Receptacle of the Sacred. Jinah Kim
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here that Nepalese Buddhists played an active role in the initial stage of illustrated manuscript production in eastern India. With such frequent movements of people and manuscripts between eastern India and the Himalayan region, the inspiration for illustrating a Buddhist manuscript could have easily traveled between the regions. Although no Nepalese manuscript predates the earliest Indian example, the practice of inserting painted panels in Buddhist manuscripts seems to have gotten established in both places contemporaneously. Also, the distinctive iconographic scheme (Group B) of the earliest surviving illustrated manuscript from Nepal, now in the Cambridge University Library (Add. 1643, dated NS 135, 1015 CE), was followed later in twelfth-century India, suggesting multidirectionality of cultural influence in Buddhist artistic productions.
This geographical connection also helps us understand the late date for the introduction of the practice of illustrating. It may be no coincidence that the period in which we see an explosion of the production of the Buddhist illustrated manuscripts corresponds with the beginning of chidar (phyi-dar, ca. 960–1400 CE), the second great transmission of Buddhism in Tibet. The heightened demand for Sanskrit manuscripts that were rigorously translated into Tibetan during this period also meant thriving scriptoria in Bihar and Bengal, which would have provided a fertile ground for the proponents of the Buddhist book cult. Long before the Tibetans, there were Chinese pilgrims looking for Buddhist manuscripts in India, but the scale of movement of people and manuscripts seems to have been unforeseen. For example, the manuscript now in the Asia Society, New York, with which we started this chapter, was commissioned by a lay donor named Nāesutaṣohāsitta in Nālandā during Vigrahapāla III’s fifteenth regnal year (ca. 1058 CE). The donor’s non-Sanskrit name and the manuscript’s later luminary Tibetan monastic owners claimed in the post colophons suggest that Nāesutaṣohāsitta may have been from Tibet as well. According to the post colophons, the manuscript was in Tibet by the beginning of the thirteenth century.21
An increase in volume of production does not necessarily translate into artistic advancement and quality refinement. It may have the opposite effect in terms of quality, as in mass-produced contemporary souvenir items. Compromising quality for quantity may well have been the case in eastern Indian manuscript productions. Albīrūnī (ca. 973–1048), a Persian scholar, who traveled in India during the early eleventh century, notes that Indian scribes were notoriously careless and inattentive. According to him, “The Indian scribes are careless, and do not take pains to produce correct and well-collated copies. In consequence, the highest results of the author’s mental development are lost by their negligence, and his book becomes already in the first or second copy so full of faults that the text appears as something entirely new, which [no one] could any longer understand.”22 Frustrations and complaints expressed by Tibetan translators regarding the often haphazard and faulty nature of Indian manuscripts also suggest that providing high-quality products was not the top priority of the Indian manuscript makers.23 The production of illustrated Buddhist manuscripts, many of which were written carefully in siddhamātṛkā script, may have been a collective attempt to adhere to the older values in response to this unruly situation. The sustained use of siddhamātṛkā script in the face of developing regional scripts, such as Gauḍi (proto-Bengali), and the formalized and ornamental style of calligraphy seen in illustrated manuscripts reflect the degree of conservatism that existed among the supporters of the Buddhist book cult in medieval India when the illustrating practice was first introduced.24 Compared with the careless presentation of texts in so many contemporary Sanskrit manuscripts, illustrated manuscripts formed a class of their own with their controlled and refined production process.
FIGURE 2-2Sculpted panels surrounding the lower part of Temple 2, Nālandā monastery. Notice the decorative columns used to demarcate the space between each panel, which is also contained within an individual frame.
While the idea of illustrating text folios may have originated elsewhere, the format of illustrating a palm-leaf folio with symmetrically arranged square or rectangular panels seems to be rooted in the indigenous tradition of constructing sacred structures. The images in Central Asian manuscripts appear in roundels, perhaps in compositional harmony with the simple representations of dharmacakra (wheel of dharma) that were frequently inserted in early Sanskrit manuscripts.25 The square or rectangular format chosen for inserting paintings on a manuscript folio of a medieval South Asian book is comparable to the shapes of niches on a contemporary stūpa (Buddhist relic mound) or shrine, many of which are laid out in rectangular grids and often demarcated by plastered and decorated pillars, as seen on the stūpas and temples, especially Temple 2 and Temple 12, at Nālandā (fig. 2–2). The illustrated panels, too, often have border frames that demarcate the space and are placed at regular spatial intervals. The aforementioned mid-eleventh-century Nālandā manuscript donated by a Nepali, Rāmajīva, shows this feature quite distinctively. Two folios from this manuscript now in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (M72.1.20a-b) show thick embellished bands placed on either side of each illustrated panel (fig. 2–3). All the illustrated panels in this manuscript are framed in square shapes just as in the visual program of a temple structure, a good example of which is seen on Temple 2 in Nālandā (see fig. 2–2). The earlier practice of inserting dharmacakra symbols coexisted with the new mode of illustration, as we can see from the two large roundels containing geometric designs appearing in the middle of the text in between the rectangular illustrated panels in the same manuscript.26 Locating the illustrated manuscripts’ designing mechanism in the indigenous context of constructing sacred structures is historically important because Buddhist manuscript paintings are the earliest manuscript paintings surviving from South Asia. It can help us locate the development of later manuscript painting traditions in historical context, linking the mural-painting tradition of Ajanta and the later painting schools. Their historical connection goes beyond their stylistic and artistic merits. The paintings can be understood as transforming a sacred space, be it a temple or a manuscript.
FIGURE 2-3First and the last folios of an AsP Ms (Ms A3), Nālandā monastery, Bihar. Nayapāla’s14th year (ca. 1041 CE). Scribe (lekhaka): Svameśvara. Donor: Rāmajīva. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, M72.20.a-b. Digital Image © 2012 Museum Associates / LACMA. Licensed by Art Resource, NY.
ANATOMY OF A BUDDHIST SACRED OBJECT: PARAMETERS OF ANALYSIS
Not all the Buddhist manuscripts made in medieval eastern India and Nepal were illustrated. The manuscripts of a few selective Mahāyāna sūtras, such as the Kāraṇḍavyūha, the Gaṇḍavyūha, the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka, the Pañcarakṣā, and the AsP and other Prajñāpāramitā sūtras,27 were commissioned with paintings. It is interesting to note that the AsP remained the most illustrated text in medieval South Asia because the AsP, while geared towards sensory experiences, that is, worship of a book as a physical object, is the least visually inclined among this group of Mahāyāna sūtras, especially compared with the visual worlds of the Lotus sūtra and the Avataṃsaka (Gaṇḍavyūha) sūtra.28 The resplendent visual imagery of the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka sūtra (popularly known as the Lotus sūtra) provides bountiful possibilities for illustrations.29 The Gaṇḍavyūha sūtra is also a visually inclined text, as it narrates the story of Sudhana’s pilgrimage, visiting various teachers and divinities of different worlds.30 Yet these two sūtras were only occasionally commissioned with paintings in medieval South Asia, and the images did not quite meet the visual potential of the text.31 It is as if they did not earn enough currency in the circle of the promoters of the medieval Buddhist book cult.
The Kāraṇḍavyūha sūtra (Kv) and the Pañcarakṣā sūtra (PC) concern a more cultic aspect of Mahāyāna Buddhism in which the visual world is much emphasized. The Kv eulogizes the virtue of Avalokiteśvara, who could save the devotees even from the burning hell (avīci), while the PC is about the five protective goddesses who could be propitiated for protections against worldly