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INNOVATIONS OF THE MEDIEVAL BUDDHIST BOOK CULT

Opening an illustrated manuscript of the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā sūtra (AsP) now in the Asia Society, New York, we encounter six brilliantly painted panels on the first two pages (fig. 2–1).¹ Four decorative bands divide each folio into three compartments, and a rectangular panel is placed in the middle of each section. The colorful painted panels shine like studded jewels against the earthy color of palm leaf, although the pigments used on these panels are not luminous. Despite their miniature size, each panel measuring only roughly 2 by 2 inches, the paintings’ presence is visually powerful and commands our attention. The sea of black letters seems a purposeful backdrop for these stunning pictures. Written in siddhamātṛkā script with very controlled and pronounced hooks on the bottom of each letter, the calligraphy presented in this manuscript also showcases the masterful skill of Ānanda, who wrote this manuscript. Ānanda was no ordinary scribe, as the colophon tells us: he was a dharmabhāṇaka (reciter or preacher of the doctrine) at the illustrious Nālandā monastery.² Both the text and the images on these folios suggest that achieving outstanding visual quality was a main concern for the makers of this manuscript. Perhaps, the purpose of including images in a manuscript of a philosophical treaty like the AsP was just to embellish a book. Whoever commissioned a book of the Buddhist scripture would want it made beautifully, especially when the text explains the great merit one acquires from copying and worshipping the book, as in the AsP. Then, it seems reasonable to assume in the context of the Buddhist book cult that the paintings were added to increase the religious merit (puṇya)³ of the donor.

FIGURE 2-1Five folios (1v–2r, 299v–300r, 301v) from the AsP Ms (Ms A4), Vigrahapāla III’s 15th year (ca. 1058 CE) and Gopāla IV’s 8th year (ca. 1140 CE), Nālandā monastery, Bihar, India. Pāla period. Ink and opaque watercolor on palm leaf. Each, approx., H. 2⅞ × W. 22⅜ in. (7.3 × 56.8 cm). Asia Society, New York: Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd Acquisitions Fund, 1987.1. Image courtesy of Asia Society Museum.

The emphasis on the religious merit in understanding the reason behind inserting images is not entirely misplaced. In a purely materialistic sense, the more resources put into the project, that is, expensive pigments and more skillful artisans and scribes, the greater the merit claimed in the donor’s mind and the community that encountered the end result, that is, the beautifully illustrated manuscript of the AsP.⁴ Merit making must have been one of the major motivations behind donating an illustrated manuscript. After all, the manuscripts were the “pious gifts” (deya dharma) made to accrue punya to benefit all sentient beings. However, merit making alone cannot explain why elaborate iconographic schemes were developed during the course of the two centuries when the production of illustrated manuscripts in eastern India saw its heyday. As we will see, the manuscript makers in medieval South Asia responded to the changing doctrinal and cultic environment of Esoteric Buddhism with innovative iconographic schemes. Seen in this context, the images do more than just decorate a book. They do not exist entirely superfluous to the text, nor do they defy the context of a book. On the contrary, the iconographic programs are designed to symbolize the teaching of the text, and the images define a book’s material context as a three-dimensional sacred object. To emphasize their function in the book as more than mere embellishment, I have chosen the term illustration to refer to the paintings. The term illustration does not exclude the meaning of decoration, and their decorative aspect is part of our discussion. Before examining the innovative strategies introduced in making Buddhist books, let us first investigate the historical circumstances that led to the introduction of illustrated Buddhist manuscripts in South Asia to understand the rationale behind illustration.

MAPPING THE HISTORICAL ORIGIN

The earliest surviving illustrated manuscript from South Asia dates to the late tenth century (ca. 983 CE).⁵ Painted book covers from the Gilgit region may date to the ninth or tenth century, but no surviving manuscript with images on folios dates to earlier than the tenth century. As seen in the previous chapter, this late introduction of the illustrating practice may relate to the flourishing of the Prajñāpāramitā cult in the ninth century in eastern India. Where did this practice originate? Why did the Buddhists in eastern India suddenly begin to illustrate their manuscripts at this time? While the historical origin of the practice of illustrating manuscripts in Buddhist tradition is beyond the scope of the current study, I would like to offer a few remarks regarding this issue to provide the historical context for the development of iconographic schemes identified below.

Sanskrit manuscripts of South Asian origin survive from much earlier dates. Some of the Gilgit manuscripts date to the fifth or sixth centuries,⁶ and the manuscripts from Bamiyan, Afghanistan, now in the Schøyen collection, have some palm-leaf fragments that are reported to date to the second century.⁷ A few painted wooden boards that served as book covers accompanied the manuscripts found at Naupur near Gilgit.⁸ Varying dates between the seventh and the ninth centuries have been proposed for these painted covers,⁹ and whichever date we accept, the painted covers certainly predate the earliest known surviving illustrated manuscript from the South Asian subcontinent, dated circa 983 CE (see web 2–1). It is intriguing to find vertical compositions on the book covers made for the Gilgit manuscripts, because the pothi format manuscripts were usually written horizontally from left to right and later book covers also follow this format (see fig. 2–5). As Pratapaditya Pal remarks, the vertical format found on two sets of these covers may suggest their connection to a preexisting tradition of banner paintings.¹⁰ I wonder if this may also reflect the influence from the north, that is, from China via Central Asia, where a manuscript would have been written vertically from right to left.¹¹

Manuscripts from Dunhuang suggest that illustrating manuscripts was rigorously practiced by the ninth century in China and Central Asia.¹² Inserting an illustrated frontispiece comparable to the painted book covers was in practice by the mid-eighth century in East Asia, as an illustrated frontispiece of the Avataṁsaka sūtra from Korea (Unified Silla) dated 754–755 CE suggests. Among the great number of early manuscripts in Indian language and script found in Central Asian sites and Dunhuang, a few manuscripts contain a forerunner to the idea of illustrating a text folio, with images of the Buddha appearing in roundels.¹³ All of these early examples point to the possibility that the idea traveled to South Asia from Central Asia, especially to eastern India in the case of illustrated palm-leaf manuscripts, suggesting multi-directionality and mutuality of cultural influence on the development of Buddhist practices in India and elsewhere. With many international pilgrims and foreign monks coming to the land of the historical Buddha, especially to the area of ancient Magadha and Gauḍa (Bihar and Bengal), where all the major Buddhist pilgrimage sites were located and where many Buddhist monastic institutions thrived under the royal support of the Pālas and the Candras during the early medieval period (especially the ninth through the tenth centuries), new ideas about how to make a Buddhist book could have traveled a great distance. This is not to argue that the exact manner of illustrating manuscripts traveled from Central Asia or China to eastern India. The mode of illustration developed in South Asia is unique and quite different from its counterparts in Central Asian and Dunhuang examples. But I emphasize the multidirectionality in the pattern of interaction and contacts to suggest the possibility that the idea of putting the images inside the text folios was shared in different culture zones through frequent travels and trades undertaken by many Buddhists during the early medieval period. Such travels by the devout in turn enabled the survival of the manuscripts from Bihar and Bengal as they faced unfavorable conditions with the demise of Buddhist monastic institutions there from the late twelfth century onwards.

INTRODUCTION OF THE ILLUSTRATING PRACTICE IN SOUTH ASIA

If the tradition of illustrating text folios was inspired by the practice established in Central Asia and China, it is easy to assume that it was transmitted through the northwestern region of the South Asian subcontinent, such as Gilgit and Kashmir, where a number of earlier manuscripts were found and where the archaeological evidence for Buddhist book cult in practice from earlier centuries is available.¹⁴ However, a relatively late date for the surviving material from India, the late tenth through the thirteenth centuries, makes us look for an alternate traveling route, for Buddhist activities in Gilgit had dwindled considerably by the tenth century.¹⁵ We may look to the neighboring Himalayan region, especially to the Kathmandu Valley in Nepal where the production of illustrated Buddhist manuscripts was equally on the rise in the early eleventh century and increased dramatically by the thirteenth century.¹⁶ The similarity in format and size and the use of palm leaf as the main material of choice put the Nepalese and eastern Indian illustrated manuscripts in the same tradition of bookmaking, despite their stylistic, iconographic, and sometimes paleographic differences.¹⁷

The Kathmandu Valley was not as politically stable during this time, with periods of joint rules and short-lived kings. Yet it is remembered as a Buddhist paradise in contemporary Tibetan literature, and Buddhist artistic productions indeed thrived during this time.¹⁸ Perhaps, the unstable political condition provided a perfect ground for cultural experimentations and heightened religious zeal that accommodated increased movements of people to and from India, not only Nepalese, but also Tibetans, such as Nagtso Lotsāwa, traveling to India in search of a teacher, and Indian Buddhist masters, such as Atīśa, traveling to Tibet. Among these travelers were the donors of the earliest known surviving illustrated manuscripts from the South Asian subcontinent. The second earliest surviving illustrated manuscript from Nālandā (ca. 1041 CE), now at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, was a manuscript of the AsP commissioned by a Nepalese lay donor named Rāmajīva. The donor of the earliest surviving AsP manuscript, now in the Asiatic Society, Kolkata, (G.4713) is identified as a monastic elder (sthāvira) named Sādhugupta, whose unique title, śākyācarya, raises that tantalizing possibility that his monastery, Tāḍivāḍi Mahāvihāra, may have been in Nepal.¹⁹ Another AsP manuscript, made during Mahīpāla’s twenty-seventh regnal year, was transported to Nepal and was in the Kathmandu Valley by NS 355 (1235 CE).²⁰ While the social and historical significance of the donor and scribal colophons is analyzed in detail in chapter 6, it is important to note 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 disasters. The Kv, in particular, has narrative moments that demonstrate Avalokiteśvara’s heroic and fantastic actions, which could be easily translated into a visual narrative. An eastern Indian Kv manuscript now in the British Library (Or. 13940) is indeed richly illustrated and includes a few panels representing the narratives from the text.³² But this text, too, was not as frequently commissioned with paintings in medieval eastern India.³³ The PC was the second most popular text for illustration in medieval eastern India, and the demand for illustrated manuscripts of the PC actually superseded the demand for the Prajñāpāramitā sūtra in Nepal by the sixteenth century. The relationship between the text and the images in an illustrated manuscript of the PC is perhaps most straightforward, since it is an apotropaic text proclaiming the efficacy and the power of the five protectresses. From the twelfth century onwards, the iconographic program of the PC manuscripts is more or less standardized, and a manuscript of the PC contains the images of the five goddesses accompanying their respective texts.³⁴ The PC’s standardized one-on-one iconographic scheme, however, did not arise without various attempts to imbue the manuscript with the sacred presence in India.³⁵

In comparison to the visually translatable contents of these Mahāyāna sūtras, the AsP provides little visual material to illustrate, for it is a philosophical treaty on emptiness. But perhaps the lack of visionary accounts in the text contributed to its malleability as a cultic object. When the text’s main goal is to expound a philosophical concept, how to represent it visually has many possibilities. The various iconographic schemes developed during this period suggest that the makers of these manuscripts were aware of the challenge of representing an unrepresentable text and sought ways to incorporate the message of the text in constructing their manuscripts as sacred objects. The fact that this metaphysical text was chosen for commissioning illustrated manuscripts, over other more visually oriented texts, attests to its status as the book of the Buddhist book cult. The cultic importance of the AsP, a more traditional Mahāyāna text, in the face of the fully developed forms of Esoteric Buddhism also reflects the conservatism that we see in the choice of a more archaic and formalized script. This conservatism and a desire to be more securely connected to the root of the tradition may also explain the popularity of the Buddhist book cult among the lay Buddhist practitioners in the late twelfth century when the monastic establishments were falling apart, as we will see in chapter 6. My analysis of the iconographic programs focuses on the illustrated manuscripts of the AsP with occasional examples of the Pañcarakṣā manuscripts.

Some iconographic choices, such as the choice of the Buddha’s life scenes, do suggest the conservative tendency to remain true to the core value of the Buddhist traditions. But the makers of medieval Buddhist books quickly adapted to the ever-changing cultic and demographic environments of eleventh- and twelfth-century eastern India. Many bookmakers developed strategies that made their books valuable cultic objects that could be animated and enlivened through the divine presence. Some manuscripts were designed to embody famous tīrthas (sacred sites, Group B manuscripts) and some to manifest maṇḍalas (lit. “circles,” plans or diagrams representing the hierarchical ordering of the divine presence, Group D manuscripts) in their respective three-dimensional spaces. If we consider how each manuscript was constructed as a sacred object, we can categorize the surviving illustrated Buddhist manuscripts from South Asia into four groups based on their iconographic structure: Group A, embodying the enlightenment experience of the Buddha; Group B, embodying the Buddhist sacred geography; Group C, representing and symbolizing the text; and Group D, manifesting a maṇḍala. The manuscripts (Ms) in Group A usually have three illustrated panels per folio. Four of them (Ms A1–Ms A4) have two pairs of two illustrated folios placed at the beginning and the end of the text, and three (Ms A5–Ms A7) have three pairs of illustrated folios placed at the beginning, the middle, and the end of the text. Both Group B and Group C manuscripts have a single panel per illustrated folio, except for occasional irregularities in Group B manuscripts (Ms B1 and Ms B2), and these two groups have the illustrated folios placed at the beginning and the end of each chapter or each section of the text, except for two Group C manuscripts (Ms C3 and Ms C4). Most manuscripts categorized under Group D have three illustrated panels per folio and three pairs of two facing illustrated folios placed at the beginning, the middle, and the end of the text, just as in Group A manuscripts. My categorization covers both Indian and Nepalese productions, but the main focus of the analysis is on eastern Indian manuscripts. The list of manuscripts in each group is by no means comprehensive. By dividing relatively well-known manuscripts into these four groups, we can understand better their cultic significance in historical context. It can also provide a useful analytical framework to understand the complex iconographic programs of illustrated Buddhist manuscripts.

FOUR ICONOGRAPHIC TRENDS

Makers of Group A rendered a book comparable to a reliquary or a stūpa. The iconographic program of Group A systematically represents the Buddha’s life scenes and the Prajñāpāramitā deities along with the cultic deities. This trend was the earliest iconographic scheme to develop in eastern India, possibly at the famous monastery of Nālandā, and all the subsequent trends more or less developed in reference to this one. The following manuscripts are examined as part of Group A:

Ms A1: AsP, Mahīpāla’s 6th year (ca. 983 CE), Asiatic Society, Kolkata G.4713 (fig. 3–1, web 2–1)

Ms A2: AsP, Mahīpāla’s 27th year (ca. 1007 CE), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, M86.185a-d

Ms A3: AsP, Nayapāla’s 14th year (ca. 1041 CE), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, M72.I.20a-b³⁶ (fig. 2–3)

Ms A4: AsP, Vigrahapāla III’s 15th year (ca. 1058 CE) and Gopāla’s 8th year (ca. 1140 CE), Asia Society, New York (fig. 2–1, W-diagram 3–1)

Ms A5: AsP, Mahīpāla’s 5th year (ca. 1074 CE), Cambridge University Library, Add. 1464 (W-diagram 3–2)

Ms A6: AsP, Vigrahapāla III’s reign (ca. 1043-1069 CE), Wellcome Library, London, Sansk ε 1 (fig. 3–3, 3–4)

Ms A7: AsP, Madanapāla’s 17th year (ca. 1160 CE), Detroit Institute of Arts, Acc. No. 27.586

Of these seven manuscripts, Ms A5 and Ms A6 stand out from the group because their iconographic programs most clearly allude to the idea of a three-dimensional maṇḍala, articulated in Group D. Ms A7 dated to the second half of the twelfth century (ca. 1160 CE), and many manuscripts in Group D suggest that the Buddha’s life scenes remained the most popular theme in illustrated manuscript production until the beginning of the thirteenth century in eastern India.

Group B manuscripts consider a book as an embodiment of holy sites, and their iconographic programs characteristically represent famous images and sacred sites. This tradition initially developed in Nepal in the early eleventh century in parallel with Group A, which developed in Magadha (Bihar), and was adopted in Bengal by the beginning of the twelfth century. Group A and Group B are rooted in the same idea of embodying sacred sites in a book, if we understand the eight life scenes of the Buddha in Group A’s iconographic program as the eight major Buddhist pilgrimage sites.³⁷ The major difference between the two groups lies in the structure of iconographic programming. If the makers of Group A manuscripts considered a book as a stūpa and placed the eight scenes systematically to encase the text, the Group B makers had a more ambitious vision of holding and replicating all the famous Buddhist holy sites, or tīrthas, in a book. The sites identified in these manuscripts are located not only in the South Asian subcontinent but also in faraway Buddhist lands of Sri Lanka, Java, Sumatra, Central Asia, and China. This group is comparable to a pata (or paubhā in Nepal) painting that commemorates one’s pilgrimage to the holy sites, which could serve as a pictorial guide for imagined pilgrimage.³⁸ Many sites are located in Bihar and Bengal, but some are in western India (Gujarat, Maharashtra, Sindh), the northwestern region (Peshawar, Swat valley), China, Java, Sri Lanka, and other faraway places. This vision also reflects what sites the Buddhists in the Kathmandu Valley considered more important and powerful. The following manuscripts are considered in Group B:

Ms B1: AsP, NS 135 (1015 CE) during the joint rule of Bhojadeva, Rudradeva, and Lakṣmīkāmadeva, restored in NS 259 (1139 CE) during the reign of Mānadeva, Cambridge University Library, Add. 1643 (W-diagram 3–3)

Ms B2: AsP, NS 191 (1071 CE), Asiatic Society, Kolkata, A.15 (fig. 3–7)

Ms B3: Pañcaviṃśatī Prajñāpāramitā (PvP), Harivarman’s 8th regnal year (ca. 1100 CE), Baroda Museum and Picture Gallery (fig. 3–10)

Ms B4: PvP, early 12th century, Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, and Metropolitan Museum, New York (fig. 3–12, 3–13)

Ms B5: Kv, early 12th century, British Library, Or. 13940

The images in the manuscripts categorized under Group C collectively symbolize the text. The relationship between the text and the images in this group is most straightforward, as images refer directly to the text. The images serve as indexical signs of the text and provide a visual index or a site map for each book. Through the presence of these images, a book becomes an icon of the text that could help open up the text in one’s mind even when the book is closed. This scheme seems to have become popular from the beginning of the twelfth century, and Nepalese Pañcarakṣā manuscripts follow it most closely.³⁹ This iconographic trend in its simplistic form subsequently became the most popular method of illustrating a Buddhist manuscript in Nepal. This group would comprise a large number of manuscripts if we include all the surviving eastern Indian and Nepalese manuscripts from the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries. Thus I have limited the discussion to a few examples:

Ms C1: AsP, Rāmapāla’s 37th regnal year (ca. 1114 CE), Tibet Museum, Lhasa (fig. 4–2)

Ms C2: Pañcarakṣā, NS 255 (1135 CE), San Diego Museum of Art, Acc. No. 1990:156, formerly Edwin Binney 3rd Collection (web 4–1)

Ms C3: AsP, NS 268 (1148 CE), Asiatic Society, Kolkata, G.4203 (web 4–2)

Ms C4: AsP, Gopāla’s 15th year (ca. 1147 CE), British Library, Or. 6902 (fig. 4-1, 4–3)

Ms C5: Pañcarakṣā, Madanapāla’s 13th year (ca. 1156 CE), Rietberg Museum, Zurich (web 4–4)

Ms C6: Pañcarakṣā, Govindapāla’s 16th year (ca. 1191 CE), National Archive, Kathmandu (web 4–3)

In Group D, a book becomes a three-dimensional maṇḍala through the presence of images. The seed for this trend is already seen in Group A, and its earliest manifestation appears in a mid-eleventh-century Pañcarakṣā manuscript (Ms D1). This iconographic mode is most inventive of all. It marks the culmination of the Buddhist book cult in medieval eastern India. The idea of making a book into a three-dimensional maṇḍala was experimented with and articulated in the practice of the Buddhist book cult during the twelfth century. Interestingly, although these Indian manuscripts containing the world of Esoteric Buddhist divinities were transported to Nepal and Tibet and survived there until the nineteenth century, this scheme was never seriously picked up in Nepal:⁴⁰

Ms D1: Pañcarakṣā, Nayapāla’s 14th year (ca. 1041 CE), Cambridge University Library, Add. 1648 (fig. 4–4, 4–5, 6–3, W-diagram 4–1)

Ms D2: AsP, Rāmapāla’s 15th year (ca. 1092 CE), Bodleian Library, Oxford, Sansk a.7 (fig. 4–6, 4–7, 4–8, 4–9)

Ms D3: AsP, Rāmapāla’s 36th year (ca. 1113 CE), Victoria and Albert Museum, IS4.1958-10.1958 (fig. 5–1, 5–2, web 5–1)

Ms D4: AsP, Gopāla’s 4th year (ca. 1136 CE), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, No. 20.589 (fig. 5–3, 5–4, web 5–2)

Ms D5: AsP, Gomīndrapāla’s 4th year (ca. 1179 CE?), Bharat Kala Bhavan, Banaras Hindu University (BHU) (fig. 5–5)

Ms D6: AsP, Govindapāla’s 4th year (ca. 1179 CE), Royal Asiatic Society, London, Hodgson Ms 1 (fig. 5–6)

Ms D7: AsP, Govindapāla’s 30th year or earlier (ca. 1205 CE; late 12th or early 13th century), British Library, Or. 14282⁴¹ (fig. 5–7, W-diagram 5-1)

Ms D8: AsP, Govindapāla’s 32nd year (ca. 1207 CE), Musée Guimet, Paris, MA 5161, formerly Fournier Collection (fig. 5–8, W-diagram 5–2)

Ms D9: AsP, Govindapāla’s 32nd year (ca. 1207 CE), Asiatic Society, Mumbai, BI-210 (fig. 5–9, web 5–4, 5–5, W-diagram 5–3)

Ms D10: AsP, Lakṣmaṇasena’s 47th year (ca. 1226 CE), Bharat Kala Bhavan, BHU (fig. 5–10, 5–11, 5–12, 5–13, web 5–6, 5–7, 5–8, 5–9, W-diagram 5–4)

One of the main characteristics of Group D manuscripts is the inclusion of Tantric Buddhist deities that belong to what Rob Linrothe identifies as “Phase Two Esoteric Buddhism” and “Phase Three Esoteric Buddhism.”⁴² The unrelated nature of the text–image relationship marked by the appearance of the highly charged forms of Phase Three Esoteric Buddhist deities, such as Hevajra, Cakrasamvara, and Kālacakra, in the manuscripts of the AsP led previous scholars to consider these images just as a protective measure. With some images placed upside down to the direction of the text, the text–image relationship in this group seems the most distant. This distant relationship, however, makes this group the most interesting. The Group C trend, that is, images functioning as indexical signs and ultimately serving as iconic symbols of the text, became the norm in the later Nepalese manuscript production. During the twelfth century, however, many experiments were conducted in manuscript production, as seen in the Group D manuscripts. There is a sense of freedom in experimental design of Group D manuscripts, which may reflect the social and cultural situation of Buddhists in twelfth-century eastern India because many of the Group D manuscripts were provincially made and their production was not controlled by monastic institutions.

These four groups are by no means exclusive categories. For example, a manuscript with Buddha’s life scenes that belongs to Group A could also belong to Group B in terms of embodying the pilgrimage sites. Group B and Group C share similarities in their iconographic structures. Many manuscripts in these two groups have images marking the beginning and the end of each chapter. The importance of the Buddha’s life scenes in illustrating the AsP manuscripts is common to all these four groups. Regardless of their iconographic characteristics, images in an illustrated Buddhist manuscript serve as a visual index of a manuscript.

PICTURES, MOVEMENTS, AND A CULTIC OBJECT

THE MAÑJUŚRĪMŪLAKALPA AND THE ILLUSTRATED BUDDHIST BOOKS

Another common trait in book design in medieval South Asia is the idea of constructing a maṇḍala, comparable to the construction of patas as elaborated in the Mañjuśrīmūlakalpa (Mmk). As scholars like Matthew Kapstein and Rob Linrothe suggest, the bearing of the Mmk as a ritual manual (kalpa) on the production of Buddhist art in eastern India and Tibet is clear.⁴³ The goal of the following discussion, of course, is not to argue that the Buddhist book cult practitioners used the Mmk as their manual. The Mmk provides a useful analytical frame to understand the medieval practice of the Buddhist book cult because what is described in the Mmk reflects the general cultic attitude towards the construction and the use of sacred objects in medieval India.⁴⁴ The illustrated manuscripts provide art historical support for Kapstein’s theoretical construction of the process of pata production in India when no pata from Pāla India survives to prove it.⁴⁵ Although only Group D is identified as the manifestation of a thre,e-dimensional maṇḍala, the manuscripts in all four groups have a characteristic of a maṇḍala, as the illustrated panels are systematically placed to represent the various fields of power and to articulate the hierarchical relationship among them. For example, in the case of Group A manuscripts, at least four different visual fields of power, that is, the Buddha’s life scenes, the Prajñāpāramitā deities, the cultic deities, and the letters of the text, all come together in a book and create the collective field manifesting the spiritual power of the enlightenment (see W-diagram 2–1).

Even a manuscript with the most diverse spatial arrangement, like Ms B1 (Cambridge University Library, Add. 1643), in which famous images and sites from all over the Buddhist world are arranged in a maze-like fashion, can be understood as a linear maṇḍala that ultimately creates a vast space of Buddhist universe in one’s mind (see W-diagram 3–3).⁴⁶ If we consider a book as an object with many movable parts, the folios, which could be animated under its normal use, that is, opening of a book and flipping the folios, we can understand a book’s cultic potential as an animatable object. If pata is an “animated cult image” in Glenn Wallis’s “interpretive translation,” an illustrated manuscript is an animatable cult object without any interpretive intervention.⁴⁷ A manuscript with its many images can assist “the adept to traverse great distances of space rapidly [Groups A, B], overcome the force of time [Groups A, B, D], heal sickness [Groups C, D, especially the Pañcarakṣā manuscripts],” and attain enlightenment (Groups A–D).⁴⁸

Invoking the Mmk in understanding the Mahāyāna cult of book in medieval South Asia is particularly relevant when we see the demographic change of its patronage in the twelfth century. As will be discussed in chapter 6, some donors of the illustrated manuscripts in twelfth-century eastern India identify themselves as sādhu. As a lay Buddhist practitioner, this sādhu may be understood as a real-life equivalent of the sādhaka, the ideal practitioner of the Mmk. In addition, the presence of the donors in manuscripts in the form of colophons, and sometimes in the form of visual representations (see figs. 2–3 and 6–1), may be comparable to the Mmk’s prescription that requires the sādhaka be integrated into the painted space of a paṭa.⁴⁹ A monk with his hands folded together in añjalī mudrā, with ritual implements in front of him, on the last folio of Ms D1, the Pañcarakṣā manuscript in the Cambridge University Library (Add. 1686), does not seem too different from the image of the sādhaka, as described in the Mmk, kneeling piously in the periphery of the divine space (see fig. 6–3 and 4-5). Although the sādhaka here is a monk, not a lay donor, this simple ritual scene renders the transcendental divine space created within a manuscript accessible and immediate. The sādhaka of the Mmk, in fact, does not seem too different from the donor figures appearing in the eastern Indian Buddhist sculptures from the ninth century onwards, in terms of his attitude and relative position (see web. 1–2). It would be wrong to identify all the donors on sculptural productions as equivalents of the sādhakas of the Mmk. But both the prescription in the Mmk and the donor images represented in illustrated manuscripts and sculptures reflect a strong desire to be part of the divine world and to go beyond the human limitation of the here and now. If we understand controlling the uncontrollable as one of the main objectives of Esoteric Buddhist rituals, the human figures plugged into the divine space bring the abstract, visionary world into the concrete world of materiality. This practice was even more concretized in Nepal, and including visual representations of the donor figures in manuscript illustration and the practice of recording more elaborate, personalized accounts of the donors’ actions in the colophons became a norm in Nepalese illustrated manuscript production.

MOVING TEXT

The sacred space unfolding in a book of the AsP can also transform the here and now into the field of enlightened visions that reveal the reality that lies “beyond” what is in front of one’s eyes.⁵⁰ This transformative power of a book is unusual for a Buddhist sacred object, for no other single cultic object, be it a sculpted image, a stūpa, or a relic, provides a mechanical possibility of movements and promises a structural potential for deconstruction without destruction that only the pothi format of the South Asian manuscripts allows. Although I do not know of any textual source that discusses a book’s mechanical potential directly as an object that can be animated, the awareness and interest in movements necessary for using a book can be glimpsed from the development of the so-called Tibetan prayer wheels or the revolving cylinders that enable “mechanized recitation” of sacred texts (see web 2–2).⁵¹ The origin of this practice has long been sought in China, but Gregory Schopen’s analysis of a verse in a praśasti (eulogistic donative) inscription from Nālandā opens up the possibility of its Indian origin.⁵² Found in monastery no. 7 at Nālandā, written neatly in siddhamātṛkā type script, the inscription records the monastic lineage and the meritorious deeds of the Buddhist monk Vipulaśrīmitra.⁵³ In verse 6, the inscription refers to the mother of the jinas (jananījinānāṃ), that is, Prajñāpāramitā, which was constantly in motion (bhramatyavirataṃ) thanks to Vipulaśrīmitra’s meritorious act. That Prajñāpāramitā here refers to the AsP is clear from the context, as verse 4 mentions “the Mother of the Buddhas in eight thousand (verses).” Since texts generally do not “incessantly move(s) about” on their own, Schopen suggests, this moving text refers to the revolving movement created using a mechanical device. Rereading the text of verse 6, Schopen proposes a new translation, which reads, “a copy of the AsP constantly revolves . . . by means of a contrived (book) case,” and suggests that a revolving bookcase invented for the purpose of continuous “mechanized recitation” of the text existed in eleventh-century India.⁵⁴

FIGURE 2-4Signs of worship on a book cover, a Nepalese manuscript of the Kāraṇḍavyūha sūtra dated 1641 CE. Cambridge University Library, Add. 1330. Image reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.

While I find Schopen’s brilliant analysis convincing, I also wonder if it isn’t possible to think that a beautifully produced book with its encasing book covers was in itself conceived as a case (mañjuṣā) in the context of the medieval cult of Buddhist books. As suggested in the previous chapter, if we consider the fluidity between the inner and outer space of a book, a book can be both a relic and a relic case. The visual representations of a book in worship show a long rectangular object on a pedestal with flowers and ribbons on top. The Prajñāpāramitā manuscript represented in the Orissan stele of the goddess Prajñāpāramitā examined in chapter 1 has two knobs on top that would have held together the manuscript, along with two flower offerings (see fig. 1–4).⁵⁵ Surviving wooden book covers that have heavy accumulations of sandalwood paste and vermillion powder suggest that manuscripts have been in direct worship, just as seen in the representations of ritual scenes (fig.2–4). It became a common practice by the mid-twelfth century to have the inside of the wooden book covers painted and illustrated and to incorporate this space into the iconographic design of the whole manuscript (fig. 2–5, see fig. 5–5). The outer surfaces of these wooden book covers were also painted and decorated, and the more elaborate, sometimes sculpted, wooden book covers that developed later in Nepal and Tibet may reflect this tendency to consider a book as encasing or packaging a relic, in this case, the Buddha’s teaching (see web 2–3).⁵⁶

FIGURE 2-5Painted book covers of an AsP Ms (Ms D5), Nālandā, Gomīndrapāla’s 4th year (ca. 1179 CE). Bharat Kala Bhavan, Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Varanasi.

While keeping in mind this development of almost three-dimensional embellishment of book covers, let us look at verse 6 again: “śrīmatkhasarppaṇamahāyatane prayatnāt [sic] mañjūṣayā vihitayā jananījinānāṃ / yena bhramatyavirataṃ pratimāś catasraḥ sattreṣu parvvaṇi samarppayati sma yaś ca.” A beautifully produced book with its encasing book covers might in itself be conceived as a case (mañjuṣā) in the context of the medieval cult of Buddhist books. We may also consider jananījinānāṃ as referring to the text of the Prajñāpāramitā. If this text “incessantly moved about” through the “continuous effort” (prayatnāt) of Vipulaśrīmitra(yena) in the great temple of Khasarpaṇa (Avalokiteśvara), we may propose that a ritual turning of folios of a manuscript that accompanied a continuous recitation of the text could have created such movements.⁵⁷ Of course, this reading is even more fanciful than an imaginative construction of a revolving bookcase. What is important for our discussion here is that the inscription talks about a text in motion, and whether in a revolving case or not, this implies the awareness of the movements involved in using a manuscript.

MECHANICAL ANIMATION OF A THREE-DIMENSIONAL MAṆḌALA

Reading a Buddhist book as a three-dimensional maṇḍala that can be animated can be historically situated by comparing it with another innovative ritual object made during this period, the so-called lotus maṇḍala. It is a bronze cast lotus with eight movable petals that can open and close. In addition to being a truly three-dimensional maṇḍala, its small size, measuring around 6 to 8 inches in height, and the possibility of closing the lotus with the deities systematically arranged within may permit the classification of this object as a portable miniature shrine.⁵⁸ In this regard, the lotus maṇḍala belongs to a category of objects that developed much earlier. Portable shrines made of wood, ivory, or lightweight stone, many of which date between the eighth and the tenth centuries, have been found in northwest India, Central Asia, China, Korea, and Japan.⁵⁹ But the lotus maṇḍala adds an innovative technological twist that could amplify its effect as a three-dimensional maṇḍala: a true sense of transformation is conveyed through opening the eight petals of a lotus bud and revealing the inner reality residing within. A few of these bronze lotus maṇḍalas survive from eastern India, and they all seem to date to the eleventh or twelfth century, the same period as the illustrated manuscripts discussed here. Their iconographic programs also show common features with those seen in Buddhist manuscripts. Let us examine two examples.

A lotus maṇḍala containing Vajra Tārā now in the Indian Museum, Kolkata, was found in Chandipur next to a Devīsthāna, an old Devī temple, near Pātharghātā in Bhagalpur district, Bihar.⁶⁰ Its reported height when the lotus is closed with a cap on top is about 8 inches. The eight petals were cast separately and inserted into holes to achieve the effect of a blooming lotus once the cap is removed and the petals are released. As the lotus blooms, it reveals a seated image of Vajra Tārā in the center with her troupe of eight goddesses on eight petals, one on each (see web 2–4). Vajra Tārā, an eight-armed form of Tārā, was extremely popular among medieval South Asian Buddhists, for she could help the devotee achieve anything that he or she desired.⁶¹ Eight attendant goddesses surround her on eight petals, four siting cross-legged and the other four standing in āliḍha posture with left leg bent and right leg stretched. The petals are incised with numbers, and the four two-armed goddesses are seated on petals number 1, 3, 5, and 7, marking their places in the four inter-cardinal corners of Vajra Tārā’s maṇḍala.⁶² They may represent the four offering goddesses, namely, Gandha (no. 1, holding flowers), Dīpa (no. 3, holding a lamp), Dhūpa (no. 5, incense burner), and Puṣpa (no. 7, holding an utpala lotus). The four standing goddesses all hold a tarjanī gesture in the left hands, and they may be four yoginīs guarding the four cardinal directions of the Vajra Tārā maṇḍala, called Vajraghaṇṭā (no. 2, holding vajra and ghaṇṭa), Vajrapāsī (no. 4, holding pāśa, or a noose), Vajrasphoṭī (no. 6, holding cakra, or a wheel), and Vajrāṅkuśī (no. 8, holding aṇkuśa, or an elephant goad). The outer surface of the petals have incised outlines of images that may represent the “shadow” or male counterparts of the goddesses represented within.⁶³ When the lotus is closed, an elegantly made lotus bud sits on a beautifully molded pedestal with a swirling flower pattern from which two vines shoot upwards supporting two dancing female figures on each. In this state, Vajra Tārā and her retinue are hidden from view, just like the images in a book when a book is closed. Just as a book is a beautifully made object of worship when closed, the lotus is a thing of beauty in itself that could have emanated the powerful light that it contains within.

Another lotus maṇḍala, now in the British Museum (OA 1982.8-4.1), also made with extremely fine craftsmanship, demonstrates that illustrated manuscripts and lotus maṇḍalas were designed with common iconographic idioms that reflect shared doctrinal and cultic concerns (fig. 2–6). Made with a copper alloy, with silver and copper inlay detailing on figures, this carefully constructed lotus must have been a precious thing to behold and to be surprised by. It is dated to the twelfth century on stylistic grounds, and it bears an inscription that identifies the donor as a lay devotee named Dantanāga (upāsakaśrīdantanāgasyayadatra-puṇyaṃ||). Even when the lotus is closed, active movements are implied by the swirling stems of lotus buds that surround the upper part of the pedestal and by the two naga (serpentine) figures about to climb up the stem in avid devotion. Stepping up from the small sprouting lotus stems, the nagas turn their faces upwards ardently and have one hand out as if trying to receive the blessing at the minute the lotus opens up. Right under the main lotus connected to the supporting lower petals sit two figures in relaxed pose with their right feet down. They represent Jambhala and Vasudhārā, two of the most common cultic deities in medieval India that usually occupy the outer orbit of a sacred space, including illustrated manuscripts (Ms A5, Ms A7, Ms D3, Ms D6, and Ms D10). The one on the left, from our view, is Jambhala, a chubby figure holding a mongoose and a jewel, and the one on the right is the goddess Vasudhārā, holding a jewel and a lotus. As their attributes suggest immediately, they are associated with granting worldly wishes of the devotees. Their placement in the outer layer and their proximity to the donor inscription clearly visible on the pedestal suggest that the bookmakers and the makers of the lotus maṇḍalas had a shared idea regarding the structure of a sacred space and employed the cultic deities accordingly. This helps us understand the hierarchic relationship implied in the layout of the deities in Group D manuscripts.

FIGURE 2-6Lotus maṇḍala with the Buddha and eight bodhisattvas, ca. 12th century. Bronze. British Museum, OA1982.8-4.1. Photograph © Trustees of the British Museum.

FIGURE 2-7Buddha’s enlightenment/Bodhgayā icon, left panel, folio 1v, AsP Ms (Ms D9), ca. 1207 CE (Govindapāla’s 32nd year), Asiatic Society, Mumbai BI-210.

As if responding to the ardent devotion expressed in the space below, opening the lotus petals reveals a seated image of the Buddha, displaying the characteristic gesture of enlightenment with his right hand touching the earth (bhumīsparśa mudrā). Although sometimes identified as Akṣobhya,⁶⁴ one of the five transcendental Buddhas (pañcatathāgata or pañcajina), who displays the same gesture and whose iconography ultimately derives from that of the historical Buddha Śākyamuni as a blissful manifestation (sambhogakāya), this image represents a specific image of the Buddha Śākyamuni once in the central shrine of the Mahābodhi temple.⁶⁵ The identification of this image as Akṣobhya can still be entertained, partly because of the presence of the eight bodhisattvas surrounding him.⁶⁶ Eight bodhisattva figures sit in relaxed pose (rājalalitāsana), holding various attributes on eight petals.⁶⁷

FIGURE 2-8Vajrāsāna Buddha/Bodhgayā icon, center panel, folio 1v, AsP Ms (Ms D10), ca. 1226 CE (Laksmanasena’s 47th year). Bharat Kala Bhavan, BHU, Varanasi. No. 4920.

We should note the formal characteristics of the Buddha image: he has an unusually wide forehead, a very short neck, a diadem-like headdress marked with inlaid copper and silver, and a trefoil-shaped copper-inlaid jewel on his uṣṇiṣa. There survive a number of such “robust” or “short-necked” Buddha images that display the same formal features, including two manuscript paintings (fig. 2–7 and 2–8). As recent scholarship has shown, it is safe to conclude that they may all represent an actual image of the Buddha that was in the Mahābodhi temple at Bodhgayā.⁶⁸ Thus, the Buddha image seated in the center of the British Museum lotus maṇḍala represents a famous image of the Buddha Śākyamuni that was actually at Bodhgayā, while appropriating the eight bodhisattvas of Akṣobhya. In addition to the context of three-dimensional maṇḍala, the choice of the Bodhgayā Buddha in this configuration provides an interesting visual clue for understanding the central theme of iconographic programs in illustrated Buddhist books, that is, the enlightenment of the Buddha Śākyamuni represented through illustrated panels depicting his life, sometimes arranged together with a group of deities from a maṇḍala. It does not seem to be a coincidence that this specific iconographic type of Bodhgayā Buddha emerged only in the eleventh to twelfth centuries when the manuscripts began to be illustrated with the life scenes of the Buddha. Copying a famous image, perhaps with an intention of emulating its power rooted in its locality, suggests a general shift in the goals of constructing Buddhist sacred objects in medieval South Asia, including Buddhist manuscripts, which aimed at evoking more concrete, material, personal, and perhaps visceral associations of the divine presence for the practitioners. With this understanding in mind, let us consider the first group of manuscripts.