Tibetan and Himalayan Library - THL

[1] I would like to extend thanks to the organizers and participants in the Wutai Shan Conference, held May 12-13, 2007, at the Rubin Museum of Art, New York, for their very helpful suggestions, as well as for their stimulating papers on the later history of Wutai Shan.

[2] Peng Ling, Dong Gao, et al., eds., Xixun shengdian [Magnificent Record of the Western Tour] (Beijing: Wuying Dian, 1812); reprint (Beijing: Guji chubanshe, 1996), 3 volumes. See Natalie Köhle, “Why Did the Kangxi Emperor Go to Wutai Shan? Patronage, Pilgrimage, and the Place of Tibetan Buddhism at the Early Qing Court,” Late Imperial China 29.1 (2008): 73-119, on the Kangxi emperor’s tours to Wutai Shan and the broad patronage he distributed while there.

[3] The period in question is covered in Jiaqing qiju zhu (Guilin: Guangxi Shifan Daxue chubanshe, 2006), v. 16, and Da Qing Renzong Rui (Jiaqing) huangdi shilu (Taiwan: Huawen shuju, 1968), vol. 6, 3546. I thank Susan Naquin, Princeton University, for drawing attention during the discussion at the Wutai Shan conference to the coincidence of Jiaqing’s timing of his tour and the twelfth anniversary of Qianlong’s death.

[4] Princess Zhuangjing Heshi’s burial and that of her half-sister, Princess Zhuangjing Gulun, who died just two months later, were located in 1965 in a walled garden enclave just off Chang’an Dajie in what is now downtown Beijing during excavations conducted by the Chinese Hydrology Research Institute. See Zhongguo Shui ke yuan [The Chinese Hydrology Research Institute], “Gong zhu fen an sang di shi na wei gong zhu?” [Which Princess is Buried in the Princess’ Grave?], http://dhr.iwhr.com/dhr/B20070105.htm.

[5] See Maxwell Hearn, “Document and Portrait: The Southern Tour Paintings of Kangxi and Qianlong,” Phoebus 6, no. 1 (1988): 90-131.

[6] This motive is repeated in several places, among them, in the preface to the Magnificent Record of the Western Tour; Jiaqing Di qiju zhu (Guilin: Guangxi Shifan University Press, 2006), vol. 16, 143; Wang Xianqian, ed., Shier chao donghua lu (Changsha: Wenhai chubanshe, 1963), vol. 13, 21-22.

[7] Michael G. Chang, A Court on Horseback: Imperial Touring & the Construction of Qing Rule, 1680-1785 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2007), 431.

[8] One of the earliest examples of the ‘set view’ approach to landscape painting is the Xiao xiang bajing, which were already formulated as a series of poetic titles in the Song dynasty. Others rapidly followed, including a series of poetic titles describing the Jin capital at Yanjing (eventually transformed into the Eight Views of Beijing in the early Ming), and the multiple versions of views of Suzhou that were given as retirement presents and were avidly collected by visitors to the city.

[9] On these two birthday records, Kangxi’s Wanshou shengdian (1716) and Qianlong’s Baxun wanshou shengdian (1782), see Helen Uitzinger, “For the Man Who Has Everything: Western Style Exotica in Birthday Celebration at the Court of Ch’ien-lung,” in Leonard Blussé and Harriet T. Zurndorfer, ed., Conflict and Accommodation in Early Modern East Asia: Essays in Honor of Erik Zürcher (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1993), 216-39.

[10] On recursiveness in the Qing construction of history, see Mark Elliott, “Whose Empire Shall It Be? Manchu Figurations of Historical Process in the Early Seventeenth Century,” in Time, Temporality, and Imperial Transition ed. Lynn Struve (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2005); and Patricia Berger, Empire of Emptiness: Buddhist Art and Political Authority in Qing China (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2003).

[11] This incident is described in Chang, A Court on Horseback, 426-28. The account here follows his and all direct quotations are his translations. Dongxun jishi, a later record of Jiaqing’s first tour to Shengjing in 1805 was compiled by Yang Zhongxi and republished in Shen Yunlong, ed., Jindai Zhongguo shiliao congkan (Taipei: Wenhai chubanshe, 1966), 852-54. He traveled there again in 1818.

[12] Chang cites Liang Zhangju, Langji congtan (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1997).

[13] Arthur Hummel, Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period, vol. 2 (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1944), 684.

[14] Gugong bowuyuan, Wenxian bianhao, 404014440. I thank Wen-shing Chou for this reference.

[15] Zhao Lin’en has done the hard work of counting Qianlong’s Wutai Shan poems in “Cong Hongli di xun Tai shi kan qi dui fojiao di,” Xinzhou shifan xueyuan xuebao 17, no. 4 (October 2001): 61-65. Like all poets writing in Chinese, the Qing emperors were highly aware of the recursive power of borrowed rhyme patterns. Qianlong’s 40,750 or more recorded poems (more than a few ghosted by his aides) are often prefaced with the source of their rhymes, most often chosen from those used by Kangxi. In 1763, Liang Guozhi and others completed an “Imperially Decreed Memorial on the Classification and Standardization of Rhyme Books” (Gugong bowuyuan, Gongzhong danghao, 15781), to which Qianlong added his vermilion endorsement. The restoration of proper rhymes was part of the larger phonological reconstruction project that Qianlong actively promoted. Another important component was the restoration of the proper sounds of Buddhist dhāranī and mantra, most of which had been rendered in Chinese in the Tang dynasty and were, by the eighteenth century, pronounced very differently and thus no longer zhenyan – “true speech.” Qianlong’s uncle, Zhuang Qinwang Yinlu (1695-1767) supervised this project between 1748 and 1758, using Tibetan sources as a guide to proper pronunciation. His four-part compilation, titled in Chinese Yuzhi Man Han Menggu Xifan hebi dazang quanzhou, which included dhāranī and mantra in Manchu, Chinese, Mongolian, and Tibetan, was printed and distributed to monasteries throughout the empire in 1773.

[16] The 1750 Wutai Shan poems are in Qing Gaozong yu zhi shi wen quan ji, vol. 3, juan 15 (Taipei: National Palace Museum, 1976), 17-18. Hereafter, Qing Gaozong, Collected Works.

[17] The painting is published in Gugong shuhua tulu, vol. 11 (Taipei: National Palace Museum, 1989-), 377-8.

[18] Gugong shuhua tulu, vol. 12, 233-4.

[19] Qianlong even ordered an illustrated Gazetteer of Pan Shan (Pan shan zhi), dated in its preface to 1755, which features the same conventionalized visual restraint as his Imperially Commissioned Gazetteer of the Clear and Cool Mountains and Jiaqing’s Magnificent Record of the Western Tour. Its illustrations have been republished in Liu Tuo and Meng Bai, eds., Qingdian banhua huikan (Beijing: Xuefan chubanshe, 1996), v. 8.

[20] This is nothing new. As early as the Ming Yongle reign (1403-24), eminent Tibetan Buddhist monks (and even arhats) were depicted with the accoutrements of Chinese gentlemen: inkstone, Chinese-style string-bound books, ancient bronze vessels, carved lacquer seal ink containers, and so forth. See, for example, the silk tapestry portrait of Sakya YeshéSa skya ye shes, which was done in the Ming Xuande court sometime between 1426-1435; Precious Deposits vol. 3, no. 55 (Beijing: Morning Glory Press, 2000). See also Köhle, “Why Did the Kangxi Emperor Go to Wutai Shan?,” on the evidence for Ming imperial support of Tibetan Buddhism.

[21] Edwin O. Reischauer, trans., Ennin’s Travels in T’ang China (New York: Ronald Press, 1955), 200.

[22] In Qing Gaozong, Collected Works, vol. 3, juan 15, 18. “Shuxiang si zai yi” [殊像寺再依, Nearing the Shuxiang Monastery Again]:

再至瞻殊像

維新煥法筵

匪因修福業

可以悅真禪

結攬千山外

平量五載前

鷲峰直北望

樹杪鬱葱然

“Zai ti shuxiang si” [再題殊像寺, Again Writing on the Shuxiang Monastery]:

夷嵕此地開紺園

屏息一禮兩之尊

文殊師利無定相

優數比丘多讆言

翠柏風舞鸞鳳盖

玉峰寒入雲霞軒

不須拙速催成句

少憩吾將意與存

[23] Wang Jiapeng, “Qianlong yu Manzu lama siyuan,” Gugong bowuyuan yuankan 67, no. 1 (1995): 58-65. Wang describes the entire site surrounding the Baodi Monastery as populated by Manchu monks.

[24] Qing Gaozong, “Shuxiang Si” [殊像寺] in Collected Works, vol. 5, juan 11, 18b:

是像即非像

文殊特地殊

毫端寶王刹

鏡裡焰光珠

法雨滄桑潤

梵雲朝暮圖

高山仰止近

屏氣步霄衢

[25] Zhang Yuxin, ed., “Baoxiang beiwen,” in Qing zhengfu yu lamajiao (Xinchang, Henan: Xizang renmin chubanshe, 1988), 409-10:

是一是二, 在文殊本不生分別見, 倘必執清凉為道場, 而不知香山亦不為道場

[26] Qianlong was not the only admirer to reconsitute the Five Peaks closer to home. “Small Wutai Shan,” now a natural preserve west of Beijing in the Taihang Range, was a more convenient alternative to the Clear and Cool Mountains because its similar snow-covered, five-peak topography recalled the real thing but offered easy access. Small Wutai Shan was also the site of imperial patronage: two Liao emperors visited the Jinhe Monastery there, which was founded in the Northern Wei by Emperor Xiao Wendi (r. 471-500). Other temples there, among them a Shuxiang Monastery with an image of Mañjuśrī on lion-back, were also explicitly modeled on those at Large Wutai Shan.

[27] Gugong shuhua tulu, vol. 13, 127-30:

圓光默識, 如月印川。