Tibetan and Himalayan Library - THL

[1] I would like thank the organizers and participants of the Wutai shan Conference, in particular Patricia Berger, Isabelle Charleux, Karl Debreczeny, and Gray Tuttle, for helpful comments and suggestions.

[2] Gray Tuttle, “Tibetan Buddhism at Wutai shan in the Qing: The Chinese-language Register,” Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 6 (December 2011), http://www.thlib.org?tid=T5721; Johan Elverskog, “Wutai Shan, Qing Cosmopolitanism and the Mongols,” Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 6 (December 2011), http://www.thlib.org?tid=T5715; Vladimir Uspensky, “The Legislation Relating to the Tibetan Buddhist Establishments on Wutai Shan under the Qing Dynasty”; Patricia Berger, “The Jiaqing Emperor’s Magnificent Record of the Western Tour,” Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 6 (December 2011), http://www.thlib.org?tid=T5711; 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, no. 1 (2008): 73-119.

[3] Isabelle Charleux, “Mongol Pilgrimages to Wutai Shan in the Late Qing Dynasty,” Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 6 (December 2011), http://www.thlib.org?tid=T5712; Elverskog, “Wutai Shan, Qing Cosmoplitanism”; Kurtis Schaeffer, “Tibet Poetry on Wutai Shan,” Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 6 (December 2011), http://www.thlib.org?tid=T5719; Paul K. Nietupski, “Labrang Monastery and Wutai Shan,” Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 6 (December 2011), http://www.thlib.org?tid=T5718.

[4] It was the centerpiece of “Wutaishan: Pilgrimage to Five Peak Mountain” exhibit held at the Rubin Museum of Art from May 10th to October 16, 2007.

[5] Wen-shing Chou, “Ineffable Paths: Mapping Wutaishan in Qing Dynasty China,” Art Bulletin 89 no.1 (2007), 108-129.

[6] For transcriptions and translations of the trilingual inscription, see Karl Debreczeny, “Wutai Shan: Pilgrimage to Five-Peak Mountain,” Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 6 (December 2011), http://www.thlib.org?tid=T5714.

[7] There are around fourteen known copies of the image in Chinese and overseas collections, indicating that there are many more copies in museums and private collections. In addition the print from the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City, there exists 1) one copy in the Museum of Cultures in Helsinki, 2) one copy in the Confucian Temple at Ochanomizu in Tokyo, 3) one copy in the Etnografiska Museet in Stockholm, from the collection of explorer Sven A. Hedin (1865-1952), 4) one copy in the Museum of the Missionary Fathers of Scheut (C.I.C.M.) in Belgium, 5) one copy in the Beijing National Library, 6) one copy in the Minorities Cultural Palace in Beijing, 7) two copies in the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., 8) two copies shown in an online catalog from an auction house in Beijing, and 9) one copy in the Honolulu Academy of Art. The Rubin Museum of Art print is available online at http://wutaishan.rma2.org/rma_viewer.php?image_id=1&mode=info (accessed August 15, 2007); the Helsinki print is published in Harry Halen, Mirrors of the Void: Buddhist Art in the National Museum of Finland: 63 Sino-Mongolian Thangkas from the Wutai Shan Workshops, a Panoramic Map of the Wutai Mountains and Objects of Diverse Origin (Helsinki: National Board of Antiquities, 1987); the Tokyo print is reproduced in F. A. Bischoff, “Die Wu T’ai Shan Darstellung von 1846,” in Proceedings of the Csoma de Koros Symposium, eds. Ernst Steinkellner and Helmut Tauscher, Wiener Studien zur Tibetologie und Buddhismuskunde (Vienna: Universitat Wien, 1983), 17-18; the Stockholm print is cited in Li Xiaocong, A Descriptive Catalogue of pre-1900 Chinese Maps Seen in Europe (Beijing: Qinghua University Press, 1996), 31. the Scheut print is cited in Charleux, “Mongol Pilgrimages,” note 30. I thank Charleux for informing me about this copy; the two copies in the Library of Congress (hereafter LC) came into the collection separately. One hand-colored copy acquired in 1905 (although not recorded in the Library of Congress' annual reports) came into the collection along with other maps and rare books donated by William Rockhill (1854-1914), who visited Wutai shan several times. We can assume this because the LC did not receive many donations at the time, and Rockhill was one of its earliest contributors. One section of the map is published in Cordell Yee, The History of Cartography 2, bk. 2, in Cartography in the Traditional East and Southeast Asian Societies, ed. J. B. Harley and David Woodward (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), pl. 14. Another unpainted print came from the map collection of Arthur Hummel (1884-1975). Only the central portion of the image is still discernible.

[8] Some prints, like one of the two Cifu Temple maps in the Library of Congress, were left uncolored.

[9] Another copy brought back from Wutai shan by the American diplomat William Rockhill, who donated the map to the United States Library of Congress in 1905, will occasionally be referred to for further comparison. Rockhill's visits to Wutai shan are described in detail in Susan Meinheit, “Gifts at Wutai Shan: Rockhill and the Thirteenth Dalai Lama,” Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 6 (December 2011), http://www.thlib.org?tid=T5717.

[10] For scholarship on popular woodblock prints, see Wang Shucun, ed., Zhongguo gudai minsu banhua [Popular Prints of Pre-modern China] (Beijing: Xin shijie, 1992); Po Sungnien and David Johnson, Domesticated, Deities and Auspicious Emblems: The Iconography of Everyday Life in Village China. Publications of the Chinese Popular Culture Project, no. 2 (Berkeley: Chinese Popular Culture Project, 1992)

[11] This is a full application of paint rarely seen in the Chinese tradition of landscape prints, which is generally more sparing with their use of colors and more nuanced with the spread of ink washes.

[12] Chun-fang Yu, Kuan-yin: The Chinese Transformation of Avalokitesvara (New York, Columbia University Press, 2001), 6.

[13] For a study on artisans’ involvement in Buddhist art production in a different context of, see Sarah Fraser, Performing the Visual: The Practice of Buddhist Wall Painting in China and Central Asia, 618-960 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004).

[14] Zhongguo minjian wenxue jicheng quanguo bianji weiyuanhui, ed., Zhongguo minjian guoshi jicheng: Shanxi Juan [Collected Works of Chinese Folk Legends: Shanxi Province] (Beijing: Zhongguo minjian wenxue jicheng quanguo bianji weiyuanhui, 1999), 132.

[15] For a discussion of the counterpoised identifications of the Qing emperors and the Dalai Lamas as the emanations of Mañjuśrī and Avalokiteśvara, respectively, see Debreczeny, “Wutai Shan: Pilgrimage to Five-Peak Mountain,” 37-39.

[16] They are among a small group of Tibetan-only inscriptions. Most of the inscriptions appear in Chinese with Tibetan transliteration.

[17] For transcriptions and translations, see the exhibit catalogue in Debreczeny, “Wutai Shan: Pilgrimage to Five-Peak Mountain.”

[18] I thank Karl Debreczeny for this observation.

[19] The Library of Congress version acquired by Rockhill also follows this convention; it is otherwise rather plainly and loosely colored in comparison with the Helsinki and Rubin versions.

[20] The same description of Mahāsattva’s Cliff exists in all three versions of Wutai shan gazetteers printed in the Qing dynasty. See Gugong bowuyuan (故宮博物院), ed., Qingliang shan zhi [清涼山志, Qingliang shan Gazetteer], juan 2, 5; Qingliang shan xin zhi [清涼山新志, New Qingliang shan Gazetteer], juan 2, 4; Qinding Qingliang shan zhi [欽定清涼山志, Imperial Gazetteer of Qingliang shan], juan 9, 10.

[21] This is likely considering that the same story is also well-cherished in Tibetan sources. The Thirteenth Dalai Lama reiterated the story in poetic verses in his praise poem of Wutai shan. See Thub bstan rgya mtsho, Rje btsun ’jam pa’i dbyangs kyi gnas la bstod pa dwangs gsal mdzes pa’i me long [Beautiful Clear Mirror: A Praise to Lord Manjughosha’s Abode], in Collected Works of Dalai Lama XIII (New Delhi: International Academy of Indian Culture, 1981), vol. 3, 400.6-400.7.

[22] See Miaozhou, Mengzang fojiao shi [History of Mongolian and Tibetan Buddhism] (Beijing: Jingcheng chubanshe, 1935), 88.

[23] Charleux, “Mongol Pilgrimages,” 8-10, 12-16.

[24] Halen, Mirrors of the Void, 3. Painters from Wutai shan also traveled to Urga frequently at the end of the nineteenth century. See A. M. Pozdneyev, Mongolia and the Mongols (Bloomington: Indiana University, 1971): 69.

[25] This is attested to in the inscriptions as well. See Chou, “Ineffable Paths,” 114.

[26] Personal communication.

[27] David S. Areford, “The Image in the Viewer’s Hands: The Reception of Early Prints in Europe,” Studies in Iconography 24 (2003), 5-42.

[28] For the role of woodblock printing in the dissemination of the Cifu Temple image, see Chou, “Ineffable Paths,” 114.

[29] See Koichi Shinohara, “Literary Construction of Buddhist Sacred Places: The Record of Mt. Lu by Chen Shunyu,” Asiatische Studien 53 (1999): 937-64; James Robson, “Sites of Conversion: Locating Buddhist Sacred Sites within the Chinese Religious Landscape” (Paper presented at the international symposium “Images, Relics, and Legends: Formation and Transformation of Buddhist Sacred Sites” at the University of British Columbia, October 15-16, 2004.); Tansen Sen, Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade: The Realignment of Sino-Indian Relations, 600-1400 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2003): 55-101.

[30] “Subjugation” and “conversion” are topoi often used to describe the ways by which demons and mountain spirits were quelled by Buddhas, bodhisattvas, and Buddhists. They are also frequently seen in the gazetteers of Wutai shan. For an analysis of these topoi in the Chan Buddhist tradition, see Bernard Faure, Chan Insights and Oversight: An Epistemological Critique of the Chan Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993): 161-74; for a rereading of subjugation tales in the Tibetan mythology, see Janet Gyatso, “Down with the Demoness: Reflection on a Feminine Ground in Tibet,” in Feminine Ground: Essays on Women and Tibet, ed. Janet Willis (New York: Snow Lion, 1988): 33-51.

[31] The interactive website and photographs can be viewed at: http://wutaishan.rma2.org/rma_viewer.php?image_id=1&mode=info.