The Crowned Buddha and Narratives of Enlightenment 51

The Crowned Buddha and Narratives of Enlightenment 51 Chapter 2 The Crowned Buddha and Narratives of Enlightenment From the eighth to the tenth century, the Maṇḍala of Eight Great Bodhisattvas was a prominent feature of the iconographic programs of cave shrines and monasteries in South Asia, stretching from Mahārāṣṭra in the west to Orissa and Bihār in the east. Almost immediately, this maṇḍala appeared at sites in Southeast Asia, Tibet, China, and Japan. This chapter treats carvings and paint- ings of the Maṇḍala of Eight Great Bodhisattvas produced during the Tibetan empire. As will become evident, local instantiations of this maṇḍala often var- ied considerably in visual form and material format, even while the iconography remained consistent. Despite these local variations, the conjunction of the central Buddha with eight bodhisattvas represents a particular understanding of the Buddha’s awakening experience that was distinct from the conventional narrative centered upon the events under the bodhi tree at Bodhgayā. A concern with the Buddha’s awakening was already evident in Buddhist sculpture of the Pāla period (8th–12th century) from eastern India; in sculpture from this period, the image of the Buddha assuming the bhūmisparśa mudrā receives special emphasis.1 Approaching maṇḍalas from the perspective of the Buddha’s experience rather than that of the practitioner has the potential to reorient modern schol- arly discourse regarding maṇḍalas in significant ways. Since the early twentieth century, maṇḍalas have been couched in the language of psychological interi- ority. The Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung (1875-1961), who claimed to sketch a maṇḍala every morning, stated that the circular form of the maṇḍala was an “archetype of wholeness” that expressed the “totality of the individual.”2 Jung’s views came to be echoed in the work of the Tibetologist Giuseppe Tucci (1894-1984), who was concerned with maṇḍalas as a “means of reintegration.”3 Analyzing the Maṇḍala of Eight Great Bodhisattvas from the 1 See Janice Leoshko, “Scenes of the Buddha’s Life,” Silk Road Art and Archaeology 3 (1993-94): 251-71, especially 261-63; and Janice Leoshko, “Looking at Buddha Images,” Archives of Asian Art 52 (2000/2001): 63-82. 2 C.G. Jung, Mandala Symbolism, trans. R.F.C. Hull (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972), 4-5. 3 Giuseppe Tucci, The Theory and Practice of the Mandala (reprint, Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2001), 16, 21-22. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004360402_004 52 Chapter 2 perspective of the Buddha, however, places it firmly in its own time and context. In this context, the concern lay not only with the nature of the Buddha’s awakening, but was also dictated by the prerogatives of the Tibetan empire, its peace negotiations with Tang China, and the maintenance in its eastern terri- tories of a multilingual and multicultural Dunhuang. The Cult of Vairocana in Early Tibet Following earlier precedents in East and South Asia, the cult of Vairocana, known in Tibetan as Nampar Nangdze (rNam par snang mdzad), and the imperial history of Tibet were inextricably intertwined.4 In a classic study, H.E. Richardson noted the prevalence of Vairocana as the main icon in temples throughout Tibet, suggesting that the worship of Vairocana had reached Tibet by the eighth century.5 Indeed, the association of Vairocana with the founda- tion of the Tibetan empire was firmly established under Tri Songdetsen (Khri srong lde btsan, r. 755–ca. 797), during whose reign “the Tibetan imperial state itself came to be constituted, through a principle of homology, as the body and maṇḍala of the Buddha Vairocana,” as Matthew Kapstein has argued.6 Around 779, Samye (Bsam yas), Tibet’s first Buddhist monastery, was constructed in what is now Shannan during the reign of Tri Songdetsen (fig. 15). Samye’s iconographic program appeared to place particular emphasis upon Vairocana. According to the description in the Testament of Ba (9th–10th century), an account of the establishment of Buddhism in Tibet and the monastery’s found- ing, an image of Vairocana accompanied by the eight bodhisattvas was installed on the top floor; on the second floor, Vairocana was likewise the main deity. The main icon of the first floor was Śākyamuni, representing the earthly form of Vairocana.7 4 Matthew T. Kapstein, The Tibetan Assimilation of Buddhism: Conversion, Contestation, and Memory (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 59-60. 5 H.E. Richardson, “The Cult of Vairocana in Early Tibet,” in Tadeusz Skorupski, ed., Indo-Tibetan Studies: Papers in Honour and Appreciation of Professor David L. Snellgrove’s Contribution to Indo-Tibetan Studies (Tring: Institute of Buddhist Studies, 1990), 271-74. Richardson observes that, while certain temples were attributed to the reign of Songtsen Gampo (r. ca. 617-49), it is doubtful that the cult of Vairocana had reached Tibet in the seventh century; see his “Cult of Vairocana in Early Tibet,” 272. Matthew Kapstein urges similar caution by noting the my- thologization of Songtsen Gampo. See Kapstein, Tibetan Assimilation of Buddhism, 54. 6 Kapstein, Tibetan Assimilation of Buddhism, 60. 7 Kapstein, Tibetan Assimilation of Buddhism, 60-61. Amy Heller notes that the top floor was built in the Indian style, the second floor in the Chinese style, and the first floor in the Tibetan .

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