East Asian History NUMBER 43 • NOVEMBER 2019 www.eastasianhistory.org CONTENTS i–ii Editor’s Preface Benjamin Penny 1–19 The Transmission of Buddhist Iconography and Artistic Styles Around the Yellow Sea Circuit in the Sixth Century: Pensive Bodhisattva Images from Hebei, Shandong, and Korea Li-kuei Chien 21–37 The Drug Poem in the Dunhuang Story of Wu Zixu Revisited Di Lu 39–74 ‘Gaze Upon Its Depth’: On the Uses of Perspectival Painting in the Early-Modern Chinese Village Hannibal Taubes 75–88 Tōa-Oan (The Big Pool) 1653-1983: A History of Water, Forests, and Agriculture in Northern Taiwan Hung-yi Chien Reprinted papers by Igor de Rachewiltz 89–94 The Name of the Mongols in Asia and Europe: A Reappraisal 95–100 Qan, Qa’an and the Seal Of Güyüg Editor Benjamin Penny, The Australian National University Associate Editor Lindy Allen Design and production Lindy Allen and Katie Hayne Print PDFs based on an original design by Maureen MacKenzie-Taylor This is the forty-third issue of East Asian History, the fifth published in electronic form, November 2019. It continues the series previously entitled Papers on Far Eastern History. Contributions to www.eastasianhistory.org/contribute Back issues www.eastasianhistory.org/archive To cite this journal, use page numbers from PDF versions ISSN (electronic) 1839-9010 Copyright notice Copyright for the intellectual content of each paper is retained by its author. Reasonable effort has been made to identify the rightful copyright owners of images and audiovisual elements appearing in this publication. The editors welcome correspondence seeking to correct the record. Contact [email protected] Banner calligraphy Huai Su 懷素 (737–799), Tang calligrapher and Buddhist monk Published by The Australian National University EDITOR’S PREFACE Benjamin Penny In this issue of East Asian History, we continue our project of reprinting works of the late Professor Igor de Rachewiltz, doyen of Mongolian Studies. As I noted in the Preface to issue 40, before his death Igor had worked with us in the Australian Centre on China in the World, where he was based, to collect and make available articles that he considered represented his most impor- tant work, and that were unavailable online. The two articles in this issue show Igor’s characteristically extraordinary scholarship and erudition and, we hope, will be appreciated by students of Mongolian history. The four original articles in this issue, though on very different themes, all open out research in important new directions. Hung-yi Chien explores ground on which many have walked, literally, in her environmental history of that dis- trict of Taipei now known as Da’an. Such ‘sedimentary’ historical study uncov- ers layers of topography, settlement, land use, naming, and meaning in a way that is both revelatory and possibly unsettling. Di Lu’s study of part of a Tang Dunhuang manuscript brings together philology, literary studies, and medical history to reveal — as much as it is possible to do — the intriguing encoding of the names of medicinal drugs in a literary text. As much as the author notes this is a ‘revisitation’ of a known text, his scientific knowledge brings genuinely new insights to the study of Dunhuang manuscripts. Li-kuei Chien’s work on the circulation of ‘pensive’ bodhisattva images — those with one foot resting on the opposite knee — in the sixth century between the Chinese mainland and the Korean peninsula breaks new ground in its detailing of the routes of transmission of Buddhist sculptural motifs. In a period when the textual record relating to these questions is at best patchy, Chien’s research also broadens our view of the communications between states and regions during the medi- eval period in general. Finally, Hannibal Taubes’s study of murals in village buildings in northern Hebei uncovers a remarkable local rural tradition of i ii BENJAMIN PENNY wall painting across the last few centuries that shows both the creeping in of modernity and the persistence of local religious and theatrical traditions. Taubes’s research also performs an act of documentation of this work as, in some cases, it fades and crumbles; memorialising the performing and paint- ing practices that informed it, and the lives of the people who created it, and lived among and around it. EAST ASIAN HISTORY 43 (2019) THE TRANSMISSION OF BUDDHIST ICONOGRAPHY AND ARTISTIC STYLES AROUND THE YELLOW SEA CIRCUIT IN THE SIXTH CENTURY: PENSIVE BODHISATTVA IMAGES FROM HEBEI, SHANDONG, AND KOREA Li-kuei Chien When Buddhism reached the Korean peninsula and took root there between Acknowledgements the fourth and sixth centuries, both China and the Korean peninsula were in a I am grateful to Mr Gong Dejie 宮德杰 and state of division. Regional powers competed against each other and waged wars Ms Yi Tongjuan 衣同娟, the former and pre- sent Directors of Linqu County Museum, who for dominance on both sides of the Yellow Sea, making the political and cultural welcomed research on the museum’s collec- history of this period exceptionally complex. Korean rulers sought alliances tion and granted me permission to study and with the powerful states to their west, and the transmission of Buddhist cul- photograph the sculptures discussed in this ture was accelerated along with these diplomatic exchanges.1 Despite the rapid paper. I acknowledge Kim Minku 金玟球 for his discussion on secondary scholarship and development of Buddhism on the Korean peninsula, the history of interaction for informing me of the latest archaeological between Korea and China remains a challenging topic because relevant textual discoveries in Korea. I thank Lee Yu-min 李 documents from this period are scarce.2 玉珉 for her advice on the title of this paper. The work in this paper was substantially sup- Modern archaeological and art history research compensates for the lack of ported by a grant from the Research Grants written records in this field.3 Our understanding of the development of sixth- Council of the Hong Kong Special Administra- century Korean Buddhism and Buddhist art and their relationship with the tive Region, China (Project No. PolyU 559713). outside world are largely based on material evidence such as stylistic and icon- 1 Jonathan Best discussed how the Chinese ographic analysis of extant Buddhist sculptures, examination of the remains cultural influence in Paekche grew along of monastic sites, and scrutiny of Buddhist motifs in tomb murals and objects. with the political exchanges between the two countries in his ‘Diplomatic and Cultural Con- These types of evidence suggest that although Buddhist emissaries reached tacts Between Paekche and China,’ Harvard Koguryǒ and Paekche in the late fourth century, the scale of Buddhist material Journal of Asiatic Studies 42.2 (1982): 443–501. culture remained limited for some time afterwards and was mainly associated For a more comprehensive study of Paekche with the royal courts. Early examples of Buddhist art include a small gilt bronze history, see Jonathan Best, A History of the Early Korean Kingdom of Paekche, Together with figure of a seated Buddha dated to the fifth century (found in the territory an Annotated Translation of the Paekche Annals of Paekche but possibly produced elsewhere) and a painted mural of a seated of the Samguk sagi (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Buddha in a late-fifth-century Koguryǒ tomb.4 Production of Buddhist images University Asia Center, 2006). increased during the sixth century and expanded to Silla, which developed 2 For brief discussions of the uses of these texts closer connections to China after its consolidation of territorial conquests on in the study of early Korean history, see Rhi Juhyung, ‘Seeing Maitreya: Aspiration and 5 the Yellow Sea coast in 553. Scholars have tentatively proposed specifically Vision in an Image from Early Eighth-Cen- northern or southern Chinese origins for certain stylistic features found in tury Silla,’ in ed. Youn-mi Kim, New Perspec- 1 2 LI-KUEI CHIEN tives on Early Korean Art: From Silla to Koryŏ numerous individual Korean Buddhist statues from the sixth century, such as (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, facial features, ornamentation, clothing, and drapery.6 However, analysis of 2013), p.73; Youn-mi Kim, ‘(Dis)assembling the National Canon: Seventh-Century ‘Eso- such stylistic features is made more challenging by uncertainties surround- teric’ Buddhist Ritual, the Samguk yusa, and ing the geographical origins of many Korean statues and by the scarcity of Sach’ŏnwang-sa,’ in ed. Youn-Mi Kim, New surviving Buddhist sculptures from China’s southern dynasties. Perspectives on Early Korean Art: From Silla to Koryŏ (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Many questions about how Buddhist artistic styles were transmitted to Press, 2013), pp.123–24. the Korean peninsula thus remain unanswered. In particular, it is unclear 3 Kwon Oh Young indicated that in the study which of the distinctive regional Chinese traditions provided the most impor- of the early history of Korea, archaeological tant sources of inspiration for Buddhist artisans working on the peninsula. data plays a more significant role than writ- By identifying the characteristics specific to certain locales, we can see how ten records in his ‘The Influence of Recent Archaeological Discoveries on the Research these places related to each other as a region, transcending geographic and of Paekche History,’ in ed. Mark E. Bying- linguistic barriers to share similar Buddhist iconography and art across the ton, Early Korea: Reconsidering Early Korean Yellow Sea. History Through Archaeology (Cambridge, MA: Korean Institute, Harvard University, This article presents an iconographic and stylistic analysis of the pensive 2008), p.65. In the study of ancient archipe- bodhisattva images popular in Hebei, Shandong, and the Korean peninsula lagic-peninsular relations, William Wayne from the sixth to the early seventh century.