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Access provided by Princeton University (2 May 2016 14:37 GMT) Imperial Apparitions: Manchu Buddhism and the Cult of Mañjuśrī

Wen-shing Chou Hunter College

Abstract

This essay­ re­consid­ ers­ the Qing impe­ rial­ appro­ pri­ ­a­tion of the sa­cred moun­tain range of Wutai Shan through a study of three Manchu­ monas­ ter­ ­ies, Baodi Si, Baoxiang Si, and Shuxiang Si, built at the court of the Qianlong em­peror between­ 1750 and 1775. Qianlong’s con­suming­ inter­ est­ in the vi­sion cult of Wutai Shan’s res­ident­ de­ity Mañjuśrī is displayed in the building­ of the three monas­ ­teries,­ which were all ­modelled­ after­ famed temples­ at Wutai Shan. An in­vesti­ ­ga­tion of the ritu­ al,­ archi­ tec­ tural,­ and ar­tis­tic produc­ tions­ surrounding the three monas­ ­teries­ re­veals the crafting of a dis­tinct Manchu­ Imperial Buddhist­ iden­tity cen­tered on Qianlong him­self as the ap­pa­rition­ of Mañjuśrī at Wutai Shan. keywords: Manchu­ Buddhism,­ the Qianlong em­peror­ , Wutai Shan, Baodi Si, Baoxiang Si, Xiang Shan, Shuxiang Si, Chengde, Mañjuśrī, Ti­betan Bud­dhism, Chi­nese Bud­dhism, di­vine king­ship.

uite un­like the de­velop­ ­ment of any other Chi­nese This es­say ex­am­ines the Qianlong’s cre­a­tive im­per­ QBud­dhist sa­cred site, the holy moun­tain range of son­a­tion of Mañjuśrī through the construc­ tion­ of three Wutai Shan 五臺山 (the Mountain of Five Terraces) tem­ples around Beijing that were built to imi­­tate (Ch. (Fig. 1) in north­east China has, from the in­cep­tion of its fang 仿) im­por­tant mon­as­ter­ies at Wutai Shan. These fame dur­ing the Tang dy­nas­ty, cap­ti­vated the imag­i­na­ three temples—Baodi­ Si 寶諦寺 (Temple of Precious tions of rul­ing elites in China. During the last mil­len­ Truth) and Baoxiang Si 寶相寺 (Temple of Precious nium and a half, nu­mer­ous rul­ers of reigning dy­nas­ties, Form) in Xiangshan 香山 (Fragrant Hills), the im­pe­rial with the help of their re­li­gious ad­vi­sers, en­listed Wutai park at the foot of the Western Hills just west of Beijing, Shan’s res­i­dent de­ity Mañjuśrī, as the protec­ ­tor of their and Shuxiang Si 殊像寺 (Temple of Mañjuśrī’s Image) in nation,­ and sought to rein­ force­ legit­ i­macy­ for their rule pres­ent-day Chengde 承德, the im­pe­rial sum­mer re­treat through an align­ment with Mañjuśrī’s earthly abode.1 lo­cated 140 miles northwest of Beijing—were com­mis­ The reli­­gious and worldly sa­gac­ity of Mañjuśrī, re­ sioned by the Qianlong em­peror be­tween 1750 and garded as the Chi­nese bo­dhisattva­ par ex­cel­lence and 1775 and were established as the first of what even­tu­ most of­ten asso­ ci­ ­ated with qual­i­ties of wis­dom, also be­ ally amounted to more than a dozen Man­chu Buddhist­ came linked with In­dian Buddhist­ models­ of re­ligious­ mon­as­ter­ies. Although Qianlong’s fore­bears had sup­ king­ship in both Chi­nese and Ti­betan tra­di­tions.2 Sover­ ported Bud­dhism prac­ticed by the mul­ti­lin­gual con­stit­u­ eigns who identi­ fied­ them selves­ or be­came identi­ ­fiedas ents of his em­pire, and pro­moted the Gelukpa sect of the wheel-turning­ king (Skt. cakravartin) or the ruler of Ti­betan Bud­dhism (the sect of the Dalai­ La­mas) among law (Skt. dharmarāja) also evoked ties to Mañjuśrī, them, it was Qianlong who initi­ ­ated the trans­la­tion sanc­ti­fy­ing their sec­u­lar role with a spir­i­tual mis­sion of the scrip­tures into the Man­chu lan­guage, man­dated and condi­ tion.­ The Qing Manchu­ em­perors­ added a their rit­ual rec­i­ta­tions, founded mon­as­ter­ies that were new level of sig­ni­fi­ca­tion to this mil­len­nial tra­di­tion of ex­clu­sively staffed by Manchu­ lamas­ with the help of Buddhist­ kingship­ at Wutai Shan when they merged his guru and state precep­ ­tor the Monguor4 re­in­car­nate their own iden­tities­ with that of Mañjuśrī—pro­mot­ing lama Chankya Rölpé Dorjé (1717–1786), and even­tu­ them­selves as em­a­na­tions of Mañjuśrī through the ally un­der­took the mon­u­men­tal pro­ject of com­pil­ing the uniquely Ti­betan Bud­dhist no­tion of bo­dhi­sattva re­ Man­chu Bud­dhist can­on. Why did Qianlong seek to cre­ incar­na­tion.3 The Qianlong 乾隆 em­peror (1711–1799), ate ex­clu­sively Man­chu mon­as­ter­ies? Where was the in par­tic­u­lar, employed un­prec­e­dented vi­su­al, ma­te­ri­al, place of Buddhism­ for a peo­ple who were ini­tially for­ rit­u­al, and rhe­tor­i­cal means to as­sert, over and over again, bidden­ to become­ lamas,­ and whose own reli­ ­gious tra­ his iden­tity as the wheel-turn­ing Mañjuśrī-in­car­nate. di­tion was pre­served in im­pe­rial sha­man­ist rit­u­als that 140 ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART

Fig. 1. View from Central Peak, Wutai Shan, Shanxi Province, China. Photograph by the au­thor.

Qianlong himself had ordered to codify? Why and in there­fore con­sid­ered the em­per­or’s per­sonal prop­er­ty.8 By what ways were three of the chief Man­chu Bud­dhist the Qianlong pe­ri­od, they were mostly descen­ ­dants of mon­as­ter­ies de­rived from mod­els of those at Wutai Shan? Han, Kore­ an,­ Mon­gol, Jurchen, and even Russian­ groups The term “Man­chu,” though appearing to de­note a who were pre­vi­ously cap­tives of the Man­chus and con­ uni­tary group of nomadic­ peo­ple who came to rule China demned by them to servi­ tude.­ 9 The so-called Man­chu through con­quest, was coined in 1636 by Hong Taiji Lamas were thus Man­chu-speak­ing peo­ple be­long­ing to (1592–1643), Qianlong’s great-great-grandfa­ ­ther, in an the court who were rarely eth­nic Man­chus. These mon­as­ ef­fort to unite dif­fer­ent Jurchen tribes on China’s north­ ter­ies did not extend­ be­yond the court to include­ reg­u­lar east­ern fron­ti­er.5 By Qianlong’s time, this constructed Man­chu bannermen, and would have been seen only by ethnic­ marker had become­ an ances­ tral­ tradi­ tion­ that he res­i­dent la­mas and close mem­bers of the im­pe­rial fam­i­ly. sought to up­hold in governing a largely Chi­nese em­ As in­sti­tu­tions built and staffed by the Imperial House­ pire through the pres­er­va­tion of sha­man­is­tic rit­u­als and hold Department, they should there­fore be more ac­cu­ the use of the Manchu­ lan­guage.6 Since the status­ of eth­ rately called Man­chu Imperial Household Mon­as­ter­ies. nic Manchus­ as bannermen made it al­most impos­ si­­ ble­ My in­ves­ti­ga­tion into the making­ of these monas­­ for them to be­come mo­nastics,­ Manchu­ lamas­ were se­ teries—based­ on ex­tant ar­chi­val, vi­su­al, ar­chi­tec­tur­al, lected instead­ from the booi (Ch. Baoyi 包衣) class of the sculp­tur­al, ep­i­graph­ic, trav­el, and car­to­graphic sources— Imperial Household Department (Neiwu Fu 內務府), demonstrates Qianlong’s sin­gu­lar pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with the rather than from the Eight Banners. Booi, which lit­er­ally com­plex and con­tin­u­ously evolv­ing pro­jects of re-creating means “house­hold per­sons,” were de­pen­dent ser­vants rep­li­cas of Wutai Shan’s tem­ples over a twen­ty-five-year who manned the Imperial Household Department, which span, with the goal of reenacting a par­tic­u­lar vi­sion cult man­aged the em­per­ors’ per­sonal af­fairs.7 Booi were of Mañjuśrī at Wutai Shan that had di­verse fol­low­ings WEN-SHING CHOU • Imperial Apparitions: Manchu Buddhism and the Cult of Mañjuśrī 141 throughout­ Central Asia, East Asia, and the Himalayas. the Qing im­pe­rial Bud­dhist per­so­na. A va­ri­ety of source By restaging an ap­pari­ tion­ of Mañjuśrī10 through rit­ ma­te­ri­als points syn­er­gis­ti­cally to­ward Wutai Shan as u­al, lit­er­ary, and ar­tis­tic means, Qianlong sought to an in­dis­pens­able ground for Qianlong’s im­pe­rial self- craft and ad­vance a dis­tinct Man­chu Imperial Bud­dhist fash­ion­ing. iden­tity centered­ upon himself­ as the Mañjuśrī of Wutai Patricia Berger’s sem­i­nal work Em­pire of Emptiness Shan. His ap­pro­pri­a­tion of mod­els and ma­te­rial man­i­ (2003) re­mains the only art his­tor­i­cal study to pay at­ fes­ta­tions of Mañjuśrī’s mil­len­ni­um-old vi­sion cult from ten­tion to Qianlong’s ap­pro­pri­a­tion of the vi­sion cult of Chi­nese, Ti­bet­an, and Mon­go­lian sources and tra­di­tions Wutai Shan. In her study of Qianlong’s and his court art­ further­ perfected, from the point of view of the em­ ist Ding Guanpeng’s (丁觀鵬 [active 1708–1771]) cop­ies per­or, a uniquely Manchu­ Imperial Wutai Shan in the of true im­ages, which in­cluded a brief ac­count of the mi­ orig­inal­ moun­tain range. rac­u­lous icon at Wutai Shan, Berger re­veals the trans­for­ This is not an attempt­ to perpet­ ­u­ate fixed notions­ of ma­tive power of Qianlong’s copies­ for both the copy and the ethnonyms “Man­chu,” “Mon­gol,” “Ti­bet­an,” and the orig­i­nal.12 What re­mains to be eluci­ ­dated in a thor­ “Han,” nor to re­ify the categories of “Chi­nese” and “Ti­ ough study here is Qianlong’s use of the potent­ sig­ni­fi­ca­ bet­an” Bud­dhism in the eighteenth­ cen­tu­ry. Indeed, re­ tions of the moun­tain and cult of Mañjuśrī to es­tab­lish cent schol­ar­ship has shown the ex­tent to which these Man­chu im­pe­rial Bud­dhism, as well as Qianlong’s com­ constructed categories were uti­lized by Qianlong at a pre­hen­sive reconceptualization of Bud­dhist cos­mol­ogy time when the very def­i­ni­tion of “Manchuness” was be­ and his­to­ri­og­ra­phy through these build­ing pro­jects. Fol­ ing chal­lenged.11 Instead of provid­ ing­ a static under­ ­ lowing Berger’s use of the terms “copy” and “rep­li­ca” to stand­ing of cul­tural and eth­nic en­ti­ties, this essay­ shows de­note a range of emu­ ­la­tive acts in the Qing court that how fluid the bound­aries were be­tween the per­ceived in­ter­pret more than they du­pli­cate,13 and in keeping­ with tra­di­tions of Chi­nese and Indo-Ti­betan Bud­dhism, and re­cent art his­tor­i­cal schol­ar­ship that em­pha­sizes the gen­ how much Qianlong was re­spon­si­ble for the cre­a­tion of er­a­tive14 and re­ve­la­tory na­ture15 of the copy, this essay­ a pan-Ma­ha­yana Bud­dhist nar­ra­tive in­cor­po­rat­ing var­i­ in­ves­ti­gates the logic and phys­i­cal pro­cesses by which ous Bud­dhist tradi­ ­tions. Qianlong’s engage­ ­ment in pro­ the past is made anew through the act of rep­li­ca­tion. di­gious cul­tur­al, po­lit­i­cal, and ar­tis­tic en­ter­prises, of which his Bud­dhist prac­tice and ac­tiv­i­ties were only a Baodi Si: Founding a New Man­chu Monastic part, reflected the dy­namic and hy­brid con­di­tions of his Culture em­pire that, de­spite his own heavy-handed ef­fort to pro­mote fixed notions­ of ethnic­ i­ty­ , could not be reduced­ In 1750, imme­ ­di­ately af­ter Qianlong returned from a to cul­tural or eth­nic terms. They also de­lineated­ an im­ pil­grim­age to Wutai Shan with his mother and his guru,­ pe­rial pro­ject of cos­mo­log­i­cal recentering that places all­ the Monguor lama Rölpé Dorjé, he told the lat­ter about un­der the em­per­or’s do­main. his as­pi­ra­tions to build an ex­clu­sively Man­chu Ti­betan The con­struc­tion of the three temples­ at Xiangshan Bud­dhist mon­as­tery.16 (Rölpé Dorjé also ac­com­pa­nied and Chengde lies at the nexus of impe­ ­rial ac­tiv­i­ties on Qianlong to Wutai Shan on his sub­se­quent vis­its un­til sev­eral fronts: first, the Qing impe­ ­rial pro­mo­tion of his own death in 1786, and spent nearly all­ his sum­mers Wutai Shan—in­clud­ing fre­quent pil­grim­ages to the from 1750 to 1786 in retreat­ there, fre­quently giving­ moun­tain range, spon­sor­ship of its mon­as­ter­ies, en­gage­ teach­ings and ini­ti­a­tions.)17 Even though there had been ment with rit­u­als and ini­ti­a­tions while at Wutai Shan, Man­chus who had be­come monks, an ex­clu­sive Man­ and the pro­duction­ of its gaz­et­teers; second,­ Qianlong’s chu monas­ tery­ would be the first of its kind. To fulfill­ fa­mously in­ven­tive “rep­li­cas” of great Ti­betan mon­as­ his wish, Qianlong com­mis­sioned the build­ing of a tem­ ter­ies and the per­va­sive cul­ture of rep­li­ca­tion dur­ing his ple at the im­pe­rial park of Xiangshan west of Beijing reign; third, the host of other vi­sual and rhe­tori­­cal as­ser­ that would be an im­i­ta­tion of Pusa Ding 菩薩頂 (Mon­ tions of “em­per­or-as-bo­dhi­satt­va”; and fi­nal­ly, the mak­ astery of the Bodhisattva Mañjuśrī’s Peak) at Wutai ing of the Man­chu Bud­dhist can­on, an im­mense task of Shan, a mon­as­tery that was built in the fifth century­ and trans­la­tion that was struc­tur­ally anal­o­gous to the build­ orig­i­nally named Wenshu Yuan 文殊院 (Cloister of ing of Wutai Shan rep­li­cas. This essay­ , by sit­u­at­ing the Mañjuśrī), but renamed Pusa Ding early in the fifteenth cre­a­tion of Man­chu im­pe­rial mon­as­ter­ies within the var­ cen­tury­ . Qianlong asked Rölpé Dorjé to be in charge of i­ous all­-con­sum­ing agen­das and ma­te­rial pro­duc­tions of the new temple’­ s de­sign, and named it Baodi Si.18 The the Qing court that peaked dur­ing the Qianlong reign, monas­ tery­ was completed­ in 1751, although­ by the end brings to the fore the concep­ ­tu­al, geo­graph­i­cal, and cos­ of 1750 two hundred­ Man­chu la­mas had already­ been mo­log­i­cal im­por­tance of Wutai Shan in the cre­a­tion of chosen­ to study Buddhist­ scriptures­ in the Manchu­ 142 ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART lan­guage at Baodi Si.19 Baodi Si sub­se­quently be­came na­tions by em­perors­ of suc­ces­sive dy­nas­ties. In maps of the head­quar­ters for all­ twelve of the Man­chu mon­as­ Wutai Shan from Dunhuang, for ex­ample,­ Zhenrong ter­ies in and around Beijing that were built throughout­ Yuan most of­ten occupies the cen­ter of the com­po­si­tion. Qianlong’s reign; a court-appointed offi­ ­cial re­sid­ing at Even as the origi­nal­ icon had disappeared, and the tem­ Baodi Si over­saw all­ Man­chu Bud­dhist af­fairs.20 ple’s name was changed to Pusa Ding dur­ing the Ming What did Qianlong mean by an im­i­ta­tion? What as­ Yongle 永樂 pe­riod (1403–1424), stories of the mirac­ ­u­ pects of Pusa Ding were copied,­ and what were his aims lous im­age con­tin­ued to be published in ev­ery im­pe­rial of such a ma­te­rial trans­fer? Even though no build­ings and nonimperial guide­book. In fact, the ab­sence of the from Baodi Si are ex­tant, and no stele in­scriptions­ sur­ origi­nal­ image­ had in all­ likeli­ ­hood served to enhance­ vive or have been recorded, early maps, gazet­ teers,­ and its allure,­ and con­trib­uted to the in­creasingly­ more court doc­u­ments from the Imperial Household Depart­ elab­o­rate nar­ra­tive of its mi­rac­u­lous or­i­gin. By the early ment of­fer glimpses into the building­ pro­cess. They re­ Qing dy­nasty at the lat­est, Pusa Ding be­came the chief veal a detailed­ attempt­ to re-create,­ and also to revise,­ Gelukpa mon­as­tery.23 The Geluk sect mo­nop­o­lized the the rit­ual set­ting of Pusa Ding. This concern­ for exac­ ­ti­ moun­tain range after­ the founding of the Qing dynas­ ­ty, tude and spec­ific­ ity­ of the rit­ual set­ting paved the way when many of the tem­ples were said to have been “con­ for what be­came the first in a se­ries of pro­jects for verted” to Ti­betan Bud­dhism.24 After the Fifth Da­lai La­ the es­tab­lish­ment of Man­chu mon­as­ter­ies. The ways in ma’s visit to Beijing in 1652, the Qing Shunzhi emperor­ which cer­tain rit­u­al­ized spaces and bod­ies be­came a me­ established the ap­pointment­ of “jasagh lamas”­ (of Mon­ dium through which im­pe­rial iden­tity was ar­tic­u­lated go­lian, Ti­bet­an, and Han or­i­gins) to pre­side over re­li­ would be­come ap­par­ent in subse­ ­quent build­ings of Ba­ gious affairs­ at Wutai Shan and in­stalled monks from oxiang Si at Xiangshan and Shuxiang Si at Chengde. Tibet and Mongolia at Wutai Shan’s var­ious­ monas­ ter­ ­ They would also clarify­ Qianlong’s choice and appro­­ ies.25 Although the posi­ tion­ of jasagh lamas­ was also pri­a­tion of Pusa Ding. Among Wutai Shan’s more than created­ at the cap­i­tal in Beijing, Mukden, Hohhot, Je­ one hun­dred mon­as­ter­ies, Pusa Ding (Fig. 2) has been a hol, and Dolonor, the suc­ces­sive jasagh la­mas at Wutai lo­cus of pil­grim­age and im­pe­rial spon­sor­ship since at Shan be­came es­pe­cially tied to Tibet, as later reg­u­la­tions least the Tang dynas­ ­ty. Located on the summit­ of Lingjiu spec­ified­ that they should be drawn from a pool of la­ Shan 靈鹫山 (Vulture Peak Mountain, named after­ the mas in Tibet.26 In or­der to house the jasagh la­mas at In­dian site where the Buddha­ gave many sermons),­ it is Wutai Shan, Shunzhi ren­o­vated Pusa Ding ex­tensively­ the highest point in the town of Taihuai 臺懷, the valley­ into an of­fi­cial im­pe­rial es­tab­lish­ment (with yel­low- town be­tween the five ter­races of Wutai Shan. As the glazed tiles). Pusa Ding thus be­came the of­fi­cial res­i­ name of the mountain­ Lingjiu Shan suggests,­ it is itself a dence of the jasaghs who over­saw all­ re­li­gious ac­tiv­i­ties Chi­nese trans­plan­ta­tion of the In­dian orig­i­nal, the on a moun­tain range of some one hun­dred tem­ples source of Wutai Shan’s re­li­gious legit­ i­ macy­ in the first dur­ing the eigh­teenth and nineteenth centu­ ­ries.27 It also place. According to the Expanded Record of the Clear and housed the im­pe­rial trav­el­ling pal­ace (xinggong 行宮), Cool Mountains, com­piled around 1061,21 the first temple­ where the Kangxi 康熙 (r. 1662–1722), Qianlong (r. 1736– at the sum­mit of Lingjiu Shan was Wenshu Yuan, built by 1795), and Jiaqing 嘉慶 (r. 1796–1820) emper­ ­ors all­ the Northern Wei em­peror Xiaowen 孝文 (r. 471–499). stayed dur­ing their nu­mer­ous vis­its to Wutai Shan. By The same re­cord in­di­cates that, al­though ap­pa­ri­tions of the reign of Qianlong, Pusa Ding housed ap­prox­i­ma­tely Mañjuśrī were reported to have appeared on this peak one-third of the three thousand­ la­mas (of Ti­bet­an, Mon­ fre­quently­ , it was not until­ the time of the Tang emperor­ go­lian, Man­chu, and Han ethnic­ mark­ers) who were re­ Ruizong 睿宗 (662–716) that the tem­ple fea­tured a sid­ing at Wutai Shan. sculpted im­age of Mañjuśrī. Because Pusa Ding was the undis­ ­puted cen­ter of This history­ is related­ in a well-known tale of the wor­ship and im­pe­rial spon­sor­ship since the Tang dy­ re­clu­sive sculp­tor Ansheng 安生, of un­known or­i­gin, nas­ty, its re-cre­a­tion at Xiangshan not only served as a who, after­ many failed at­tempts to com­plete a sculp­ture substi­ tute­ for the orig­i­nal mon­as­tery but also evoked of Mañjuśrī without­ cracks, appealed to the bodhi­ ­sattva the en­tire moun­tain range of Wutai Shan.28 This was re­ and then succeeded in mak­ing a per­fect im­age by mod­ flected in the cou­plet that Qianlong inscribed on a pair el­ling it af­ter se­ven­ty-two man­i­fes­ta­tions of Mañjuśrī of placards­ hung at Baodi Si, proclaiming what the site that ac­com­pa­nied him as he com­pleted his work.22 This was: a sur­rogate­ of Wutai Shan, which was a surro­ ­gate tem­ple, known thereaf­ ­ter as Zhenrong Yuan 真容院 of In­dia (by way of Lingjiu Shan) but much closer to his (Cloister of the True Appearance), became­ a pri­mary court than In­dia or Wutai Shan.29 Qianlong’s choice of lo­cus of pil­grim­age and a con­spic­u­ous re­cip­i­ent of do­ ini­ti­at­ing a Man­chu Bud­dhist mon­as­tery and hous­ing it WEN-SHING CHOU • Imperial Apparitions: Manchu Buddhism and the Cult of Mañjuśrī 143

Fig. 2. Pusa Ding Monastery, Wutai Shan. From Daijō Tokiwa and Tadashi Sekino, Shina bunka shiseki vol. 1 (Tōkyō: Hōzōkan, Shōwa 14–16, 1939–1941), plate 92. in a sur­ro­gate of Wutai Shan’s most con­spic­u­ously im­ trans­fer was re­al­ized in ma­te­rial terms. First of all­, the pe­rial as well as Gelukpa Bud­dhist tem­ple, de­fined by im­i­ta­tion seems to be at least partially­ reflected in the the mem­ory of a mi­rac­u­lous icon, seems more than ap­ de­sign of the ex­te­rior ar­chi­tecture.­ A map of the im­pe­ pro­pri­ate. As a sa­cred mountain­ range in China with rial sum­mer gar­den Yihe Yuan 頤和園 and the sur­ deep roots in Ti­betan Bud­dhism, and as the field of en­ rounding area (Fig. 3), which has been dated to after­ light­ened ac­tiv­i­ties for the de­ity of whom the Man­chu 1888, de­picts a mon­as­tery with a stone gate at the en­ em­per­ors were con­sid­ered in­car­na­tions, Wutai Shan trance and steps leading­ up to it (Fig. 4). Photographs was an ex­cel­lent source and model for the in­augu­ ­ra­tion from the be­gin­ning of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury show a sur­ of a new im­pe­rial Man­chu mo­nas­tic cul­ture. Appropri­ viv­ing stone gate of the same design­ (Fig. 5).30 This was ately, as Pusa Ding was home to the jasagh la­mas who pre­sumed to be an im­ita­ ­tion of the set of steps and the over­saw all­ Bud­dhist af­fairs at Wutai Shan, Baodi Si, gate in front of Pusa Ding (Fig. 6), com­missioned­ and too, be­came the chief Man­chu mon­as­tery that over­saw inscribed by Qianlong’s grand­fa­ther, the Kangxi em­ all­ Man­chu Bud­dhist af­fairs. per­or. However, it is closer kin to the contem­ ­po­ra­ne­ Baodi Si’s enormous­ scale and im­por­tance have long ously erected stone gate at Biyun Si 碧雲寺 (Azure been ob­scured by its lost ed­i­fices and in­scriptions.­ But Cloud Monastery) in Xiangshan, a Yuan-dy­nasty tem­ thanks to extant­ maps and court records,­ we can recon­­ ple where Qianlong rep­li­cated a Ti­bet­an-style Mahābo­ struct some of the precise­ ways in which the con­cep­tual dhi Temple in 1748 (Fig. 7)31—that is, although­ the 144 ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART

Fig. 3. Yiheyuan Baqi Bingying tu (Map of Eight Banners Brigade bar­racks and the Yiheyuan Summer Palace). Pen and ink and wa­ter­col­or, 97 × 172 cm. After 1888. Original map and im­age are in the pub­lic do­main; dig­i­tal im­age pro­vided by the Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress. steps clearly refer­ to Pusa Ding’s iconic set of 108 steps, Although we have limited­ knowledge­ of Baodi Si’s no ef­fort seems to have been made in its design­ to rep­li­ ar­chi­tec­tural ex­te­ri­or, re­cords from the Palace Work­ cate the archi­ ­tec­tural style of Pusa Ding’s built envi­ ­ron­ shops of the Imperial Household Department (Neiwu fu ment. The gate is made out of stone rather than wood; Zaoban chu Jishi lu 內務府造辦處記事錄) re­veal de­tails more­over, the dec­o­ra­tive de­tails and the pro­por­tions of about the com­pli­cated pro­cess through which Baodi Si’s the ar­chi­tec­tural el­e­ments are en­tirely dif­fer­ent from in­te­rior was furnished. On April 6, 1750 (the thir­teenth those on the gate at Pusa Ding. The scale of Baodi Si is day of the second­ month of the fifteenth year of Qian­ con­veyed only in a court doc­u­ment in the fi­nan­cial ac­ long’s reign), Qianlong issued a decree to ob­tain the di­ counts of the Imperial Household Department (Neiwu men­sions of Pusa Ding’s Mañjuśrī dugang as well as fu Zouxiao dang 內務府奏效檔) re­gard­ing its res­to­ra­ model draw­ings of all­ its Bud­dhist im­ages and ritual­ im­ tion be­gin­ning in 1770: a sur­vey of Baodi Si conducted ple­ments (jiang Pusa Ding Wenshu dugang dian dipan by that de­part­ment, which recorded its five-bay main chicun foxiang [fa?]qi dengxiang ju huayang 將菩薩頂 hall, five-bay rear tower­ , six-bay side hall, nine-bay du- 文殊都剛殿地盤尺寸佛像 [法?]器等項俱畫樣). This was gang 都剛 (a large as­sem­bly hall), six-bay side hall near un­doubt­edly pre­pa­ra­tory work re­quired for the build­ the front of the complex,­ three-bay hall of heavenly­ ing of Baodi Si. The term dugang is a Chi­nese trans­lit­er­ kings, three-bay mountain­ gate, bell and drum towers,­ a­tion of the Ti­betan word ’du khang, a large assem­ ­bly eigh­teen-bay side dor­mi­tory hall, twen­ty-four-bay cor­ hall within a mon­as­tery where monks gather for prayer ner dor­mi­tory hall, and six-bay guard build­ing, which rec­i­ta­tions. In the eigh­teenth-cen­tury Chi­nese im­pe­rial makes a total­ of eighty-seven bays.32 The map of Yihe gaz­et­teer, only one other mon­astery­ at Wutai Shan was Yuan de­picts only a single­ five-bay cen­tral hall as Baodi listed as hav­ing a dugang.34 It is not clear how dugang Si’s main build­ing, whereas the origi­­nal complex­ at Pusa halls at Wutai Shan ac­tu­ally followed the de­sign of a Ding would have fea­tured four halls on the cen­tral ax­is, Ti­betan ’du khang, but they cer­tainly re­fer to halls that three of which had only three bays.33 can ac­com­mo­date large mo­nas­tic as­sem­bly in the Ti­betan WEN-SHING CHOU • Imperial Apparitions: Manchu Buddhism and the Cult of Mañjuśrī 145

Fig. 4. Detail of Fig. 3. tra ­di­tion. Since Man­chu Bud­dhism was in large part the a ho­mo­phone for “im­mea­sur­able (wuliang 無量),” and practice­ of Buddhism­ in the Manchu­ language­ follow­ ing­ these are the Chinese­ transla­ tions­ of the names for the the Gelukpa tradi­ tion,­ according to Rölpé Dorjé, Qian­ Buddha­ of Immeasurable Light and the Buddha­ of Im­ long’s guru and state precep­ tor­ , the modell­ ing­ of a Man­ measurable Life (Skt. Amitābha and Amitāyus).36 For chu mon­as­tery on a Ti­betan as­sem­bly hall would have this reason,­ beamless halls, which only numbered­ about made perfect­ sense. During the same week, how­ev­er, a dozen in China and were con­sidered­ to have non-Chi­ Qianlong also or­dered the mea­sure­ment and con­struc­ nese or­i­gins, usu­ally carry the con­no­ta­tion for lon­gev­ity tion of a model of another­ hall at another­ mon­as­tery at and were therefore­ of­ten used for birth­day cele­ ­bra­tions. Wutai Shan, Xiantong Si’s Beamless Hall (wuliang dian Together, these records­ suggest­ that Qianlong was ini­ 無梁殿), presum­ ably­ also intended as a poten­ tial­ model tially looking to­ward dif­fer­ent tem­ples as po­ten­tial for the mon­as­tery of Baodi Si.35 The so-called beamless mod­els for his rep­li­ca. hall re­fers to a vaulted ma­sonry hall that does not re­ Qianlong’s decree of April 6, 1750, provided­ no fur­ quire the beams of tra­di­tional post-and-beam con­struc­ ther details­ about what Buddhist­ images­ and ritual­ im­ tion. The term “beamless” in Chi­nese (wuliang 無梁) is ple­ments were to be mod­elled, but re­cords of the weeks 146 ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART

Fig. 5. Stone Gate at Baodi Si, Xiangshan (1750), 1906–09. Photograph. From Ernst Boerschmann, Chinesische Architektur (Berlin: E. Wasmuth, 1926), plate 267. to fol­low sug­gest that the copying­ was carried­ out in 七寶) and Seven Royal Treasures (qizhen 七珍) from earnest.­ They also re­flect that the prin­cipal­ con­cern in Wutai Shan be repaired, and five days lat­er, he or­dered build­ing Baodi Si was the proper setting­ for rit­u­als two sets of rep­licas­ of the Five Treasures (wubao 五寶), rather than the im­i­ta­tion of any par­tic­u­lar ar­chi­tec­tural Seven Treasures, and Eight Treasures (babao 八寶) to­ fea­tures. On April 12 (the sixth day of the third month), gether with of­fer­ing ta­bles, all­ of which were brought Qianlong or­dered that the sets of Seven Treasures (qibao from Wutai Shan.37 The hall or mon­as­tery of or­i­gin was not spec­i­fied in this re­cord, al­though it is clear that they would have come from a Ti­betan Bud­dhist tem­ ple, pre­sumably­ Pusa Ding’s Mañjuśrī dugang, the only one of the two dugangs at Wutai Shan mentioned­ in the re­cords. As with the rest of the rit­ual par­a­pher­na­lia Qianlong sub­se­quently commis­ ­sioned, the two sets of rep­li­cas were prob­a­bly intended for spe­cific lo­ca­ tions—one for Baodi Si, and the other to be sent back to Wutai Shan. The var­i­ous sets of ritual­ offer­ ­ings, which would have been placed in front of the main icons, are stan­dard of­fer­ings within Ti­betan tra­di­tions that are ab­sent in their Han-Chinese­ coun­ter­parts, which would have fea­ tured only a much simpler­ set of Five Offerings (wugong 五供). Found through­out Qing impe­ rial­ tem­ples, these Fig. 6. Gate at en­trance to Pusa Ding, Wutai Shan. Photograph offer­ ­ings were either­ produced­ at the court or given as by Ani Lodro Palmo, ca.1985. gifts by high-ranking­ la­mas vis­it­ing from Tibet and WEN-SHING CHOU • Imperial Apparitions: Manchu Buddhism and the Cult of Mañjuśrī 147

Fig. 7. Stone Gate at Biyun Si, Xiangshan, 1748. Photograph by the au­thor, 2009.

Mongolia.38 Equally impor­ ­tant as their cul­tural and re­ enam ­el, and so forth of the offer­ ­ings and the frames and li­gious as­so­ci­a­tion to Ti­betan Bud­dhism were their im­ stands that were made for them, we know that the sets pe­rial con­no­ta­tions; for ex­am­ple, the pos­ses­sion of the that were produced­ for Baodi Si and repaired and possi­­ set of Seven Royal Treasures, which origi­­nated in pre- bly re­made for Pusa Ding would have looked very much Bud­dhist In­dia, was one of the de­fin­ing fea­tures of a like ex­tant ex­am­ples. The in­sis­tence on repairing and re­ wheel-turn­ing worldly sov­er­eign (cakravartin).39 Even producing a Ti­betan Bud­dhist rit­ual set­ting is con­sis­tent though in Buddhist­ tradi­ tions,­ the set of Seven Royal with an all­-con­sum­ing ef­fort at rec­ti­fy­ing and stan­dard­ Treasures later became­ ritual­ offer­ ­ings to the Buddha,­ iz­ing rit­ual and iconog­ ­ra­phy at Qianlong’s court, in they still carried­ with them impe­ rial­ conno­ ta­ ­tions and each case of which an Indo-Tibet­ ­an, rather than a Han- were reg­u­larly used to fur­nish im­pe­rial chap­els, es­pe­ Chi­nese mod­el, was followed.40 A sim­i­lar at­tempt to cially dur­ing the Qing dy­nas­ty. Such of­fer­ings—some of stan­dardize­ and reintroduce Indo-Tibetan­ ritual­ and which are still in their origi­­nal lo­ca­tions, and many ico­nog­ra­phy can be ob­served here. more of which were looted and sold, and are today­ scat­ Still, despite­ the fact that these of­fer­ings were so tered in museum­ col­lec­tions around the world—have by ubiq­ui­tous and nearly syn­on­y­mous with Qianlong-era now become­ vi­sual hallmarks­ of Buddhism­ in the Qian­ Bud­dhism, what we can glean from the records­ is an long reign (e.g., Fig. 8). Thanks to re­cords from the Im­ in­sis­tence on rep­li­cat­ing and repairing the par­tic­u­lar perial Household Department that describe­ details­ sets of rit­ual of­fer­ings at Pusa Ding. Again on April 26, about the mate­ ri­ al,­ col­or, pat­tern, and precise­ type of Qianlong or­dered two sets of rep­licas­ of Pusa Ding’s 148 ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART

Fig. 8. Offerings of Seven Royal Treasures (top reg­is­ter) and Eight Treasures on dis­play at Treasure Gallery, Palace Museum, Beijing. Photograph by the author­ , 2008.

man­dala of­fer­ings, and var­i­ous of­fer­ing ta­bles and of­ tinctly im­pe­rial Bud­dhist iden­tity cen­tered on the de­ity fer­ing bowls, to­gether with elab­o­rately designed sets of Mañjuśrī. Available sources did not spell out Qianlong’s Five Sense Offerings (wuyugong 五欲供), and Eight Of- ap­pro­pri­a­tion of Wutai Shan be­yond rit­ual ef­fi­ca­cy, but ferings (bagong 八供); and one each of these complete­ the per­sis­tent cen­tral­ity of Mañjuśrī’s vi­sion cult be­ sets, when finished,­ was to be placed at Baodi Si and the comes apparent in his subse­ quent­ projects.­ other brought back to Wutai Shan’s Pusa Ding.41 Qian­ long’s con­cern for the pre­ci­sion of the rit­ual set­ting can Baoxiang Si: Staging an Apparition also be seen in his fre­quent in­struc­tions that the sets be ver­i­fied and ­then au ­ti­cated by Rölpé Dorjé. Together, the After Qianlong’s pil­grim­age to Wutai Shan in 1761, the nu­mer­ous re­cords of pro­duc­tion un­der­taken within a twen­ty-sixth year of his reign, his at­ten­tion shifted from pe­riod of three weeks in­di­cate that not only were the the realm of rit­ual and ar­chi­tec­ture to the ap­pro­pri­a­tion tem­ple ar­chi­tec­ture and its in­te­rior fur­nish­ings, cloth of a famed icon: an im­age of Mañjuśrī on a li­on. This hang­ings, stream­ers, im­ages, of­fer­ings, and rit­ual im­ trip—Qianlong’s third visit to Wutai Shan, and the sec­ ple­ments to be rep­li­cated whole­sale, but also that this ond time he went there with his mother—co­ in­ cided­ rep­li­ca­tion pro­cess was an oc­casion­ to make the origi­­ with the em­press dow­a­ger’s sev­en­ti­eth birth­day and nal more per­fect, and the two sites more pre­cisely and Qianlong’s own fif­ti­eth birth­day.43 The pilgrims­ were per­fectly con­gru­ent. As Patricia Berger as­tutely noted greeted with ap­pro­pri­ate fan­fare, in­clud­ing the per­for­ with regard to Qianlong’s rep­li­cas of Inner Asian tem­ mance of a six-part drama presented in honor of the ples as well as his copying­ of pre­vi­ous paint­ings and dou­ble birth­day cel­e­bra­tion.44 At Shuxiang Si, the Tem­ icons, ev­ery act of copying­ re­in­ter­prets and revises­ the ple of Mañjuśrī’s Image (Fig. 9), Qianlong was awe­ orig­i­nal, such that “the orig­i­nal was also forced to live struck with the tem­ple’s widely re­vered name­sake im­age up to the ex­pec­ta­tions of the copy.”42 As the first Man­ of Mañjuśrī on a lion,­ a sculpted figure­ that es­pe­cially chu mon­astery­ to be built from the ground up, Baodi Si attracted pil­grims from Tibet and Mongolia and that re­lied on the pre­cise trans­ferring­ and perfecting of Pusa still sur­vives to­day in its repainted and re­stored form Ding’s rit­ual set­ting to cre­ate a fa­mil­iar al­beit dis­ (Fig. 10). Qianlong was moved to make at least two WEN-SHING CHOU • Imperial Apparitions: Manchu Buddhism and the Cult of Mañjuśrī 149

ca­tion with the Chi­nese clas­si­cal tra­di­tion of gen­tle­ manly cul­ti­va­tion. By con­trast, here his at­ten­tion was turned to­ward the sin­gle icon and to cap­tur­ing its true trace with his own hand. According to records­ from the Imperial Workshop for Carvings and Paintings, known as Ruyi guan 如意舘 (Wish-Fulfilling Studio), one of the sketches en­tered the impe­ ­rial art col­lec­tion and was sub­ se­quently remounted sev­eral times over the next several­ years. While the sketch does not appear­ to have sur­vived, it sub­se­quently be­came the ba­sis for the build­ing of an even larger tem­ple next to Baodi Si. Qianlong’s orig­i­nal sketch was, according to his in­struc­tions in the col­o­phon of the sketch, enlarged­ and trans­ferred onto a stone stele.­ 47 In 1762, Qianlong or­dered a sculpted rep­lica of the im­age Fig. 9. Hall of Mañjuśrī, Shuxiang Si, Wutai Shan. Photograph based on the engrav­ ­ing from the stele,­ and asked Rölpé by the au­thor, 2009. Dorjé to de­sign a tem­ple to house this im­age.48 The tem­ ple, which he named Baoxiang Si, was built imme­ ­di­ately ad­ja­cent to Baodi Si on its west­ern side (see Fig. 13). It was com­pleted in 1767, and the stone stele bear­ing the en­grav­ing was placed next to it, al­though it and other ­ste­les were al­ready fallen by the early twenti­ ­eth cen­tury (Fig. 14).49 Court docu­ ments­ suggest­ that as soon as con­ struction­ was under­ way, Manchu­ la­mas were selected­ from the booi class and placed there. As early as 1763, only one year af­ter the build­ing project­ be­gan, the ­mon­as­tery had ex­panded to in­clude the ad­di­tion of sixty la­mas.50 What about this im­age so cap­ti­vated Qianlong? The icon at Shuxiang Si fea­tur­ing the im­age of Mañjuśrī on a lion has a complex­ gene­ ­al­o­gy. Shuxiang Si is located­ on the edge of the Taihuai village­ where ma­jor tem­ples, in­clud­ing Pusa Ding, are clus­tered. It was re­built in 1496 af­ter struc­tures from pre­ced­ing dy­nas­ties were burned to the ground. During the Ming and Qing dy­ nas­ties, it be­came a large, im­pe­ri­ally spon­sored mon­as­tery and un­der­went ma­jor ren­o­va­tions. Already a prominent pil­grim­age des­ti­na­tion and a re­cip­i­ent of im­pe­rial spon­ sor­ship, Shuxiang Si was fre­quently vis­ited by the Kangxi em­per­or, who wrote numer­ ­ous po­ems about the rem­ ark­ able char­ac­ter­is­tics of the im­age (faxiang zuiyi 法相最異) Fig. 10. Mañjuśrī on a li­on, Hall of Mañjuśrī, Shuxiang Si, and made very gen­er­ous do­na­tions for its res­to­ra­tion.51 Wutai Shan. Photograph by the author­ , 2015. Even though the mon­as­tery had al­ways been Chi­nese Bud­dhist in af­fil­i­a­tion, rather than Ti­betan Bud­dhist, it sketches of the image­ plus a lengthy inscrip­ ­tion while en became­ so re­vered among the Ti­betan and Mon­go­lian route back to Beijing.45 This was a rare ges­ture for an pop­u­la­tion that the Tümed Mongol­ prince Yéshé Dön­ emperor­ who wrote vo­lumi­ nously­ but was hardly drup (Ye shes don grub bstan pa’i rgyal mtshan, 1792– known for his own paintings.­ 46 Consider, for exam­ ­ple, 1855) authored a text on the hist­ory and en­vi­rons of that during­ Qianlong’s previ­ ous­ trips to Wutai Shan, he Shuxiang Si with the help of the emi­­nent Ti­betan Bud­ had ordered­ court offi­­cials Zhang Ruo’ai and Zhang dhist gram­mar­ian Ngawang Tendar of the Alasha ban­ Ruocheng to com­pose tra­di­tional land­scape paint­ings ner (A lag sha Ngag dbang bstan dar, 1759–1831).52 of a snowy scene, on which he wrote lengthy col­o­phons This Mon­go­lian lan­guage guidebook­ about the exalted (Figs. 11 and 12). They rep­re­sent a con­spic­u­ous iden­ti­fi­ im­age at Shuxiang Si was published and trans­lated into Fig. 11. Zhang Ruo’ai, Zhenhai Si, 1746. Colors on pa­per, 127.6 × 62.8 cm. Photograph pro­vided by the Palace Museum, Taipei. WEN-SHING CHOU • Imperial Apparitions: Manchu Buddhism and the Cult of Mañjuśrī 151

Fig. 14. Main Hall of Baoxiang Si. Photograph. From Ernst Boerschmann, Chinesische Architektur (Berlin: E. Wasmuth, 1926).

Ti­betan around 1813, attesting to the im­age’s pop­u­lar­ ity among Mon­gol and Ti­betan pil­grims. It is recorded in Rölpé Dorjé’s bi­og­ra­phy that be­fore he passed away at Wutai Shan in 1786, he led an assem­ ­bly of prayers­ in front of a mag­nif­i­cent im­age of Mañjuśrī in a great hall, and was joined by the em­peror­ . It is quite likely that the icon at Shuxiang Si was the very im­age men­tioned.53 When the Rus­sian dip­lo­mat Dmitri Pokotilov vis­ited Shuxiang Si in 1903, he credited the mon­as­tery’s sur­ vival well into the twenti­ ­eth cen­tury to the non­stop flow of do­na­tions from Mon­gol pil­grims at a time when do­ na­tions for all­ other mon­aster­ ­ies at Wutai Shan were Fig. 12. Zhang Ruocheng, Zhenhai Si, 1750. Colors on pa­per, dwin­dling, even though Shuxiang Si was never a Ti­betan 103.4 × 56.9 cm. Photograph provided­ by the Palace Museum, Bud­dhist mon­as­tery.54 Taipei. This im­age of Mañjuśrī at Shuxiang Si (Fig. 10) can be dated to 1496, less than a de­cade af­ter the main hall was erected (1489). In fact, what is referred­ to as an im­ age here and in the im­pe­rial re­cords (the Chi­nese word is xiang 像) prob­a­bly has existed for most of its histo­ ­ry, and ex­ists in the cur­rent ver­sion, as a sculp­tural group, com­posed of a cen­tral fig­ure of Mañjuśrī seated atop a lion da­is, flanked by the fig­ure of the Khotanese king as a li­on-tamer (lead­ing the lion by a leash), the youth pil­ grim Sudhana from the Gaṇḍavyūha chapter­ of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra, and several­ other atten­ ­dant fig­ures.55 The ico­nog­ra­phy of Mañjuśrī riding on a lion and ac­ companied by a lion-tamer can be traced back to the lost sacred­ icon at Pusa Ding / Zhenrong Yuan, the tem­ple that later be­came the model for Qianlong’s Baodi Si.56 Even though the origi­nal­ image­ from the Tang dynasty­ is no lon­ger extant,­ icon­ographic­ assemblies similar to what Fig. 13. Detail of Fig. 3, Boaxiang Si, Yihe Yuan Baqi is found at Shuxiang Si were popu­ lar­ in Dunhuang, Ja­ Bingying tu. pan, and at Wutai Shan itself from as early as the tenth centu­ ry­ , and even made its way to the fifteenth-century­ 152 ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART icon­ographic­ pantheon­ of Gyantse Kumbum in cen­tral iang Si, Mañjuśrī appeared in perfect­ form in the sky to a Tibet (Fig. 15).57 Surviving im­ages from Dunhuang, Ja­ frus­trated sculp­tor ex­pe­ri­enc­ing art­ist’s block.58 Appari­ pan, and cen­tral Tibet show that they share more or less tions, whose elu­sive guise is given tan­gi­ble form only the same ico­nog­ra­phy, with Mañjuśrī on a lion as the through mir­a­cle tales, have in­her­ently com­pli­cated and cen­tral de­i­ty, a Khotanese king as lion­ -tam­er, and the ex­tended ge­ne­al­o­gies. Mon­go­lian and Ti­betan re­cen­sions youth Sudhana as an atten­ ­dant dis­ci­ple. Even though the of the story provide­ more speci­ f­ics for this partic­ ­u­lar im­ icon­o­graphic or­i­gin of this sculptural­ group is still a mat­ age. In one account,­ when the deity­ instructed the sculptor­ ter of scholarly­ dis­pute, we know for certain­ that it be­ to make an im­age in his like­ness, the sculp­tor im­pro­vised came asso­ ­ci­ated with the cult of Wutai Shan; when and by grab­bing the nearest avail­­able dough in the mon­as­ wher­ever it appeared, these Mañjuśrī fig­ures harked back tery’s kitchen (it was nearly lunchtime)­ and molding­ it to and served as a synecdoche for Wutai Shan. Not unlike­ into the shape of the ap­pa­ri­tion’s head.59 The sculptor­ in the com­pe­ti­tion for rel­ics in me­di­e­val Chris­tian churches, an­other account,­ while hold­ing up a piece of barley­ bread mon­as­ter­ies within and be­yond Wutai Shan com­peted for as an of­fer­ing for the ma­jes­tic ap­pari­ ­tion in the sky, re­ own­er­ship of Mañjuśrī’s true pres­ence as manifested in ceived bless­ings from Mañjuśrī in the form of the bo­dhi­ the sculp­tural group in order­ to assert­ their central­ ­ity in satt­va’s per­fectly shaped coun­te­nance in the bread, and the pil­grim­age circuit.­ It appears­ that Shuxiang Si suc­ sub­sequently­ com­pleted the rest of the body to create­ a ceeded in its claim for the true pres­ence of the bo­dhi­ statue of ex­cep­tional beau­ty.60 Today, this image­ is still re­ sattva and maintained it from the Ming dy­nasty on­ward. ferred to as the “Buckwheat-dough-headed Mañjuśrī” in The sculp­tural group at Shuxiang Si ac­quired more Tibetan­ and Mongo­ ­lian sources (Tb. ’Jam dbyangs rtsam than its ico­nog­ra­phy from Pusa Ding/Zhenrong Yuan. mgo, Mong. Gulir terigütü manzusiri).61 Sure enough, According to the widely recounted or­i­gin tale of Shux­ dur­ing the 1983 res­to­ra­tion, it was dis­cov­ered that the

Fig. 15. Mañjuśrī on a Lion with Five At­ten­dants, main sculp­tural im­age in the fifteenth chapel,­ sec­ond floor of Gyantse Kumbum, Gyantse, Central Tibet, 15th cen­tu­ry. Photograph by the au­thor. WEN-SHING CHOU • Imperial Apparitions: Manchu Buddhism and the Cult of Mañjuśrī 153 head was really­ made from buckwheat,­ with clay fillings­ aware of the power of that image­ and its mirac­ ­u­lous or­ for holes cre­ated by res­i­dent mice.62 It is par­tic­u­larly in­ i­gins. Even though the stele at Baoxiang Si and the ter­est­ing that this pop­u­lar leg­end with “a grain of truth” sculp­tural group based on Qianlong’s orig­i­nal sketch is pre­served in Mon­go­lian and Ti­betan lan­guages, but is are ei­ther no lon­ger ex­tant or in­ac­ces­si­ble (as the hall not in­cluded in Chi­nese-lan­guage texts, fur­ther attesting hous­ing the sculptural­ group is currently­ in a veter­ ­ans’ to the fact that the pre­dom­i­nant pop­u­la­tions ven­er­at­ing re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion cen­ter contained within the walls of a the im­age were Mon­gols and Ti­bet­ans dur­ing the late mil­i­tary com­pound off-lim­its to the pub­lic), two sur­viv­ eigh­teenth and nineteenth cen­tu­ries. ing paint­ings and one textile­ from the same series­ of Even though the image’­ s perfect form, which artists rep­li­cas shed light on his in­ter­est in and ma­nip­u­la­tion of can only create through divine intervention, is a com­ the ap­pa­ri­tion’s many lives. As soon as he returned to mon trope for sacred­ im­ages or for any work of high Beijing in 1761, Qianlong ordered­ court painter Ding ar­tis­tic mer­it, var­i­a­tions of the tale res­o­nate most closely Guanpeng to make a large paint­ing based on his orig­i­ with that of the Tang dy­nasty Mañjuśrī on a lion made nal sketch. Documents from the Imperial Workshop re­ by the sculp­tor Ansheng, mod­elled af­ter an ap­pa­ri­tion at cord sev­eral paint­ings or­dered multi­ ­ple times through Zhenrong Yuan. In both tales of mi­rac­u­lous im­ages the year 1761.65 Two of the paint­ings, along with one of from Zhenrong Yuan and from Shuxiang Si, the bod­ hi­ Qianlong’s own sketches, as well as a closely related­ sattva comes to rescue­ the trou­bled ar­ti­san by manifest­ tex­tile gifted by the mother of Qianlong’s trusted of­fi­ ing his true form. Although the sculptural­ group at cial, en­tered Midian Zhulin 秘殿珠林, Qianlong’s cat­a­ Shuxiang Si has a dis­tinct lo­cal flavor reflecting theTi­ logue of re­ligious­ art. The two paint­ings and the tex­tile betan Bud­dhist pop­u­la­tion at Wutai Shan dur­ing the later are now in the collec­ ­tion of the National Palace Mu­ pe­ri­od, it can be con­sid­ered a true sub­sti­tute for the mi­rac­ seum in Taipei.66 Matching the in­scrip­tion on one of u­lous im­age from the Zhenrong Yuan sto­ry, made at a them to doc­u­ments from the Imperial Workshop, the time when the image­ from Zhenrong Yuan had long dis­ two paint­ings can be dated to the fourth and twelfth appeared. In fact, it was erected right around the time the months of the twen­ty-sixth year of Qianlong (i.e., 1761), Tang dy­nasty Mañjuśrī disappeared from Zhenrong re­spec­tively (Figs. 16 and 17).67 The ear­lier paint­ing is Yuan, dur­ing the Ming dynasty (no later than 1482), and made up of many small pieces of paper­ , suggesting that it soon earned its re­nown as the only “true im­age” of might have acted as a kind of large pre­pa­ra­tory paint­ing Mañjuśrī in the Taihuai val­ley of Wutai Shan.63 for the second­ paint­ing, which, as Ding notes in his colo­­ For pil­grims, the sculp­tural group at Shuxiang Si phon, took seven months to com­plete. there­fore be­came a sort of re­place­ment of the orig­i­nal one The three mon­u­men­tal im­ages are of sim­i­lar di­men­ at Pusa Ding, sat­is­fy­ing a thou­sand-year-old zeal for the sions, each measur­ ing­ about ten feet in height and five feet bo­dhi­satt­va’s true coun­te­nance. In the most au­thor­i­ta­tive in width. Except for some seals along the edges, the entire­ Ti­bet­an-lan­guage guide­book since the late-eigh­teenth length of each compo­ ­si­tion is occu­ ­pied by a sin­gle bo­dhi­ cen­tu­ry, com­piled by Rölpé Dorjé and his dis­ciples,­ many sattva on a lion in a highly unusual­ backgroundless void. stories from Chinese­ -language­ gazet­ teers­ were abbrevi­ Gone too are Mañjuśrī’s il­lus­tri­ous at­ten­dants, such as ated, whereas stories of the mi­rac­ulous­ im­ages of Sudhana and the Khotanese King, who had been an Mañjuśrī at Pusa Ding and Shuxiang Si were re­it­erated­ ­in­te­gral part of the mi­rac­u­lous im­age in rep­li­cas from in greater detail­ than available in the Chinese source Tibet to Japan. A de­tailed com­par­i­son of the two paint­ texts, attesting to their his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance for the Ti­ ings re­veals the many sub­tle, cal­cu­lated ad­just­ments betan and Mon­go­lian pop­u­la­tions, de­spite the fact that that were made between­ the painting­ done in the Shuxiang Si was not itself af­fil­i­ated with Ti­betan Bud­ fourth month and the paint­ing com­pleted in the twelfth dhism. Qianlong’s court was no doubt aware of the dis­ month, suggesting that the second­ paint­ing was in­deed tinction at the practiced level as well; in 1768, it was the a cor­rec­tion or mod­i­fiedver ­sion of the first. To make Chi­nese rit­ual setting­ of Five Offerings, not the elab­o­rate the mat­ters more in­trigu­ing, a third mon­u­men­tal im­ set­ting of a Sino-Tibetan­ Bud­dhist al­tar as recorded in age (Fig. 18), ren­dered in the me­dium of em­broidery­ the build­ing of Baodi Si, that were placed in the main by the mother­ , wife, and granddaugh­ ters­ of the court hall of the main al­tar at Baoxiang Si.64 of­fi­cial Qiu Yuexiu 裘曰脩 (1712–1773) as a gift to the em­per­or, en­tered the im­pe­rial col­lec­tion (for the Rituals of Transformation cata­ logue­ of which Qiu was one of the com­pilers),­ and was based closely on the earlier­ of the two paintings,­ Beyond his spon­ta­ne­ous ex­pe­ri­ence of awe be­fore the save per­haps for the fem­i­ni­za­tion of the bo­dhi­satt­va’s image­ of Mañjuśrī, Qianlong was no doubt deeply face.68 154 ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART

Fig. 17. Ding Guanpeng, Second paint­ing of Shuxiang Si’s Mañjuśrī on a li­on. 1761. Hanging scrolls. Ink and col­ors on Fig. 16. Ding Guanpeng, First paint­ing of Shuxiang Si’s pa­per, 297.3 × 159.1 cm. Photograph pro­vided by the Palace Museum, Taipei. Mañjuśrī on a lion.­ 1761. Hanging scrolls. Ink and col­ors on pa­per, 297.3 × 159.1 cm. Photograph pro­vided by the Palace Museum, Taipei. paint ­ings, the later paint­ing (Fig. 20) shows Mañjuśrī with a some­what angu­ ­lar, more elon­gated face, mak­ing Through these small but pro­found changes in the him look more hu­man; and the par­allel­ curves just portrayal­ of Mañjuśrī’s phys­i­og­nomy and at­tire, Qian­ be­low the bodhi­ satt­ va’­ s chin are replaced by a single­ long’s ma­nip­u­la­tion of a thou­sand-year-old lin­e­age of curve of a leaner face with a protrud­ ­ing chin. Whereas iconic pro­duc­tion be­comes clear. A con­sis­tent trans­for­ Mañjuśrī’s eye­lids in the ear­lier paint­ing are more closed, ma­tion of the figure­ from an ideal­ ­ized Chi­nese bo­dhi­ ev­er-so-slight­ly, gently down­cast with pu­pils un­dis­tin­ sattva to a “human­ ­ized” tan­tric ini­ti­ate sub­tly forges a guished from the iris­es, con­vey­ing the com­pas­sion­ate link between­ Wutai Shan’s famous­ icon with the em­ gaze for all ­sentient­ beings­ that can often­ be seen in ear­ peror him­self. While the earlier­ ver­sion (Fig. 19) bears lier de­pic­tions of Chi­nese bo­dhi­satt­vas, the eye­lids in the rather round face and softly rounded chin of a the later paint­ing ap­pear to be opened wider through ­bo­dhi­sattva fig­ure in Ming-dy­nasty Chi­nese Bud­dhist the heightened­ contrast­ between­ the dark pupils­ and the WEN-SHING CHOU • Imperial Apparitions: Manchu Buddhism and the Cult of Mañjuśrī 155

Fig. 19. Detail of Fig. 16.

Fig. 20. Detail of Fig. 17.

ligh­ter irises as well as the slight thicken­ ing­ of the upper­ eye­lids. These mod­i­fi­ca­tions cre­ate the im­pres­sion of an active­ human­ gaze, set off by a no­ticeably­ wider nose Fig. 18. Mother of court of­fi­cial Qiu Yuexiu, Shuxiang Si’s and thicker, more nat­ural,­ and less shaped eye­brows. In Mañjuśrī on a lion.­ Hanging scroll, embroi­ ­dery, 354 × 150.3 cm. the ear­lier paint­ing, bi­zarre snakes of hair fan out sym­ Photograph pro­vided by the Palace Museum, Taipei. met­ri­cally to either­ side of Mañjuśrī’s neck, while large- beaded earrings­ and strings of small pearls hang­ing down from his crown flare outward­ and flank a circle­ of stiff folds in the col­lar with equally un­convinc­ ing­ ani­ma­­ tion. This highly im­plau­si­ble but dra­matic up­per por­tion 156 ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART

Five Buddha­ crown in the first im­age looks like a crown worn by a de­ity or a priestly fig­ure, of­ten seen in de­pic­ tions of Mañjuśrī from the Ming dy­nasty on­ward, and is likely a more ac­curate­ depic­ tion­ of the Shuxiang Si image­ at the time. In con­trast, the crown in the second­ im­age is formed of dis­tinct flat pan­els re­ced­ing back as it en­cir­cles the bodhi­ ­satt­va’s head, more in keeping­ with a crown worn by ritual­ special­ ists­ or practi­ ­tion­ers dur­ ing a Tibetan­ Buddhist­ tantric­ rite. (A rit­ual crown worn by none other than the Qianlong emperor­ himself­ when he un­der­went tan­tric ini­ti­a­tions in 1780 dis­plays a sim­i­ lar de­sign, Fig. 21.) Atop the crown in the second­ im­age, Mañjuśrī’s pre­vi­ously unadorned­ top­knot is now adorned with a small gold im­age of a seated Amitabha Buddha­ and encircled by color­ ful­ gems set within gold “flames.” Embroidered im­ages of a seated Bud­dha Śākyamuni adorn two pen­dants that hang down from either­ side of the crown and over Mañjuśrī’s shoul­ders. The heavily cloaked bo­dhisattva­ in the first im­age un­ dergoes a change of season­ in the second­ image­ by wearing­ what appears­ to be a diaph­ a­ nous­ collar­ above an elabo­ rate­ chest plate dec­orated­ with net­ted beads, precious­ stones, and small gold plaques featur­ ing­ Bud­ dha images.­ Whereas the beaded chest plate of the first bodhi­ sattva­ features­ a single­ image­ of what appears­ to be Bud­dha Śākyamuni in an earth-touching­ ges­ture, the beaded chest plate of the second­ fea­tures twelve Bud­ dhas, most visi­bly­ a cosmic­ Buddha­ Vairocana (with hands held in the dharmacakra mu­dra posi­ ­tion) at the center­ of his net­ted chest plate (Fig. 22). The mod­ified­ Mañjuśrī is bedecked with Buddha­ im­ages from head to toe—numer­ ous­ golden Nirvana Bud­dhas in the crown,

Fig. 21. Gilded gold rit­ual crown with Five Directional Buddhas­ used by Qianlong in 1780. From Du Jianye, Yong- hegong: Palace of Harmony (Hong Kong: Yazhou yishu-Art Blooming Publ., 1995), 220. of the painting­ is reduced­ to still­ness and sim­plic­ity in the second­ painting,­ where the strings of pearls curv­ing out­ward are replaced by straight-hanging­ pen­dants of em­broidered­ cloth, and the bodhi­ satt­ va’­ s hair is now neatly tucked away be­hind an iden­ti­cal but smaller pair of ear­rings that also hang down­ward, in ac­cor­dance with the law of grav­ity and the deco­ rum­ of royal­ ty­ . Other features­ also mark a clear shift from an ide­al­ ized bodhi­ sattva­ fig­ure to a more “human­ ized”­ one. The Fig. 22. Detail of Fig. 17. WEN-SHING CHOU • Imperial Apparitions: Manchu Buddhism and the Cult of Mañjuśrī 157

Fig. 23. Ceremonial cos­tume for an im­pe­rial la­ma: Beaded col­lar and apron. From Du Jianye, Yonghegong: Palace of Harmony (Hong Kong: Yazhou yishu-Art Blooming Publ., 1995), 221.

in the jew­eled net, and on the pet­als of the lo­tus throne. ally re­in­forces the trans­for­ma­tive ca­pac­ity of tantric ritu­ Mañjuśrī’s lion,­ now posi­ ­tioned nearly sideways­ to re­ als to unite a human­ being­ with his Buddha­ hood.­ veal the length of its body, sports a matching col­lar and Yet other rep­re­sen­ta­tional and icon­o­graph­i­cal changes apron made of equally fine netted­ beads, jewels,­ and from the first to the sec­ond painting­ bring the bo­dhi­ bells, though (ap­pro­pri­ate­ly) with­out Bud­dha im­ages. sattva from an oth­er­worldly space to that of the viewer­ , Like the de­pic­tion of the rit­ual crown, these nets of beads fur­ther en­hanc­ing the hu­man-like qual­ity of Ding’s sec­ and plaques re­sem­ble those that would have been worn ond paint­ing. Judging from the pos­ture of the fig­ure by those un­der­go­ing im­por­tant Ti­betan Bud­dhist tan­tric and the sculp­ture’s cur­rent ap­pear­ance, it is most likely rites. The de­pic­tion is nearly iden­ti­cal to a con­tem­po­ra­ that Mañjuśrī balanced­ a ruyi scep­ter between­ his neous­ set preserved­ at the Yonghe Gong (Palace of Peace hands in the origi­nal­ sculpture,­ as he does now (Fig. 10). and Harmony) in Beijing (Fig. 23).69 The per­va­sive ap­ Mañjuśrī’s hands in Ding’s first painting­ are depicted pear­ance of mul­ti­ple Bud­dhas on the sec­ond bo­dhi­satt­va, in the same po­sition,­ with fin­gers curved slightly in­ just as on Tantric Bud­dhist crowns and chest plates, vi­su­ ward, al­beit with­out holding­ any imple­ ment.­ In Ding’s 158 ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART sec­ond paint­ing, how­ev­er, Mañjuśrī’s right arm and and Chi­nese ico­nog­ra­phy and his­tory­ . In light of the fact palm open up completely­ to abhaya mu­dra (gesture­ of that Qianlong him­self had un­der­gone tan­tric ini­ti­a­tion fear­less­ness/protec­ tion),­ and his left arm is placed on his rit­u­als (the im­ple­ments from some of which are still vis­ knee as though in a ges­ture of royal ease. The clar­i­fied ible,­ see Fig. 21, for exam­ ple),­ plus the wealth of textual­ mu­dra of the right hand as well as the palpa­ ble­ weight and visual­ ma­teri­ als­ produced­ at the Qing court that of the left hand rest­ing on the knee con­vey a pres­ence asserted his status­ as the cakravartin-bo­dhi­sattva in­car­ and imme­ di­ acy­ that is accen­ tu­ ­ated by the change in the nate, it would not be too far-fetched to see Ding’s sec­ li­on’s po­si­tion. Again, pos­si­bly fol­low­ing the sculpted ond paint­ing as a por­trayal of Qianlong him­self.71 image­ at Shuxiang Si, the lion in Ding’s first paint­ing The vital­ ­ity of ritual­ in Qing ruler­ ship­ has been at stands with its head turned upward­ and to the left. In the cen­ter of re­cent schol­ar­ship. Angela Zito, in her contrast­ to the dy­namic upper­ part of the paint­ing study of the grand sac­ri­fice—the most sig­nif­i­cant cer­e­ around the bodhi­ ­satt­va’s head and upper­ body discussed monial­ oc­casion­ for the Qing emper­ ors—showed­ how above, here the lion’­ s mane ap­pears in or­derly pat­terns, the perfor­ mance­ of ritual­ texts “make mani­fest”­ the neatly combed on his back. His head is turned away power of the heav­ens in hu­man affairs­ and the power of from the viewer­ , and his legs stand on free-float­ing lo­tus the past in the pres­ent, and argued­ that the em­per­or, by blos­soms, which de­mar­cate a self-enclosed, oth­er­worldly don­ning a va­ri­ety of cer­e­mo­nial robes, “em­bod­ied” his space. But in Ding’s second­ paint­ing, the lion faces for­ con­stit­u­en­cies.72 James Hevia an­a­lyzed Qing guest cer­e­ ward, its head and body are rotated­ clockwise­ to reveal­ mo­nies and found that rit­uals­ of inclu­ sion­ (guest / host a semi-profile­ view, and its paws are planted squarely rit­u­als) and trans­for­ma­tion (ini­ti­a­tion rit­u­als) were ways on the ground. This per­spec­tive (com­bin­ing fron­tal and to “en­compass­ and in­clude others­ in their own cos­mol­o­ semi-pro­file views), im­plau­si­ble for a three-di­men­sional gies.”73 The painting­ of a revered­ sculptural­ icon in the form, as­serts a pic­to­rial in­de­pen­dence from its sculp­tural guise of an im­pe­rial tan­tric ini­ti­ate re­it­er­ates the pri­ or­igin.­ Unlike Ding’s first paint­ing, in which the up­per macy of the ritual­ re­en­act­ment as a cate­ ­gory in the phys­ por­tion fea­tures more movement­ than the lower portion,­ i­cal and meta­phys­i­cal ar­tic­u­la­tion of Qianlong’s im­pe­rial the lower por­tion of his second­ paint­ing be­comes the ac­ iden­ti­ty, as does the whole­sale rep­lica of Pusa Ding’s tive cen­ter of the com­po­si­tion: the bo­dhi­satt­va’s foot, rit­ual space in the building­ of Baodi Si. with the an­kle now ex­posed, presses against a tilted lo­tus But what about Ding’s sec­ond paint­ing, which ex­ blos­som on a vi­brantly or­nate sad­dle, while il­lu­sion­is­tic plic­itly and ex­clu­sively establishes Qianlong’s iden­ti­ty? rib­bons, bells, feather­ -orna­ ­ment, hair, and flames all ­flut­ After all­, the face of the figure­ in the painting­ does not ter in gusts of wind that do not af­fect the up­per portion­ look any­thing like that of Qianlong’s, as we have come of the paint­ing. Here, the li­on’s frontal,­ an­imat­ ­ed, and to know so well from a plethora­ of Castiglionesque grounded stance puts the bodhi­ ­sattva’­ s calm but hu­man paint­ings of him. Considering Ding’s painted “copies”­ and al­most confron­ ­ta­tional pres­ence in the here-and-now in light of their mul­ti­ple or­i­gins go­ing back to the Tang- right into the space of the viewer­ . dy­nasty sculp­ture at Zhenrong Yuan, and mem­o­ries of All to­geth­er, these mod­i­fi­ca­tions mark a sub­stan­tial the mi­rac­u­lous origi­­nal(s) that are kept alive in count­ on­to­log­i­cal shift—from the por­trayal of the mi­rac­u­lous less tex­tu­al, vi­su­al, and oral it­er­a­tions in the Chi­nese, sculp­tural im­age of Mañjuśrī, with all­ of the earthly Ti­bet­an, and Mon­go­lian lan­guages, the self-ref­er­en­tial­ trap­pings and emo­tive tran­scen­dence of a Ma­ha­yana ity of Qianlong’s in­ter­ven­tions be­comes clear: if in this Chi­nese bodhisattva fig­ure, to the in­ti­ma­tion of di­vin­ity par­tic­u­lar re­en­act­ment Ding Guanpeng played the role in a hu­man body through rit­ual trans­for­ma­tion. The of the skilled ar­ti­san who helped make man­i­fest the idea that a per­son can be rit­u­ally transformed into a re­ earthly form of Mañjuśrī, then Qianlong’s sketch is the cep­ta­cle of the divine­ is a hall­mark of Ti­betan tantric Bud­ me­di­at­ing force—that is, the di­vine in­ter­ven­tion of dhism;70 that the person­ car­ries the trap­pings of roy­alty Mañjuśrī that prompted and guided the im­age-mak­ing fur­ther marks the fig­ure of a tan­tric cakravartin (a uni­ pro­cess.74 In Ding Guanpeng’s paint­ings, Mañjuśrī is versal,­ enlight­ ened­ ruler­ , whose reign brings peace and there­fore not only the subject­ but also the agent of the jus­tice). In the mod­i­fi­ca­tions of the orig­i­nal icon, Ding’s depic­ ­tion, and that agent is none other than Qianlong sec­ond paint­ing there­fore su­per­im­poses the es­o­ter­ic, him­self. Ding’s paint­ings thus take the ap­po­si­tional re­la­ and spe­cif­i­cally Ti­bet­an, tra­di­tion of rit­ual transformation tion­ship be­tween the emperor­ and the bodhi­ ­sattva to a and an In­dian ideal of Bud­dhist king­ship onto a Chinese­ level of un­prec­e­dented spec­i­fic­i­ty. Acting as a ref­er­ent in Bud­dhist icon with a pop­u­lar Mon­go­lian cult fol­low­ing, the dou­ble sense of the word (one who re­fers and one vi­su­ally and met­a­phor­i­cally reenacting the bo­dhi­satt­ who is re­ferred), Qianlong im­plied a con­nec­tion with va’s hy­brid iden­tity through Indo-Ti­bet­an, Mongo­ ­lian, Mañjuśrī be­yond re­sem­blance. The stag­ing of him­self WEN-SHING CHOU • Imperial Apparitions: Manchu Buddhism and the Cult of Mañjuśrī 159 as a new “ap­pa­ri­tion” of Shuxiang Si’s mi­rac­u­lous In fact, it must be con­clud­ed, in light of the fact that sev­ ­im­age, and a refashion­ ing­ of the image­ as a royal tan­ eral ex­tant two-di­men­sional and three-di­men­sional rep­ tric ini­ti­ate—as in the case of Ding’s sec­ond painting—­ li­cas more closely conformed to one anoth­ ­er, that Ding’s allowed Qianlong to em­body the bo­dhi­sattva of Wutai sec­ond paint­ing was an even more striking­ depar­ ­ture, Shan, and thereby also per­fect it. Much like the repa­ ­ra­ one that is ex­clu­sively asserted through the two-di­men­ tion and repli­ ca­ tion­ of ritual­ offer­ ings­ at Pusa Ding, the sional me­dium of the paint­ing. copying­ of works mod­eled after­ Qianlong’s sketch was a Ding’s in­scrip­tion de­scribed Mañjuśrī’s coun­te­nance reclaiming of the own­ership­ of Wutai Shan; how­ev­er, un­ with phrases that evoke the imag­ ­is­tic met­a­phors of like the wholesale­ rep­lica of a temple­ in­teri­ ­or, this was a Chan Bud­dhism—“ra­di­ant with the sub­tle glow of wis­ far more succinct­ asser­ ­tion, one that reached the diverse­ dom, [the reflection of] the moon that seals the river” pi­ous con­stit­u­en­cies of Shuxiang Si’s mi­rac­u­lous im­age. (yuanguang moshi, ruyue yinchuan 圓光默識。如月印 Forestalling any possi­ ­bil­ity that this nu­anced sub­sti­ 川)—suggesting that the true coun­te­nance of Mañjuśrī tution­ might go unde­ tect­ ed,­ Ding’s unusu­ ­ally lengthy in­ ex­ists be­yond the or­di­nary ex­ter­nal phys­i­cal ap­pear­ scription­ on the second­ paint­ing makes explicit­ that by ance. It fol­lows that to make a true copy of the di­vine, “rely­ ing­ on the heavenly­ brush [of the emper­ ­or],” he one must not only pains­tak­ingly copy the ex­ter­nal fea­ was able­ to com­plete Mañjuśrī’s golden coun­te­nance. tures but must also dis­cern the hid­den quali­­ties. In other Ding then compares­ himself­ to the ar­tisans­ who carved words, true like­ness in the Buddhist­ con­text has to go the san­dal­wood Bud­dha com­mis­sioned by the In­dian be­yond the or­di­nary ex­ter­nal ap­pear­ance. If Ding’s own King Udayana, but at­tributes­ the in­ad­e­quacy of the fi­nal con­fes­sion of in­ad­equacy­ in his in­scrip­tion is more than re­sult to his own lack of in­sight.75 That Qianlong’s di­ the false mod­esty of an impe­ ­rial sub­ject, per­haps it is an vine in­ter­ven­tion is anal­o­gous to the famed mi­rac­u­lous ac­knowl­edg­ment of his strug­gle to rec­on­cile these two im­age of the san­dal­wood Bud­dha fur­ther sealed the lev­els of re­sem­blance, which would help explain­ the iden­tity of a Bud­dhist king.76 This iden­ti­fi­ca­tion may strange, un­set­tling qual­ity of Ding’s sec­ond painting.­ also ex­plain why Mañjuśrī’s en­tou­rage was elim­i­nated in If, in­deed, Ding’s sec­ond paint­ing spe­cif­i­cally por­ Qianlong’s cop­ies: in this new guise of emperor­ as bo­ trays Qianlong, the im­per­son­ated di­vin­ity com­pli­cates dhi­satt­va, these mytho-his­tor­i­cal fig­ures from an­other what was orig­i­nally an “im­i­ta­tion (fang 仿),” as it was time and place are no lon­ger rel­e­vant. Furthermore, if in called, of the sculptural­ im­age of Mañjuśrī at Shuxiang the eighth century­ Zhenrong Yuan became­ a locus­ of Si, and places it into the rank of Qianlong-as-bo­dhi­ pil­grimage­ on ac­count of a mi­racu­ lous­ icon of Mañjuśrī, sattva paint­ings (Fig. 24).78 Among the best-known vi­ it stayed as the center­ of pilgrim­ ­age in the Qing despite­ sual ex­am­ples of Qianlong’s claims to bodhisattvahood, the loss of its namesake­ icon. What need is there for an these paint­ings pres­ent the for­mal likeness of Qianlong’s icon when it is the very abode of the per­sonal em­bodi­ ment of the bodhi­ ­satt­va, the Mañjughosa em­per­ors? Qianlong’s se­ries of enact­ ments­ reveals­ not a simple­ as­ ser­tion of his iden­tity as Mañjuśrī vis-à-vis his Ti­betan and Mon­golian­ con­stit­u­ents, but his role as a benev­ ­o­ lent, uni­versal­ Bud­dhist ruler over the vast do­mains of the im­age’s sway. By appropriating Wutai Shan’s most emblem­ ­atic icon, Qianlong inserted him­self in the place of both the ap­pa­rition­ and the icon. Even if we under­ ­stand the impli­ ­ca­tions of this trans­for­ma­tion from an ide­al­ized bo­dhi­sattva to a hu­ man­ized one, who was re­sponsi­ ­ble for it? Under whose com­mand were all­ the sub­tle ad­just­ments ev­i­dent in Ding’s sec­ond paint­ing com­plet­ed? Was it based on a di­ rective­ issued by Qianlong himself,­ or was it Ding’s own de­cision­ to de­part from Qianlong’s sketch? While we may never know the an­swer, records­ from the Imperial Workshop re­veal that Ding was asked to use sev­eral sources for his sec­ond paint­ing, which took seven months Fig. 24. The Qianlong Emperor as Bodhisattva Mañjuśrī, to com­plete: two sketches by Qianlong, Ding’s ear­lier Thangka, col­ors on cloth. The Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, paint­ing, and, most di­rect­ly, a wax model of Mañjuśrī.77 D.C. Photograph pro­vided by the Freer Gallery of Art. 160 ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART face (based on a sub­dued modell­ ing­ technique­ of the Je­ with a vaulted dome in the in­te­ri­or.84 Its ma­jes­tic dou­ble suit painters)­ against a depic­ ­tion of him in the Tibetan­ friezes of glazed green-and-yel­low tiles be­low the eaves, Bud­dhist icono­­graphic guise of the Mañjughoṣa em­ which can be seen from afar, still im­parts a clear sense of per­or at the center of a host of de­i­ties and teach­ers in a ar­chi­tec­tural dis­tinc­tion. According to re­cords from the man­dalic for­ma­tion.79 Instead of this stark juxta­ ­po­si­ Palace Workshops of the Imperial Household Depart­ tion of two modes of repre­ sen­ ta­ tion,­ Ding’s painting­ ment from 1750 that requested the di­men­sions of Wutai con­veys the em­per­or-as-bo­dhi­sattva iden­tity through Shan’s own beamless hall, the brick bar­rel-arch con­struc­ the sub­tle ma­nip­u­la­tion of a sa­cred icon.80 tion of Baoxiang Si was inspired­ by none other than the But the sig­nif­i­cance of clas­si­fy­ing Ding’s sec­ond afore­men­tioned hall in Xiantong Si, though with one im­ paint­ing as a por­trayal of Qianlong-as-bo­dhi­sattva lies por­tant dif­fer­ence: a square plan instead­ of the narrow­ be­yond its em­ploy­ment of a dif­fer­ent pic­to­rial strat­e­gy: rect­an­gu­lar one at Xiantong Si. Was Baoxiang Si a fuller its very exis­ ­tence poses a challenge­ to the commonly­ re­al­i­za­tion of Baodi Si, in that it fulfilled Qianlong’s per­ceived no­tion that Qianlong’s iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with the wishes to re-cre­ate a beamless hall from Wutai Shan? Mañjuśrī was a pro­ject of self-fash­ion­ing that he per­ How was this an im­prove­ment upon the orig­i­nal? formed pri­mar­ily within the Indo-Tibetan­ eso­ ­teric Bud­ As men­tioned ear­li­er, the Chi­nese term for “beam­ dhist con­text.81 At least eight ex­tant Ti­betan thangkas less” is a ho­mo­phone of the word “im­mea­sur­able.” fea­tur­ing the like­ness of Qianlong’s face that are found Beamless halls are thus of­ten as­so­ci­ated with the wish in Ti­betan Bud­dhist in­ner sanc­tu­ar­ies of the court and for lon­gev­ity and are there­fore ap­pro­pri­ate for birth­day at the court of the Dalai­ La­mas and Pan­chen Lamas in cel­e­bra­tions. Baoxiang Si’s 1767 stele con­firms this pur­ Tibet, to­gether with refer­ ­ences and addresses­ to Qian­ pose, explaining that Qianlong’s pri­mary in­ten­tion for long as the wheel-turn­ing Mañjughoṣa em­peror in re-cre­at­ing Shuxiang Si at nearby Xiangshan was to ­Ti­betan and Mon­go­lian sources, have led scholars­ to re­ save his el­derly mother from the toil of jour­neys to gard the ef­fi­cacy of Qianlong’s self-fash­ion­ing within a Wutai Shan, which is in Shanxi province­ 200 miles Ti­betan Bud­dhist (and spe­cif­i­cally Gelukpa) sec­tar­ian south­west of Beijing.85 There have been many such sur­ and courtly context.­ 82 But this is subject­ to circu­ ­lar rea­ rogate­ Wutai Shans in the long history­ of pil­grim­ages to son­ing, as the as­sump­tion that Qianlong only ac­cepted that moun­tain, but per­haps none be­fore that had been and pro­moted his bo­dhi­satt­va-in­car­nate iden­tity to­ward built for a sin­gle per­son.86 As an act of filial­ pi­ety to­ Mon­gols and Ti­bet­ans was built on a se­lec­tive use of ward the em­press-dow­a­ger, this re-cre­a­tion was ef­fec­ Ti­ ­betan Bud­dhist ma­te­ri­als.83 The mul­ti­plic­ity of sources tively used as such, since Qianlong did not travel to in Qianlong’s ap­pro­pri­a­tion of Wutai Shan’s nu­mi­nous Wutai Shan be­tween his 1761 visit and 1781, four years icon, and its pur­pose in the es­tab­lish­ment of a Man­chu after­ his mother had passed away. The use of Shuxiang mon­as­tery, how­ev­er, re­veals a much more complex­ pic­ Si for birth­day cele­­brations,­ as expressed on the 1767 ture that goes beyond­ the ap­pease­ment of the empire’­ s stele,­ suggests­ the use of the tem­ple in a per­sonal and fa­ par­tic­u­lar eth­nic con­stit­u­en­cies: in­deed, Qianlong’s self- mil­ial context,­ which also con­trib­uted to a strength­ened fash­ion­ing of himself­ as the Mañjuśrī of Wutai Shan was sense of Man­chu im­pe­rial kin­ship and identi­ ty­ . However, based on a seam­less bring­ing to­gether of mul­ti­ple vi­sual in or­der to legit­ ­i­mize this re-crea­ tion,­ Qianlong launched and de­vo­tional tra­di­tions, in­clud­ing In­di­an, Chi­nese, Ti­ into a lengthy ex­plana­ tion­ of the lo­ca­tion of his newly bet­an, and Mon­go­lian, un­der a sin­gle im­pe­rial do­main created­ mon­astery­ in rela­ tion­ to Wutai Shan, here re­ around the em­peror him­self. ferred to by its alter­ nate­ name, Qingliang (Clear and If Ding’s re­vised sec­ond paint­ing por­trays Qianlong Cool). On spe­cif­i­cally why this re-cre­a­tion was both nec­ in the guise of a Tantric initi­ ­ate, fash­ioned af­ter Qian­ es­sary and le­git­i­mate, the stele re­cords: long’s sketch of Wutai Shan’s cel­e­brated Chi­nese Bud­ dhist icon of Mañjuśrī, how was this trans­lated onto the Mañjuśrī has long dwelled in this worldly realm, sculp­tural form? Even though we no lon­ger have any but has ex­clu­sively manifested and preached at ev­i­dence to­day as to what the Baoxiang Si sculp­tural Qingliang, or the Clear and Cool Mountains . . . ​ group looked like, the ex­te­rior of the ru­ins of the main Qingliang is located­ to the west of the cap­i­tal, and hall of Baoxiang Si (Fig. 14) of­fers fur­ther in­sights into Xiangshan is also to the west of the capi­­tal; in the pos­si­ble rit­ual or sym­bolic di­men­sions suggested rela­ tion­ to Qingliang, Xiangshan is still posi­ tioned­ above. The main hall itself, called Xuhua zhi ge 旭華 to its east; in re­la­tion to In­dia, Qingliang and 之閣, was constructed as a beamless hall, featur­ ing­ a Xiangshan are both in the easterly­ direc­ tion.­ square plan with five arched open­ings on each of the Therefore, how can one say these two mountains­ four sides in the exte­ ri­ or­ , and proba­ bly­ a circu­ lar­ plan are not the same, or that they are differ­ ent?­ . . . ​ WEN-SHING CHOU • Imperial Apparitions: Manchu Buddhism and the Cult of Mañjuśrī 161

Mañjuśrī can be seen with the rise and fall of ti­ty. The con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous im­pe­rial gaz­et­teer of Beijing, phe­nom­e­na; he man­i­fests and trans­forms with­out Qinding Rixia Jiuwen, specifies the struc­ture of the limit . . . ​So, why would he in­sist on Qingliang as main hall as square on the out­side and round on the in­ his field of en­light­en­ment, and not know that side (waifang neiyuan 外方内圓).89 Designed to house Xiangshan can also be? . . . ​In the past, we have the famed image­ of Mañjuśrī, from Wutai Shan, and paid obei­sance to Mañjuśrī at Wutai to pray for therefore­ as the very structure­ that Berger suggests­ is re­ [his] bless­ings. But Qingliang is more than a ferred to as a “manda­ la”­ in the Tibetan­ in­scrip­tion90 Ba­ thou­sand li away from the capi­­tal. Being car­ried in oxiang Si’s main hall likely also evoked in form the an im­pe­rial car­riage, I have only made it there three struc­ture of an Indo-Tibetan­ man­da­la. After all,­ none of times. But Xiangshan is only thirty li away from the ex­tant beamless halls from be­fore or af­ter Baoxiang the capi­­tal, so we can go year af­ter year. Therefore Si is square in plan with sym­met­ri­cal vaulted open­ings. with the aspi­ ­ra­tion for the flourishing of the Bud­ If the main hall of Baoxiang Si were a sim­ple copy of dhist faith for ten thou­sand years from this point the beamless hall at Wutai Shan or elsewhere,­ the con­ on, the tem­ple at Xiangshan was ini­tially built.87 cen­tric square and cir­cu­lar plan would have been un­ neces­ sary.­ This in­ten­tional mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the orig­i­nal Qianlong, re­peat­edly ac­knowl­edg­ing that Mañjuśrī into a square/cir­cu­lar struc­ture sug­gests a sym­bolic sig­ is un­bounded by place and form, is par­a­dox­ically­ in­ nif­i­cance and/or rit­ual func­tion be­yond the usual ap­par­ vested in locat­ ­ing and relocating the tangi­ ­ble ma­te­rial ent as­so­ci­a­tion of beamless halls with lon­gev­ity and body that can best serve as a re­cep­ta­cle for Mañjuśrī. In birth­day cel­e­bra­tions. re-cre­at­ing the im­age of Mañjuśrī from Shuxiang Si, Representations of man­da­las in the Indo-Ti­betan Qianlong sought to re-cre­ate the en­tire tem­ple, and by tra­di­tion, which are ideal­ ­ized mod­els of the cosmos­ with ex­ten­sion, to rep­li­cate the en­tire moun­tain range of a prin­ci­pal power or de­ity re­sid­ing at its cen­ter, are used Wutai in Xiangshan, just outside­ the capi­­tal for the ease for con­se­cra­tion rit­u­als and med­i­ta­tive vi­su­al­i­za­tions. of fre­quent ven­er­a­tion. The au­then­tic­ity of the im­age, as Therefore, when a temple­ is designed after­ a manda­ ­la, a synecdoche for Wutai Shan, rests on two seem­ingly it implies the estab­ ­lish­ment of a ground for con­se­cra­ con­tra­dic­tory claims: first, ñMa juśrī is un­con­fined by tion.91 Regardless of what the sculpted image­ looked fixed no­tions of place and form; and, sec­ond, Mañjuśrī like and whether the space in­deed served rit­ual func­ is right­fully in a specific­ place (Xiangshan), and precisely­ tions, the fact that a mandalic­ or manda­ ­la-like struc­ture in a spe­cific form (the im­age of Mañjuśrī at Baoxiang Si) was built to house the sculpted replica­ of the Mañjuśrī be­cause of its spe­cific loca­ ­tion in rela­ ­tion to In­dia and its on a lion traced by Qianlong’s hand under­ ­scores the sta­tus as a copy in re­la­tion to the orig­inal.­ 88 sym­bolic po­tency of the newly re-cre­ ated­ sculp­tural icon. It is precisely­ in the am­bi­gu­ity caused by these two Furthermore, as noted above, the Ti­betan biog­ ra­ phy­ of claims that Qianlong was ­able to derive­ his own iden­tity Rölpé Dorjé recorded that the em­peror en­gaged in many as a Mañjuśrī-in­car­nate and Man­chu Bud­dhist rul­er. rit­ual ini­ti­a­tions re­lated to Mañjuśrī at Wutai Shan, Carefully locat­ ­ing his court east of India,­ closer to Wutai and Qianlong fa­mously oc­cu­pied the cen­tral po­si­tion Shan, and closer yet to rep­li­cas of them than the Da­lai as Mañjuśrī in afore­men­tioned thangka paint­ings. The Lama in Lhasa, Qianlong asserted explic­ ­itly what had thangkas of Qianlong as Mañjuśrī ­were composition­ only been a tacit con­nec­tion for pre­vi­ous Man­chu rul­ ally modelled ­after the refuge field (Tib. tshogs zhing) ers: that the suc­ces­sive Man­chu em­per­ors are the wheel- paintings, which were­ often used as the basis of visual­ turn­ing in­car­na­tes of the bo­dhi­sattva Mañjuśrī. The ization practices for the devotion to one’s guru. Some in­scriptions­ at Baoxiang Si do not elabo­ ­rate on this schol­ars have even pro­posed that these paint­ings also asso­ ­ci­a­tion, nor do they men­tion the es­tab­lish­ment of a served as tools for vi­su­al­iz­ing Qianlong as a de­ity in the Man­chu Bud­dhist mon­as­tery. But the struc­ture of the course of med­i­ta­tive train­ing prac­tices.92 Finally, the main hall itself hints at the possi­ ­bil­ity that both Qian­ Qianlong em­peror built Yuhua Ge 雨花閣 (Pavilion of long’s rhe­tor­i­cal word­play that jus­ti­fiedBaoxiang Si’s ef­ Rainy Flowers) in the im­perial­ palace­ as an ini­tia­tion­ fi­cacy and his bo­dhi­satt­va-in­car­nate sta­tus were not only hall in 1750 and Pule Si 普樂寺 (Temple of Universal pic­to­ri­al­ized but also an­i­mated in ar­chi­tec­tural terms. Joy) in Chengde in 1766–67 as a man­dala of the Bud­ If Ding Guanpeng achieves the em­per­or-as-bo­dhi­sattva dhist de­ity Samvara. They were designed by Rölpé Dorjé, por­trayal of Qianlong by depicting a royal tantric­ ini­ who gave Qianlong the tan­tric ini­ti­a­tion into the man­ ti­ate in the guise of Wutai Shan’s cel­e­brated icon of dala of Samvara back in 1745. Our knowl­edge of these Mañjuśrī, at Baoxiang Si, it is the archi­ tec­ tural­ restaging var­i­ous con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous ac­tiv­i­ties al­lows a cer­tain de­ of the sculpted im­age that im­bues it with the same iden­ gree of specu­ ­lation­ about the little­ -known struct­ure of 162 ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART

Baoxiang Si: when fur­ther ev­i­dence be­comes avail­­able, a copy of the Manchu­ canon that was finished­ in 1790.95 it will not be surpris­ ing­ to discover­ that a three-dimen­­ The Man­chu canon,­ pro­duced through transla­ ­tion from sion­al, archi­ ­tec­tural man­dala that would sym­bol­i­cally and con­sul­ta­tion with existing Chi­nese-, Ti­bet­an-, and or ritu­ ally­ en­hance and re­in­force Qianlong’s Mañjuśrī Mon­go­lian-lan­guage ver­sions, was in a sense a linguis­ ­tic sta­tus was also em­bed­ded in the de­sign of Baoxiang Si’s par­al­lel to the Wutai Shan rep­li­cas. Though bear­ing the main hall.93 In his ini­tial at­tempts to estab­ ­lish Manchu­ name and look of the Tibetan­ Kangyur, the Man­chu Bud­dhism through the re­ifi­ca­tion of his bodhisattva­ canon was in fact an entirely­ new com­pi­la­tion based on hood, Qianlong’s stated em­phasis­ was the re-crea­ ­tion a syn­the­sis of Chi­nese, Ti­bet­an, and Mon­go­lian can­ons of Mañjuśrī’s holy abode for rea­sons of fil­ial pi­e­ty. But while follow­ ­ing the struc­ture of the Chi­nese Bud­dhist his more pub­lic and more personal­ agen­das were both can­on, the Tripiṭaka (Three Baskets of Teachings).96 increas­ ­ingly made known in his sub­se­quent pro­jects. Likewise, it was through the close juxta­ ­po­si­tion of Chi­ nese and Ti­betan icon­o­graphic and scrip­tural tra­di­tions, Shuxiang Si at Chengde: Copying the Copy ar­chi­tec­tural styles, and rit­ual lex­i­cons that a dis­tinctly Man­chu Bud­dhist cul­ture (with man­da­tory Man­chu- In 1774, Qianlong be­gan build­ing a Man­chu Bud­dhist language­ rec­i­ta­tion) was cre­at­ed. Qianlong, on his 1775 mon­as­tery at Chengde, which he named af­ter the orig­i­ stele in­scrip­tion com­mem­o­rat­ing the com­ple­tion of the nal Shuxiang Si at Wutai Shan (Fig. 25). Completed in mon­as­tery, ex­plains that although­ the image­ of Mañjuśrī just one year, this ar­chi­tec­tural rep­lica was designed was to be made in the same way as the im­age from Ba­ from the be­gin­ning to fa­cil­i­tate the trans­lation­ of the oxiang Si, the halls and pavil­ ­ions (diantang louge 殿堂 Man­chu Bud­dhist scrip­tural can­on, a mon­u­men­tal pro­ 樓閣) were “rough­ly” based on the orig­i­nal one at Wutai ject that had commenced­ the year before.­ 94 Its main Shan—which in­di­cates that not only was Qianlong ex­ hall, Huicheng Dian 會乘殿, was also designed to house plic­itly aware of the dif­fer­ence be­tween Baoxiang Si at

Fig. 25. Huicheng Dian, Shuxiang Si, Chengde. Photograph by the au­thor. WEN-SHING CHOU • Imperial Apparitions: Manchu Buddhism and the Cult of Mañjuśrī 163

Xiangshan and Shuxiang Si at Wutai Shan, but also that ritual­ needs of a Ti­betan Bud­dhist as­sem­bly hall (’du his de­ci­sion for copy­ing was a cal­cu­lated one.97 Assum­ khang), where prayer gath­er­ings are held (in this case ing that the Baoxiang Si sculpture­ of Mañjuśrī on a lion by res­i­dent Man­chu la­mas), and that of a Chi­nese-style was, through the above-men­tioned process­ of rep­li­ca­ hall, in which im­ages usu­ally oc­cupy the cen­tral space. tion, transformed into an im­age of Qianlong-as-bo­dhi­ The main hall of the origi­­nal Shuxiang Si at Wutai sattva,­ the choice of mod­el­ling a new im­age af­ter the Shan is much smaller, measur­ ­ing five bays wide and copy at Baoxiang Si must be read as a way to per­pet­u­ate three bays deep—just enough space to house the cen­ that iden­ti­ty. tral im­age.100 The Shuxiang Si rep­lica at Chengde was built on the Therefore, de­spite the re­peated rhet­o­ric that Qian­ northern­ slopes beyond­ the Summer Palace on the west­ long’s Baoxiang Si and Shuxiang Si are close repli­ ­cas of ern side of Putuo Zongcheng Miao 普陀宗乘廟 (Qian­ the halls and pavil­ ­ions of the origi­­nal Shuxiang Si at long’s re-crea­ tion­ of the Potala Palace, erected in 1771 Wutai Shan, the actual­ archi­ ­tec­tural de­signs of Shux­ as part of a birth­day pres­ent to his eighty-year-old iang Si’s build­ings at Chengde are dif­ferent.­ The plan­ moth­er). The monas­ ­tic com­plex of the Shuxiang Si rep­ ning and de­sign of these tem­ples speak much more to lica follows­ the central­ plan of a Han-Chinese­ monas­­ their rit­ual and sym­bolic purpose­ as man­dalic ar­chi­tec­ tery: the gate, the protec­ ­tors’ chapel (Tianwang Dian ture, in the case of Baoxiang Si, and their practi­ ­cal 天王殿), and a main prayer hall are laid out on a central­ func­tion as a place of mo­nas­tic assem­ ­bly, in the case of axis,­ with chap­els and monks’ quar­ters on both sides the new Shuxiang Si. What distin­ ­guished Shuxiang Si (Fig. 26). The third build­ing on the main ax­is, which is at Chengde was the mi­racu­ ­lous im­age, not the tem­ple the main hall of the com­plex, is set at the top of a se­ries complex;­ copy­ing the ar­chi­tec­ture ex­actly was hardly of steps on a gently slop­ing hill. Comparing the layout­ nec­es­sary when Shuxiang Si can be ref­erenced­ by a rep­ of this Shuxiang Si with gaz­et­teer de­pictions­ of Shux­ li­ca­tion of the true im­age and by the im­pe­rial au­thor­ity iang Si at Wutai Shan, some have ar­gued that it is in­deed invested in Qianlong’s stele in­scrip­tions. closely based on the origi­­nal.98 In fact, the layout­ of the The im­age that was modelled­ af­ter the Mañjuśrī of Shuxiang Si rep­lica is no dif­fer­ent than any centrally Baoxiang Si is housed in an oc­tag­o­nal pa­vil­ion called planned Chi­nese tem­ple. The con­scious adop­tion of a Baoxiang Ge 寶相閣 (Precious Form Pavilion) atop a Han-Chi­nese tem­ple plan for the build­ing of a Man­chu hill be­hind Shuxiang Si’s main build­ing complex.­ 101 An mon­as­tery that none­the­less fol­lows the rit­ual pro­to­cols arti­ fi­ cial­ moun­tain land­scape (jiashan 假山) with grot­ of a Ti­betan Gelukpa mon­as­tery would have appeared toes and meander­ing pas­sages leads up to Baoxiang Ge con­spic­uous­ in light of the two Ti­betan repli­cas­ that (Fig. 30).102 The en­tire gar­den land­scape is rem­i­nis­cent Qianlong built on that same hill before­ and af­ter he of those found at Qing impe­ rial­ gar­dens, while the min­ built Shuxiang Si, namely Putuo Zongcheng Miao and i­a­ture moun­tain land­scape evokes the Wutai Shan range. Xumi Fushou zhi Miao 須彌福壽之廟, mod­elled af­ter Even though the pa­vil­ion and the orig­i­nal image­ are no Tashi Lhunpo in 1780. In her study of Chengde, Anne lon­ger ex­tant, early photo­ ­graphs al­low us to compare­ Chayet spec­u­lated that Wutai Shan was per­haps first and this rep­lica of a replica­ with the origi­­nal im­age at Shux­ foremost­ “a Chi­nese sa­cred place” for Qianlong, and iang Si and with Ding Guanpeng’s paintings­ (see Figs. there­fore he de­cided that his evo­ca­tion of Wutai Shan in 16 and 17).103 The Chengde Mañjuśrī is in al­most ex­ Chengde “had to be purely Chi­nese.”99 Chayet’s ex­pla­na­ actly the same posi­ ­tion as the figure­ in Ding Guanpeng’s tion overlooks­ the var­i­ous ways in which cul­tures and earlier­ painting­ (Fig. 31): the bodhi­ sattva­ sits in a fron­ tra­di­tions have been si­mul­ta­neously evoked and jux­ta­ tal po­si­tion with his right knee pointing outward­ and posed in Qianlong’s series­ of repli­ ca­ tions.­ An eighteenth­ - foot tucked around the nape of the li­on’s head, which is century­ map of Chengde (Fig. 27) shows that faux-Tibetan­ turned up­ward to the right; the li­on’s feet, stub­bier than style build­ings and stupas­ (simi­lar­ to the blind walls with the orig­i­nals at Wutai Shan (due to the trans­fer from a small orna­ men­ tal­ win­dows of the Putuo Zongcheng three-di­men­sional im­age to a two-di­men­sional one and Miao), were also built off to the side of the central­ ax­is. back), are also planted on lotus­ blos­soms. Even the flow In terms of function,­ the main hall of Shuxiang Si at of the bodhi­ satt­ va’­ s garb and locks of hair follow­ the Chengde also adapted and incor­ po­ rated­ differ­ ent­ de­ same con­tour. What is added are at­ten­dant fig­ures be­ signs. Huicheng Dian mea­sures seven bays wide and five side the bo­dhi­satt­va, which sug­gests that they were not bays deep, and is designed as a prayer and gather­ ­ing part of what would have been copied­ from the array­ of hall, with images­ at the far end (Figs. 28 and 29). The orig­i­nal sources. We can therefore­ de­duce that the sculp­ layout­ of the main prayer hall al­lows for a flex­i­ble use ture was a rather careful­ three-di­men­sional rep­lica of of space, with enough depth to accom­ ­modate­ both the the rep­lica at Baoxiang Si, of the two-di­men­sional rep­lica Fig. 26. Idealized Plan of Shuxiang Si. Copyright The J. Paul Getty Trust, 2009. All rights re­served. WEN-SHING CHOU • Imperial Apparitions: Manchu Buddhism and the Cult of Mañjuśrī 165

Fig. 27. Detail of Shuxiang Si, Map of Palaces at Jehol, 18th centu­ ­ry. Colored, mounted on silk scroll, 122 × 226 cm. Original map and im­age in pub­lic do­main; dig­ital­ im­age pro­vided by the Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress. by Ding Guanpeng, of the sketch by Qianlong, and of af­fin­ity is not ap­par­ent in avail­­able pho­to­graphs of the orig­i­nal im­age. The imi­­ta­tion was not just a repro­­ the im­age.104 As suggested in Ding Guanpeng’s sec­ond duc­tion in name but also in a formal,­ ma­te­rial tech­nique paint­ing, the way in which Qianlong asserted his bodhi­­ designed to transfer­ , over and over again, the true like­ sattva iden­tity revealed a form of like­ness that is de­fined ness of Qianlong-as-Mañjuśrī / Mañjuśrī-as-Qianlong, through the concept­ of “true trace” and the visual­ lex­i­ with each new copy reinforcing and enhanc­ ­ing the no­ cons of a royal tan­tric ini­ti­ate, rather than through the tion of the true form. As the de­fin­ing foci of the re­cently more fa­mil­iar tech­nique of mod­i­fied chiar­oscuro in­tro­ in­sti­tuted Man­chu mon­as­ter­ies, these im­pe­ri­ally me­di­ duced by and demanded of the Jesu­ ­its in the Qing court. ated copies­ mod­elled af­ter Wutai Shan’s nu­mi­nous icon Qianlong’s stele in­scrip­tions con­firmed his ­creas in ­ing po­si­tioned Qianlong at the center­ of a newly established in­ter­est in ad­vanc­ing his bo­dhi­sattva iden­tity for the tra­di­tion that never­ ­the­less traces itself back to one of pro­mo­tion of Man­chu Bud­dhism. Whereas the ear­lier Bud­dhism’s most il­lus­tri­ous bo­dhi­satt­vas and his earthly in­scrip­tions at Xiangshan, from 1767, stressed fil­ial pi­ realm. e­ty, Qianlong him­self proclaimed for the first time in It should come as no sur­prise then that trav­ell­ers to Shuxiang Si’s commem­ ­o­ra­tive stele in 1775 the urgent­ Shuxiang Si at Chengde noted the sim­i­lar­ity be­tween need for Man­chu trans­la­tions of Bud­dhist scrip­tures, the face of Mañjuśrī at Baoxiang Ge and that of the and for those who would study and recite­ them in order­ Qianlong em­per­or, de­spite the fact that a phys­i­og­nomic to spread the teach­ings of the Bud­dha. Importantly, 166 ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART

Fig. 28. Main Images of Huicheng Dian, Shuxiang Si, Chengde, ca. 1933. Copyright The J. Paul Getty Trust, 2009. All rights re­served.

mo ­nas­tic estab­ ­lish­ments of the em­pire where no one would be ­able to read them sug­gests the perfor­ ­ma­tive as­pect of this en­deav­or—that the emperor­ has pro­duced a true and perfected ver­sion of the scrip­tural can­on. Following his re­marks on the propa­ga­ tion­ of the Man­chu can­on, he asked, “The Tibetan­ la­mas call me an em­a­na­tion of Mañjuśrī based on the near homo­­ phone of ‘Manchu’­ and ‘Manju,’ but if it were really­ true that our names cor­re­spond to the re­al­i­ty, wouldn’t Mañjuśrī laugh at me for that?” Although the rhetor­ i­cal­ ques­tion implies Qianlong’s am­biv­a­lence to­ward this gift of hon­or, expressed at least in the Chi­nese lan­guage, a year lat­er, he wrote the fol­lowing­ on an­other tablet­ at Shuxiang Si: Fig. 29. Interior of Huicheng Dian, Shuxiang Si, Chengde. Copyright The J. Paul Getty Trust, 2009. All rights re­served. The im­age of Wenshu 文殊 [Mañjuśrī] is noth­ing shu 殊 [ex­traor­di­nary]. It’s mag­nif­i­cent as is. The two among the twelve sets of Manchu­ canon that were peaks [behind­ Shuxiang Si and behind­ the Potala] carved, many were dis­trib­uted to non-Man­chu mon­as­ stand side by side, not more than half a li away from ter­ies, in­clud­ing the Potala Palace of the Dalai­ La­mas in each other­ . His dharma body can man­ifest­ as a young Lhasa, Tashi Lhunpo of the Pan­chen Lamas in Shigatse, boy, or as a tall gen­tle­man. The vermil­ ­lion edict and Yonghe Gong in Beijing. 105 Their placement­ in key [from the Dalai­ Lama]­ has been overly enthu­ si­ as­ tic­ WEN-SHING CHOU • Imperial Apparitions: Manchu Buddhism and the Cult of Mañjuśrī 167

Fig. 31. Interior of Baoxiang Ge, Shuxiang Si, Chengde. From Fig. 30. Exterior of Baoxiang Ge, Shuxiang Si, Chengde, ca. Sekino Tadashi and Takuichi Takeshima, Jehol: The Most 1933. From Sekino Tadashi and Takuichi Takeshima, Jehol: The Glorious and Monumental Relics in Manchoukuo (Tokyo: The Most Glorious and Monumental Relics in Manchoukuo (Tokyo: Zauho Press, 1934), Vol. 4, page 14. The Zauho Press, 1934), Vol. 4, page 11.

in its praise [of me as a Mañjughosa em­per­or]. Lama as an em­a­na­tion of Avalokitêśva­ra.107 Replicating Wouldn’t it be laugh­able if it were true?106 the Shuxiang Si im­age was surely a way to unite a cel­e­ brated im­age that en­cap­su­lated Wutai Shan’s nu­mi­nous This re­frain at Shuxiang Si, which would have been his­tory with Mañjuśrī’s other man­i­fes­ta­tion as Qianlong seen only by close mem­bers of the court, is Qianlong’s him­self. clos­est writ­ten ac­knowl­edg­ment of him­self as an em­a­ na­tion of Mañjuśrī. It also made appar­ ­ent that this self- Lives of an Image iden­ti­fi­ca­tion was de­fined vis-à-vis Avalokitêśvara (the bo­dhi­sattva of great com­pas­sion). Directly ad­ja­cent to Consider, for a mo­ment, the chain of trans­for­ma­tions of Shuxiang Si is Putuo Zongcheng Miao, which had been that cele­ brated­ image­ (Fig. 32). Based on the mi­racu­ lous­ built just a few years ear­lier (in 1771) in hom­age to the tale of the eighth-century­ sculpted image­ of Mañjuśrī in Da­lai La­mas, suc­ces­sive in­car­na­tions of whom are con­ Zhenrong Yuan (the temple­ later renamed Pusa Ding), a sid­ered em­a­na­tions of Avalokitêśva­ra. Because Shux­ sim­i­lar tale was established to ac­count for the or­i­gin of iang Si was known to house objects­ from Qianlong’s the fifteenth-century­ im­age of Mañjuśrī in Shuxiang Si, child­hood, and was pop­u­larly referred­ to as Qianlong’s also at Wutai Shan. The Qianlong emper­ ­or, soon after­ “fam­ily shrine,” and because­ of the two steles­ there that his pil­grim­age to Wutai Shan in 1761, made a sketch bear Qianlong’s own repeated­ sugges­ ­tions of his asso­ ­ci­ based on the sculptural­ image­ of Mañjuśrī in Shuxiang a­tion with Mañjuśrī, the temple­ would have been seen Si, which was then transferred,­ in accor­ dance­ with as the very em­bodi­ment of a Man­chu Imperial Buddhist­ Qianlong’s in­struc­tions, onto a stone ste­le. That same iden­tity founded on Qianlong’s con­nec­tion with Wutai year, he also commis­ sioned­ court painter Ding Guan­ Shan, and as a direct­ counter­ ­part to the seat of the Dalai­ peng to make a large paint­ing from his sketch, which 168 ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART

Fig. 32. Diagram show­ing chain of rep­li­cas. was en­larged to about a third the size of the origi­nal­ chi­tec­tural spaces, the inser­ ­tion of the impe­ rial­ brush sketch, and several­ other paint­ings of Mañjuśrī; a wax trace in the sketch of the sculp­tural im­age, the com­mit­ model and a tex­tile of the image­ were also made in con­ ment of the copied­ form to the author­ i­ta­ tive­ (and long- junc­tion with the paint­ings. Subsequent cop­ies were last­ing) sur­face of a stone stele,­ the cre­a­tive re­vi­sion of its based on all ­ear­lier mod­els. The stone stele was erected painted versions,­ or a re­peated rhetor­ i­­cal act of achiev­ing in front of Baoxiang Si in Xiangshan, com­pleted in 1767, geo­graph­i­cal equiv­a­lence—the Qianlong em­peror en­ which housed a replica­ of the Mañjuśrī image­ that was acted his identity­ as a Mañjuśrī-in­car­nate. The var­i­ous based on three sources: the sketch, the ste­le, and Ding two-di­men­sional and three-di­men­sional me­dia, con­tin­ Guanpeng’s paintings.­ This Baoxiang Si copy of the Shux­ u­ously im­i­tat­ing and informing sub­se­quent rep­li­cas, iang Si im­age sub­se­quently be­came a source for a fur­ther col­lectively­ produced­ a line­age­ that not only re-cre­ated copy, enshrined in an octag­ o­ nal­ pavil­ ion­ at Shuxiang Si the pure land of Wutai Shan closer to the capi­tal­ but that was named Baoxiang Ge, a sculp­tural im­age that can also enhanced,­ perfected, and resituated it around the be traced to the ear­lier of the two paint­ings of Mañjuśrī Man­chu ruler him­self. by Ding Guanpeng. This second­ ­ary copy became­ the name­sake of Shuxiang Si in Chengde, the mon­as­tery Replication, Translation, and the New Geography that houses Baoxiang Ge. of Man­chu Imperial Bud­dhism This chain of copies,­ as well as the earlier­ acts of re- creating Wutai Shan in Baodi Si, sug­gests a fluid re­la­ The con­scious align­ment of Man­chu im­pe­rial iden­tity tionship­ between­ copy and orig­i­nal: each copy in its with Wutai Shan’s sa­cred his­tory and power puts into specific­ form and medium­ takes on a life of its own, and per­spec­tive Qianlong’s sub­se­quent ac­tiv­i­ties in con­nec­ the pro­cess of repli­ ca­ ­tion makes something­ more true, tion with the moun­tain range, such as the trans­la­tion of and thus creates­ something­ new (in this case, a Manchu­ Mañjuśrī-re­lated texts into Manchu­ and a new edition­ im­pe­rial iden­ti­ty). Through a va­ri­ety of gen­er­a­tive acts of the Wutai Shan gaz­et­teer. On his 1781 trip to Wutai of copying—whether­ the repairing and re-cre­ ­a­tion of Shan, the fourth of his six pil­grim­ages there, Qian­ sets of ritual­ objects,­ the map­ping and plan­ning of ar­ long cop­ied Dasheng wenshu shili pusa zanfo fashen li WEN-SHING CHOU • Imperial Apparitions: Manchu Buddhism and the Cult of Mañjuśrī 169

大聖文殊師利菩薩讚佛法身禮 (The Great Sage Mañjuśrī Qianlong’s fi­nal ma­jor effort­ to seal the con­nec­tion Bodhisattva’s Praise of the Dharma Body of the Bud­dha be­tween him­self and Mañjuśrī, and between­ Wutai Shan Liturgy),108 and trans­lated it into Man­chu. Rölpé Dorjé and the cap­i­tal, reached a much wider au­di­ence than did is said to have selected­ this text from the Chinese­ his pre­vi­ous en­deav­ors. The pro­ject be­gan with Qian­ Tripiṭaka, Chinese­ be­ing the only language­ in which the long’s prov­ince-wide con­fis­ca­tion of all­ Wutai Shan gaz­ text sur­vived.109 The text was brought back to the capi­­ et­teers and their printing­ blocks in order­ to con­trol the tal, and in ad­dition­ to its Man­chu trans­la­tion (Amba pro­lif­er­a­tion of “er­ro­ne­ous” in­for­ma­tion.114 The mo­ti­va­ enduringge nesuken horonggo fusa. fucihi i nomun i tion for this order­ was undoubt­ ­edly to maintain­ con­trol beye de doroloho maktacun), it was later translated­ into over the history­ of the mountain­ range, and more­over, Ti­betan (Byang chub sems dpa’i ’jam dpal dbyangs kyis to make canon­ ­i­cal his con­nec­tion to it, much like Qian­ sangs rgyas kyi sku la bstod pa) and Mon­go­lian and in­ long’s other pro­jects of com­pil­ing Bud­dhist icono­­ corpo­ ­rated into a quadrilingual edi­tion.110 Qianlong, in graphic scrip­tural and liter­ ­ary can­ons, and cata­ ­logues of a praise poem that he wrote while vis­it­ing Baoxiang Si ob­jects in his col­lec­tion. That the Qing court took such in 1782, commented on his own transla­ ­tion of the text a step to cur­tail the pop­u­lar cir­cu­la­tion of such pub­li­ca­ into Manchu,­ and on his or­der that the print­ing house tions also con­firmed their pop­u­lar­ity among tour­ists, pro­duce “gold-let­tered quadrilingual edi­tions”(jinshu pil­grims, and the like. Subsequently, Qianlong issued his siti 金書四體) to be offered­ on Wutai Shan’s five peaks own edi­tion of the mountain­ gaz­et­teer, the Imperial Re- as well as at Baoxiang Si in Xiangshan.111 In re­al­i­ty, cord of the Clear and Cool Mountains (Qinding Qingli­ many other cop­ies were made, and their cir­cu­la­tion was ang shan zhi 欽定清凉山志) in 1785 (reprinted in 1811). not lim­ited to Wutai Shan and Xiangshan.112 There are While more than twice the length and the number­ of vol­ also sin­gle-lan­guage trans­la­tions of the text in Chi­nese, umes (juan) than the pre­vi­ous edi­tion of the Wutai Shan Mon­go­lian, or Man­chu. That this par­tic­u­lar trans­la­tion gaz­et­teer pref­aced by the Kangxi Emperor, this new text was car­ried out at Wutai Shan and by Qianlong himself­ re­duced and elim­i­nated much of the his­tory of Wutai suggests­ that the pro­ject’s pri­mary im­por­tance lay in the Shan to make room for lengthy descrip­ ­tions of im­pe­rial Manchu­ em­per­or’s au­thor­ity in reproducing and dis­ res­to­ra­tions, ste­les, and Qianlong’s other writings­ about sem­i­nat­ing a pre­vi­ously un­trans­lated text on Mañjuśrī. the moun­tain range. The new guide­book took on the per­ Qianlong’s vir­tuoso­ act of trans­la­tion makes clear that, spec­tive of one pil­grim—the em­peror him­self—which in this case as well as in the case of the monu­ ­men­tal task presented the moun­tain range as ex­clu­sively im­pe­ri­al.115 of com­piling­ a Man­chu can­on, what mattered more was It so­lid­i­fied Qianlong’s connec­ ­tion to the site, not only not whether the texts were used and consulted for gen­ through sug­ges­tions of his bo­dhi­sattva iden­ti­ty, but also era­ ­tions to come, but Qianlong’s perfor­ mance­ of trans­ by pub­li­ciz­ing his ac­tiv­i­ties as one of the most de­voted lation.­ As the Man­chu in­car­na­tion of the Bodhisattva im­pe­rial spon­sors. Mañjuśrī mak­ing a pil­grim­age to his sacred­ abode, Qianlong’s heavy-handed editing, re­vi­sion, and Qianlong asserted his own agency in trans­lat­ing a scrip­ transla­ ­tion of Wutai Shan’s his­tory serve as a per­fect tural hom­age to Mañjuśrī and dis­sem­i­nat­ing it through­ tex­tual par­al­lel to the se­ries of rep­li­ca­tion pro­jects ex­ out the key Buddhist­ loca­ ­tions of his em­pire. Even with plored in this essay­ . Seen as part of the micro­ -uni­verses a very limited­ au­dience,­ the ulti­ ­mate aim of Qianlong’s that Qianlong cre­ated at Xiangshan and Chengde, the gesture­ was, as Pamela Crossley ar­gues, “to make all­ Wutai Shan rep­li­cas an­chored the Man­chu im­pe­rial iden­ true expres­ ­sion, in any lan­guage, the prop­erty of the em­ tity within an In­dia-cen­tered cos­mog­ra­phy; ev­ery­thing per­or.”113 By do­ing so, he not only de­clared his au­thor­ east of In­dia was con­sid­ered the do­main of Mañjuśrī and ity in the mak­ing of Man­chu Buddhism,­ but also linked there­fore of Qianlong. The repli­­cas that de­rived their himself­ to Bud­dhism’s Indic­ ori­gins.­ As he noted in the power from the true image­ of the bodhi­ ­sattva em­peror preface­ to his trans­lations,­ this “Homage to Mañjuśrī” func­tioned not only sym­bol­i­cal­ly, but also as the fun­ had never be­fore been avail­­able in the lan­guages of his Ti­ da­men­tal ba­sis for the ini­ti­a­tion of Man­chu im­pe­rial bet­an, Mon­go­lian, or Man­chu con­stit­u­ents. Qianlong was Bud­dhist mo­nasti­ ­cism. The retracing of the steps of rep­ thus the first to bring them this text—which was orig­i­ li­ca­tion shows how Qianlong, by com­bin­ing var­i­ous nally translated­ from the San­skrit by Amoghavajra (705– ar­chi­tec­tur­al, ar­tis­tic, rit­u­al, con­cep­tu­al, and se­man­tic 774)—and thereby connect­ him­self to early transla­ tors­ evoca­ ­tions of Mañjuśrī at Wutai Shan, created­ what he who were respon­ ­sible­ for the transmis­ ­sion of Buddhism­ saw as a perfected and univer­ ­sal form of Buddhist­ teach­ to China. As a site that was from the be­gin­ning created­ to ing and prac­tice around him­self as the uni­ver­sal em­per­or, transplant­ Bud­dhist India­ to China, Wutai Shan itself be­ and in so do­ing re-cre­ated a more perfectly­ Manchu­ im­ came a source for transla­ tion­ and transplan­ ta­ tion.­ pe­rial Wutai Shan. 170 ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART

Rethinking Universal Emperorship tal ef­forts at shap­ing and pre­serv­ing a dis­tinct Man­chu im­pe­rial Bud­dhist mo­nas­tic and scrip­tural her­i­tage was Having conquered­ China from out­side the Great Wall not sustained as im­pe­rial sup­port of mon­as­ter­ies at in north­east Asia, the Man­chu rul­ers carefully­ crafted a Wutai Shan waned in the latter­ half of the Qing dy­ mul­ti­fac­eted im­pe­rial per­sona that was ab­so­lutely cen­ nas­ty.119 By the early twenti­ ­eth cen­tu­ry, with the col­ tral to their gover­ ­nance of an expanding and increas­­ lapse of most of the edi­­fices at Xiangshan, the Manchu­ ingly diverse­ empire.­ As many scholars­ of Qing history­ mon­as­ter­ies fell into ob­scu­ri­ty. But even this his­tory of and re­li­gion have shown, the Man­chu rul­ers’ state­craft de­mise is in­structive.­ Instead of read­ing it as ev­idence­ depended heavily on a re­tell­ing of their or­i­gins and iden­ of Qianlong’s failed attempt­ to create­ a lasting­ impact,­ ti­ty, as well as those of the peo­ples over whom they or at­tri­bute the short-lived in­sti­tu­tion to the in­ev­i­ta­bil­ sought to rule, projecting themselves­ as “the ulti­ mate­ ity of Sinicization, I ar­gue that Qianlong’s aims were apo­the­o­sis of righ­teous rul­ers in the re­cur­ring cy­cles of else­where. The so­phis­ti­ca­tion of these build­ing pro­jects his­tory and myth.”116 It was un­der the Qianlong em­ showed that having­ under­ taken­ the tasks (of perfecting peror that the Qing em­pire reached its greatest ter­ri­to­rial the teach­ings and practices­ of Bud­dhism in the form of ex­tent and height of power and pros­per­i­ty. As the fourth Man­chu Bud­dhism) in his role as an em­peror mattered Manchu­ emperor­ to rule from China prop­er, Qianlong more to him than the mon­as­ter­ies’ projected lon­gev­ity inherited the iden­tity­ -making­ en­terprise­ from his fore­ within a his­tor­i­cal timeframe. Far from serving­ as in­stru­ bears, yet a very differ­ ­ent real­ ity­ from each of them.117 ments of po­lit­i­cal or re­li­gious pro­pa­gan­da, Qianlong’s Qianlong’s in­car­na­tion of the wheel-turning­ Mañjuśrī, cop­ies of Wutai Shan dis­play the ex­pan­sive tem­po­ral­ity along­side his zeal­ous cul­ti­va­tion of an im­pe­rial Con­fu­ of a uni­ver­sal, wheel-turn­ing Sino-Ti­betan bo­dhi­sattva cian perso­ ­na, both of which ma­tured through his long em­per­or, one whose po­lit­i­cal, re­li­gious, cul­tur­al, and reign of sixty years (1736–1795), attests­ to his abil­ity to artis­ tic­ en­gage­ments were as much about the instru­­ em­body the moral centers­ of all­ cul­tural and re­li­gious men­tal gov­ernance­ of his empire­ as they were aimed at tra­ditions­ un­der his do­main and allowed him to recenter the man­i­fes­ta­tion of an ide­al, uni­ver­sal king­ship, a role his impe­ ­rium upon himself.­ Just as Qianlong rehearsed­ that Qianlong fully iden­tified­ with through­out his long the early Qing ruler’­ s re­en­act­ment of the la­ma–pa­tron reign. A careful­ study of the crea­tion­ of the Manchu­ rela­ ­tionship­ of the Yuan Mon­gols and the reli­ ­gious lead­ mon­as­ter­ies has allowed us to re­con­struct the world­ ers of the Sakya sect of Ti­betan Bud­dhism and re-c­re­ated view of the eigh­teenth-cen­tury ruler on his own terms— the palaces­ of the Da­lai La­mas and Pan­chen Lamas in a cos­mol­ogy in which reli­­gion and poli­tics­ were not Chengde, his act of copy­ing Wutai Shan recentered, reor­ sep­a­rate categories. ganized, and reconfigured the past, such that his reen­­ Regardless, the im­pe­rial pro­mo­tion of Wutai Shan actments­ and reappropriations pro­duced a new im­pe­rial was to have long-last­ing conse­ ­quences on reli­ gious­ cul­ cosmol­ ­o­gy. Qianlong’s rep­li­cas were even­tu­ally achieved ture in the Qing empire:­ it played an impor­ ­tant role in through his re­en­act­ment of an em­bodi­ment of a sa­cred ini­ti­at­ing a thriv­ing Sino-Ti­betan Bud­dhist pil­grim­age icon that was highly ven­er­ated across North, East and cul­ture at Wutai Shan, supported by visit­­ing Mon­gols Central Asia. His merg­ing of himself­ with Wutai Shan’s and Ti­betans­ in the nineteenth century­ (de­spite the lack most cel­ebrated­ icon, which had ties to Chi­nese, Mon­ of impe­ rial­ support),­ and laid the ground­work for the de­ go­lian, Ti­bet­an, and even Central Asian ico­nog­ra­phy, al­ vel­op­ment of Wutai Shan as a center­ of Qing Gelukpa lowed the mes­sage he sought to con­vey to tran­scend all­ Buddhist­ scholas­ ­ticism­ and a site of Ti­betan Buddhist­ ha­ re­li­gious, cul­tur­al, and lin­guis­tic dif­fer­ences. gio­graph­i­cal tra­di­tions. The ar­tic­u­la­tion of a Man­chu im­ Of par­a­dox­i­cal im­por­tance is that nei­ther the im­ perial­ Wutai Shan, which synthe­ sized­ the past and present­ ages of Mañjuśrī on a lion Qianlong com­mis­sioned and in Chi­nese, Mon­go­lian, and Ti­betan imag­i­na­tions, set the re­ceived, nor the temples­ he built to enshrine­ the images,­ stage for Ti­betan Buddhism­ to flour­ish on the mountain.­ were ac­cessi­ ­ble to the pub­lic, or for that mat­ter put on dis­play for his mul­ti­cul­tural sub­jects. Moreover, the Wen-shing Chou is assis­ ­tant pro­fes­sor of art history­ at Man­chu mon­as­ter­ies’ in­sti­tu­tional and ar­chi­tec­tural Hunter College. Her ar­ti­cles on maps and wall paint­ings of ephem­er­al­ity meant an even smaller audi­ ­ence over time. Bud­dhist sa­cred sites have appeared in the Art Bulletin, the A court record­ from the end of the thirty­ -fourth year of Journal of Asian Studies, and the Journal of the Interna­ the Qianlong reign (1770), twenty years af­ter the ini­tial tional Association of Ti­betan Studies. She is cur­rently com­ con­struction­ of Baodi Si—the first Wutai Shan rep­lica at plet­ing a book on the transcul­ ­tural pil­grim­age site of Wutai Xiangshan—reported that the temple­ complex­ was in Shan in late im­pe­rial China. ur­gent need of re­pair.118 Overall, Qianlong’s mon­u­men­ [[email protected]] WEN-SHING CHOU • Imperial Apparitions: Manchu Buddhism and the Cult of Mañjuśrī 171

Acknowledgments 2. See Pamela Crossley, Translucent Mirror: History and Identity in Qing Imperial Ideology (Berkeley: Univer­ Parts of this es­say were first presented at the an­nual con­ sity of California Press, 1999), 233. fer­ences of the Association for Asian Studies (2012) and 3. Da­vid Farquhar’s 1978 study was the first to draw Amer­ican­ Academy of Religion (2014). I thank the par­ at­ten­tion to the Qing im­pe­rial iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with Mañjuśrī. tici­pants­ of both panels­ for their questions­ and sugges­­ According to Farquhar, the Qing emper­ ­ors’ self-fash­ion­ing represented a blend­ing of the Ti­betan Bud­dhist “the­ory of tions. I am espe­ cially­ grate­ful for insights­ and help from bo­dhi­sattva me­tem­psy­cho­sis” in iden­ti­fi­able in­di­vid­u­als, Patricia Berger, Isabelle Charleux, Kevin Greenwood, es­pe­cially rul­ers who spread the Bud­dhist teach­ings, and Johann Elverskog, Ellen Huang, Li Jianhong, Lin Shih- the Chi­nese Bud­dhist un­der­stand­ing of Mañjuśrī’s res­i­ Hsuan, Wei-cheng Lin, Nancy Lin, Chris­tian Luczanits, dence at Wutai Shan. See David­ Farquhar, “Emperor as William Ma, Wang Ching-Ling, Wen Wei, and Yang Bodhisattva in the Governance of the Ch’ing Empire,­ ” Hongjiao. I also thank Tara Zanardi, Lynda Klich, Ste­ Harvard Journal of Asiatic­ Studies, 38, no. 1 (1978): 15. phen Frankel, Stanley Abe, and the anony­ ­mous read­ers 4. Monguors re­fer to a group of Mon­gols who had set­ for their as­tute ed­i­to­rial com­ments and sug­ges­tions. The tled in the northeast­ Tibetan­ highlands­ during­ the Mon­gol final version of this essay was completed at the Institute Yuan dynasty. During the Qing dynas­ ­ty, many reli­ ­gious au­ for Advanced Study, Princeton. thor­i­ties from this group played an im­por­tant role in me­di­ at­ing the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the Qing court and Central Notes Tibet. 5. Mark Elliott, Emperor Qianlong: Son of Heaven, Man of the World (New York: Longman, 2009), 53. 1. Imperial pa­tronage­ at Wutai Shan is a topic that has 6. See Nicola Di Cosmo, “Manchu­ Shamanic Ceremo­ been well stud­ied and documented in the mountain’­ s own nies at the Qing Court,” in State and Court Ritual in China, mytho-his­to­ri­og­ra­phy. Emperors of the Northern Wei dy­ ed. Joseph P. McDermott (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer­ nasty (385–534), Northern Qi dy­nasty (550–577), and Sui sity Press, 1999), 352–98. Di Cosmo observes­ two sepa­ ­rate dy­nasty (581–618) all­ erected tem­ples at Wutai Shan. Rul­ strands of de­vel­op­ments of Man­chu rit­ual and re­li­gion: a ers dur­ing the Tang dynasty­ (618–907), whose ances­ ­tral po­lit­i­cal and ideo­log­i­cal one that resulted in the ven­er­a­ home is located­ in the vicin­ ­ity of Wutai Shan in the Tai­ tion of Wutai Shan and the emper­ ­ors’ as­so­ci­a­tion with yuan 太原 re­gion, were es­pe­cially com­mit­ted to ad­vanc­ing Mañjuśrī, and a social­ phe­nom­e­non rooted in Manchu­ re­ Mañjuśrī as the pro­tec­tor of the im­pe­rial clan and of the li­gious cults that led to the incor­ ­po­ra­tion of Bud­dhist and en­tire na­tion. A special­ tem­ple of Mañjuśrī was built in na­tive Chi­nese de­i­ties into Man­chu sha­man­is­tic rit­u­als. See Taiyuan at the sugges­ ­tion of Bud­dhist trans­la­tor and tan­ Di Cosmo, “Man­chu Shamanic Ceremonies,” 375. Man­ tric mas­ter Amoghavajra (705–774). See Raoul Birnbaum, chus were in fact for­bid­den to take mo­nas­tic vows until­ the Studies on the Mysteries of Manjusri (Boulder, CO: Society reign of the Shunzhi 順治 em­peror (1638–1661). for the Study of Chinese­ Religions, 1983), 32; Stanley 7. For a study of the orga­ ­ni­za­tion of the Imperial Weinstein, Bud­dhism Under the T’ang (Cambridge: Cam­ Household Department, see Preston M. Torbert, The bridge University Press, 1987), 83. The mytho-histo­ ­ri­og­ra­ Ch’ing Imperial Household Department: A Study of Its phy of the mountain’­ s or­i­gins traces its history­ of im­pe­rial Organization and Principal Functions, 1662–1796 (Cam­ con­nec­tion back even further­ . According to a sixteenth­ - bridge, MA: Harvard University Asian Center, 1977). cen­tury gaz­et­teer com­piled by Monk Zhencheng 鎮澄 8. Booi were of­ten in­ex­actly de­scribed as bondservants (1546–1617), Mañjuśrī had first come to Wutai Shan (from or slaves. For more on the or­i­gins and def­i­ni­tions of booi, In­dia) to con­vert King Mu (r. 1001–947 BCE) dur­ing the see Mark Elliott, The Man­chu Way: The Eight Banners and Zhou dynasty (1046–256 BCE), and the dei­­ty’s pres­ence Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China (Stanford, CA: was again rec­og­nized dur­ing the Han dynasty (206 BCE– Stanford University Press, 2001), 81–84. 220 CE) through the clair­voy­ance of two In­dian monks, 9. Ibid., 83. Kaśyapa Matanga and Dharmaratna, who trav­elled to 10. That is, stag­ing Ma ju r ’s reappearance in a vi­sion. China after­ Emperor Ming (r. 58–75) had a dream about a ñ ś ī 11. For a re­cent vol­ume that ex­plores the making­ of ra­di­ant golden fig­ure. See Zhencheng, Qingliang Shan zhi eth­nic­ity in the Qing, see ed. Pamela Crossley et al., Em­pire (Record of the Clear and Cool Mountains), juan 1, re­ at the Margins: Culture, Ethnicity, and Frontier in Early printed in Zhongguo Fosi shi zhi huikan 中國佛寺史志彙 Modern China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 刊, 2nd se­ries, vol. 29 (Taibei: Minwen shuju, 1980–85), 2006); es­pe­cially Mark Elliot’s con­tri­bu­tion “Ethnicity in 17, 97–98, 206. Imperial patron­ ­age of temples­ at Wutai the Qing Banners,” 27–57. Shan contin­ ued­ through the Song, Yuan, and Ming dy­nas­ 12. Patricia Ann Berger, Empire­ of Emptiness: Bud­ ties, and was well documented in Ming gazet­ teers,­ but it dhist Art and Political Authority in Qing China (Honolulu: was not until­ the Qing dynasty­ that its Manchu­ emper­ ors­ University of Hawai‘i Press, 2003), 161–64. embraced­ the project­ of building­ Wutai Shan with unprec­­ 13. Ibid., 126–27. e­dented fer­vor. 172 ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART

14. See, for ex­am­ple, Maria Loh, Titian Remade: Rep- long and Man­chu Ti­betan Bud­dhist Monasteries), Gugong etition and the Transformation of Early Modern Italian­ Art bowuyuan yuankan 1 (1995): 60. Beginning with Baodi Si, (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2007). Loh uti­lizes as many as thir­teen Man­chu mon­as­ter­ies were built in Bei­ Deleuze’s model of a rhi­zome, among oth­ers, to re­con­struct jing, Shengjing, Chengde, and the Western and Eastern the in­ter­de­pen­dent re­la­tion­ship be­tween the orig­i­nal and Mausoleums. See Lin Shih-Hsuan 林士鉉, Qingdai menggu the rep­li­ca, be­tween the im­i­ta­tor and the orig­i­nal au­thor. yu manzhou zhengzhi wenhua 清代蒙古與滿洲政治文化 15. See Christopher Wood, Forgery, Replica, Fiction: (Mongolia and the Political Culture of the Man­chus in the Temporalities of Ger­man Renaissance Art (Chicago: Univer­ Qing Dynasty) (Kaohsiung: Fuwen, 2009), 136–38. sity of Chicago Press, 2008). For Wood, the processes­ of sub­ 20. Awang Pingcuo 阿旺平措,“Qingdai Zangchuan Fo­ sti­tu­tion and rep­li­ca­tion are sites for the rev­e­la­tion of “deep jiao zai neidi de chuanbo yu yingxiang 清代藏传佛教在内 struc­ture of think­ing about ar­ti­facts and time.” Even more 地的传播与影响 (The spread and in­flu­ence of Ti­betan Bud­ fun­da­men­tal­ly, Whitney Davis ar­gues that to de­scribe the dhism in China during­ the Qing),” Fayin (2012), accessed pro­cess or dy­nam­ics in rep­li­ca­tion is to de­scribe cog­ni­tion, Sep­tem­ber 5, 2014, http://www.fayin.org/luntanjing­ con­scious­ness, and there­fore cul­ture itself. See Whitney Da­ pin/2012/0823/425.html. vis, Replications: Archaeology, Art History, Psychoanalysis 21. There ex­ist a se­ries of such his­to­ries of Wutai Shan, (University Park: Penn State University Press, 1996), 4. each of them impe­ ri­ ­ally en­dorsed to a cer­tain de­gree; each 16. See Thu’u bkwan, Lcang skya rol pa’i rdo rje’i one is a new compi­ la­ ­tion by a new edi­tor­ (or edi­­tors), with rnam thar (Bi­og­ra­phy of Chankya Rölpé Dorjé) (Lanzhou: il­lus­tra­tions pro­duced from a new carving­ of wood­blocks, Kan su’u mi rig s dpe skrun khang, 1989), 332. Thu’u and through the spon­sor­ship of a new pa­tron (or pa­trons), bkwan does not mention­ an ex­act date for this event be­ based on a se­lective­ use of the sources avail­­able at the time. tween the 1740s and 1750s, but the tim­ing of the in­sti­tu­ A later his­tory of Wutai Shan is men­tioned later in this tion of the first Man­chu Bud­dhist mon­astery­ is cor­rob­o­rated ­es­say (Imperial Record of the Clear and Cool Mountains, both in the archives­ of the Grand Council (Junjichu 軍機處) published in 1785). and in Damcho Gyatsho Dharmatāla, Rosary of White 22. The var­i­ous recen­ sions­ of this story in con­nec­tion Lotuses: Being the Clear Account of How the Precious with the sacred­ icon have been the focus­ of a number­ of Teaching of Bud­dha Appeared and Spread in the Great art-his­tor­i­cal stud­ies. See Sun-ah Choi, “Quest for the True Hor Country, trans. and an­no­tated by Piotr Klafkowski; Visage: Sacred Images in Medieval Chi­nese Bud­dhist Art su­per­vised by Nyalo Trulku Jampa Kelzang Rinpoche and the Concept of Zhen” (PhD diss., University of Chi­ (Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1987), 320–21. See Beijing cago, 2012), 164–74, and Wei-cheng Lin, Building a Sacred Number One Archive, doc­u­ments no. 03-182-2218-15 and Mountain: The Buddhist­ Architecture of China’s Mount no. 03-182-2218-14, which were origi­­nally a single­ fi­le. I Wutai (Seattle and London: University of Washington thank Lin Shih-Hsuan for help­ing me piece this to­geth­er. Press, 2014), 89–98. See page 23 and note 65 for Mongo­­ Chen Qingying’s at­tri­bu­tion of this event to af­ter 1761 is lian and Ti­betan re­cen­sions of the story­ . likely er­ro­ne­ous. See Chen Qingying, “Zhangjia Ruobi duoji 23. For a sum­mary of the his­tory of the Ti­betan pres­ nianpu (II)章嘉若必多吉年谱 （二） (Chronology of Rölpé ence at Wutai Shan, see Karl Debreczeny, “Wutai Shan: Dorjé)” Qinghai minzu yanjiu 2 (1990): 37. Pilgrimage to Five-Peak Mountain,” Journal of the Inter- 17. Many sec­ond­ary sources in­di­cate that Rölpé Dorjé national Association of Ti­betan Studies 6 (De­cem­ber en­tered re­treat con­sec­u­tively at Wutai Shan be­gin­ning in 2011): 30–39, accessed Septem­ ­ber 6, 2014, http://www​ 1750, but from his biog­ ­raphy­ it is obvi­ ­ous that he did not .­thlib.org?tid = T5714. go there during­ a two-year trip to Tibet in search of the 24. This pro­cess of so-called con­ver­sion is one that re­ Seventh Da­lai La­ma’s re­in­car­na­tion be­tween 1757 and quires fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Even though most sec­ond­ary 1758. sources speak of the ten monas­ ­ter­ies that the Shunzhi em­ 18. See Huang Hao 黄颢, Zai Beijing de zangzu wenwu peror converted from Chinese­ Bud­dhist to Tibetan­ Buddhist­ 在北京的藏族文物 (Ti­betan cul­tural ma­te­ri­als in Beijing) tem­ples—as Köhle pointed out in her 2008 ar­ti­cle “Why Did (Beijing: Minzu chubanshe, 1993), 85. Huang spec­u­lates the Kangxi Emperor Go to Wutai Shan?: Patronage, Pilgrim­ that this monas­ ­tery was Xiangjie Si, but court and gazet­­ age, and the Place of Tibetan Buddhism at the Early Qing teer re­cords and Thu’u bkwan’s bi­og­ra­phy Lcang skya rol Court,” Late Imperial China 29, no. 1 (June 2008), 73– pa’i rdo rje’i rnam thar, indi­ ­cate Baodi Si to be the monas­­ 119—none of the liter­ ­a­ture that makes this statement­ cites a tery in ques­tion. pri­mary source, and this process­ of conver­ ­sion was proba­ ­bly 19. Dou Guangnai 竇光鼐 (1720–1795), ed., Qinding a more grad­ual process,­ where the Chinese,­ Ti­betan, and rixia jiuwen kao 欽定日下舊聞考 (Im­pe­rial Edi­tion of leg­ Mon­go­lian tra­di­tions coexisted within these in­sti­tu­tions. In ends of old about the capi­tal­ ) (Beijing: Wuying dian, 1774), Dharmatala’s Rosary of White Lotuses, the con­version­ is dis­ juan 103, 7. Wang Jiapeng noted the number­ of lamas­ at cussed in straightfor­ ward­ terms; it includes a descrip­ tion­ of each Manchu­ monas­ tery­ recorded in court docu­ ments,­ but the Shunzhi and Kangxi em­perors’­ construc­ tion­ of large im­ did not provide­ specific­ sources; seeWang Jiapeng, “Qian­ perial­ temples­ on each of the five terraces.­ See Damcho long yu Manzu lama siyuan” 乾隆與滿族喇嘛寺院 (Qian­ Gyatsho Dharmatāla, Rosary of White Lotuses, 418–19. WEN-SHING CHOU • Imperial Apparitions: Manchu Buddhism and the Cult of Mañjuśrī 173

25. Originally used to de­scribe a se­ries of laws laid Kaikyoku 渡辺海旭 (1872–1932) et al., Taishō shinshū dai down by Chinggis Khan (1162?–1227), the Mon­gol term zōkyō 大正新脩大藏經 (Revised ver­sion of the can­on, jasagh was sub­se­quently used among the Man­chus to de­note com­piled dur­ing the Taishō era, 1912–26) (Tokyo: Taishō a sta­tus of mil­i­tary and ad­min­is­tra­tive rule, and “jasagh Issaikyō Kankōkai, 1924–32 [–1935]), T.2098: 51, la­mas” was used to de­scribe high-rank­ing im­pe­ri­ally ap­ 1094a25–b2. Following stan­dard con­ven­tion, ref­er­ences to pointed lama of­fi­cials. See Dorothea Heuschert, “Legal texts in the Taishō canon are in­di­cated by text num­ber (T.), Pluralism in the Qing Empire:­ Man­chu Legislation for followed by the vol­ume, page, regis­ ­ter (a, b, or c), and, the Mon­gols,” The International History Review 20, no. when ap­propri­ ­ate, line numbers.­ Qianlong was by no 2 (June 1998): 310–24. For more on Qing ad­min­is­tra­tive means the first person­ to “relo­ ­cate” Wutai Shan elsewhere­ doc­u­ments concerning im­pe­rial spon­sor­ship of jasagh la­ through the re-cre­a­tion of a mon­as­tery at Wutai Shan. mas, see Vladimir Uspensky, “The Legislation Relation to Throughout its long his­to­ry, Wutai Shan has been a uniquely the Tibetan­ Bud­dhist Establishments,” paper given at the pop­u­lar site of rep­lica­ ­tion in Japan, Korea, Central Asia, “Wutai Shan and Qing Culture” conference at the Rubin Tibet, and areas­ close to Beijing, and such re-crea­ ­tions fre­ Museum of Art, 2007. See also Jagchid Sechin (Zhaqi quently in­volved the erec­tion of a new temple­ named af­ter Siqin 札奇斯欽), “Manzhou tongzhi xia menggu shen­ a mon­as­tery at Wutai Shan. On sites in Japan, see for ex­ quan fengjian zhidu de jianli” 满洲统治下蒙古神权封建制 am­ple, Susan Andrews’s pa­per, “Moving Mountain: Mount 度的建立 (The Establishment of the Man­chu-Controlled Wutai Traditions at Japan’s Tōnomine,” presented at The Mon­go­lian Feudal System of Incarnation), Gugong wenx- Mountain of Five Plateaus Conference, Wutai Shan, Shanxi, ian 2, no. 1 (1970): 1–18. July 27–Au­gust 2, 2015. On sites in the Tangut state, see 26. See Gray Tuttle, Ti­betan Bud­dhists in the Making Yang Fuxue 楊富學, “Xixia Wutai shan xinyang zhenyi” 西 of Modern China (New York: Colum­ ­bia University Press, 夏五臺山信仰斟議 (Notes on Wutai shan vener­ ­a­tion in the 2005), 22; and see also Qinding Lifan yuan zeli 欽定理藩 Xixia dy­nas­ty),” Xixia yanjiu 1(2010): 14–22. On sites in 院則例 (Imperially Commissioned Norms and Regulations Tibet, see the Ti­betan­ -lan­guage guide­book by ’Jam-dbyangs of the Board for the Administration of Outlying Regions), Mkhyen-brtse’i-dbang-po et al., Guide to the Holy Places of in Gugong Zhenben Congkan 300 (Haikou shi: Hainan Central Tibet (Rome: Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Es­ chubanshe, 2000), juan 58, 9. The three earli­ ­est jasagh tremo Oriente, 1958), 72; and Andreas Gruschke, The Cul- ­la­mas, Awang Laozang (Ngag dbang blo bzang, 1601– tural Monuments of Tibet’s Outer Provinces: Kham 1687), Laozang Danbei Jiancan (Blo bzang bstan pa’i rgyal (Bangkok: White Lotus Press, 2004), 82. See also Shi Jinbo mtshan, 1632–1684), and Laozang danba (Blo bzang bstan 史金波, Xixia fojiao shilue 西夏佛教史略 (Survey of Tangut pa, [act late sev­en­teenth–early eigh­teenth cen­tu­ries), wrote Bud­dhist his­to­ry) (Yinchuan: Ningxia renmin chubanshe, pref­aces to the im­pe­ri­ally spon­sored edi­tions of Wutai 1988), 118–19 and 156, cited in Robert Gimello, “Wu-t’ai Shan gaz­et­teers in Chinese­ and Manchu­ and included­ their Shan 五臺山 dur­ing the Early Chin Dynasty 金朝: The Testi­ own bi­og­ra­phies among the emi­­nent monks of Wutai Shan. mony of Chu Pien 朱弁,” Chung-Hwa Bud­dhist Journal 7 These pref­aces are pre­served in ed. Gugong bowuyuan 故 (1994): 507. A smaller site known as Wutai Shan also ex­ists 宮博物院, Qingliang shan zhi. Qingliang shan xin zhi. Qin in Zhangjiakou west of Beijing. Most re­cent­ly, a Mountain ding Qingliang shan zhi 清凉山志.清凉山新志.欽定清凉山 of Five Peaks was rit­u­ally initi­ ­ated at the Larung Valley in 志 (Record of the Clear and Cool Mountains. New Record east­ern Tibet by Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok. of Clear and Cool Mountains. Imperial Record of the Clear 29. Dou Guangnai, ed., Qinding rixia jiuwen kao, juan and Cool Mountains) (Haikou Shi: Hainan Chubanshe, 103, 7. The orig­i­nal text reads: 地即清凉, 白馬貝書開震 2001). See also Tuttle, “Ti­betan Bud­dhism at Wutai shan in 旦, 山仍天竺, 青鴛蘭若近離宮 (This is the very ground the Qing: The Chi­nese Language Register,” Journal of the of the Clear and Cool [Wutai Shan] Palm Leaf man­u­scripts International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 6 (Decem­ of the Baima Monastery that opened China [up to Bud­ ber 2011): 192–94, at http://­www​.­thlib​.­org​?­tid​= ­T5721 (ac­ dhism]. The moun­tain is still In­di­an, but the black-tiled cessed September 5, 2014); Natalie Köhle, “Why Did the mon­as­tery is close to the summer­ pal­ace.) By inscribing Kangxi Emperor Go to Wutai Shan?,” 78–79; the bi­ogra­­ this state­ment on the plac­ards, Qianlong es­sen­tially as­ phies are in­cluded in Qinding Qingliang shan zhi, juan 16, serted that the site is a surro­ ­gate of Wutai Shan, which is a 21a–22b; and Qingliang shan xin zhi, juan 7, 21b–24b. For sur­ro­gate of In­dia. a par­tial En­glish trans­la­tion of these biog­ ­ra­phies, see Hoong 30. Poet Zhu Ziqing 朱自清 (1898–1948) documented Teik Toh, “Ti­betan Buddhism­ in Ming China” (PhD diss., in his travelogues the col­lapse of the gate in the spring of Harvard University, 2004), 228–37. 1932. See Zhu Ziqing, “Songtang Youji” 松堂游记 (Jour­ 27. Köhle (2008) showed that Pusa Ding was prob­ably­ ney to the Pine Pavilion), accessed Septem­ ber­ 6, 2014, converted into a Tibetan­ Buddhist­ temple­ as early as 1481. http://www.xys.org / xys/ebooks / literature / prose / Zhu-Ziq​ 28. The temple­ was then called Dafutu Si. See Huixi­ ing / songtang.txt. ang 慧祥, Gu Qingliang zhuan 古清涼傳 (Ancient History 31. Anne Chayet, “Architectural Wonderland: An Em­ of the Clear and Cool Mountains) (Tang dynas­ ty),­ ed. pire of Fictions,” in New Qing Imperial History: The Mak- Takakusu Junjirō 高楠順次郎 (1866–1945) and Watanabe ing of Inner Asian Empire­ at Qing Chengde, 49; Li 174 ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART

Qianlang, “Beijing Biyun si jingang baota zuo” 北京碧云寺 pojab (Tb. Mgon po skyabs; Ch. Gongbu Chabu 工布查布, 金刚宝塔座 (The Diamond Throne at Beijing Biyun si), 1699–1750) state an in­ten­tion to cor­rect pre­vi­ous Han- Zijin cheng 9 (2009): 12–15; Zhang Yuxin, Qingdai lama- Chi­nese mod­els, which were thought to be impre­ ­cise. See jiao beiwen 清代喇嘛教碑文 (Stele inscrip­ ­tions from Qing- also Kevin Greenwood, “Yonghegong: Imperial Universal­ dy­nasty La­ma­ism) (Beijing: Tianjing guji chubanshe, 1987), ism and the Art and Architecture of Beijing’s ‘Lama Tem­ 132–33; and Isabelle Charleux, “Copies de Bodhgayā en ple’” (PhD diss., University of Kansas, 2013), 221–27. In Asie orientale: Les stu­pas de type Wuta à Pékin et Kökeqota ad­di­tion to var­i­ous icon­o­graphic pan­the­ons un­der­taken by (Mongolie-Intérieure),” Arts Asiatiques 61 (2006): 120 – 42. Rölpé Dorjé, his com­pi­la­tion of mul­ti­lin­gual dic­tio­nar­ies Significantly for the temple’­ s con­nec­tion to rulers,­ this is that aimed to standard­ ­ize the process­ of transla­ tion­ also where rev­o­lu­tion­ary and mod­ern China’s founding fa­ther served the same need for ritual­ au­then­tic­i­ty. In Em­pire of Sun Yat-sen’s body was interred­ tem­porar­ ­ily be­fore his Emptiness, Berger as­tutely shows how these var­i­ous lin­ burial in his mau­so­leum in Nanjing. guis­tic and icono­ ­graphic pro­jects were harnessed to pro­ 32. Shan Shiyuan 單士元, Qingdai jianzhu nianbiao duce an or­thodoxy­ of form and mean­ing. 清代建築年表 (Beijing: Zijincheng, 2009), 202. 41. Zhongguo diyi lishi dang’an guan, ed., Qinggong 33. Qinding Qingliang shan zhi, juan 10, 1. Neiwu Fu Zaoban Chu Dang’an Zonghui, vol. 17, 431–33. 34. That monas­ ­tery was Luohou Si 羅睺寺. See Qind- The Chinese­ date is the sec­ond day of the fourth month. ing Qingliang shanzhi, juan 10, 9b. It is the sec­ond-larg­est The com­mis­sioning­ of drawings­ for sets of Five Sense Of­ Gelukpa Monastery at Wutai Shan, which housed about ferings and Eight Offerings are listed in great detail.­ For two hundred­ lamas­ by the end of the nineteenth centu­ ­ry. ex­am­ple, among the Eight Offerings, the offer­ ­ing of mu­sic Isabelle Charleux, Nomads on Pilgrimage, Mong­ols on has a “gilt bronze vajra bell on purple­ sandalwood tray Wutaishan (China), 1800–1940 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 110, with cloisonné enamel stand.” cit­ing Tian Pixu, Wutai Xinzhi (New Gazetteer of Wutai) 42. Berger, Em­pire of Emptiness, 6. ([China]: Chongshi shuyuan, 1883). 43. The en­tourage­ de­parted Beijing on the tenth day of 35. Jiang Xiantong Si Wuliang Dian chicun tangyang the second­ month, and returned more than a month lat­er; chenglan qin 將顯通寺無量殿尺寸盪樣呈覧欽. See Zhong­ Zhongguo diyi lishi dang’an guan, ed., Qianlong di qiju guo diyi lishi dang’an guan, ed., Qinggong Neiwu Fu Zao- zhu, vol. 20, 42–85. ban Chu Dang’an Zonghui 清宮內務府造辦處檔案總匯 44. A copy of Bitian Xiaoxia (Glowing Clouds in an (The Complete Archive of the Royal Manufactory in the Azure Sky) is in the Gest Library at Princeton University. Imperial Household Department), vol. 17 (Beijing: Remin See Wu Xiaoling, “Glowing Clouds in an Azure Sky: A Chubanshe, 2005), 275. Newly Discovered Royal Pageant,” Gest Library Journal 3 36. The back shrine of the first floor of Yuhua Ge (Pa­ (1989): 46–55. In the genre of trib­u­tary dra­mas, the play vilion of Rainy Flowers) is also called a Wuliang Dian 無量 fea­tured “ce­les­tial de­i­ties on five-col­ored clouds,” “gods of 殿, refer­ enc­ ing­ the Buddha­ of Immeasurable Light and the the Five Marchmonts,” and heads of “ten thousand­ states” Buddha­ of Immeasurable Life. See Wang Jiapeng, “Gugong arriv­ ­ing to pay obei­sance and of­fer birth­day wishes to the Yuhua Ge tanyuan 故宮雨花閣探源 (Inquiry into the or­i­ em­peror and em­press-dow­a­ger. gins of the Pavilion of Rainy Flowers),” Gugong bowuyuan 45. 是像即非像, 文殊特地殊, 亳端寶王剎, 鏡裡焰光珠, yuankan 47 (1990): 52, 54–55. Located in the north­west­ 法雨滄桑潤, 梵雲朝暮圖, 高山仰止近, 屏氣步霄衢。謁殊 ern sector­ of the Forbidden City, Yuhua Ge’s com­plex 像寺得句, 因寫滿月容, 以紀其真, 即書於右, 行營促成, struc­ture was designed by Rölpé Dorjé at Qianlong’s re­ 限於方幅, 迴鑾餘暇, 將放展成大圖勒石, 須彌棗葉, quest during­ the same year of 1750. See Berger, Em­pire of 無異無同, 五於此未免著相矣。辛已暮春, 保陽行宮並識. Emptiness, 97–104. Translation: “An image­ and not an image,­ Mañjuśrī’s 37. Zhongguo diyi lishi dang’an guan, ed., Qinggong abode is in­deed spe­cial. The awe of the bejew­ ­eled king is at Neiwu Fu Zaoban Chu Dang’an Zonghui, vol. 17, 431. the tip of the brush, and brilliant­ flam­ing light in the reflec­­ 38. Wang Jiapeng, Cultural Relics of Tibetan­ Bud­ tion of the mir­ror. The rain of Bud­dhist teach­ings moist­ens dhism Collected in the Qing Palace (Qinggong Zangchuan all­ worldly suf­fer­ings, heav­enly clouds at dawn and dusk Fojiao Wenwu 清宫藏传佛教文物) (Beijing: Forbidden make a marvel­ ­ous sight. I gaze up at the tall mountains;­ City Press, 1992), 169. hold­ing my breath, I approach­ the high path. When I paid 39. Robert Beer, The Handbook of Ti­betan Buddhist­ a visit to Shuxiang Si, these verses came to me. Therefore I Symbols (Bos­ton: Shambhala, 2003), 37–42. sketch the full-moon coun­te­nance [of Mañjuśrī] in or­der to 40. In nu­merous­ pas­sages from the bi­og­raphy­ of Qian­ doc­u­ment its au­then­tic­i­ty, and com­pose a col­o­phon to its long’s guru and Qing impe­ rial­ precep­ tor­ Rölpé Dorjé, he right. This is hastily­ exe­cuted­ while still on the road, so its was said to have copied­ ritu­als­ from Lhasa. See Berger, size is constrained. When there is time af­ter our return, I will Empire­ of Emptiness, 84, citing­ Thu’u bkwan, Lcang skya enlarge­ it and affix­ it to a rock [i.e., make a relief carving].­ rol pa’i rdo rje’i rnam thar, 138, 225, 187, and 221. The Mount Meru and a ju­jube leaf are nei­ther differ­ ent­ nor the pref­aces of the Canon of Iconometry, translated­ into Chi­ same. If one were to insist­ on this, it would be attaching one­ nese by Mongol­ scholar and Qing court transla­ tor­ Göm­ self to form. Written at Baoyang trav­elling­ palace,­ at the end WEN-SHING CHOU • Imperial Apparitions: Manchu Buddhism and the Cult of Mañjuśrī 175 of spring season­ dur­ing the Xinyi year (1761).” It is recorded P.4049 and Related Issues) Dunhuang yanjiu (March 2005): in Qinding Midian Zhulin, Shiqu Baoji, xubian 欽定秘殿珠 26–32. 林, 石渠寳笈, 續編 (Imperially Or­dered Beaded Grove of 56. This sculp­tural group is also found at Nanchan Si, the Secret Hall and Precious Bookbox of the Stone Drain, Foguang Si, and Yanshan Si in the Wutai Shan area from sup­ple­ment) (Taipei: Guoli Gugong Bowuyuan, 1971), 42. the eighth to the twelfth centuries. Baoyang Palace proba­­bly refers­ to the travell­ ­ing pal­ace at 57. Some schol­ars have ar­gued that this ico­nog­raphy­ Baoding 保定 in Hebei province. orig­i­nated not in Wutai Shan but in Khotan, noting­ the ob­ 46. For ev­i­dence of Qianlong’s own hand in­side the vi­ous prom­i­nence of the Khotan King. For our present­ pur­ One or Two paint­ings, see Kristina Kleutghen, “One or poses, it matters­ less where this iconog­ ­ra­phy orig­inally­ Two, Repictured,” Archives of Asian Art 62 (2012): 37–39. came from and more that it some­how be­came as­so­ci­ated 47. Ibid., 48. The ex­act term used in the im­pe­rial cat­a­ with Wutai Shan. See Jiang Li, “Qianxi Dunhuang xinyang logue is fangzhan cheng datu leshi 放展成大圖勒石, i.e., Wenshu zaoxiang chansheng de yuanyuan” (A Primary en­large and afix [the sketch] to a rock. Analysis of the Origins of the Production of “New-Style 48. According to his bi­og­ra­phy, Rölpé Dorjé was in Mañjuśrī” Images at Dunhuang), Mei yu shidai (Jan­u­ary charge of build­ing Baoxiang Si; see Thu’u bkwan, Lcang 2010): 67–69. skya rol pa’i rdo rje’i rnam thar, 486. One modern­ -day 58. The leg­end was cited in the carved colo­ ­phon on a blogger has noted see­ing a stele at Baoxiang Si with an 1608 stele erected by monk Zhencheng, the Ming-dynasty­ im­age of Mañjuśrī carved on it; how­ev­er, un­til fur­ther com­piler of Qingliang shan zhi. See ed. Cui Zhengsen and ac­cess is per­mit­ted, no study of this stele can be under­ ­ Wang Zhichao, Wutai Shan beiwen xuanzhu, 289–91. See tak­en; accessed May 2, 2014, http://blog.sina.com.cn/s​ also Huanyu, “Shuxiang Si li de chuanshuo gushi” 殊像寺 /­blog_512f6d690100fp9s.html. 里的传说故事 (Legends of Shuxiang Si), Wutai Shan yan- 49. Dou Guangnai, ed., Qinding rixia jiuwen kao, juan jiu, 3 (1996): 47–48. 103, 8. 59. In this story­ , the old abbot­ of the monas­ ­tery hosted 50. Wang Jiapeng, “Qianlong yu Manzu lama siyuan,” a com­pe­ti­tion for the de­sign of the main im­age. Dissatisfied 60. Wang cites Neiwufu zouxiaodang 內務府奏銷檔 (Im­ with each and ev­ery de­sign en­try, the old ab­bot fi­nally ac­ perial Household Agency ar­chives, Financial ac­counts vol­ cepted the pleas from an ex­tremely skilled sculp­tor and his umes), 319 ce. See also Qinding Lifan yuan zeli, juan 58, team of ar­tisans,­ who, hav­ing jour­neyed from afar, vowed 16; juan 59, 25. not to return home if their work did not meet the expec­ ­ta­ 51. See ed. Zhao Lin’en 趙林恩, Wutai Shan shige tions of the ab­bot. The project­ began­ and progressed in zongji 五台山诗歌总集 (Anthology of Wutai shan po­ems), due time, but came to a standstill­ when the sculptor­ found vol. 2 (Beijing: Zongjiao wenhua chubanshe, 2002), 407. him­self sty­mied by art­ist’s block in attempting to come up 52. Ye shes don grub and A lag sha Ngag dbang bstan with the per­fect de­sign for Mañjuśrī’s head. After several­ dar, Ri bo dwangs bsil gyi ’jam dpal mtshan ldan gling gi days of this, at around lunchtime,­ clouds sud­denly part­ed, mtshar sdug sku brnyan gyi lo rgyus bskor tshad dang bcas and an im­age of the per­fect form of Mañjuśrī rid­ing on a pa dad ldan skye bo’i spro bskyod me tog ’phreng mdzes lion appeared in the sky. Witnessing this, all ­of the ar­ti­sans (A beau­ti­ful flower gar­land to rouse the faithful:­ the his­ pros­trated them­selves in amaze­ment. The sculp­tor im­me­di­ tory and en­vi­rons of the Beautiful statue of the Temple of ately got up, ran into the kitchen,­ grabbed a batch of buck­ Mañjuśrī’s Marks at the Clear and Cool Mountains) (Bei­ wheat dough pre­pared for lunch, and sculpted it into the jing: Songzhu Si, 1818), in the Collection of the Library of form of the heav­enly ap­pa­ri­tion. Just as he was finishing it, the Minorities Cultural Palace, Beijing. the im­age of Mañjuśrī disappeared. This story of mirac­ ­u­ 53. Thu’u bkwan, Lcang skya rol pa’i rdo rje’i rnam lous oc­cur­rence spread far and wide, and soon pilgrims­ thar, 615; Chi­nese trans­la­tion by Chen Qingying, 294. rushed there from all­ parts of the coun­try to pay hom­age 54. D. Pokotilov, “Der Wu T’ai Schan und seine to the resulting sculpture.­ See Ye shes don grub and A lag Klöster,” trans­lated from Rus­sian into Ger­man by W. A. sha Ngag dbang bstan dar, Ri bo dwangs bsil gyi ’jam dpal Unkrig. Sinica-Sonderausgabe (1935): 79. mtshan ldan gling, 5a. 55. Judging from available­­ im­ages from Dunhuang, 60. Lcang skya rol pa’i rdo rje, Zhing mchog ri bo rtse this triad was later ex­panded some­time in the ninth cen­ lnga’i gnas bzhad (Xining: Mtsho sngon mi rigs dpe sgrun tury to in­clude the Kash­miri monk Buddhapāli and the khang. 1993), 43. bearded old man. For a study of the Mañjuśrī pen­tad in 61. For a re­cently published Ti­betan source, see Ngag Japan, see Wu Pei-Jung, “The Manjusri Stat­ues and Bud­ dbang bstan dar, Dwangs bsil ri bo rtse lnga’i gnas bshad dhist Practice­ of Saidaiji: A Study on Iconog­ ra­ ­phy, Inte­ rior­ (Pilgrimage Guide to the Clear and Cool Five Peak Moun­ Fea­tures of Stat­ues, and Rit­u­als As­so­ci­ated with Bud­ tains) (Beijing: krung go’i bod rig dpe skrun khang, 2007), dhist Icons” (PhD diss., University of California, Los Ange­ 58; for Mon­go­lian, see Ye shes don grub and A lag sha les, 2002); Sha Wutian, “Dunhuang P.4049 ‘xinyang Ngag dbang bstan dar, Ri bo dwangs bsil gyi ’jam dpal mt- Wenshu’ huagao ji xiangguan wenti yanjiu” (A Study of shan ldan gling, 5b, line 3; the name also ap­pears as an in­ the Sketch of the “New-Style Mañjuśri” in Dunhuang scrip­tion on the late-eigh­teenth-/ear­ly-nineteenth-cen­tury 176 ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART map of Wutai Shan at Badgar Coyiling Süme. See Wen-shing 稱。而濁質鈍根。獲霑香國功德。歡喜信不可思議。臣 Chou, “The Visionary Landscape of Wutai Shan in Tibetan­ 丁觀鵬敬識。 Translation: During the spring of 1761, the Bud­dhism from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Century” em­peror toured Wutai to ob­tain bless­ings. He vis­ited the (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2011). pre­cious im­age of Mañjuśrī [at Shuxiang Si], which is ra­di­ 62. Charleux, online appen­ ­di­ces to the book Nomads ant with the sub­tle glow of wis­dom, like the moon’s seal on on Pilgrimage, 59. a river­ . After returning to his palace,­ he made a sketch after­ 63. Charleux notes that the true im­age was replaced in the im­age in ink splendor­ . The sketch wondrously­ matched 1482 by a new golden statue;­ Charleux, Nomads on Pil- the true counte­ ­nance of [the sage of] Clear and Cool grimage, 310. [Mañjuśrī]. Then, based on the sketch, he or­dered the hum­ 64. Diyi lishi dang’an guan ed., Qinggong Neiwu Fu ble ser­vant Guanpeng to make a col­ored paint­ing. Observ­ Zaoban Chu Dang’an Zonghui, vol. 33, 40–41. ing rit­ual fasting and cleans­ing, I dil­igently­ held a brush for 65. Ibid., vol. 26, 693. 乾隆二十六年四月十八日: 十八日 seven months. [Even though I was ­able to paint] the gar­ 接得員外郎安泰押帖一件, 內開本月十七日奉旨著丁觀鵬用 lands and the beaded pearls, the lion throne and the lo­tus 舊宣紙畫文殊菩薩像著色工筆畫, 得時裱掛軸, 欽此。乾隆 ped­es­tal, exhausting all­ knowl­edge and un­der­stand­ing of 二十六年十二月十五日: 十二月十五日接得達色押帖一件, the smaller vehi­ ­cle, Mañjuśrī’s pri­mary and sec­ond­ary 內開十四日太監胡世傑持來御筆文殊像二幅、丁觀鵬畫文 marks are origi­­nally ex­cel­lent, therefore­ my brush could 殊像一副。傳旨著觀鵬仿蠟身樣法身起稿, 仍用舊宣紙另 not en­hance even one-ten-thou­sandth. I se­cretly feel my 畫三幅, 其塔門暫且放下, 先畫文殊像, 欽此。I thank thoughts are banal­ and my skill is limit­ ­ed. Fortunately, by Wang Ching-Ling for first bring­ing this ref­erence­ to my at­ re­ly­ing on the heav­enly brush [of the em­per­or], I was ­able ten­tion. to lay out the golden coun­te­nance. Just like the ar­ti­sans 66. Qinding Midian Zhulin, Shiqu Baoji, xubian 欽定 who carved the sandal­ ­wood Bud­dha for King Udayana, [I 秘殿珠林, 石渠寳笈, 續編 (Imperially ordered­ Beaded com­pleted it] af­ter much care­ful chis­el­ing and mod­i­fi­ca­ Grove of the Secret Hall and Precious Bookbox of the Stone tion. It can still hardly deserve­ to be called any­thing. Even Drain, sup­ple­ment) (Taipei: Guoli Gugong Bowuyuan, though my qual­i­ties are im­pure and roots dull, that I can 1971), 357–58. still ob­tain mer­its of the fra­grant land [par­a­dise of Am­ 67. This would date the painting­ to the eleventh­ month itabha], I feel bliss­ful be­yond mea­sure. Servant Ding Guan­ of the year, just one month before­ it was presented to the peng re­spect­fully ac­knowl­edges [this]. em­peror as a re­cord in Neiwu fu Ruyi guan’s doc­u­ments. 76. For a thor­ough study of the history­ of sandalwood This is noted by Wang Ching-Ling in an e-mail to the au­ Bud­dhas in China, see Martha­ Carter, The Mystery of the thor, Au­gust 13, 2010. Udayana Bud­dha (Napoli: Istituto Universitario Orientale, 68. Qinding Midian Zhulin, Shiqu Baoji, xubian, 405. 1990). The in­scrip­tion reads: 臣裘曰脩之母王氏率孫媳等敬繡. 77. Qianlong instructed Ding to paint an image­ of 69. I thank Chris­tian Luczanits for this ob­ser­va­tion. Mañjuśrī by “imi­­tat­ing a wax model”­ (fang lashen yang 70. Da­vid Snellgrove, Indo-Ti­betan Bud­dhism: In­dian fashen 仿蠟身樣法身). Bud­dhists and their Ti­betan Successors (Bos­ton: Shamb­ 78. See Patricia Berger, “Lineages of Form: Authority hala, 2002), 231–70. and Representation in the Bud­dhist Portraits of the Man­ 71. The im­mensely in­for­ma­tive Ti­betan bi­og­ra­phy of chu Court,” Tibet Journal 28, nos. 1–2 (2003): 109–46; Rölpé Dorjé by Tuken records­ the ini­ti­a­tions. For an anal­ and Mi­chael Henss, “The Bodhisattva-Emperor: Tibeto- y­sis of them, see Wang Xiangyun, “Tibetan­ Bud­dhism at Chi­nese Portraits of Sacred and Secular Rule in the Qing the Court of Qing: The Life and Work of lCang-skya Rol- Dynasty,” Oriental Art 3 (2001): 1–16, and 5 (2001): 71– pa’i-rdo-rje (1717–86)” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 83. 1995), 293–96. 79. They counter­ , in Berger’s words, “the ap­par­ent im­ 72. Zito, Of Body and Brush. me­di­acy of the im­pe­rial face with a pat­terned, ca­non­i­cal 73. James Hevia, “Lamas, Emperors, and Rituals: Po­ pan­theon of vi­sions.” Berger, Empire­ of Emptiness, 61. litical Implications in Qing Imperial Ceremonies.” Journal 80. Indeed, Berger credits­ Ding’s copies­ of true images­ of the International Association of Bud­dhist Studies 16, with the in­tegra­ tion­ of these two modes of rep­resen­ ta­­ no. 2 (1993): 246. tion—“while Ding faithfully­ copied­ the overall­ outlines­ of 74. I thank Lin Wei-Cheng for pointing this out to me archaic­ vision,­ in an illu­ sion­ ist’­ s trick he also fleshed them at the Association for Asian Studies con­fer­ence in 2012. out, plumped them up, and made them un­can­nily real.­ ” 75. The com­plete in­scrip­tion reads: 乾隆辛已春。上以 Ibid., 166. 祝釐巡幸五臺。瞻禮曼殊寶相。圓光默識。如月印川。回 81. “Farquhar’s in­flu­en­tial work may also rep­re­sent 鑾後。摹寫為圖。水墨莊嚴。妙合清涼真面。復以稿 the prevailing tendency­ to focus­ ex­clu­sively on Tibetan­ 本。命小臣觀鵬設色。齋盥含毫。積七閱月。雖華鬘珠 Bud­dhist con­cepts and ma­te­ri­als.” Farquhar at­trib­uted 珞。猊座蓮臺。殫竭小乘知解。而於師利本來相好。實未 Qianlong’s self-promo­ tion­ to a polit­ i­­cal need to manage­ 能裨助萬一。竊自念凡庸末技。幸得仰承天筆。擬繪金 the alle­ ­giance of Mongols­ and, later­ , Tibet­ ans,­ who had be­ 容。譬諸匠眾為優填王作旃檀像。雕鐫塗澤。無足名 come subjects­ of their expanding empire;­ and he did this WEN-SHING CHOU • Imperial Apparitions: Manchu Buddhism and the Cult of Mañjuśrī 177 by show­ing how Qianlong employed the same method of Ti­bet­an, Man­chu, Mon­go­lian, and Chi­nese, and sit­u­ates self-iden­ti­fi­ca­tion as Mon­gols and Ti­bet­ans, who by the Qianlong in a mountain­ ous­ “pure land” of Wutai Shan. I sev­en­teenth cen­tury had all­ be­come ad­her­ents of Ti­betan thank Lin Shih-Hsuan for bringing­ this album­ to my at­ Buddhism­ and were subscrib­ ­ing to a growing­ sys­tem of ec­ ten­tion. cle­si­as­ti­cal re­in­car­na­tions in which oc­cu­pants of mo­nas­tic 83. Recent schol­ar­ship has come to challenge­ Farqu­ thrones were con­sid­ered in­car­na­tions of spe­cific ­dhibo ­satt­ har’s claim (that Qing em­perors’­ Bud­dhist guise was pri­mar­ vas. That is, the Qing em­per­ors’ par­al­lel self-iden­ti­fi­ca­tion ily targeted at Mon­gols and Ti­betans)­ by fo­cus­ing on would there­fore al­low them to gain con­trol of Tibet and Chi­nese lan­guage texts that re­it­er­ate their Mañjuśrī ap­pel­la­ Mongolia by rais­ing them­selves to the same level of divin­­ tion and spell out their sumptu­ ­ous im­pe­rial do­na­tion in ity as Tibet and Mongolia’s own bo­dhi­sattva in­car­na­tes. both Chi­nese and Ti­betan monas­ ter­ ­ies at Wutai Shan. See Furthermore, Farquhar dem­on­strated how early Qing rul­ Natalie Köhle, “Why Did the Kangxi Emperor Go to Wutai ers first jus­ti­fied their claims on Mon­gol prece­ ­dence by Shan?; and Gray Tuttle, “Ti­betan Bud­dhism at Wutai Shan trac­ing their abil­ity to claim this sta­tus for them­selves to a in the Qing: The Chi­nese-lan­guage Register.” Gray Tuttle’s his­tory of priest–pa­tron re­la­tion­ships be­tween Chi­nese em­ study of im­pe­ri­ally en­dorsed Chi­nese-lan­guage gaz­et­teers per­ors and Tibetan­ la­mas that had be­gun in China dur­ing chal­lenges Farquhar’s as­ser­tion that the Man­chu em­per­ors’ the Mon­gol Yuan dy­nasty (1271–1368): the in­vi­ta­tion of as­so­ci­a­tion with Mañjuśrī was a strategy­ directed­ at Tibetan­ the Fifth Da­lai Lama (1617–1682) by the Qing dy­nas­tic and Mon­go­lian pop­u­la­tions. Tuttle pos­tu­lates in­stead that founder Abahai (1592–1643) to his court in Mukden in Han-Chi­nese ad­her­ents of Ti­betan Bud­dhism were a prin­ci­ 1637 was mod­eled af­ter previ­ ­ous em­perors­ who in­vited re­ pal re­cip­i­ent of Qing impe­ ­rial pa­tron­age and were the pop­ li­gious teach­ers to their court, and es­pe­cially the la­ma–pa­ u­la­tion group es­pe­cially targeted for the prop­a­ga­tion of tron re­la­tion­ship be­tween Kublai Khan (1215–1294), the Wutai Shan and, in par­tic­u­lar, Ti­betan Bud­dhism. founder of the Yuan dynas­ ­ty, and his impe­ ­rial pre­cep­tor 84. Ibid. For the de­sign of the man­dalic struc­ture, see the ’Phags pa lama (1235–1280) from Tibet; it was upon Heather Stoddard, “Dynamic Structures in Buddhist­ Man­ his return to Tibet that the Fifth Da­lai La­ma, jointly with dalas: Apradakṣina and Mystic Heat in the Mother Tantra the Fourth Panchen­ Lama (1570–1662), bestowed on Aba­ Section of the Anuttarayoga Tantras,” Artibus Asiae 58, hai the ti­tle of “Mañjuśrī-Great Emperor,” a ti­tle that was no. 3–4 (1999): 169–213. Stoddard relates­ the build­ing of maintained and solid­ ­i­fied by and for sub­se­quent Manchu­ the Cakrasamvara Mandala at Pule Si in the Qing impe­ ­rial em­per­ors. This iden­ti­fi­ca­tion was made in­dis­put­able by the summer­ pal­ace of Jehol to the man­dala ini­ti­a­tions that Third Dalai­ La­ma’s proph­ecy that a great sec­u­lar in­car­na­ Qianlong un­der­took at around the same time. The pres­ent- tion of Mañjuśrī would unite China, Mongolia, and Tibet, day ru­ins of Baoxiang Si are lo­cated in­side a closed mil­i­ to­gether with the ho­mo­pho­nic sim­i­lar­ity be­tween the tary com­pound and are there­fore closed to re­searchers.­ names “Man­chu” and “Mañju.” See Da­vid Farquhar, “Em­ 85. 歲辛巳, 值聖母皇太后七旬大慶, 爰奉安輿詣五臺, peror as Bodhisattva,” 15–20; the no­tion that Qianlong 所以祝釐也。 殊像寺在山之麓, 為瞻禮文殊初地, 妙相莊 pro­moted his im­age as the Mañjughoṣa em­peror ex­clu­ 嚴, 光耀香界, 默識以歸。即歸則心追手摹, 係以讚而勒之 sively to­ward the Mongols­ and Ti­betans­ has also been im­ 碑。香山南麓, 曩所規菩薩頂之寶諦寺在焉。迺於寺右度 plic­itly sub­stan­ti­ated by the fact that Qianlong at the same 隙地, 出內府金錢, 飭具庀材, 營構藍若, 視碑摹而像設 time supported Con­fu­cian state rit­u­als and the pres­er­va­ 之。… 經始於乾隆壬午春, 越今丁亥春蕆工。 See Zhang tion of Man­chu Shamanistic rit­uals.­ For more on Qian­ Yuxin 張羽新, Qing zhengfu yu lama jiao 清政府與喇嘛教 long’s prac­tice of Con­fu­cian state rit­u­als and par­tic­i­pa­tion (The Qing gov­ern­ment and Lama Religion) (Lhasa: Xizang in Shamanistic rit­u­als, see Angela Zito, Of Body and remin chubanshe, 1988), 409–11. Brush: Grand Sacrifices as Text/Performance in Eighteenth- 86. See note 38 above. Century China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 87. 因記之曰： 文殊師利久住娑婆世界, 而應現說法則 1997), and Di Cosmo, “Man­chu Shamanic Ceremonies.” 獨在清涼山, 固《華嚴品》所謂東方世界中菩薩者也。夫 82. On Ti­betan ap­pel­la­tion of Qianlong as Mañjuśrī, 清涼在畿輔之西, 而香山亦在京城之西。然以清涼視香山, the Pan­chen Lama Blo bzang dpal ldan yes shes com­posed 則香山為東, 若以竺乾視震旦, 則清涼、香山又皆東也。是 a prayer to Qianlong’s pre­vious­ in­car­na­tions on the oc­ca­ 二山者不可言同, 何況云異？ 矧陸元暢之答宣律師曰： 文 sion of the em­per­or’s sev­enti­ ­eth birth­day. See Vladimir Us­ 殊隨緣利見, 應變不窮, 是一是二, 在文殊本不生分別見, pensky, “The Previous Incarnations of the Qianlong 倘必執清涼為道場, 而不知香山之亦可為道場, 則何異鑿井 Emperor According to the Pan­chen Lama Blo bzang dpal 得泉而謂水專在是哉？ 而昔之詣五臺禮文殊, 所以祝釐也, ltan ye shes,” in Tibet, Past and Present: Proceedings of 而清涼距畿輔千餘里, 掖輦行慶, 向惟三至焉。若香山則去 the Ninth Seminar of the International Association for Ti­ 京城三十里而進, 歲可一再至。繼自今憶萬年延洪演乘, 茲 betan Studies, ed. Henk Blezer (Leiden: 2000), 215–28. An 惟其恒, 是則予, 建寺香山之初志也。寺成, 名之曰： 寶 album­ of thirteen painted leaves featur­ ing­ Qianlong and 相。See Zhang, Qing zhengfu yu lama jiao, 408. his twelve pre­vious­ incar­ na­ tions,­ now in the Palace Mu­ 88. For Qing knowledge­ of and policy­ toward­ India,­ seum Library in Beijing, is based on this incar­ ­nation­ line­­ see Matthew­ Mosca, From Frontier Policy to Foreign Pol- age. It is accom­ pa­ nied­ by quadrilingual inscrip­ tions­ in icy: The Question of India­ and the Transformation of 178 ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART

Geopolitics in Qing China (Stanford, CA: Stanford Uni­ 99. Anne Chayet, “Architectural Wonderland: An Em­ versity Press, 2013). pire of Fictions,” in New Qing Imperial History: The Mak- 89. Dou Guangnai, ed., Qinding rixia jiuwen kao, juan ing of Inner Asian Em­pire at Qing Chengde, ed. James A. 103, 8. Concerning the building­ of Baoxiang Si’s mall hall, Millward et al. (London and New York: Routledge Cur­ the text reads: 命於寶諦寺旁，建茲寺，肖像其中，殿制 zon, 2004), 49. 外方內圓，皆甃甓而成，不施木植，四面設甕門. 100. The cur­rent struc­ture is five bays wide and three 90. Berger, Em­pire of Emptiness, 161. bays deep. According to Qinding Qingliang shan zhi 91. Da­vid Snellgrove and Hugh Richardson, A Cul- (1785), the hall measures­ two bays (three ying 楹) wide; tural History of Tibet (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, see Qinding Qingliang shan zhi, juan 10, 10. 1968), 115–16. 101. The name is a var­i­a­tion of Qianlong’s icon­o­ 92. Ishihama, “Study on the Qianlong as Cakravartin, graphic pro­ject, the Baoxiang Lou 寶相樓, lo­cated in the a Manifestation of Bodhisattva Mañjuśrī, Tangka,” Waseda Cining Palace in­side the Forbidden City, which was also daigaku Mon­gol Kekyusyo, 2, no. 24 (March 2004). Qian­ constructed in honor of the eighti­­eth birth­day of his long gave at least one painting­ to Rölpé Dorjé around the moth­er, the em­press-dow­a­ger, in 1771. year 1784; see Wang, “Tibetan­ Bud­dhism at the Court of 102. Zhengjue Si, another­ Man­chu mon­as­tery that be­ Qing,” 296. gan con­struc­tion in 1773 near the Yuanming Yuan Sum­ 93. Car­o­line Bodolec, “Uncommon Public Buildings with mer Palace, also ap­pears to have had an oc­tag­onal­ pa­vil­ion Vault with Abutments in the Chinese­ Landscape of Wooden that housed a sculp­tural im­age of Mañjuśrī on a li­on. See Construction (Sixteenth–Eighteenth Centuries),” in Proceed- Zhou Fang, Zhengjue Si li hua jinxi 正觉寺里话今昔 ings of the Second International Congress on Construction (Speaking of the Past and the Present in­side Zhenjue Si), History, vol. 1 (Exeter, UK: Short Run Press, 2006), 409–16. accessed Au­gust 26, 2015, http://www.mzb.com.cn/html/ 94. The Man­chu Bud­dhist canon took nearly twenty Home/report/220569-2.htm. This sculp­tural im­age is also years and more than five hun­dred transla­ ­tors to com­plete. ref­er­enced in Eugene Pander, Lalitavajra’s Manual of Bud­ A Man­chu transla­ ­tion bu­reau (Qingzi Jingguan 清字經館) dhist Iconography (New Delhi: International Academy of was established in 1772 (the thirty­ -seventh­ year of the In­dian Culture and Aditya Prakashan, 1994), 40. Qianlong reign). See Marcus Bingenheimer, “The History 103. The Getty Conservation Institute has been en­ of the Man­chu Bud­dhist Canon and First Steps to­wards its gaged in a resto­ ­ra­tion pro­ject at Shuxiang Si since 2002, Digitization,” Central Asi­atic Journal 56 (2012–13): 203– and has published old photo­ ­graphs of the monas­ ­tery for its 19; Gao Mingdao (a.k.a. Friedrich Grohmann),“Rulai zhi­ ex­ten­sive con­ser­va­tion re­port. See Chengde Cultural Heri­ yin sanmai jing fanyi yanjiu 如來智印三昧經翻譯研究” tage Bureau, Hebei Cultural Heritage Bureau, and The (mas­ter’s the­sis, Taipei: Chi­nese Culture University, 1983), Getty Conservation Institute, Assessment Report on Shux­ 1–33, 153–205; Walther Fuchs, “Zum mandjurischen Kan­ iang Temple, Chengde, rev. ed. (Los Angeles: Getty Conser­ djur,” Asia Major 6 (1930): 388–402; and Hans-Rainer vation Institute, 2009); accessed April 29, 2011, http:// Kämpfe, “Einige tibetische und mongolische Nachrichten getty.edu/conservation/publications/pdf_publications​ zur Entstehungsgeschichte des mandjurischen Kanjur,” /­shuxiang.html. Zentralasiatische Studien 9 (1975): 537–46. On the con­ 104. Xiang Si 向斯, Huangdi yu foyuan 皇帝的佛緣 nec­tion with Shuxiang Si in Chengde, see Feng Shudong 馮 (Emperors and Buddhism)­ (Hong Kong: Heping tushu, 術東,“Shuxiang Si yu manwen dazang jing” 殊像寺與滿文 2005), 297; and Banyou, “Wai ba miao yu qingdai zheng­ 大藏經 (Shuxiang Si and the Manchu­ Canon), Wenwu zhi 外八廟與清代政治,” Chengde minzu zhiyie jishu Chunqiu 1 (2005): 41–43. xueyuan xuebao 承德民族職業技術學院學報, vol. 4 95. According to Wang, Lifan yuan’­ s re­cords in­dicate­ (1996), 47. Sven Hedin not­ed, “Folk-lore says that the six­ty-three Man­chu la­mas re­sided in Shuxiang Si; see rider on the lion is the di­vine rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Em­ Wang, “Qianlong yu Manzu lama siyuan,” 62. Wang does peror Ch’ien Lung as Mañjuśrī.” Hedin, History of the Ex- not cite the spe­cific pas­sage. pedition in Asia 1927–1935 (Stockholm: Elanders, 1943), 96. One excep­ ­tion to the structure­ of the Chinese­ 141; http://dsr.nii.ac.jp/toyobunko/E-290.9-HE01-025/V-2​ canon is addi­ ­tion of eso­ ­teric texts; see Gao Mingdao, “Ru­ /­page/0149.html.en. See also a sim­i­lar de­scrip­tion of an­ lai zhiyin sanmai jing fanyi yanjiu,” 10. other Mañjuśrī on a lion at Zhenjue Si by Eugene Pander 97. 莊校金容, 一如香山之制； 而殿堂樓閣, 略仿五 in Pander, Lalitavajra’s Manual of Buddhist­ Iconography, 臺山。 The commem­ ­ora­ ­tive stele dates to the for­ti­eth year 40, cited in Berger, Empire­ of Emptiness, 226. Berger won­ of the Qianlong reign (1775); see Zhang, Qing zhengfu yu ders whether Pander could be re­fer­ring to an­other temple­ lama jiao, 443. at Wanshuo Shan. Zhenjue Si was also a Man­chu Bud­dhist 98. Meng Fanxing 孟繁興, “Chengde Shuxiang Si yu monas­ ­tery built around the same time as Chengde’s Shux­ Wutai Shan Shuxiang Si 承德殊像寺與五台山殊像寺,” in iang Si. It would not be sur­prising­ to find Qianlong’s rep­lic­ as Bishu shanzhuang luncong 避暑山莊論叢 (Collected essays­ of Shuxiang Si’s Mañjuśrī sculpture­ at other Man­chu mon­ on the summer­ pal­ace) (Beijing: Zijincheng chubanshe: as­ter­ies as well. 1986), 450–54. 105. I thank Lin Shih-Hsuan for this obser­ va­ tion.­ WEN-SHING CHOU • Imperial Apparitions: Manchu Buddhism and the Cult of Mañjuśrī 179

106. Qi Jingzhi 齊敬之, Wai ba miao beiwen zhushi 114. Beijing Number One Archive, docu­ ­ment no. 04- 外八廟碑文註釋 (The Eight Outer Temple’s Annotated 01-38-0015-011. ­Inscriptions) (Beijing: Zijingcheng chubanshe, 1985), 92: 115. For a com­par­i­son of the dif­fer­ent ver­sions of gaz­ 殊像亦非殊，堂堂如是乎。雙峰恆並峙, 半里弗多纖。法爾 et­teers at Wutai Shan, see Chou, “The Visionary Landscape 現童子，巍然具丈夫。丹書過情頌，笑豈是真吾。 of Wutai Shan,” 51–53. 107. These childhood­ ob­jects in­clude a silver­ vase, a 116. Johan Elverskog, Our Great Qing: The Mon­gols, golden bowl, ivory pil­lars, and por­ce­lain plates; see Feng Bud­dhism, and the State in Late Imperial China (Hono­ Shudong, “Shuxiang Si yu manwen dazang jing,” 397. lulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2006), 8. 108. T. 20.1195. 117. As Stephen Whiteman shows through his study of 109. For a more detailed­ study of this transla­ ­tion pro­ the impe­ ­rial summer­ re­treat in mod­ern-day Chengde dur­ ject and its sig­nif­i­cance, see Lin Shih-Hsuan, “Wutai Shan ing the reign of Qianlong’s grandfa­ ­ther Kangxi, the retreat­ yu Qing Qianlong nianjian de manwen fojing fanyi” 五臺山 constructed un­der Kangxi displayed a very dif­fer­ent vi­sion 與清乾隆年間的滿文佛經繙譯 (Wutai Shan and the trans­ of rul­er­ship than that of the Qianlong era, de­spite Qian­ la­tion of Manchu­ Bud­dhist scrip­tures dur­ing the Qianlong long’s em­ploy­ment of a rhet­o­ric of con­tin­u­a­tion from his reign). Paper presented at The Mountain of Five Plateaus grand­fa­ther. The trans­for­ma­tions of the sum­mer re­treat Conference, Wutai Shan, Shanxi, July 27–Au­gust 2, 2015. that took place be­tween the two reigns reflected the fact 110. See Lin Shih-Hsuan, Qingdai menggu yu man- that whereas Kangxi faced the “chal­lenges of con­quest zhou zhengzhi wenhua, 215, quot­ing Yuzhi shi siji 御製詩 and consol­ ­i­da­tion,” it was only under­ Qianlong’s reign 四集 (Imperial Poems in Four Volumes), juan 89, 19. that a model of uni­ver­sal em­per­or­ship was established. 111. The original reads: 《大聖文殊師利菩薩讚佛法身 See Whiteman, “From Upper Camp to Mountain Estate: 禮經》載漢經中而番藏中乃無。去歲巡幸五臺, 道中因以 re­cov­er­ing his­tor­i­cal nar­ra­tives in Qing im­pe­rial land­ 國語譯出, 並令經館譯出西番、蒙古, 以金書四體經供奉臺 scapes,” in Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed 頂及此寺. Landscapes 33, no. 4 (Oc­to­ber, 2013): 266. 112. A study has yet to be done on how many copies­ 118. See Shan, Qingdai jianzhu nianbiao, 202. were made and how widely they were dis­sem­i­nat­ed. 119. Di Cosmo, “Manchu­ Shamanic Ceremonies,” 113. Crossley, A Translucent Mirror, 266. 390.