reviews 247 chapters on childhood possession, one dealing with the positive phenomena of oracular possession, and another dealing with the malign invasion of children by demonic forces. This excellent book is well worth reading. Robert Mayer Oriental Institute, University of Oxford [email protected]

Donors of Longmen: Faith, Politics, and Patronage in Medieval Chinese Buddhist Sculpture, Amy McNair (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press, 2007), 230 pp., $52/£33.50, ISBN 0-8248-2994-8

Longmen, located just outside of the city of Luoyang in Henan Province, is one of the most diverse and opulent expressions of in the world. Over a period of 250 years (from the late fifth century to the mid-eighth century) an astonishing 2,345 grot- toes were dug out of the side of a cliff and ornamented with approximately 100,000 indi- vidual statues accompanied by some 3,000 inscriptions, many in fine calligraphy admired to this day by art critics and aficionados (p. 1). Longmen has long attracted the attention of specialists in , drawn both to its beauty and to the plethora of art-historical puzzles it presents. In Donors of Longmen, Amy McNair focuses on the stories behind the images, revealed obliquely through inscriptions and the iconography itself. She leads us through the his- tory of Longmen, beginning with the first grotto, made in approximately 493 by an enter- prising monk named Huicheng, himself a member of the royal family, ostensibly to make karmic for his emperor and the state. Subsequent chapters focus, in chronological order, on the donors for other grottoes, or grotto complexes, concluding, in the final chap- ter with a curious set of 48 Amitābhas made by the powerful eighth-century figure Gao Lishi – one of the most famous eunuchs in Chinese history – for his friend and benefactor, Emperor Xuanzong. McNair provides perceptive observations on style and technique, noting the inten- tional distortion of one set of figures, whose noses ‘stand out rather wierdly’ when lit from above in the Metropolitan Museum of Art where they are now housed, whereas in their original setting, lit by a shaft of light from the cave opening, they would have appeared in perfect proportion to the rest of the faces (p. 48). Similarly, she notes that when the massive lokapāla and dvārapāla figures of the Great Viarocana Image Shrine are viewed from a distance, looking at them directly, we see that ‘the figures have been intentionally broadened, with an almost grotesque wideness to the hips and shoulders’, but that when they are viewed from the front of the shrine, with the viewer looking up, the proportions seem natural (p. 114). McNair also engages the considerable scholarship on the caves to propose her own solutions to questions of dating and iconographical identification. But as the title suggests, the greatest contribution of the book is its analysis of the donors: who they were and why they made images at Longmen. The results of this analysis carry implications not just for Longmen or Buddhist art history, but for our understanding of Buddhist devotion more generally. Central to the making of images at Longmen, and a theme that runs throughout the book, is the belief that through making an image one could earn merit that could then be transferred to a loved one to improve their fate in the cycle of . This, the foun- dation of Buddhist material culture, was a belief common to Buddhists from all walks of

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2007 248 review life, from empresses to artisans. As Kenneth Ch’en demonstrated some forty years ago, inscriptions from Longmen reveal that even the most erudite monks and nuns attempted to make merit for their deceased parents through the production of images. But McNair uncovers the political and social dimensions of image-making as well. For instance, while biographical details about Longmen’s first donor, the monk Huicheng, are scarce, McNair, through careful dating of the site and comparison with political events, shows that mak- ing the grotto would have been a good career move for an ambitious monk with court connections at a time when many were hostile to the emperor’s recent decision to move the capital to Luoyang. She further plausibly argues that not only did Huicheng mean for the central Buddha image to be taken as a representation of the emperor, but that after its completion, it was read that way by a loyal general who visited the grotto and left an inscription. Given the expense of the biggest projects at Longmen, only powerful figures at court would have had the means to support many of them, and court politics are never far from the history of the images on display there. McNair documents, for instance, the machina- tions of the Tang prince Li Tai to win the title of heir apparent away from his brothers. By building a grotto in honour of his recently deceased mother (and of course former wife of the emperor), he could at once express his and curry favour with his distant and imposing father. For the inscription to his grotto, Li Tai employed his father’s memo- rialist and personal calligraphy tutor, intending, in McNair’s words ‘to impress the reader with the imperial air of his inscription and to create an impression of the inevitability of his succession’ (p. 86). And when the heir apparent was stripped of his title after a scan- dalous affair with a singing boy, it looked for a time as if Li Tai’s efforts would succeed. But his efforts to employ Buddhist piety to impress his father and the mistakes of his brother did not in the end compensate for his own failings. He had a reputation for gluttony – he was so fat that the emperor had to grant him special permission to travel within the pal- ace on a small cart since he could barely walk – and he celebrated the fall of the previous heir apparent too publicly. In the end, Li Tai lost the designation of heir apparent to yet another brother, Li Zhi, who went on to become emperor Gaozong, leaving the hapless Li Tai to sink into obscurity before dying prematurely at the age of 35. Although McNair shies away from psychological analysis of the donors, she sees more in the stories behind the images than just politics and the thirst for prestige; she at times uncovers more personal emotions, whether those of a general for his beloved commander (p. 28) or those of a young emperor for his mother, murdered when he was 12, and for his father, who died on campaign when he was 18 (p. 33). I wished at times that McNair would have further explored the role of guilt in the production of Buddhist images. We can safely assume that most of the donors genuinely believed that they would be rewarded for their donations through the mechanism of karma. But if they believed in the positive influence of merit, surely they must have believed in its opposite: punishment for immoral acts. And in the karmic calculations of good and bad deeds, many of the Longmen donors clearly had cause for concern. Empress Dowager Hu, for example, responsible for build-

1. ‘Filial Piety in ’, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 28 (1968), 81–97. Chen’s arti- cle, which suggested that the from a monk or nun to their parents was a sign of sinification, prompted an article by Gregory Schopen that demonstrated that the practice of monastics transferring merit to parents was common in Indian Buddhism as well. Gregory Schopen, ‘Filial Piety and the Monk in the Practice of Indian Buddhism: A Question of “Siniciza- tion” Viewed from the Other Side’, T’oung Pao 70 (1984), 110–26.

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2007 reviews 249 ing a massive in the capital – perhaps the highest pagoda ever built – a monastery, and a large grotto at Longmen, rose to power as a consort of the emperor when she gave birth to the emperor’s only son (another consort had previously given birth to a son, but he was murdered by the empress). When her five-year-old son was declared emperor, Hu managed to avoid an attempt on her life by the empress, who was then forced to become a nun and later murdered in her convent, presumably with Hu’s knowledge (p. 61). When her son came of age, Hu refused to relinquish power and, when he gave secret orders to a general to liberate him from the clutches of his own mother, the young emperor died mysteriously, after which Hu put yet another child on the throne as puppet emperor. In short, Hu came to power with blood on her hands, and continued to order assassinations – perhaps even of her own son – in order to maintain power. In the ruthlessly violent world of court politics, Buddhist belief provided at once a source of remorse and at the same time avenues for softening its blow. As in the case of prince Li Tai, the story of Empress Dowager Hu is a case study in the vanity of temporal power. Not only did she herself die an ignoble death – drowned by a general whom the son that she saw murdered had called to for assistance before his death – but the projects she sponsored did not leave a lasting legacy: her pagoda and monas- tery were burned, and the grotto she sponsored at Longmen is now known as the ‘Grotto Destroyed by Fire’ (Huoshaoku 火燒窟), reflecting its current state – surely a lesson in the implacable power of , if not karmic retribution. The case of the Grotto Destroyed by Fire did not apparently discourage a dour group of early Tang donors, convinced that stone inscriptions and icons had the best chance of surviving a coming apocalypse. McNair describes the pervasive anxiety among Buddhists in the late sixth and early seventh centuries that the period of the decline of the was in full swing, and that it was the duty of the faithful to preserve of Buddhism what they could for a future age. These concerns are mirrored in the inscriptions from the period, which place particular emphasis on the durability of stone as compared to other mediums. In addition, devotees sponsored copies of what they believed to be original Indian icons made in the likeness of the Buddha in his presence, presumably in the hopes of protecting for the future accurate representations that they hoped would survive the coming cata- clysm. This desire to make images that endure a of destruction was not prominent in India and seems to have been a Chinese innovation (p. 94). Other sections of the book describe grottoes made by Empress Wu of the Tang, by officials of various ranks, obscure artisans, powerful abbots and groups of nuns. Taken together, these portraits reveal the extent to which Buddhist devotion was incorporated into economics, politics and social life during the medieval period. Finally, a brief but fas- cinating epilogue recounts the later history of Longmen, including the early part of the twentieth century when so many of its images were hacked off their original setting to be sold on a newly emerging international art market. McNair includes as well a useful appendix of sixty inscriptions with both Chinese text and translations of what are often extremely difficult texts, accurately rendered into clear English. For the sake of readers interested in the patronage of Buddhist art in medieval China, outside of Longmen, I would add a few works missing from McNair’s bibliography. But in

2. Namely, T. Griffith Foulk’s ‘Religious Functions of Buddhist Art in China’, in Cultural Intersec- tions in Later Chinese Buddhism, ed. Marsha Weidner, 13–19 (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press, 1987); Erik Zürcher, ‘Buddhist Art in Medieval China: The Ecclesiastical ’, in Function and Meaning in Buddhist Art, eds K. R. van Kooij & H. van der Veere, 1–20 (Groningen: Egbert

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2007 250 Buddhist studies review general Donors of Longmen fully engages the scholarship on the grottoes, providing insights into both the history of Longmen, and the rich complexity of Buddhist devotion, best appreciated when its context is reconstructed by an able historian as it is here.

John Kieschnick University of Bristol

Cambodian Buddhism: History and Practice, Ian Harris (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press, 2005), 352pp, $62/£39.95, ISBN 0824827651

Among the earliest sustained studies of Cambodia was Adhémard Leclère’s 1899 Le Buddhisme au Cambodge. This remarkable but problematic volume stood alone for over one hundred years in its attempt to provide an overview of the history and practice of : arguably the single most important aspect of Cambodian identity itself. Ian Harris was not the first to notice this gaping hole in Khmer and Buddhist stud- ies, but he has proved the only scholar willing and able to take on the challenge of filling it. One wonders who was faced with the more daunting task: Leclère, who pioneered the field, drawing what conclusions he could from tentative translations of sparse primary source material read against, and indeed contributing to an elementary knowledge of both Buddhism and the Khmer vernacular; or Harris, who set out to compile, decipher, analyse and synthesize the vast range of primary and secondary source material produced on the subject in the intervening century. The resulting volume, Cambodian Buddhism: History and Practice, is itself nothing less than a remarkable feat. Harris’s work is genuinely comprehensive. It makes intelligent use of a mind-bog- gling amount and range of material: ancient Khmer epigraphy and art; classical Buddhist literature; historical, political, anthropological and literary studies of Cambodia and its surrounding region; journalism, NGO reports and radio logs; personal interviews with actors in the field – and I am surely forgetting something. A first stumbling block for many interested in the subject is the language of research publication. Much of the material is in French; in some cases, a particularly esoteric or erudite form of academic French. A fun- damental accomplishment of Cambodian Buddhism has been to make the material acces- sible to a broader audience. Yet Harris’s work in this regard has not been one of simple translation (if translation is ever simple); nor has it been one of simplification. His success has been, rather, in composing a viable, coherent yet complex narrative out of a hetero- geneous array of sources. In the Preface, Harris tentatively claims originality for only the second half of the book, in its explorations of politicized Buddhism in the modern period. I beg to differ with him on this point, in so far as the work of compilation as he has accomplished it was only possi- ble through the complementary originality of a subtle understanding of Buddhist practice in earlier historical periods, and subsequent insight into associations between histori- cal and modern practices. This is due in part to Harris’s grounding in classical Buddhist studies, which is dishearteningly rare in Khmer studies today: confronted with Harris’s

Forsten, 1995); and Hou Xudong’s 侯旭東 study of early medieval Chinese Buddhist epigraphy, Wu liu shiji beifang minzhong fojiao xinyang 五六世紀北方民眾佛教信仰 (Beijing: Zhongguo She- huikexue Chubanshe, 1998).

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2007