system in Sukhāvatīvyūha, ed. Ashikaga, Atsuuji (Kyoto: Librairie Hozokan, 1965). This appears as vow #20 in: Müller, The Larger Sukhāvatī-vyūha, 15–16. Sukhāvatīvyūha, vow #21 (my translation). sacen me bhagavan bodhiprāptasya, tatra buddhaks.etre ye sattvāh. pratyājātā bhaveyus, te sarve naikajātibaddāh. syur anuttarāyām . samyaksam . bodhau, sthāpayitvā pran.idhānaviśes.ām . s tes.ām eva bodhisattvānām . . . ., sarvalokadhātus.u bodhisattvacaryām . caritukāmānām . , sarvabuddhān satkartukāmānām ., . Gangānadīvālukasamān sattvān anuttarāyām . samyaksam . bodhau pratis.t.hhāpakānām ., bhūyaś cottaricaryābhimukhānām . samantabhadracaryāniyatānām . , mā tāvad aham anuttarām . samyaksam . bhodhim abhisam . budhyeyam. Gómez, trans., The Land of Bliss, 71–2. Sukhāvatīvyūha, vow #22 (my translation). sacen me bhagavan bodhiprāptasya, tadbuddhaks.etre ye bodhisattvāh. pratyājātā bhaveyus, te sarva ekapurobhaktenānyāni buddhaks.etrān.i gatvā, bahūni buddhaśatāni, bahūni buddhasahasrān.i, bahūni buddhaśatasahasrān.i, bahvīr buddhakot.īr, yāvad bahūni buddhakot.īniyutaśatasahasrān.i, nopatis.t.heran sarvasukhopadhānair, yad idam . : buddhānubhāvena, mā tāvad aham anuttarām . samyaksam . bodhim abhisam . budhyeyam. Gómez, trans., The Land of Bliss, 72. Sukhāvatīvyūha, vow #25 (my translation). sacen me bhagavan bodhiprāptasya, tatra buddhaks.etre bodhisattvānām evam . cittam utpādyeta, yan nv ihaiva vayam . lokadhātau sthitvāprameyāsam.khyeyes.u buddhaks.etres.u buddhān bhagavatah. satkuryāmo gurukuryāmo mānayemah. pūjayemah., yad idam . : cīvarapin.d.apātaśayanāsanaglānapratyayabhais.ajyaparis.kāraih. pus.padhūpagandhamālyavilepanacūrn.acīvaracchatradhvajapatākābhir nānāvidhanr.ttagītavāditaratnavars.air iti, tes.ām . cet te buddhā bhagavantah. sahacittotpādān tan na pratigr.hn.īyur, yad idam: anukampām upādāya, mā tāvad aham anuttarām . samyaksam . bhodhim abhisam . budhyeyam. Gómez, trans., Land of Bliss, 72–3. Honda, “Annotated Translation of the Daśabhūmika-Sūtra,” 222. Ibid., 224. Vaidya, Gan.d.avyūhasūtra, 12 (my translation). sarve ca te bodhisattvāh. saparivārāh. samantabhadrabodhisattvacaryāpran.idhānaniryātā sarvatathāgatapādamūlamukhoddarśanāya pariśuddhajñānacaks.us.ah. . . . sarvatathāgatopasam . kraman.aks.an.aks.an.asam . darśanavikurvitaniryātāh. sarvalokadhātvekakāyaspharan.avis.ayāh. sarvatathāgatapars.anman.d.alābhyudgatavirocanakāyāh.. Cleary, Entry into the Realm, 21. I have not translated the phrase “pādamūlamukha,” which may mean “the faces and the soles of the feet” of all Buddhas. Bosch does not identify this scene with any particular verse of the Bhad.: Bosch, “De Bhadracarī afgebeeld op den Hoofdmuur der Vierde Gaanderij van den Baraboed.oer,” 283–4. I do not attempt to provide a textual identification here, but only to interpret the visual composition. Fontein, The Pilgrimage of Sudhana, 135. Griffiths, On Being Buddha, 130–1. Sangyé Gompa, Public Explication of Mind Training, in Thupten Jinpa, trans. and ed., Mind Training: The Great Collection, compiled by Shonu Gyalchok and Konchok Gyaltsen, Library of Tibetan Classics 1 (Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2006), 313–20, 620 note 500.

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57 Chattopadhyaya, Atīśa and Tibet, 88–91. 58 Ibid., 96. 59 Michael J. Sweet and Leonard Zwilling, “Historical and Thematic Introduction,” in Geshe Lhundub Sopa, with Michael Sweet and Leonard Zwilling, Peacock in the Poison Grove: Two Buddhist Texts on Training the Mind (Boston: Wisdom Publications: 2001), 25 note 11. 60 Jinpa, Mind Training, 9. 61 Chattopadhyaya, Atīśa and Tibet, 94. 62 Makransky, Buddhahood Embodied, 17. 63 Ibid., 65. 64 Chattopadhyaya, Atīśa and Tibet, 330–3. 65 Sonam, Atisha’s “Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment,” 152. 66 Ibid., 152, 58–9, 200 note 2. 67 Ibid., 152. 68 Ibid., 152, 67, 20 note 9. 69 Sé Chilbu Chökyi Gyaltsen, A Commentary on the “Seven-Point Mind Training,” Mind Training, 87–9, 589 note 155. 70 Sangyé Gompa, Public Explication of Mind Training, 313–20, 620 note 500. 71 Ibid., 314. 72 Ibid., 313. 73 Ibid., 336. 74 Sé Chilbu, A Commentary on the “Seven-Point Mind Training,” 9. 75 Sangyé Gompa, Public Explication, 337. 76 Ibid., 338. 77 Ibid. 78 Ibid., 341. 79 Ibid., 342–5. 80 Ibid., 341. 81 Ibid., See also Nam-kha Pel, Mind Training Like the Rays of the Sun, trans. Brian Beresford, ed. Jeremy Russell (Dharamsala: Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, 1992), 61. 82 Sangyé Gompa, Public Explication, 342–3. 83 Ibid., 348. 84 Ibid., 339–40. 85 Ibid., 340. 86 Ibid., 343, 345. 87 Ibid., 343. 88 Nam-kha Pel, Mind Training Like the Rays of the Sun, 66–7. 89 Sangye Gompa, Public Explication, 348. 90 Wu Hung, “What is Bianxiang?” 148–50. 91 Miksic, Borobudur, 138. 92 Śāntideva, The Bodhicaryāvatāra, 9–10. 93 Fontein, The Pilgrimage of Sudhana, 136. 94 Griffiths, On Being Buddha, 132 (my italics). 95 Bosch, “De Beteekenis der Reliefs van de Derde en Vierde Gaanderij van Baraboed.oer,” 198, summarized in Fontein, The Pilgrimage of Sudhana, 129–30. 96 Fontein, The Pilgrimage of Sudhana, 156. 97 Dumarçay, Borobudur, 25. 98 Brown, “Narrative as Icon,” 68. 99 Fontein, The Pilgrimage of Sudhana, 156–7. 100 Ibid., 170. 101 Brown, “Narrative as Icon,” 65. 102 Chattopadhyaya, Atīśa and Tibet, 378. It should be noted that “avatāra” has multiple meanings, including “entrance into or attainment of [a moral state].” Franklin

Notes 203 Edgerton, Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Grammar and Dictionary, vol. 2 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953; reprinted Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1998), 71. In this case, the quote would indicate literally that Atiśa both took the bodhisattva vow and attained complete bodhicitta. But if, as hagiographical accounts of Atiśa’s life generally claim, he also attained realizations characteristic (at the very least) of the final stages of the bodhisattva path, then the quote would also indicate logically that he had achieved the ability to produce multiple, perfectly adapted nirmān.akāyas. Thus, the meaning of “descent” or “appearance” for “avatāra” is at least implied. 5 To emptiness and back: the transformative work of the terraces 1 Harrison, The Samādhi of Direct Encounter with the Buddhas of the Present, xviii. 2 Paul M. Harrison, “Buddhānusmr.ti in the Pratyutpanna-Buddha-Sam . mukhāvasthitaSamādhi-Sūtra,” Journal of Indian Philosophy 6, 1 (Sept. 1978): 51–2. 3 Jan Boeles, The Secret of Borobudur (Bangkok: published privately by Jan J. Boeles, 1985), 12–20. 4 Bernet Kempers, “Barabud.ur: A Buddhist Mystery in Stone,” 113. The monument was first compared to Mount Meru in 1884. See H. Kern, Geschiedenis van het Buddhisme in Indiâ (Haarlem: Tjeenk Willink, 1882–4), vol. 2, 195. 5 Miksic, Borobudur, 47. 6 Kloetzli, Buddhist Cosmology, 24–5. 7 Casparis, “The Dual Nature of Borobudur,” 70. 8 Leidy and Thurman, Mandala, 111, plate 38. 9 For this and a list of other sources, including Theravāda Buddhist accounts of the cakravāla, see: Kloetzli, Buddhist Cosmology, 23. 10 For an account of darśan in Hindu contexts, see: Eck, Darśan, 3–10, 44–58. 11 For an early contribution, see: Richard Gombrich, Precept and Practice: Traditional Buddhism in the Rural Highlands of Ceylon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971). For a recent contribution, see: Donald K. Swearer, Becoming the Buddha: the Ritual of Image Consecration in Thailand (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004). 12 See, for example: Yael Bentor, Consecration of Images and Stūpas in Indo-Tibetan Tantric Buddhism (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996), 1–21. 13 By “fully visible,” I do not mean that all parts of all Buddha figures can be seen in all compositions, but only that the figures are not hidden or covered by any screening device or structure. The upper portions of IV 53 and IV 72, for example, each depict two rows of Buddha figures, one row in front of the other. The Buddha figures in the back rows, all of which display the dharmacakra mudrā, are partially obscured by the Buddhas in the front row, which display the various mudrās that the Buddha statues in the niches of Borobudur do. Some scholars have attempted to draw a correlation between the partial obscuration of the Buddhas in the back rows and the partial obscuration of the Buddha statues in the latticed stupas – a correlation that is based in no small part on the fact that both sets of Buddhas display the dharmacakra mudrā. These scholars go on to suggest that the back rows of Buddha figures might be emanating the front rows in the same way that the central figure of the pañcajina mandala (also in dharmacakra mudrā) emanates the other four figures. While this is possible, it is also possible that the Buddhas in the back rows all display the dharmacakra mudrā for a simpler and less iconographically weighty reason – it is the only mudrā commonly used on Borobudur which would put both hands in clear view between the shoulders of the Buddhas in the front rows. 14 Eck, Darśan, 3–10. 15 This is perhaps the place to point out that, to the degree that the dharmakāya can be defined at all, it is not exhaustively defined by the full realization of emptiness, but includes all positive qualities – for example, compassion. In what follows, then, I do not mean to equate the full realization of emptiness with the dharmakāya, but rather to

204

16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50

Notes indicate that the perfection of wisdom is the necessary condition for the development of the “superknowledges,” or supernatural powers (abhijñā) that enable a Buddha or advanced bodhisattva to generate form bodies. Thus the dharmakāya can be the “ground” of the other two bodies only if (as is the case by definition) it is characterized by the perfection of wisdom. Conze, The Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines & its Verse Commentary, 282. Ibid., 282. Ibid., 283. Ibid., 290. Ibid., 282. Ibid., 291. For the sake of clarity, I have added the material in brackets. Edward Conze, trans., The Large Sutra on Perfect Wisdom with the Divisions of the . Abhisamayālankāra (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), 624. Ibid. Gómez, “The Bodhisattva as Wonder-worker,” 221–57. Paul M. Harrison, “Buddhānusmr.ti in the Pratyutpanna-Buddha-Sam . mukhāvasthitaSamādhi-Sūtra,” Journal of Indian Philosophy 6, 1 (Sept. 1978): 46. Thurman, “Mandala: the Architecture of Enlightenment,” 139. Mahāyānasūtrālam.kārabhās.ya, quoted in Makransky, Buddhahood Embodied, 51. Griffiths, On Being Buddha, 159–63. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1980). McMahan, Empty Vision, 66–82, 137–42. Ibid., 139. Cleary, Entry into the Realm of Reality, 366. Woodward, “Barabud.ur as a Stūpa,” 128–9. Garma C. C. Chang, The Buddhist Teaching of Totality (University Park and London: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1971), 24. Quoted in Woodward, “Barabud.ur as a Stūpa,” 129. Woodward, “Barabud.ur as a Stūpa,” 129. Mireille Bénisti, “Étude sur le stūpa dans l’Inde ancienne,” BEFEO 50 (1960): 90–105. Conze, The Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines & Its Verse Summary, 108. Ibid., 105. Kinnard, Imaging Wisdom, 150–8. Daniel Boucher, “The Pratītyasamutpādagāthā and Its Role in the Medieval Cult of the Relics,” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 14, 1 (1992): 1–27. Kinnard, Imaging Wisdom, 152–5. Boucher, “The Pratītyasamutpādagāthā and Its Role in the Medieval Cult of the Relics.” Williams, Mahāyāna Buddhism, 172. Beal, Si-Yu-Ki, vol. 2, 146. Miksic, Borobudur, 34–5. Bernet Kempers, Ageless Borobudur, 16. Miksic, Borobudur, 30. The inscription is engraved on 11 gold plates: de Casparis, Prasasti Indonesia II, 47–167. Jan Fontein, “The śarīra of Borobudur,” in Fruits of Inspiration: Studies in Honour of Prof. J.G. de Casparis, ed. Marijke J. Klokke and Karel R. van Kooij, Gonda Indological Studies, 11 (Groningen: Forsten, 2001), 83–91. Ibid., 90.

Notes 205 51 52 53 54 55

56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73

74 75 76 77 78

Makransky, Buddhahood Embodied, 51. Davis, Lives of Indian Images, 21. Ibid., 18–19. For examples see Snodgrass, The Symbolism of the Stūpa, 168–9. In some mandala representations, seed syllables are used to present partial visibility in a comparable way. In his recent work on the Borobudur terraces, Woodward has suggested that the Buddhas in the latticed stupas might be compared to seed syllables: Hiram Woodward, “Pien-hung / Bianhong, Mastermind of Borobudur?” unpublished paper, 2008. I am not in a position to evaluate the Chinese sources that Woodward primarily uses, but conceptually his suggestion seems correct. The latticed stupas themselves indicate the lack of visibility that is indicated by the nonfigurative seed syllables in the mandalas to which he refers. Cleary, Entry Into the Realm of Reality, 374. Ibid. Miksic, Borobudur, 28. Conze, The Large Sutra, 627. Ibid., 653–4. Burlingame, Buddhist Legends, 47–56. Zwalf, Buddhism, 36, 37, plate 24. See, for example, Jackie Menzies, ed., Buddha: Radiant Awakening (Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2001), 38, 39, plate 23. Ibid., 51, 50, plate 34. Zwalf, Buddhism, 171, 159, plate 237. Menzies, Buddha, 36–41, plates 24 and 25. Kenneth E. Wells, Thai Buddhism: Its Rites and Activities (published by author, 1960; distributed by The Christian Bookstore, Bangkok), 104. In the version of this ritual that I witnessed in Chiang Mai in 1990, I did not see a Buddha image. Ibid. Bernet Kempers, “Barabud.ur: A Buddhist Mystery in Stone,” 115–16. Reginald A. Ray, Secret of the Vajra World: The Tantric Buddhism of Tibet, foreword by Tulku Thondup, The World of Tibetan Buddhism 2 (Boston & London: Shambhala, 2002), 143–8. Klokke, “Borobudur: A Man.d.ala?,” 194. Cleary, Entry Into the Realm of Reality, 330–1. Fontein, partly on the basis of visual details in the kalyān.amitra scenes that I do not consider here, suggests that the sculptors did not know the text at all, but worked from very short phrases, comparable to those above the relief panels of the hidden base, to compose stereotyped scenes. This suggestion is not necessarily incompatible with my interpretation here, provided that one accepts the idea that the architects, who did know the text and had a sophisticated understanding of its import, would have provided the short “cues” and the general structure of the “stereotype.” See: Fontein, The Pilgrimage of Sudhana, 149–52. Edward Kamens, The Three Jewels: A Study and Translation of Minamoto Tamenori’s “Sanbōe” (Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 1988), 291–3. Angela Falco Howard, The Imagery of the Cosmological Buddha (Leiden: Brill, 1986). See e.g. S. J. Tambiah, World Conqueror and World Renouncer: A Study of Buddhism and Polity in Thailand against a Historical Background (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976). Mus, Barabud.ur, 418–74. Here, as elsewhere, Mus makes a cogent argument that is generally convincing even though it is not grounded in the Gan.d.avyūha, or in any other text that can be securely connected to Borobudur. Tambiah, World Conqueror and World Renouncer, 102–31.

206

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79 Ibid., 109. 80 Ibid., 113–14. 81 Hermann Kulke, “Epigraphical References to the ‘City’ and the ‘State’ in Early Indonesia,” Indonesia 52 (Oct. 1991): 10. 82 Clifford Geertz, Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth Century Bali (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981). 83 Cleary, Entry into the Realm of Reality, 49–50. 84 Fontein, The Pilgrimage of Sudhana, 147–8. 85 Ibid., 148. 86 Ibid. 87 Ibid. 88 Ibid., 136. 89 Susan L. Huntington, “Aniconism and the Multivalence of Emblems: Another Look,” Ars Orientalis 22 (1993): 137–8. 90 Ibid., 134. 91 Ibid., 124–5. 92 Jonathan Walters suggests that some of these relief sculptures may refer straightforwardly to the festivals, rather than to textual models. See Jonathan S. Walters, “Stūpa, Story, and Empire: Constructions of the Buddha Biography in Early Post-Aśokan India,” in Juliane Schober, Sacred Biography in the Buddhist Traditions of South and Southeast Asia (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997), 171. 93 Ronald Inden, Imagining India (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1990), 229–30. 94 Ibid., 230. Although the evidence to show that the Śailendras maintained contacts with the Rās.t.rakūt.as is thin, there are intriguing clues. For example, Rās.t.rakūt.a regnal names often ended in -tun.ga, or “pre-eminent among”: ibid., 250. One of the most successful Śailendra kings took the regnal name Samaratun.ga: Hall, Maritime Trade and State Development in Early Southeast Asia, 110. 95 John Clifford Holt, Buddha in the Crown: Avalokiteśvara in the Buddhist Traditions of Sri Lanka (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 177.

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Index

Abhidarmakośa 151 Abhisamayālam . kāra 131 access-meditation 69 Aks.obhya 84 Amitābha 83, 86–7, 89–90, 95, 98, 148, 195n35 Amitāyus-sūtropadeśa 118 aniconic art 177 Aristotle 13 asan.khyeya cosmology 150–1, 153, 168 Aśoka 177 Atiśa 120, 130–3, 146, 202–3n102 avadānas 26, 117, 190n36, 192n92 Avalokiteśvara 84 Avatam . saka sūtra 7–9, 25, 28, 34, 42, 137, 159–60 balustrades of Borobudur 29, 31, 42–5, 70, 143–4 Bernet Kempers, A. J. 21, 42–3, 45, 56, 150, 167 Bhadracarī, see Samantabhadracaryāpran.idhāna Bhais.ajyaguru (Bhais.ajyarāja) 84, 86, 90–1 Bhārhut 22, 24–5, 51, 68, 177 bodhicitta 60, 109–12, 131–4, 137, 145, 163 Bodhipathapradīpa (Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment) 120, 131–2 Boeles, Jan 149 Borobudur: balustrades of 29, 31, 42–5, 70, 143–4 Buddha statues on 5, 19, 21, 31–2, 34, 42–5, 148, 167–9 central stupa of 24, 153 general design of 5–7 hidden base of 171–2 as icon 145

latticed stupas on 149, 152, 156–7, 159, 161–3, 168, 203n13, 205n55 as mandala 12, 18, 21, 30–5, 44–5, 47, 164, 168–72, 178 as monument 12–14, 17 as Mount Meru 12, 150–1, 169 political dimension of practice at 173–8 as prāsāda (multi-storied palace) 25 rediscovery of 4–5 relief panels: first and second galleries 48–73; third and fourth galleries 74–146 restoration of 159 ritual practice at 46–7, 148–9, 162–8 stairs 20, 31, 149, 164–8, 172 as stupa 12, 18, 22–4, 159 terraces of 19, 21, 44, 147–64, 168–9 “unfinished” Buddha in central stupa of 24, 153 visual program of 3–4 Bosch, F. D. K. 76, 80, 95, 119–21, 143 Boudhanath 22–3 Bourdieu, Pierre 180n5 Brown, Robert L. 24, 45, 56, 67, 69–72, 143, 145 Buddha statues on Borobudur 5, 19, 21, 31–2, 34, 42–5, 148, 167–9 Buddhas of the ten directions (daśadigbuddhas) 37–8, 121–2 buddhaks.etra (purified buddha field) 19, 37–9, 75, 82, 110, 120–1, 125–7, 129, 150–2, 155, 163, 168, 170 see also purified field buddhānusmr.ti (recollection of the Buddha) 4, 15–19, 69, 76, 82, 99, 101, 104, 107–8, 119, 148–9, 155 Buddhavam . sa 58–9 cakravāla cosmos 150 Carruthers, Mary 104

Index 219 Casey, Edward 16 Chandra, Lokesh 30, 33 circumambulation (pradaks.in.â) 16–17, 19–21, 23–6, 46–7, 53, 62, 68–70, 72, 92, 96, 105, 107–8, 128, 138–46, 149, 151, 158–9, 162–3, 167, 174, 178 cognitive metaphor theory 87, 156 commemoration 12–14, 69 see also buddhānusmr.ti; intrapsychic memorialization Commentary on the Seven-Point Mind Training 132 Coomaraswamy, Ananda K. 66–7 continuous narrative 52, 189n22 cosmic sequence for giving and taking 134–40 cosmological Buddha 171–2 darśan 46, 151–3 Daśabhūmika sūtra 7, 25, 60–1, 113–14, 126, 181n23 Davis, Richard 14–15, 160 de Casparis, J. G. 25, 150, 159 Dehejia, Vidya 24, 51, 55, 57, 68–9 Dhammapada Commentary 64, 166 dharmadhātu (realm of reality) 82, 157, 161 Dharmākara 112, 124–5 dharmakāya (body of ultimate truth) 19, 36, 39–42, 59–60, 97, 153–61, 164, 167–8, 178, 191n58, 203–4n15 Dharmodgata 154 digvijaya 178 Doi Suthep 157 Dunhuang 51, 67–8, 89–90, 105, 139–40 Eckel, David 2, 40 emptiness (śūnyatā) 3, 19, 129, 148–9, 153–7, 163–4, 185n30, 203–4n15 epideictic rhetoric 13, 17 Errington, Shelly 15, 188n2 Faxian (Fa-hien) 71 Fazang (Fa-tsang) 27–8, 157 Fish, Stanley 182n35 Five Jina mandala, see pañcajina mandala Fontein, Jan 8, 25, 28, 67, 70, 80, 120, 142, 144, 159, 170, 175–6 Foucher, Alfred 22–3, 25 Gadamer, Hans-Georg 1 Gan.d.avyūha 5–9, 11–12, 28–30, 35–42, 75, 80–4, 110, 131, 136, 150, 174, 194n26 and passim

Gandhāra 166 Gautama 58–9, 62–6 see also Śākyamuni Geertz, Clifford 174 generosity 109–10, 117, 129, 136, 141–2, 162–4 giving and taking meditation (tonglen) 133–9 Gombrich, E. H. 103 Gómez, Luis 25, 42, 113, 119–20, 155 Gregory the Great 48 Griffiths, Paul 3, 12, 36–7, 84, 98, 129, 142 Guan Wuliangshoufo-jing (Guan-jing) 92, 100–3, 105–7 Harrison, Paul 16, 101, 107, 148, 155 hidden base of Borobudur 171–2 Howard, Angela Falco 171–2 Huayan (Hua-yen) Buddhism 8–9, 11, 27–8, 157, 185n34 Huili 100 Huntington, John C. 30, 33–4 Huntington, Susan 177 iconic art 46, 49–50, 62, 71–3, 145, 151, 153, 162, 170 illustration 3, 148 image stitching (scene stitching) 104, 107, 138, 153 intrapsychic memorialization 16–17, 43, 104–5, 107, 145 invisibility 153–4, 156, 160–1, 205n55 Japanese doll festival 170 Jay, Martin 191n79 Jātakamālā 56 jātakas 26, 45, 49, 56–9, 61, 69–73, 117, 171, 189–90n34, 190n36, 190n39 Jeta grove 37–41, 82, 87, 90, 110–12, 121, 124–5, 127, 144, 150, 168–70, 197n90 Jōgenzi 105–7 Jones, Lindsay 13, 15 Kalacakra mandala 104 kalyān.amitras 75–6, 170–1, 174, 176, 178 Kapstein, Matthew 98 karma 84, 92, 108, 133–5, 172 Kloetzli, Randy 37–8 Klokke, Marijke 31, 34, 44, 168 Krom, N. J. 30, 48 Kumbum 22

220

Index

kūt.âgāra (Maitreya’s palace) 77–80, 82, 84, 90–91, 93–7, 102–5, 109–11, 114–15, 142–3, 145, 156, 161, 168, 171, 177–8, 193n14 Lalitavistara 17, 24, 28, 46, 49, 52–8, 61–6, 96, 115–16, 144, 169 Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment (Bodhipathapradīpa) 131–2 Lancaster, Lewis 45, 61 Large Sutra on Perfect Wisdom 154–5 latticed stupas on Borobudur 149, 152, 156–7, 159, 161–3, 168, 203n13, 205n55 Lewis, Todd 98 linear narrative 52–3, 57, 189n22 lojong (mind training) 130–40 Lopez, Donald 26–7 Lotus Sutra 149 Mahākarmavibhan.ga 28, 171 Mahāmoggallāna 166 Mair, Victor 67–8 Maitreya 29, 59, 74–7, 81, 84–5, 90–102, 104, 109–11, 114–18, 123, 131–2, 135–7, 140–3, 145–6, 153, 156, 161–2, 169, 171, 177, 192n92, 193n15 Makransky, John 160 mandala principle 35–6, 39, 98, 149 mandalas 30–6, 39–42, 88–9, 104, 148, 150–1 political 173–4, 178 see also Borobudur as mandala; mandala principle Mañjuśrī 77, 90, 140, 142–3 McMahan, David L. 87, 156 meditation, see access-meditation; buddhānusmr.ti; samādhi; tonglen; visualization meditation Mendut 163 Miksic, John 48, 55, 141 mind training (lojong) 130–40 Mind Training Like the Rays of the Sun 138 Mitchell, W. J. T. 191n75 monoscenic narrative art 51, 57, 117, 190n39 Mount Meru 12, 150–1, 169, 174 mudrās 31–2, 84, 168–70, 186n48, 191n59, 195n35, 203n13 multilocation 19, 109–10, 113, 117–18, 125–30, 138, 140, 142, 145, 152, 154, 169–70 Mus, Paul 2–3, 25, 55, 173

Nālandā 9, 11, 83, 120, 131 narrative 50–51 narrative art 18–19, 48–52, 66–7, 72, 117, 188n2 narrative model of and for salvation 63 see also temporal model Nikāya Buddhism 27, 185n29 nirmān.akāya (illusory body) 19, 36, 39–42, 49, 59–66, 73, 76, 109, 112–15, 118–19, 129, 137, 145–6, 149, 151, 153–4, 156, 164, 168–71, 173–4, 177–8, 190n47, 190n52, 192n92, 202–3n102 nirvana 60, 109, 112 see also parinirvān.a nonduality 60, 73, 162, 168 Offering Cosmos Mandala 150–1 Pächt, Otto 52–3 Pāla kingdom 9 palace of Maitreya, see kūt.âgāra pañcajina mandala 31, 84, 168 p’an-chiao (doctrinal classification system) 27, 185n34 Panofsky, Erwin 67 panoramic art 18–19, 75–6, 104, 107 Parmentier, Henri 22–3 parinirvān.a 18, 58, 60–1, 86, 151, 157, 160, 171, 190n52 Pas, Julian F. 103 Perfection of Wisdom literature (Prajñāpāramitā) 148, 153, 158 political power 172–8 pradaks.in.â, see circumambulation Prajñāpāramitā 148, 153, 158 Pratītyasamutpāda 159 Pratyutpanna-buddha-sammukhāvasthitasamādhi-sūtra (PraS) 100, 148, 155 proxy manifestations 41, 170–1 Public Explication of Mind Training 110, 130, 132–7 pūjā 45, 95, 122–3, 149, 151, 158, 162–3 Pure Land Buddhism 83–4, 89, 98, 100, 119, 148 purified field 15–16, 36–8, 41, 82–99, 109–11, 123–6, 143, 148, 161, 164–5, 170, 177–8, 196n77, 197n90 see also buddhaks.etra Raffles, Sir Thomas S. 4 reception theory 14–15, 188n6 recollection of the Buddha, see buddhānusmr.ti relics 157–8

Index 221 relief panels on Borobudur 3, 16, 24–5, 28, 45, 47, and passim narrative (first and second galleries) 48–73 non-narrative (third and fourth galleries) 74–146 religious art 48–9 Reynolds, Frank 58 rhetoric 4, 13 see also visual rhetoric Ricoeur, Paul 18, 50–1, 59, 66 rūpakāya (physical body) 158 Sadāprarudita 153–4 Śailendras 5, 7–12, 16, 33, 58–9, 130–1, 142, 150, 158–9, 173–8, 181n17, 182n39, 206n94 Śākyakīrti 131 Śākyamuni 17, 34, 36–8, 40, 42, 49, 52–6, 86, 96, 115–16, 144, 149, 166, 169, 171 see also Gautama samādhi 101 Samantabhadra 30, 77, 90, 94–5, 120–9, 140–3, 145–6, 152, 154, 161–4, 169–70, 177 Samantabhadracaryā-pran.idhāna (Bhadracarī) 8, 11, 76, 83, 119–26, 129–31, 137, 139–40, 142, 149, 151, 154 sambhogakāya (body of communal enjoyment) 15, 17, 36–40, 42, 75–6, 82, 85–7, 97–9, 104, 107–9, 118, 121, 125, 129, 154, 156, 161, 164, 168–9, 178 sam . sāra 82, 91, 93, 110–14, 120, 140, 157, 160, 165 Sāñcī 22, 24–5, 68–9, 177 Sang Hyang Kamahāyānikan 11, 33 Sangyé Gompa 110, 130, 132 Śāntideva 120 Sāriputta 166 Sarvāstivādins 63–4 Schapiro, Meyer 62 Schopen, Gregory 83 sequential art 45 Sé Chilbu 132 semi-iconic art 63–6, 72 Serlingpa 130–3 Shandao (Shan-tao) 101, 103, 105 Shwedagon 157 Śiva 160–1 skillful means (upāya kauśalya) 26–8, 30, 36, 56, 59, 86–7, 98, 113–15

Smith, Jonathan Z. 14 Snodgrass, Adrian 30 Soekmono 23 Sponberg, Alan 100 Śrīvijaya 9–10, 33, 174, 182n39 stairs of Borobudur 20, 31, 149, 164–8, 172 stupas 12, 18, 22–4, 157–8, 162–3 Stutterheim, W. F. 25, 30, 33, 47 Sudhana 75–7, 90–1, 93–7, 102, 104, 110–11, 114–18, 122, 128, 132, 140, 143, 145–6, 154, 161–2, 170–1 as king 173–8 pilgrimage of 29–30 Sukhāvatī 83–4, 86, 89–95, 98, 100, 102–3, 105–7, 111–12, 119, 124–6, 143, 148, 195n35, 196n77, 198n120 Sukhāvatīvyūha 82–3, 91, 94, 100, 111–12, 123–4, 143, 148 śūnyatā, see emptiness Suvarn.advīpa 130–1, 146 Taima mandala 88–9, 92, 95–6, 100–1, 105–7 Tambiah, Stanley 173 T’an Luan 119 Tantra 10–11, 33–5, 98, 148, 155, 162, 168 Tāvatim . sa heaven 166–7 temporal model of and for salvation 56–61, 73, 86, 116 see also narrative model temporality 48–52, 55–6, 58–61, 116–17 terraces of Borobudur 19, 21, 44, 147–64, 168–9 Thurman, Robert A. F. 35–6, 47, 104, 149, 155 Tibetan Buddhism 8, 49, 120, 130–2, 150, 155, 163 tonglen (giving and taking meditation) 133–9 trikāya theory 36, 39–40, 63–4, 118, 151, 157–60 see also dharmakāya; nirmān.akāya; sambhogakāya Tus.ita Heaven 74–5, 84–5, 92–3, 96–7, 99–104, 115, 190n42 “unfinished” Buddha statue in central stupa of Borobudur 24, 153 upāya kauśalya (skillful means) 26–8, 30, 36, 56, 59, 86–7, 98, 113–15 Urban, Hugh 35

222

Index

Vairocana 31–4, 41–2, 49, 97, 153, 161, 168, 173 Vajrabodhi 33 van Erp, Theodore 159 van Lohuizen-deLeeuw, J. E. 30 Vasubandhu 92, 118, 151 Vessantara 117 vikurvan.a (compassionate shape shifting and multilocation) 113, 179 Vimalakīrti 140 Vimuttimagga 69 vision 2, 16, 43, 87, 154, 160–61 visual culture 3 visual rhetoric 4, 30, 109, 113–14, 117, 140, 167–8, 176, 178–9 visualization meditation 3, 10, 15–20, 47, 76, 82, 99–110, 112, 118–19, 128–30, 138–40, 145–6, 148, 155, 163 see also buddhānusmr.ti visualization-inspection meditation 103, 107, 119

Wang, Eugene 3 Walters, Jonathan S. 181n15, 182n51, 206n92 Wayman, Alex 30, 34 Wells, Kenneth 166–7 White, David 35, 39–40, 42–3 women and purified fields 196n77 Wo˘ nhyo 100–2 Woodward, Hiram W. 22–3, 25, 157 word-by-word illustration technique 78–82, 123, 138 Wu Hung 46, 50–2, 54–5, 62, 68, 71–2, 139–40 Xuanzang (Hsüan-tsang) 74–5, 85, 91–2, 99, 158–9, 193n1 Yi Jing (I-tsing) 9–10 Zimmer, Heinrich 30