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Overcoming Essentialism Overcoming Essentialism: A Transcultural Approach to Gandhāran Buddhist Material Culture RMA Thesis Religious Studies Utrecht University Chunrong Zhao (6163602) 25 August 2019 Supervisor: Dr. Katja Rakow Acknowledgment I have received a great deal of support during the writing process of this thesis. I would first like to thank my supervisor Dr. Katja Rakow. Your professional expertise, inspiring insights, great encouragement, and patient and meticulous guidance are invaluable for me to complete this thesis. I would like to thank all my teachers and my peer friends who have greatly inspired me in formulating my theory, especially Prof. Birgit Meyer, Dr. Christina Williamson, Dr. Christoph Baumgartner, Prof. Joseph M. Bryant, Dr. Pooyan Tamimi Arab, master student Pim Schievink at the University of Groningen, and master student Jialu Wang at Heidelberg University. I would like to thank the curator Kassiani Kagouridi, the Head of the Department of Museum Collections at the Corfu Museum of Asian Art. The talk with you in Greece was intriguing and helpful for me. I would like to thank all my classmates, especially Aleksi Hämäläinen, Jerrold Cuperus, and Laura Vendrik. Your companionships and encouragements are also precious. Finally, I would also like to thank my family who provided me with great mental support. And my special thanks to my girlfriend Jialin Zhang, my friends Anke Hartsuiker, Bingran Wang, Chih-hen Chang, Giel Maan, Jitse Daniels, Kensaku Takeuchi, Liwen Liu, Luis Angel, Reinier Langerak, Renee van de Gein, Ruyue Deng, Yanbo Hao, Wieger Krämer, Yitong Tong, Zewen Gao, etc. Your kind support and friendships deeply encouraged me! I Abstract This thesis aims to challenge the conventional essentialist approach and to suggest a more appropriate approach—the transcultural approach—to study Gandhāran Buddhist material culture in particular and religions or cultures in general. By answering the research questions that what deficiencies an essentialist approach possesses and what advantages the transcultural approach has, this thesis argues that taking a transcultural approach is more productive and heuristic than taking the conventional essentialist one. The essentialist approach has become prominent and even dominant in Gandhāran studies since the 19th century. The explanatory notes of Gandhāran Buddhist material culture in contemporary museums demonstrate that the essentialist view is still prevalent in the contemporary postcolonial era. However, the essentialist approach largely simplifies the complexity of cultural or religious processes in social-historical reality; it makes the mixed cultures lose their subjectivities and agencies; it is also more likely to make academic discussions vulnerable to be exploited by certain political agendas. Instead of following the essentialist approach, the author adopts a transcultural approach instead to re- examine Gandhāran Buddhist material culture. Taking the transcultural theoretical thinking as a first step, based on the case study of the visual representation of Gandhāran Vajrapāni, the author further attempts to re-construct a theory of cultural interactions and entanglements—the translocative framework. Based on the theorization of the translocative framework, the author argues that the transcultural approach can encourage us to attend to the complexity behind the interactive or integrative dynamics of religions and cultures; it is helpful to resume the subjectivity and agency of local cultures; it reflectively challenges the preceding politicalized discourses of cultural essentialism. Moreover, it can contribute to our understandings of religions and cultures as well as open up more space for further theoretical discussions. Keywords: Gandhāra, Buddhism, material culture, essentialism, transcultural, translocative II Table of Contents Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 1 Nomenclature ................................................................................................................................ 3 Historical Context of Gandhāran Buddhist Material Culture ...................................................... 6 Essentialist Approach vs. Transcultural Approach ...................................................................... 8 Chapter Outline ........................................................................................................................... 12 Chapter 1: Essentialism, Orientalism, and Western Classical Influence Discourse in the Study of Gandhāran Buddhist Material Culture ................................................................ 14 1. The Genealogy of the Western Classical Influence Discourse in the Colonial Period ........... 17 (1) Historical Background of the Emergence of the Western Classical Influence Discourse ................................. 18 (2) The Emergence of the Western Classical Influence Discourse ............................................................................. 19 (3) Leitner’s Coinage of the Term “Graeco-Buddhistic” .............................................................................................. 21 (4) Fergusson’s Emphasis of the Western Classical influences on Gandhāran Buddhist Material Culture .......... 23 (5) Smith’s Broadening of the Range of the Western Classical influence Discourse ............................................... 26 (6) The Complicity between Foucher’s discourse and the Colonial Agenda ............................................................. 29 (7) Marshall’s Essentialist View of the Limitations of the Western influences in the East ..................................... 32 2. The Effects of the Western Classical Influence Discourse in the (Post)colonial Era ............ 33 (1) The Effects of the Western Classical Influence Discourse in Colonial Politics .................................................. 33 (2) The Effects of the Western Classical Influence Discourse in Academia ............................................................. 34 (3) The Lasting Effects of the Western Classical Influence Discourse in the Public Sphere in the Postcolonial Period .................................................................................................................................................................................... 36 3. Concluding Remarks ............................................................................................................... 36 Chapter 2: Essentialism and Anti-/Postcolonial Interpretations of the Origin of Gandhāran Buddhist Material Culture ............................................................................. 38 1. The Anticolonial Interpretation: Indian Origin Theory .......................................................... 38 2. The Postcolonial Interpretations ............................................................................................. 54 (1) Saka Origin Theory ....................................................................................................................................................... 54 (2) Parthian Origin Theory ................................................................................................................................................ 56 (3) Aggregative Interpretations ......................................................................................................................................... 59 (4) Reflections on the Discourse of “Influence” ........................................................................................................... 61 3. Concluding Remarks ............................................................................................................... 64 Chapter 3: Translocative Gandhāran Buddhist Material Culture: Applying a Transcultural Approach to Gandhāran Cases ................................................................... 66 1. Transcultural Theory ............................................................................................................... 67 (1) The Concept of Transculturality ................................................................................................................................. 67 (2) Transculturality and History ........................................................................................................................................ 69 2. The Limitation and the Applicability of the Term “Transcultural” in the Studies of Gandhāran Buddhist Material Culture ....................................................................................... 71 3. Translocative Analysis: To Reveal Cultural Entanglements in Gandhāran Buddhist Material Culture ......................................................................................................................................... 77 (1) Theoretical Background and Method of Translocative Analysis ........................................................................... 77 (2) Case Study: Visual Representation of Vajrapāni in Gandhāran Buddhist Material Culture .............................. 81 4. Concluding Remarks .............................................................................................................. 100 Chapter 4: Productiveness and Potentiality of the Transcultural Approach through the Study of Gandhāran Buddhist Material Culture: Further Theoretical Discussion ......... 103 1. Translocative Framework ......................................................................................................
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