Performing the Jeweled Pagoda Mandalas: Relics, Reliquaries, and a Realm of Text
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The Art Bulletin ISSN: 0004-3079 (Print) 1559-6478 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcab20 Performing the Jeweled Pagoda Mandalas: Relics, Reliquaries, and a Realm of Text Halle O'Neal To cite this article: Halle O'Neal (2015) Performing the Jeweled Pagoda Mandalas: Relics, Reliquaries, and a Realm of Text, The Art Bulletin, 97:3, 279-300, DOI: 10.1080/00043079.2015.1009326 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00043079.2015.1009326 View supplementary material Published online: 23 Sep 2015. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 723 View Crossmark data Citing articles: 1 View citing articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rcab20 Performing the Jeweled Pagoda Mandalas: Relics, Reliquaries, and a Realm of Text Halle O’Neal At first glance, the characters swirl around, haphazard and Mimi Yiengpruksawan have discussed the mandalas in any tiny (Fig. 1–3). Picking out a few familiar words provides tem- real detail. In her book Paintings of the Lotus Sutra,Tanabe porary stability, but a moment later the viewer is lost again considered the Tanzan Shrine and Ryuhonji mandalas as in a sea of shining script at once accessible and remote. Nei- examples of the twelfth-century trend that emphasized ther legible nor completely illegible, these discombobulating narrative description of sutra content in the art of the and intriguing characters are specifically alegible. This vision Lotus Sutra.8 She saw the jeweled pagoda mandalas as of a luxurious realm constructed of golden text gleaming transitional works bridging conventional blue and gold against the deep blue background evokes the idea that the illustrated sutras and the pictorial transformation tableaux Sanskrit letter A begat the world.1 Experiencing these paint- (Japanese: henso, Chinese: bianxiang), or visualizations of ings known as the jeweled pagoda mandalas (Kinji hoto man- miraculous transformations occurring in scripture.9 Yieng- dara) is like entering a state of captivating and, at times, pruksawan examined the Chusonji jeweled pagoda manda- bewildering visions, a world shaped by the artistic union of las in Hiraizumi: Buddhist Art and Regional Politics in Twelfth- individual words. These mandalas form a category of highly Century Japan.10 She offers an elegant and contextualized textual paintings produced during the twelfth and thirteenth study of the mandalas, interweaving the importance of the centuries whose inventive format unifies on a single visual Golden Light Sutra to the authoritative aims of the Oshu plane the written transcription of sacred text with the Fujiwara and the intimate illustrations of the narrative painted vignettes of the chosen scripture’s stories. Further- vignettes that reveal the anxieties of the ruling family.11 more, by utterly dissolving the distinction between the two However, scholarship in both Japanese and English has media in the central icon of the paintings, their combinatory largely neglected the critical role the central pagoda plays composition embodies a new relation between text and in the construction of the paintings’ meaning. image. Word becomes picture as characters from the sacred In pursuit of this subject, we must, therefore, concentrate scriptures replace architectural line, marking the start of a on the superficial, on the craft and design essential to the progressively more popular visual trend. creation of elaborate textual images whose central icon is a Three complete sets, each of eight or ten paintings, of the reliquary composed almost entirely of scriptural characters. jeweled pagoda mandalas remain: those from the temple And through this, we arrive at how the very production of the Ryuhonji in Kyoto (Fig. 4), Tanzan Shrine in Nara (Fig. 5), surface asks a certain level of engagement from its viewers. and Chusonji, a temple in Hiraizumi (Fig. 6),2 along with The recent revival of attention paid to art’s surface rejoices three other mandalas separated from their original sets.3 On in the sometimes beautiful and always compelling artistic average, each painting transcribes two to four chapters of a qualities of the object and asks not only what it takes to particular scripture, either the Lotus Sutra4 or the Golden engage the surface but also how such encounters complicate Light Sutra,5 into the shape of a pagoda with associated nar- the putatively straightforward activity of viewing. Approach- rative vignettes positioned along the sides and bottom of the ing the jeweled pagoda mandalas from this point of view mandala. How exactly these particular religious establish- expands our thinking about the demands of viewing as the ments came to transcribe and pictorialize the scriptures in progenitor of meaning and complicates the discourse on this format is not known. The origin of this style can be word and image that often presupposes an ontological traced back to the earliest related example in China: a tenth- divide. Furthermore, because of the lacunae in the records century textual pagoda composed of the Heart Sutra6 but concerning the paintings’ patronage, potential ritualistic lacking the encircling vignettes. function, and transferal history between locations, the jew- Previous scholarship has been primarily concerned with eled pagoda mandalas are well suited for such a methodology the formal analysis and iconographic study of the narrative that finds meaning in the surface. vignettes surrounding the central icon. In this regard, the Explorations of the surface, including the transcription of mandalas have been successfully and thoroughly expli- the textual pagoda and the process of production for such cated. By far the most extensive examination of the man- innovative and expensive sets of paintings, underscore the dalas to date has been written by Miya Tsugio.7 He was inherent performativity of the design and the effects of that the first to identify possible prototypes in China and on the viewer. The intertextual community of sutra transcrip- Korea. Miya also conducted an illuminating visual study of tions from the eleventh through the thirteenth centuries the narrative vignettes surrounding the central pagoda. demonstrates the broader trend toward more complicated While quite strong, the scholarship in English on the jew- interactions of text and image and, through comparison, eled pagoda mandalas is sparse: only Willa Tanabe and highlights the augmented roles of the two media in the 280 ART BULLETIN SEPTEMBER 2015 VOLUME XCVII NUMBER 3 1 Jeweled pagoda mandala, painting one, detail of the upper section showing transcription of the Lotus Sutra, 13th century, gold, silver, and slight color on indigo paper. Ryuhonji, Kyoto, and Collection of Nara National Museum (artwork in the public domain; photograph provided by Nara National Museum) mandalas. These complexities of collaboration require a per- Ryuhonji scrolls. These black ink inscriptions document the formative viewing on the part of the audience that exposes mandalas’ location in Horyuji, a Nara temple, at the time of two fundamental juxtapositions: accessibility and alegibility, their first recorded restoration in the seventh month of and visibility and invisibility. Decoded through experiential 1362.12 However, they illuminate little about the paintings’ engagement, the ultimate indivisibility of word and picture, function and commission. Indeed, since formally and stylisti- sutra and pagoda, and relic and reliquary is apprehended as cally the paintings correspond to the early thirteenth century, a profound visualization of the multiplicity of the Buddha it is uncertain even if Horyuji is the original home of the set.13 body. In order to continue tracking the paintings, records associ- ated with the temple must be consulted. A list of Horyuji’s Nomenclature and Historical Issues treasures found in volume nineteen of the mid-fifteenth-cen- A short philological discussion is necessary in order to tury Taishiden gyokurin sho documents eight Lotus Sutra pago- explore issues of terminology and present the elusive histori- das (Hokke hatto) housed in a box.14 Slightly later, the record cal circumstances of the paintings. Unfortunately, but not of temple effects, Horyuji shariden homotsu chumon, still locates uncommonly, scant textual records remain to cast low light the mandalas at Horyuji during the inventory checks of 1550 on the shadowy history of the production and reception of and 1591.15 In these two entries, the mandalas carry a the mandalas. And, as is typical of premodern paintings, the description similar to that in the Taishiden gyokurin sho. Both extant records exhibit flexible nomenclature. entries list them as eight Lotus Sutra pagodas (Hokke no Ryuhonji’s jeweled pagoda mandalas of the early thir- hatto). Based on these findings, it is apparent that Horyuji teenth century capture in eight paintings the twenty-eight was in possession of the mandalas from the mid-fourteenth chapters of the Lotus Sutra. The earliest textual evidence of century until the late sixteenth century. Returning to the the Japanese jeweled pagoda mandalas’ existence comes in objects themselves for information, a later inscription on the the form of an inscription on the back of each of the paintings testifies to another restoration in 1681 in Edo PERFORMING THE JEWELED PAGODA MANDALAS 281 2 Jeweled pagoda mandala, painting one, detail of the middle section showing transcription of the Lotus Sutra. Ryuhonji, Kyoto, and Collection of Nara National