Receptacle of the Sacred. Jinah Kim
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in the center appear along the trefoil-shaped halo of the goddess, and four human figures stand offering garlands in between these five Buddhas. Two celestial beings also offer garlands flying amidst clouds on either side of the very top of the stele. Two more human figures, most likely monks, appear on either side of her legs, looking upward reverently. Below her double lotus seat appears saptaratna—seven jewels of the universal monarch, cakravartin, that is, wheel (cakra), wish-granting jewel, sword (i.e., general), treasurer, queen, elephant, horse—each element appearing in the middle of a vine. Although the image is identified as Tārā in the museum label, it represents the goddess Prajñāpāramitā. The preaching gesture and the two lotuses on either side (now damaged) are typical iconographic attributes of Prajñāpāramitā. In addition, it is important to note that the Buddha who sits right above her crown is Amitābha, instead of Amoghasiddhi, the usual spiritual sire of Tārā. Most importantly, the bottom register under the band of seven jewels contains a scene of a ritual, not just any ritual but that of the worship of a book. The book in worship is most likely the Prajñāpāramitā sūtra, the book of the Buddhist book cult.
The bottom register is divided into three squares with the center part protruding about an inch from the rest (see web 1–2). A long rectangular pothi-type book is in the center on a pillar-shaped stand with flowers on top. Two cone-shaped food offerings are on the ground on the right side. Its central position and the remarkable size suggest that the book is the central object of the ritual. A man with a beard sits right below the book, paying homage to the book and holding a lotus bud in his hands. Three women kneel behind him with their hands folded together in añjali mudrā and holding lotus-bud-like offerings just like the man. The man’s hairdo and beard resemble those of the kings in contemporary sculptures, and we may infer that he was a wealthy patron, possibly followed by three female members of his family. The right side panel shows a ritual master (i.e., ācārya or paṇḍita) seated at the far right end with three ritual offerings in front, two of which might be butter lamps. He seems to hold ritual implements, that is, vajra and ghaṇṭa, in his hands, and although his head is damaged, the shape of the remnant of his head suggests that he might have worn a cone-shaped hat, a common feature found in the representation of ritual masters in medieval eastern Indian Buddhist sculptures.29
We may compare this ritual scene with the scene showing a simple ritual of reciting a book by a monk depicted in the Mahāmāyūrī panels of Ellora (see fig. 1–2 and web 1–1). The ritual depicted in the eleventh-century stele of Prajñāpāramitā seems to be more elaborate and cultic, involving a ritual master and wealthy lay patrons. The book is clearly a prominent object of worship in this scene, whereas the book in the Ellora panels is a small utility object that could be held in hand to read.30 The composition of the stele makes the goddess the center of our attention just like Mahāmāyūrī in Ellora. The goddess remained in worship until the twentieth century, albeit in a non-Buddhist context. Although the book is considerably smaller in size than the goddess, the book and the goddess sustain parallel existences in this stele, one in the earthly realm and the other in the divine realm. In fact, her divine presence originates from the ritual recorded underneath, and the book in worship establishes her identity as the goddess Prajñāpāramitā. The juxtaposition between the book and the goddess as represented in this stele also demonstrates the book’s potential as a manageable, portable sacred object, unlike a stone image that would have been installed in one spot and remained more or less immovable. The stele clearly represents the increased cultic status of a Buddhist book.
THE BUDDHIST BOOK CULT
Considering a Buddhist book as an object of worship is not a new idea that emerged during the ninth and the tenth centuries. A number of early Mahāyāna sūtras in fact promote their own worship as if reflecting the authorial anxiety about their survival without the material vessel of a book and proper care given to it.31 The most elaborate prescription for the worship of a book is given in the text of the AsP, the book of the medieval Buddhist book cult in South Asia. It is almost counterintuitive to find the AsP the book of the Buddhist book cult, because the text expounds the empty nature of existence (the concept of śūnyatā) to the extent that existence (samsāra) and extinction (nirvāṇa) are essentially the same, and ultimately void. This philosophical text suddenly talks about the virtue and the merit one acquires by honoring and worshipping the book of the AsP. It states that one gains more merit by copying, reciting, illuminating, honoring, and worshipping the Perfection of Wisdom text than by making thousands of stūpas (hemispheric mounds containing the Buddha’s relics) filling the entire world of Jambudvīpa.32
The text suddenly drops the mode of listing contradictory pairs of counterstatements as a way to show the idea of śūnyatā (emptiness or voidness) and becomes affirmative about stating the methods of worshipping the book physically and the merit one acquires from such actions.33 Having a book means that one has a physical, palpable container for the profound Buddhist philosophy. If the doctrine of emptiness had been entirely formless, its propagation would not have been as effective, as it proved in its long history of immense popularity. For a text that is not too user-friendly with complex concepts expounded, extoling the merit of its multiplication and proliferation through production and cultic use seems to have been a wise strategy for its survival.
The AsP dictates the worship of the book in a concrete manner: a book of the Prajñāpāramitā sūtra is to be worshipped with numerous material objects such as “flowers, incense, scents, wreaths, unguents, aromatic powders, strips of cloth, parasols, banners, bells, flags and rows of lamps.” It is difficult to prove, however, how much of what is prescribed in the AsP was in fact practiced during the early centuries of the Common Era. Faxian’s report and the monks with books at Ellora suggest cultic use of Buddhist books but the ritual was rather simple. In practice, the full potential of a book as a cultic object as described in the AsP text was realized after the ninth century although the AsP text signals the early date of the Mahāyāna Buddhist book cult as an idea, as Schopen suggests.34 With the renewed interest in the Prajñāpāramitā literature from the ninth century onwards in Pāla India, as explained above, the cultic aspect of the AsP seems to have been reemphasized. An explosion of the production of the illustrated Buddhist manuscripts in the eleventh century, a considerably late date for the Prajñāpāramitā cult, supposedly in practice almost for a millennium by that time, may be a culmination of this post-ninth-century development. In addition, the Mañjuśrīmūlakalpa, a ritual text of the eighth century or later, seems to have provided an inspiration for designing the Buddhist books as sacred objects. Another piece of the puzzle that could help us locate this later boom of the Buddhist book cult in practice in the historical context is the development of the cult of relics, especially of the “dharma relics” during the early medieval period.
The early medieval development of the cult of the dharma relics, in which the Buddha’s teaching, epitomized in one single verse of the Pratītyasamutpādagāthā, is deposited as relics inside stūpas and images, is understood as an important product of a synthesis between the stūpa cult and the book cult.35 The Mahāyāna book cult as explained in the early Mahāyāna texts made the Buddha’s teaching materially and practically venerable, and it contributed to the emergence of the cult of the dharma relics, which in a way revolutionized the Buddhist practices, with Buddha’s true relics readily available for anyone who desired to get one. The cult of the dharma relics opened up the door to everyone for ready access to the Buddha’s true relics, and perhaps it is a truly Mahāyāna intervention. The fundamental similarity between the Buddhist book cult and the cult of the dharma relics, relying on the materiality of the text as an embodiment of the Buddha, may obscure any distinction between the two cultic practices.36 It is easy to assume that the Buddhist book cult, supposedly an early Mahāyāna cult, was subsumed under the cult of the dharma relics that developed after the sixth century.37 However, in practice, this was not necessarily the case.
The linear developmental model of the Mahāyāna cultic practices stems partly from understanding the Buddhist book cult as an early Mahāyāna institutional response to the stūpa cult, the oldest Buddhist cultic practice.38 In juxtaposing the Buddhist book cult and the stūpa cult, we implicitly acknowledge that the Buddhist books functioned as relics that sanctified the space where they were placed. However, Buddhist manuscripts were rarely deposited