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Hello, this is Natasha Heller, one of the hosts of New Books in Board of Studies, part of the New Books Network. Michelle Wong's new book is Mondyla's in the Making, the Visual Culture of Esoteric Buddhism at Dunhuang. This work joins a growing body of scholarship on Esoteric Buddhism in China. Wong's research is an important contribution for the way in which she centers murals, portable paintings, ritual manuscripts, and diagrams connected to the Mondyla of eight Great Bodhisathas.
She traces how the use of this Mondyla changed over time and how it was shaped by the distinct cultural and linguistic context at Dunhuang, a key Buddhist site on the Silk Road. This book will reshape scholarly understanding both of Mondyla's in China, but also of Dunhuang as a Buddhist site. Welcome, Michelle. I'm wondering if we could start by hearing how you ended up in the study of Buddhist art.
Well, gosh, I think that as with many scholars, a lot of that really rested on the strengths of my graduate program, and in particular what my graduate advisor was working on. And there's a really strong legacy at Harvard, of course, of studies in Buddhist art and also in Dunhuang art. And at that time, I had already had some background in Buddhist art, so that was one direction which I could have gone for PhD studies in my dissertation. Another strong interest of mine was archaeology, but at the time, I think the course offerings and the interest of other graduate students aligned in such a way that there was just a lot of support, I think, and resources for studying Buddhist art in graduate school.
So how did you end up working on this particular research topic? I discovered this research topic in the Rebelle Fine Arts Library at Harvard, so I was fishing for a seminar paper topic. And those of your listeners who are familiar with the resources for Dunhuang will be familiar with a multi-volume series. These are large over-sized volume volumes bound in orange.
Plush named Jamsu, and usually these volumes focus on anywhere between one to a few of the K-Shurans at Dunhuang and provides really high quality illustrations of the Mural paintings. It's actually catalogs, these are essentially illustration of the Mural paintings. And I was looking for a research paper topic, and I tended then and still do try to look for topics that appeal to me, that just appeals to me visually, that speak my curiosity. And so I found myself looking through each of these orange bound volumes one by one, and then I came across one, which was for Mughal K-14, and of course one thing led to another, so I read about that for my seminar paper, and I felt that there was still enough left to do on the topic, that the interest was there, that I could work out for a dissertation topic.
And at that time I felt stonly then, and still do know that there was still so much to discover that that could also form the basis of a book beyond the dissertation. It's fascinating. Turning to the book itself, you open in the introduction by talking about how Mughal has been understood by scholars up to this point, and in particular how Japanese Mughal has influenced the interpretation of Chinese ones. So how would you say your work fits into this existing body of scholarship?
So I think there's probably a really fascinating story to delve into regarding how our knowledge of studies of Japanese Buddhist art, the methodologies that we use for studying Japanese Buddhist art, and Japanese Buddhism have affected studies of Chinese Buddhism and Chinese Buddhist art. And what I try to unpack in the introduction to the book is the impact of the Xingon two realms mandala, studies of the Xingon two realms mandala on Buddhist mandala elsewhere in Asia. And one of the very distinctive characteristics of the Xingon two realms mandala is that we are talking about pear paintings, a pair of portable paintings. So the earliest Play Chrome set is located in Tohji in Kyoto, and very very large silver pear paintings, and these were hung opposite one another with a small altar for offerings in front of each painting, and then with a larger altar in the middle.
And the two paintings represent the Garb-Dhatu mandala and the Vajra-Dhatu mandala, and they're believed to have their own textual bases in the Buddhist canon. And so what I had found when I was doing research, my dissertation, and the book was that it was, if I'm not uncommon to describe mandala phenomena throughout Asia, even outside of Japan, as adhering to the two realms system. So for example, in the introductory essay to Mughal K-14 in the Australia catalog, then just described earlier, the folio book, the scholar, Madhajun Khan Academy, actually tries to interpret the paintings in this cave shrine as adhering to the Japanese ngo-turams mandala. And we see the effect of this elsewhere as well.
So for example, in the introduction, I talk a little bit about the previous scholarship on the Phamans Cider reliquaries. So very important Tang Dain St. Fine's, these have been studied by several scholars, and it's very clear that these nesting reliquaries and then a sculpture of an Yiling Bodhisapa that was meant to support the fingerbone reliqu from Phamans Cider. So these are located in Shanxi Province in Central Plains China.
It seems very clear that there is mandala imagery. And again, scholars initially tried to argue that the iconography adhered to the two arms mandala of Javi Shumam Buddhism. More recently, there's been some pushback against that in the Morbhesen Scholarship on Phamans Cider. And this is quite interesting because it really, I think it really causes us to ask questions about whether esoteric Buddhism in China, whether this was a precursor to esoteric Buddhism in Japan, and of course, is a long history of the topologies of mixed and pure esotericism, terms that were never used during the Tang or Han periods and pre-modern East Asia, or whether what we see at Tung Hwang, which is quite quite culturally distinct from the central part of China, whether we're talking about very different set of practices, very different Buddhist phenomena.
That's fascinating. And I think that your book really shows that it is a different situation. So when you move into that, when we look at the first chapter, you've titled this from Dara Nita Mandala. And I wonder if you might be again by explaining that relationship for us.
How do Dara Nita Mandala relate? So Dara Nita should be familiar, I think, to many of your listeners. There's been a rich body of East Asia scholarship on Dara Nita's which are Buddhist incantations. And this particular chapter of the book actually draws most closely from the dissertation and those were questions that I was asking at that time.
And I was particularly interested in one Dara Nita Sutra pertaining to the Sutra of the Riviera Novittoris, Dara Nita Bhutas, which Nisha or the Fokkin and Swantol, and the U.S. need to be Jaya Darni. And this circulated widely during the Tang Dynasty in China. So we really see evidence of this in many parts of China and not only in the Central Plains region in Dunhong as well.
And some of the most familiar ways in which the Darni was, or I guess devotion to the Darni was carried out was through the direction of stone killers. And what I was interested in was the ritual manuals that were based on the Darni that reimagined it and knew in the context of offering rituals. And so what I do in this particular chapter is I look at a series of ritual manuals that are based upon this particular Buddhist incantation. And in particular two ritual manuals associated with monks who in term were very strongly associated with the development of esoteric Buddhism with the translation of esoteric Buddhist sutras, namely Shubakar Simha and Amogavajra.
And in their ritual manuals, what we see is that that emphasis on the erection of stone pillars and these were stone pillars that had the syllables of the Darni, the characters of the Darni carved on their surfaces. So what we see is that that practice is no longer present in the ritual manuals, but rather what they're describing instead is the production of mandalas, an assembly of deities, and in particular a configuration in which there are eight or ten deities around the central deities, central Buddha. And each ritual manual describes a very particular type of image making process pertain to the Darni, pertain to the ritual offerings based upon the Darni. So in one ritual manual, in the let's see, one ritual manual, the type of image making process that is described is an image that is painted directly onto an altar.
This was in the manual that was attributed to Amogavajra. And this in turn, the reason why the deities were painted on the surface of the altar was that these images were meant to serve as receptacle for the deities of the mandala. And in fact, for the visualization of the deities. So the idea was that during the process of visualizing the deities of the mandala, the in this practice in from was tacked onto the Darni to the Buddhistic cante, that these images that were painted on the receptacle for the visualized deities.
So the idea was that this was meant to show the deities to their proper places. And then another type of image that is explained in the ritual manuals is associated with Shubakar Simha. And this is quite interesting because he describes something a little bit different. So this is meant to be a diagrammatic drawing, and this is made on a portable support.
So not on a fixed surface, not on an altar, but rather on a piece of cloth or silk. And what he describes is painting a circle and then dividing that circle for them to nine circles. And then each of which in turn serves as the place for one of the deities of the mandala. So I find this quite fascinating.
And of course, whenever we look at this type of material, we have to keep in mind that they are prescriptive rather than descriptive. But it is fascinating to me to think about the various material forms in which mandalas may have taken, and particularly in these visual mightals are associated with two very important monks of the Tang dynasty. Right. So mandalas have this really close relationship with ritual practice.
Yes, absolutely. So in chapter two, which is titled The Crowned Buddha, A Narratives of Enlightenment, the mandala of the eight great bodhisattvas is central to your discussion. And I'm wondering, I know it's a little hard to do throughout images, but could you describe this mandala? It's so central to your work.
Could you describe this for us? Yes. So this is an iconographic configuration that takes a number of material and visual forms. So the mandalas describe very simply pertains to a configuration in which there is a central deity, a central Buddha.
And this could vary widely throughout Asia. So for example, in a material that I discussed, the central deity is commonly by Rachaela or Mahayvara Chanel. So in other parts of Asia, the central deity could, for example, be Amitabha. And some of these variations are inherent in the text pertain to the mandalas of the eight great bodhisattvas, in which it is not very clear that is the identity of the central deities not very clear to be giometh.
And so this very likely enabled iconographic variations on this program. And in addition to the central Buddha, there are eight attendant deities, eight bodhisattvas. And these could be arranged around the central Buddha in a variety of spatial forms. So they could be arranged, for example, in two vertical rows.
And this is a spatial configuration that we see in some of the examples of the mandala of eight great bodhisattvas, especially rock carvings that are seen in early Tibet. This is also a configuration that we see at Dunhong as well. For example, in Yulan caves, 20 and 38. And then another spatial configuration is that we might see the eight bodhisattvas arranged instead in two rows on either side of the Buddha.
So rather than being arranged in two rows, they would be arranged in two rows for us, totally excuse me. So two rows on one side of the Buddha and two rows on the right side of Buddha. And this is something that we see as well at Dunhong and also in early Tibet. And then finally, another configuration is one in which the eight bodhisattvas are arranged in a circular form around the central Buddha.
And this is something that we see at Dunhong as well. And so in addition to these different spatial configurations, the mandala also appears in a variety of material forms. So in some cases, this was a fixed image. So there are some well-known examples of this particular mandala in western India.
So and let's see, there are also examples that are painted on silk. So there's one important example that's housed in the British Museum. And then of course, this was also conveyed in your paintings as well. So this, there were a lot of variations both in the spatial arrangement of the deities and also material format throughout Asia.
So in this chapter, which I mentioned the title, you talk about a crown to Buddha and how the image of this crown Buddha points to another understanding of enlightenment. So what does this crown Buddha represent? So you mentioned the crown Buddha and this is actually one intriguing consistent aspect of the iconography of the mandala big body south as we see it in early Tibet and also at Dunhong. So I'm looking at the period between the eight to 10 centuries.
And despite the Salvation Crown Buddha, we are referring simply to a central Buddha who wears a tall crown. And then the Buddha is typically shown seated on a lotus pedestal. There are two lions below the lotus pedestal. And then the Buddha typically holds his hands in the mudra meditation or the jyana mudra with one hand held above the palm of the other hand.
And I think the consistency in the lion throne and in the mudra meditation, the jyana mudra and also the crown is very important to point out because I mentioned earlier, there are many variations on the mandala big body soft fuzz, not only in the spatial layout of the attendant duties, but also in the central Buddha itself. And so this is something that we see in early Tibet and also at Dunhong. And what do you my attention in looking at the scholarship on the mandala big body soft fuzz, especially in the context of early Tibet, was that they frequently evoked Akanisha heaven. And I started to look into this a little bit more, especially into the textual sources pertaining to Akanisha heaven.
And as it turns out, this is a realm that is referred to in a number of Buddhist texts, both pertaining to, I guess I'm going to say, exoteric, as well as esoteric Buddhism. And this relates to the heaven of the final limit form. And more simply put, this was where Shakyamuni is described in a variety of texts as having been crowned by the Buddha's in the ten directions. So this is an account for the crown worn on the head.
And then it is recognized as my my eruption up. And so I interpret the iconography of the crown Buddha, then in light of these consistent iconographic characteristics, you see on the line throne, the Deanna Mujranos the crown, and also light of two narratives pertaining to the Buddhist enlightenment. So I have just described one that is what I would characterize as the alternative understanding of the Buddhist enlightenment, that is his coronation in Akanisha heaven. And then the narrative of the Buddhist enlightenment that many of us are more familiar with is the story of Siddhartha Gautama meditating under the Bodhi tree.
And then of course, we're standing at the assault of Maara and then attaining awakening by daybreak. So because of the conjunction of the mood of meditation and also the crown worn on the Buddhist head, I conclude that these collectively pertain to the Buddha's meditation, or Shaxidhartha meditation or the Bodhi tree, as well as the coronation in Akanisha heaven. So I believe that in this particular context, it is in the context of early Tibet and then the Tibetan period at Genhuang and also the post-Bhen period. So this began as the eight to 10th centuries that this particular iconographic form of crown bud in the context of the eight body salvas mandala might have been drawn from a conflation of these two narratives enlightenment that is both the meditation under the Bodhi tree as well as the coronation of the Buddha's Mahayvara Shana Kanisha heaven.
And another fascinating thing is that when I took a look at Tectuals versus relating to Akanisha heaven, they frequently describe the Buddha as seated on a lion's throne. And so this I think accounts for the third aspect of this iconography. So in this chapter, you use a phrase that I thought was really interesting and that is visual and linguistic bilingualism. So what does this mean in the case of Genhuang?
So my thoughts about this emerged from reading the scholarship on this really rich body of scholarship that's produced in the past few decades on bilingual manuscripts at Genhuang. And so these are manuscripts that were brushed in more than one language. In some cases, another language was brushes in tenor source. There's also a rich body of dictionaries for translation and that sort of thing.
And alongside this body of scholarship, Palms also by a scholarship that demonstrates that even after the period of the Tibetan presence in Genhuang, so Genhuang was ruled by the Tibetan Empire between 786, roughly 786 to 848. So there's some discussion about those dates, but basically from the late or the third quarter of the eighth century to the middle of the ninth century. And what is so fascinating is that this body scholarship demonstrates that first of all, not only did Tibetan continue to be used as a writing system in Genhuang and in Central Asia and very likely because this is a phonetic writing system unlike Chinese and therefore could be adapted to the writing not only Tibetan but other languages as well. And the evidence from the manuscripts demonstrates that the post-Bent rule is often also used to then communicate with other central nations during the post-Bent period.
But based upon the research, especially by scholars who were taught in Tibetan manuscripts, we now also know that many of the ritual manuscripts, especially those K-Testry butters rituals, very likely date not only to the post-Bent period but maybe as late as the 10th century. And so I sort of thought about the visual impact of seeing different writing systems side by side and that gave me maybe sort of a methodological perception for thinking through the conjunction of different painting styles that we see at Genhuang in the Mocha and also the Yuleen K. And one thing that I found particularly fascinating about the mural paintings is that and I just say that there are four examples of mural paintings of the Monde L'Avigre by Sefas, or I should say they are in four caves at Genhuang. So these are Yuleen KV25, Mocha KV14 and then Yuleen KV20 and 38.
I think Yuleen KV25 is probably the most well known because the Monde scholarship that has already been carried out on that particular painting. But going back to what I was saying about the different painting styles is that I had noticed with some time that it seemed very obvious to me that the Monde L'Avigre by Sadepas was painted in such a way that it looked very to that in style. And what I mean by this is an elongation and robustness in the body. And this is very different for what I characterize as the tongue style in which the face of the body are very, very round without the kind of elongated sensual quality of the Tibetan style.
And there are of course issues associated with trimming one style Tibetan one style tongue. But the reason why I use these terms is because I believe that the painting styles were employed simultaneously in order to suggest perhaps the coexistence of tongue and Tibetan cultures at Genham. And so we not only see the conjunction of the tongue to the painting styles, but in some cases what's really fascinating is that Yuleen KV20 and 38, there are paintings, two paintings in both cases of the Monde L'Avigre by Sadepas on the C.P.D. with another.
And what we see is that one of those paintings, one of those paintings, the Buddha is painted in a distinctive lead to the Himalayan style and then in the other painting, the Buddha will have been painted in a tongue style. So we actually see those two painting styles literally face to face with one another. And some scholars have argued that the reason why we see the conjunction of different painting styles in the K-Shrines might have to do with or have even paint at different times and I actually tend to disagree with that because I have visited the K-Shrines and I don't see the markers, the obvious markers of over painting that one sees in other K-Shrines. And I instead, I try to think of the conjunction of painting styles in a way that might bring us back to the bilingualism that we see in the Genham manuscripts.
And so I try to think of this as a purposeful mingling of painting styles rather than painting styles that were attributed to historical periods. So in essence, what I was trying to do was to look at the Genham manuscripts not only as a basis for the iconographic programs of K-Shrines but to sort of deal a bit deeper and see whether there's anything else going on in the manuscript that is putting the two languages of Chinese into M-Sade by Sade and whether that was reflected in other ways in the K-Shrines as well. And I think that that is reflected in the conjunction of the tongue to end painting styles. So you've just used the phrase purposeful mingling and that has a lot to do with the history of Dunhuang.
And so thinking about the turning to chapter three, which is titled Mondalos and Historical Memory, in that chapter you began with Zhang Yichao, ousting the Tibetans in the mid-ninth century. Why was this particular event significant in tracing the use of Mondalos at Dunhuang? Well, we know that the mon of a great body saus was very important under the Tibetan Empire, even prior to the historical event that you just alluded to, that is the Zhang Yichaus, also of the Tibetans from Dunhuang. There are of course also still some questions to read about how large that Tibetan presence actually was and how large the population was even after this particular event.
And the Mondalos they get to be so saus was important because there are a few examples in which the Dadek-Cherme description state that the Mondalos painted in order to commemorate peace treaty, a very important peace treaty, between the Tong and Tibetan armies. And when we think about the rulers of the Eternith-Cherlius army that is the Chinese rules of Dunhuang after the mid-ninth century, after the Austro-Tetans, I think it's important to keep in mind that because of a long period of Tibetan rule in Dunhuang about, let's see, almost, I guess over 60 years or so, that people like Zhang Yichaus grew up in what was very much a culture to that environment. So we do know, for example, that and this was not uncommon, this was probably not uncommon for the time that he had a Tibetan name, he himself brushed Buddhist manuscripts into Tibetan, and so this was simply this environment that they grew up in. And so I hypothesize it for these reasons that the rulers of the Eternith-Cherlius army, which ruled Dunhuang after the Austro-Tetans in roughly 848, that they continue to employ the Mondalos-Aegre-Buddi-Sell, this purpose of being their case shines, not only the Zhang clan, but also the Taoklan, which ruled Dunhuang after the Zhang clan lost power.
I think that this could explain, for example, the continuation of the Mondalos-Aegre-Buddi-Sell as at Dunhuang really well into the return to the Eternith-Cherlius army period. And secondly, and this goes back to the purposeful mingling of these painting styles, I look at K-156, and this is a K that is very well known for the K-150-Graphic program in which the victory of Zhang Xiao is memorialized in the mural paintings that show the procession of Zhang Xiao, his victorious procession on Victory of the Tibetans. And what's really fascinating about this cave is that there is an image in the West Wall, which houses the Buddha icon, and the West Wall has a truncated pyramid ceiling. And this is a very common ceiling type that we see in Dunhuang, not only in the main ceiling of the King Shrine, but also in some of the images inside of which clay sculptures, clay icons were installed.
And what I mean by truncated pyramid ceiling is basically a ceiling type that has four ceiling slopes, and then the pinnacle of the ceiling is flat. And what's very interesting about this is that there are two deities painted on the eastern ceiling slope, otherwise one niche, so they're very hard to see if you are standing right in front of the niche and looking at the icon, you would actually have to kind of lean into the niche and then twist your body around and then turn your face upward in order to get a view of the paintings on East Wall. And I should back check for me and say that the paintings on the other ceiling slopes, the ones that are easy to see from perspective of the viewer who stand right in front of the clay icon, that there is all painted in the standard tongue style, the quote-quote tongue style. But the paintings that are located on the East ceiling slope are painted in way described as the Tibetan style, and they're very much hidden from the viewer.
And so I hypothesize that this might be due to, first of all, the continuation of maybe an interest in Tibetan culture, a Tibetan language, in Dunhuang, even after the end of the Tibetan period. And secondly, that it might have been hidden from view, because from historical chronicles, it seems very likely that even though the Jiang clan pledged allegiance to the central tongue court in Chang'an, that there was still some suspicion about where the loyalty is actually laid. So we know, for example, that Jiang Xiaos sent envoys multiple times to Chang'an before receiving a official recognition from the court and then also his older brother had to stay in Chang'an as a hostage in order to demonstrate the loyalty of the clan. And so for me this is particularly interesting because this painting, this that is almost hidden from view, really seems to complicate or contradict the straightforward message of Jiang Xiaos' victorious procession into Dunhuang.
And so going back to the Tibetan culture environment in which Jiang Xiaos was reared and how that relates to the Mando-vigri-voy-sophas. So I believe that there are cave shrines at Dunhuang and also at the Mocha caves and also the Yoon caves, in which we see the Mando-vigri-voy-sophas, and I argue that those were produced under the patronage of the Return to Legion's army. So members of the Jiang clan as well as members of the Telk clan. So also in chapter three, you have I think what may be my most favorite image in this book, and that is this image from the music Yimid that shows the mando-la of the five buddhas with donor figures.
I'm wondering if you could walk us through this image and what it shows. This is a very complex image and I'm not surprised that it appeals to you so much because it's very brightly colored and it's unusual for a number of reasons that also contributes to our knowledge of Mando-vigri-voy-s to begin with as the title suggests this is Mando-vigri-voy-sophas. I'm sorry, five buddhas actually. And these are the five buddhas of the Vajra-vajra-dha-tumandala.
And this goes back to something that we were discussing earlier in our conversation, which is how this book fits into the scholarly discourse or maybe responding to the emphasis, the position that states of Chappings, Manas, had in the interpretation of Mando-la's elsewhere in Asia. And one of the arguments they make is that the Mando-vigri-voy-sophas had a long history of precisely because of its eightfold structure that it was argued by Mais-Allers as having been an early prototype of the Garbaddat-tumandala. And the reason for that is that the very center of the Garbaddat-tumandala, we actually see my hyper-action in the center of a pedal lotus. The difference, of course, is that in the Garbaddat-tumandala, the central buddha, my virgina, is surrounded now by abh-vly-sophas, but rather by four buddhas and four buddhas.
So even though the imagery of the central buddha, see that the center of an open lus-blasam seems to evoke the appearance of the Mando-vigri-voy-sophas, the spatial configuration of eight attendant deities around the central buddha, I think that they actually stand from very different iconographic lineages. And so one of the arguments I make is that I think the Mando-vig igra-vigha-vigra-vig-vay-sophas is actually much more closely aligned with the Vajra-vat-tumandala for a number of reasons. And also, I guess, racial practices associated with the Vajra-vat-tumandala, especially as I was interpreted at Tunnong. So going back to this particular mandala, there are five buddhas.
And one of the fascinating things is that the buddhas are actually painted in the , that as their bodies are actually painted in color, that is appropriate to their direction, the cardinal direction that they represent. And this is highly unusual, so we know that such color systems were in place. So for example, we have maha hivarochina in the center again crowned, and seated upon a lion throne, and with its hands held in the jnamudr, the mudar meditation, and his body is painted gold, and then we see Brana Samava, the Buddha of the South, with blue skin corresponding to that carnal direction, Amitabha represent the Western Crowned with red skin, and we really don't see these color designations in other images at the end, so this is highly unusual. And so the central Buddha, my version is in the center, and then four corners opposite him are the four Buddhas, representing the four carnal directions, the four Buddhas from, so these represent collectively the five Buddhas of the Vajra Dattu Mandala, and these take up roughly two-thirds of the other parts of painting.
And I show this version that this is a very small painting, and this might suggest a circumstance as a patronage. The total height of the painting is just a little over 100 centimeters, so this would actually be around 40 inches or so, so definitely under four feet, so this is not a spectacularly huge painting. So when we think of Mandala, I think a lot of us tend to think of the two-rounds mandala, and we have very, very large, you know, we've all seen them, we've produced in textbooks, especially rather a small intimate image. And that might retain to the fact that this was actually that the donors actually came from a family, and that this particular Mandala painting was, from the Dattu transcription, seemed to have been the occasion for the Dattu Prasan painting must have been the occasion of a more tree ritual for one of the family members.
So going back to the painting then, the upper two-thirds are taken out by the phybudas, and not only are they painted, they're by these painted colors, but they're also seated on pedestals, and each of the pedestals is the animal that is the animal mount, that is supposed to be the animal mount of that particular Buddha, representing a particular quadrant. And then we also see other deities attending the buddhas, and in particular we see the orphan goddesses, the eight inner and outer orphan goddesses, the Vadra-Dattu mandala. So as I mentioned earlier, in the images from the Tibetan to Nhuang, the central Buddha, the Abadi-Safas mandala, could be Vairuchina or Maha-Vairuchina. And one of the theorist distinctions between the two is that in images of Maha-Vairuchina, both in the context of the phybudas of the Vadra-Dattu mandala, and also in the Mandala-Vigra-Bhai-Safas, is that we see the buddhas, in this case, or by itself as accompanied by the inner and outer orphan goddesses, and these are some of the minor deities that we see in the Vadra-Dattu mandala, both in the more abbreviated form, which we see only the phybudas, in the more complex form of the Vadra-Dattu mandala, of the Nishin-Gandh tradition, and also in the context of the Abadi-Safa mandala, in which the central deities is Maha-Vairuchina, that is the esoteric Maha-Vairuchina rather than Vairuchina.
So we see the orphan goddesses as well, and then if we move further down the painting, we see an offering altar. So previously I discussed the altars as a support for the visualization of deities of a mandala, and this is quite interesting because we can actually see their persistent and persistent-established shifts throughout the painting, and so we can see this mungal altar, and we know it's an altar because there are lamps on other side and ritual implements, such as water bottles and offerings and so forth, and we can see it as if we're looking at it face down, and at the very center of this mungal offer is an apetal lotus blossom. So interestingly, this seems to maybe suggest precisely the sort of altar on which the places of the deities were painted, and then at the bottom of the painting, you see the donut image, and here there's yet again another perspotable shift in which these figures are foreshortened, and they occupy a clearly defined ground plane, so we can see a number of female donor figures, so left side of yet another offering altar, again with offerings and then with lamps, and then on the right hand side we can see a monk donor, and then other male donor figures, and the donor figures on both sides of the altar are kneeling on mats, and they're facing the center, and going back to a point that I made earlier that this small-scale intimate image seemed to have a sponsored un-inucational mortuary ritual. Based on the donor inscriptions, we can tell that the male donor figure on the right hand side, to the right hand side of the monk, or behind the monk, was actually the deceased father of the donor, and the female donor figures also represent deceased family members, so the deceased mother of the donor and the deceased daughter of the donor, so it seems very likely that a living donor commissioned this painting in our response from a truer ritual for the deceased family members, and so this seems to bring together the family members in the performance of a ritual, so we see them kneeling and facing ulcer, kind of suggesting the continuation of such rituals in death even as in life.
And what's particularly fascinating about this image is that not only is it highly complex and very colorful, but because of the color designations for the bodies, but we see Monde Lo's reference in number time, so we see the five Buddhas, otherwise you'd have to have two Monde Lo at the very top of the painting, as I mentioned, occupying almost two thirds of the painting, and then we also see the ulcer, which has an eight petal lotus, and that also suggests, because of its structure, this eightfold structure that's very closely associated with Monde Lo's, which is perhaps another Monde Lo, perhaps something maybe generated through a process of visualization and a two visualization. So this image really shows how Monde Lo's were connected to rituals, and that's an issue you also take up in chapter four, which is titled Monde Lo's Reclentance and Vision, and in particular here you're concerned with repentance rituals and taking the Bodhisattva precepts. So what role do Monde Lo's play in this particular context? So in this particular context, not so much about Trek for Women to say that not only were Monde Lo's, do they play prominent role in the ritual life of local population, but also for lay people as well.
So the donors that we see in the painting, Abadi Satchamundana, are obviously lay people, and I think that's really important to keep in mind as well, because if we go back to sort of our knowledge on the technology that we have listening to on Smanvela, I think we're generally thinking of Monde Lo's in the context of monastic initiation rituals, and here we can see very clearly that on the painting of Monde Lo's was actually sponsored, could be sponsored, and was sponsored by lay people, both in parable paintings like the small painting that I described and also in mural paintings. And then to answer your question more directly, so you asked about Monde Lo's and what role they play in the repentance rituals, and I was looking particular at one Dunhong manuscript in the Paleo collection, number 3920, and there are two ritual manuals in this particular manuscript that describe repentance rituals, and these rituals are quite fascinating because the spatial template that is described in the rituals seems to evoke the Vajra.2 Mandala. So for example, there are references that are made to 37 deities, so the 37 core deities of the Vajra.2 Mandala, and there's also a sequence of the Phybuddhas, so the Phybuddhas of the Vajra.2 Mandala, such as the ones pictured in the painting that we just discussed, and these are mentioned in the ritual sequences as well. And then some of the ritual implements include the building of Vajras and the wearing of a Phybuddhas crown.
This would also draw upon the Vajra.2 Mandala, and then in addition to the main text of the manuscripts, there are also inter-linear notations that are made, and these are quite interesting because of course these could have been made at a later point in time, but these make references to a Phybuddhas 8-Buddhas alter. And so these are small notations that are made in small-script, small characters, inter-linear notations, and so there are references made in the number of points, so for example in one of the manuals that describes an alter, circumempling altar, there's a small notation that's made to the Phybuddhas and the Buddhas and the Buddhas and the Phybuddhas and the Phybuddhas. I conclude that this might suggest that the altar that is being circulated is a Phybuddhas 8-Buddhas, 8-Buddhas and alter. And in addition, there is also another such notation that is made in the context of a reference to one of the stages of the repentant's ritual, and then also a notation that's made to and 8-Buddhas and Abhishek.
There are also other inter-linear notations that are made made in reference to an altar of my version again, these three seven deities again references to the Vajra Dhatu Mandala and both in the context of 37 core deities of the Vajra Dhatu Mandala and also to the five Buddhas, five main Buddhas of the Vajra Dhatu Mandala in conjunction with the eight Buddhist softfis. And so I find these notations quite interesting and the references to the five Buddhas altars, five Buddhist eight-boy softfis altars are also echoed in other sources, other manuscript sources at Dunhuang. And so another thing that I was trying to do in this chapter, in addition to trying to think a little bit about the ritual context from Mandala's at Dunhuang and also how this might have informed or might have pertained to the Econogretic program, K-Shrines is also the type of information that we get from different types of manuscripts. So the manuscript that I just referred to, the one in the paleo collection, 3920, gives very detailed textual instructions to how the ritual should be carried out.
They're the small interlinear annotations I mentioned. They're also other markings, so other scholars are currently working on these manuscript markings. But there are no diagrams, there are no illustrations. And so they seem to describe these rather complicated altars, but there are no visuals to accompany the text.
And then in this emphasis on conveying information, textually rather visually is carried out in another manuscript which also describes altars, again, sub-retained the five Buddhas and also to the eight-boy softfis. And then we have yet another manuscript also from the paleo collection, in 2012, in which we have diagrams of altars and no text accompanying them. So it's fascinating to think through how practitioners at Dunhong might have made use of these different types of materials and how they made a relied on a set of materials rather than one manuscript alone in order to learn the sort of practices that were carried out in conjunction with the mandalas. So chapter five takes you as you title it, Beyond the Mandala, and here you focus on the sutra on the names of the Buddha and also on different representations of Bodhisattvas.
And especially important in this chapter is the influence of the Gandhavuha chapter of the Amatamsa Kasutra. Could you explain how this all connects for us? Yes, yes. So I was actually really fascinated by something of random literature on the point out that in the Gandhavuha chapter and the Gandhavuha chapter relates the pilgrimage of Sudana, the Lord Pilgo of Sudana, who visits 53 spiritual mentors or Klamitra in order to learn the way of the boy Saffa.
And there's a sequence of eight goddesses among these 53 Klamitra in which they are arranged in a circular fashion, Ed Bogaya, which of course was the site of the Enlightenment of Shakkimayana, the Bodhi Tree. So this is a circular arrangement that is very monsoil similar to the circular configuration of the Bodhisattvas that we do see in some of the imagery, in present on the Mural painting in Mokko K14. And so that was quite interesting to me. And also going back to the 53 Kalyanamitra, these 53 spiritual mentors who went with him Sudana meets, my attention was drawn to a series of paintings of Bodhisattvas in Mokko K14.
So this is a cave that belongs to the post-event period at Dunhuang, and I believe that may have been sponsored under the patronage of the Jang clan of the Return to Allegiance Army, the rulers of Dunhuang after the Tibetan period. And there is a sequence of Bodhisattvas and these spread across all four walls of the cave shrine, and there are 51 of them altogether. And they're actually quite tall, they're not quite life-sized, but they're actually rather tall, striking the tall. And in addition to the 51 Bodhisattvas, there are also large paintings linking the entrance which is on the east wall of Manjushri and Samantavadra.
And what I found particularly compelling is that if we add together the two paintings of Manjushri, the core Bodhisattvas associated with the Abatamsaka Sutra and also with the Gondavirya chapter, so the first and last spiritual mentors from Sudana meets, that if we add those to the 51 Bodhisattvas, that this actually forms a cycle of 53. And I found the number to be highly suggestive and I want to look into this a little bit further. And these Bodhisattvas, these are standing Bodhisattvas, each of them enclosed within its own frame. And these tend to become more common around this period, that is the post-event period at Dunhuang.
And they do not appear in other caves in such great numbers and they do not appear spread across all four walls. Also I was particularly compelling in addition to the relatively tall size is the fact that there is a painting on the north wall of the cave of Mocha K-14, so this would be on your right as you enter, all the way toward the rear wall, so the conjunction of the two walls in the corner in which there seems to be a prompt toward circulation because the deity painted on that wall, Bodhisattvas, his head points toward the right and this almost seems to prompt the viewer to move in that direction. That would be actually clockwise, maybe suggest a clockwise circulation, so that is something that I discussed in this chapter as well. So this seems to be kind of a spatiality in this sequence, in a sense a movement that is prompted by these Bodhisattvas paintings in conjunction with other paintings in the cave.
So going back to these two, the names of Buddha, so in each for the 51 Bodhisattvas, they are located closest to the floor and as I mentioned each of them in their own frame, there is a cartouche and for most of the cartouches the inscriptions have faded due to some exposure and I was able to retrieve information from some of the cartouches that are located on the rear wall on the west wall and this is because they were shielded from sun exposure by the pillar in the middle of the main chamber of the cave shrimps, so these shielded the inscriptions on the rear wall from sun exposure and when I punch these into the c-beta, I was very surprised to find that what I pulled up was actually some hits in the sutra on the names of the Buddha which of course is not Mesotarch sutra and it has nothing to do with really the face with the mondely great bodhisattvas or with the Vajra.2 mondely or with any of the sutras that pertain to mondely is but what the sutra on the names of the Buddha does have to, what that does relate to is repentance and so I think that repentance is a unifying feature in this particular cave shrine and for those in your audience who are familiar with Jnhong art, there are some members of your audience who might be familiar with the very popular thousand Buddha's motif at Jnhwa, this is a repetitive motif of small ceded Buddhas and this is motif that scholars have demonstrated draws upon the sutra on the names of the Buddha. So what is particularly interesting then about these relatively large bodhisattvas in Mokko K-14 in their names, so these are sutra on names that are brushed inside the cartouches located next to each of the bodhisattvas is that the sutra on the names of the Buddha not only conveys the names of the Buddhas but it also conveys the names of bodhisattvas as well and sutra's names also, so this seems to be maybe form of repentance that emphasizes bodhisattvas rather than the Buddhas, the Buddhas that we call these are sutra's motif at Jnhwa. And the emphasis on Buddhas, bodhisattvas is also raising back to the eight bodhisattvas and my attention was drawn to the Bhuddha Chari and this is also important in the context of the Ganda Vuha and the Avatamsa Ghasutra and this is a text that was attended to the Ganda Vuha chapter and this exists in several forms from Jnhwaam, so we see this represented as Jnhwaam manuscripts and this is important I think for two reasons, first of all this is also from the basis of repentance rituals and secondly there is more particular translation of the Bodhisattva Chari, attributed to Modebajra in which and this is distinct from the other translations of the Bodhisattva Chari because there is a eulogy of the eight bodhisattvas on the Mandla Vibri Bodhisattvas inserted into this particular translation into the Bodhisattva Chari and so I speculate that since it has already been demonstrated that Mandla's play role in repentance rituals that the Bodhisattvas painted in Mokkavortine also by the preteen three penance rituals that perhaps the Mandla Vibri's Bodhisattvas may have had even greater residence in the context of repentance rituals in that they are referenced in the Bodhisattva Chari and that in turn might serve as a link between the sequence of Bodhisattvas, the 53 Bodhisattvas and the Mandla Vibri Bodhisattvas that is the Mandla Vibri Bodhisattvas may have made sense equally in esoteric context and it is also one of the two that appears in other context as well that are not necessary esoteric so in the context of the Bodhisattva Chari which in turn was associated with the Gannavian chapter so a source which is decidedly non-isoteric so this is a long-minded way of saying that the Mandla Vibri Bodhisattvas played in a form of all repentance rituals and that the repentance rituals very likely drew on a number of sources I think that this helps us understand the kind of graphic program of one of the K-Shrines at Tumamu Gokay 14 which contains an important example of the Mandla Vibri Bodhisattvas and at the same time that the repentance rituals and the residence of the Mandla Vibri Bodhisattvas may have spanned not only the esoteric traditions but possibly also the Hawaiian traditions or Mahayana ex-attract traditions as well. So you've made a really compelling case for the complexity of influences and practices at Dunhuang and in the epilogue to your work you refer to Dunhuang as a third space.
I'm wondering if to kind of sum up you could tell us what you mean by this and tell us why you think this site is so important for understanding esoteric Buddhism in China. Okay so by describing Dunhuang as a third space and this is a term that comes from post-colonial theory this takes us back to a point that you raised earlier in our conversation that is trying to use this material to address the influence in studies of Chinese and other Mandalas, that is based on South Swarnasia, the influence that has been zeroed upon this material by studies on Japanese Mandalas and what is particularly striking about Dunhuang, the Dunhuang, the Dunhuang is precisely the way in which they really speak to the meaning of different cultures in particular the meaning of the Chinese and Tibetan cultures and in some cases that, of course, that dialogue is expressed really nice in the spatial way so for example, be pairing of mandalas that also may be between the tongue and Tibetan styles. They're also of course mentioned earlier about the valuable manuscripts. They're also cartouches associated with the mandavic Great Boy Saffas that were oriented vertically as well as horizontally in order to accommodate Chinese as well as Tibetan scripts.
But in other cases, they're diagrams, so they're also diagrams on e-commerce diagrams of mandalas which have no inscriptions and this will be so difficult to be done of teasing out clear cut distinctions between Chinese and Tibetan. So I see this material, the spy material is really speaking to in between quality of Dunhuang particularly during the Tibetan and post-Tibetan periods in which you have the period of Tibetan rule and then even after the Tibetan rule, the period of Tibetan rule that is during the Quatrin or return to the Legion's Aryan period that rules up until the early 11th century that you continue to have the Tibetan presence that exists in the form of the use of the Tibetan writing system that we see also in painting styles. And so there's a very interesting dialogue between the cultures, between writing systems, between artistic styles. And I think there are other ways as well in which the sort of Buddhism that was practiced at Tnhoyen at this time also suggests the dialogue between Chinese and Tibetan cultures.
So another issue that I raise is kind of the parallel quality of the ritual practices that we see evidenced by the Maistur de Nacet-Tunhong. So for example, not only based upon the Bhajra Ghati Mandala but also I talk very briefly about the yet another Tantra, the Sarvada-Dargati-Pashidana Tantra, which is strongly associated with Tibetan Buddhism and there are so many elements of that cycle that strongly echo the Ushnisha-Bijaya that we talked about very early on in our conversation. So this very interesting dialogue, I think that takes place at various levels in religious practice and artistic practice in manuscript culture. And I think it really speaks to the hybrid quality of the multicultural nature of Tnhong.
And so this I think is really important to keep in mind when we're thinking about a very specific context in which Buddhist mandalas developed a very specific spatial, geographic, cultural context. They might have been very distinct from what was happening in central plains of China. Michelle, we're taking up quite a bit of your time. But before we go, I want to ask what's next for you.
Are you working on a new research project? Do you have plans for one? Well, I'm currently working on an article in project and this extends my interest in the post of Tnhong and period at Tnhong. And it's on paintings of Maha Mayuri, an esoteric Buddhist city, a comic shop seated on a peacock mount.
And so I'm interested both in mural paintings and also in one example of this particular deity, the peacock wisdom king that was painted as a portable painting. So I'm interested in, for example, why these images appear at Tnhong, or we do in the 10th century, and whether there may have been some connection between the circulation of these images to Tnhong and the intermarriage between the tal clan that rolled Tnhong and the post-pent period and the kingdom of Koton. And then the long term, I'm pursuing a project on Buddhist sculpture. And here I'm particularly interested in materiality and in sort of ways of thinking about how materiality might have a form of secularity, Buddhist sculpture.
So right now the plan is to explore statues that were made in different materials. So one of which is sandalwood and the rest is sandalwood and Buddhism, I think is very obvious. And other materials would be stone, maybe bronze and so forth. And this was really sparked by an article that I did earlier on, Miragal Tales Concerning Stashes that came to life.
And their descriptions, kind of very precise descriptions of statues that were discovered under another fantastical, even miraculous circumstances. And with a lot of attention being paid to their material properties, and some of the miraculous qualities of those statues in turn really came to rest on how the way in which these animated statues behave, the way in which they moved and interactive and the devotees actually defied the limitations of the materiality. So for example, stone statues that suddenly became very light, things of that nature. So that's kind of the beginning stages of that right now.
So we'll see how that goes. That sounds amazing. I will really look forward to your work on statues. And thank you so much for taking time to be with us this afternoon and for chatting with us about your book.
Thank you Natasha, it was a real pleasure. Thanks for joining us on New Books and Buddhist Studies, part of the New Books Network.