Function And Meaning In Buddhist Art
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Function And Meaning In Buddhist Art
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Author :
language : en
Publisher: BRILL
Release Date : 2023-08-07
Function And Meaning In Buddhist Art written by and has been published by BRILL this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2023-08-07 with History categories.
What was the function of Buddhist art at the time Buddhism was a major religion in large areas of South, East, and South-East Asia? Can we establish what these sculptures and paintings meant to Buddhist believers living at a time when this art fulfilled important religious needs? These questions are discussed, not answered, in a volume about ‘Function and Meaning of Buddhist Art’ which contains the papers of a workshop on this theme held at Leiden University in 1991. While dealing with a variety of themes and subject-matter, sometimes in great detail, sixteen specialists focus on ritual and semantic aspects of Buddhist works of art from countries such as India, China, Japan, Tibet, Thailand, and Indonesia. Recent non-western art-historical publications show an increasing tendency to work with methodological frameworks developed by specialists on western art. Moreover, there are more similarities between Buddhist and other religious art ‘than, literally, meet the eye’. For this reason, two comparative studies are included in which parallels and universals are brought forward. Two main lines emerge in the results offered in this book, the one indicating a tendency to focus on intended meanings; the other concentrating on more than one level of reception of Buddhist art in a liturgical context.
Buddhist Monks And Business Matters
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Author : Gregory Schopen
language : en
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Release Date : 2004-01-01
Buddhist Monks And Business Matters written by Gregory Schopen and has been published by University of Hawaii Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2004-01-01 with Religion categories.
The second in a series of collected essays looking at Indian Buddhism.
The Making Of A Savior Bodhisattva
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Author : Shi Zhiru
language : en
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Release Date : 2007-08-14
The Making Of A Savior Bodhisattva written by Shi Zhiru and has been published by University of Hawaii Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2007-08-14 with Religion categories.
In modern Chinese Buddhism, Dizang is especially popular as the sovereign of the underworld. Often represented as a monk wearing a royal crown, Dizang helps the deceased faithful navigate the complex underworld bureaucracy, avert the punitive terrors of hell, and arrive at the happy realm of rebirth. The author is concerned with the formative period of this important Buddhist deity, before his underworldly aspect eclipses his connections to other religious expressions and at a time when the art, mythology, practices, and texts of his cult were still replete with possibilities. She begins by problematizing the reigning model of Dizang, one that proposes an evolution of gradual sinicization and increasing vulgarization of a relatively unknown Indian bodhisattva, Ksitigarbha, into a Chinese deity of the underworld. Such a model, the author argues, obscures the many-faceted personality and iconography of Dizang. Rejecting it, she deploys a broad array of materials (art, epigraphy, ritual texts, scripture, and narrative literature) to recomplexify Dizang and restore (as much as possible from the fragmented historical sources) what this figure meant to Chinese Buddhists from the sixth to tenth centuries. Rather than privilege any one genre of evidence, the author treats both material artifacts and literary works, canonical and noncanonical sources. Adopting an archaeological approach, she excavates motifs from and finds resonances across disparate genres to paint a vibrant, detailed picture of the medieval Dizang cult. Through her analysis, the cult, far from being an isolated phenomenon, is revealed as integrally woven into the entire fabric of Chinese Buddhism, functioning as a kaleidoscopic lens encompassing a multivalent religio-cultural assimilation that resists the usual bifurcation of doctrine and practice or "elite" and "popular" religion. The Making of a Savior Bodhisattva presents a fascinating wealth of material on the personality, iconography, and lore associated with the medieval Dizang. It elucidates the complex cultural, religious, and social forces shaping the florescence of this savior cult in Tang China while simultaneously addressing several broader theoretical issues that have preoccupied the field. Zhiru not only questions the use of sinicization as a lens through which to view Chinese Buddhist history, she also brings both canonical and noncanonical literature into dialogue with a body of archaeological remains that has been ignored in the study of East Asian Buddhism.
Minding The Buddha S Business
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Author : Daniel Boucher
language : en
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Release Date : 2025-06-24
Minding The Buddha S Business written by Daniel Boucher and has been published by Simon and Schuster this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2025-06-24 with Religion categories.
Colleagues and former students of Gregory Schopen honor his path-breaking contributions to Buddhist studies with these articles on the early Mahayana, the monastic codes, and Buddhism’s art-historical and epigraphical remains. This volume honors the profoundly transformative influence of Gregory Schopen’s many contributions to Buddhist studies. Eighteen articles by former students and colleagues focus on the areas of Schopen’s most noteworthy influence: the study of the Mahayana, particularly of its early sutra literature; the study of Vinaya, especially the narratives accompanying the rules for monks and nuns; and the study of Buddhist epigraphy and art history. Contributors demonstrate the ongoing significance of Schopen’s scholarship, including his very first article, on the cult of the book in the early Mahayana, published fifty years ago. Schopen has repeatedly shown how the study of Buddhism has too often focused on scriptures and normative doctrines and not enough on the practical ideas and contexts that significantly impacted the lives of actual Buddhists. He sought to reveal these lived concerns in the massive trove of Buddhist inscriptions, which often expose the habits and ideas of the tradition’s most prominent donors (many of whom were monastics), as well as the everyday concerns of monks and nuns, whose views did not always dovetail with canonical sources. Even in his treatment of canonical sources, Schopen has shown that the standard portrait of a Buddhist monk or nun fails to match a careful reading of their law codes—his work on the Mulasarvastivada-vinaya has required scholars to substantially reimagine the legal and ritual obligations, as well as the economic concerns, that preoccupied the minds of Buddhist jurists. Schopen has, in essence, brought the Buddha down to earth, revealing that this is precisely where most Indian Buddhists encountered him. The contributions in this celebratory volume reflect this legacy and Schopen’s considerable impact on our understanding of Buddhists in India.
Tree And Serpent Early Buddhist Art In India
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Author : John S. Guy
language : en
Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art
Release Date : 2023-07-17
Tree And Serpent Early Buddhist Art In India written by John S. Guy and has been published by Metropolitan Museum of Art this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2023-07-17 with Art categories.
A pioneering study of the emergence of Buddhist art in southern India, featuring vibrant photography of rare works, many published here for the first time Named for two primary motifs in Buddhist art, the sacred bodhi tree and the protective snake, Tree & Serpent: Early Buddhist Art in India is the first publication to foreground devotional works produced in the Deccan from 200 BCE to 400 CE. Unlike traditional narratives, which focus on northern India (where the Buddha was born, taught, and died), this groundbreaking book presents Buddhist art from monastic sites in the south. Long neglected, this is among the earliest surviving bodies of Buddhist art, and among the most sublimely beautiful. An international team of researchers contributes new scholarship on the sculptural and devotional art associated with Buddhism, and masterpieces from recently excavated Buddhist sites are published here for the first time—including Kanaganahalli and Phanigiri, the most important new discoveries in a generation. With its exploration of Buddhism’s emergence in southern India, as well as of India’s deep commercial and cultural engagement with the Hellenized and Roman worlds, this definitive study expands our understanding of the origins of Buddhist art itself.
Receptacle Of The Sacred
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Author : Jinah Kim
language : en
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Release Date : 2013-04-12
Receptacle Of The Sacred written by Jinah Kim and has been published by Univ of California Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2013-04-12 with Art categories.
In considering medieval illustrated Buddhist manuscripts as sacred objects of cultic innovation, Receptacle of the Sacred explores how and why the South Asian Buddhist book-cult has survived for almost two millennia to the present. A book “manuscript” should be understood as a form of sacred space: a temple in microcosm, not only imbued with divine presence but also layered with the memories of many generations of users. Jinah Kim argues that illustrating a manuscript with Buddhist imagery not only empowered it as a three-dimensional sacred object, but also made it a suitable tool for the spiritual transformation of medieval Indian practitioners. Through a detailed historical analysis of Sanskrit colophons on patronage, production, and use of illustrated manuscripts, she suggests that while Buddhism’s disappearance in eastern India was a slow and gradual process, the Buddhist book-cult played an important role in sustaining its identity. In addition, by examining the physical traces left by later Nepalese users and the contemporary ritual use of the book in Nepal, Kim shows how human agency was critical in perpetuating and intensifying the potency of a manuscript as a sacred object throughout time.
The Buddha
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Author : Vanessa R. Sasson
language : en
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Release Date : 2023
The Buddha written by Vanessa R. Sasson and has been published by Oxford University Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2023 with History categories.
Retellings of the Buddha's life story have animated and sustained Buddhist thought and practice through some 2,500 years of history. To this day, Buddhist holidays and rituals are pinned to the arc of his biography, celebrating his birth, awakening, teaching, and final nirvana. His story is the model that exemplary Buddhists follow. Often, there is a moment of insight akin to the Buddha's experience with the Four Sights, followed by a great departure from home, and a period of searching that it is hoped will lead to final awakening. The Buddha's story is not just the Buddha's story; it is the story of Buddhism. In this book, twelve leading scholars of South Asian texts and traditions articulate the Buddha-life blueprint--the underlying and foundational pattern that holds the life story of a buddha together. They retell the episodes of Buddha Gautama's extended life story, while keeping in mind the cosmic, paradigmatic arc of his narrative. The contributors have dedicated their careers to exploring hagiographical materials, each applying their own methodological and theoretical interests to shed new light on the enduring story of Buddhism. Using multiple perspectives, voices, and sources, this volume underscores the multivalent centrality of this story. The book will be an invaluable resource to practicing Buddhists and students of Buddhist Studies to help them engage in the most foundational story of the tradition.
Surviving Nirvana
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Author : Sonya S. Lee
language : en
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
Release Date : 2010-03-01
Surviving Nirvana written by Sonya S. Lee and has been published by Hong Kong University Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2010-03-01 with Art categories.
The Buddha's nirvana marks the end of the life of a great spiritual figure and the beginning of Buddhism as a world religion. Surviving Nirvana is the first book in the English language to examine how this historic moment was represented and received in the visual culture of China, of which the nirvana image has been a part for over 1,500 years. --Mining a selection of well-documented and well-preserved examples from the sixth to twelfth centuries, Sonya Lee offers a reassessment of medieval Chinese Buddhism by focusing on practices of devotion and image-making that were inspired by the Buddha's "complete extinction." The nirvana image, comprised of a reclining Buddha and a mourning audience, was central to defining the local meanings of the nirvana moment in different times and places. The motif's many guises, whether on a stone-carved stele, inside a pagoda crypt, or as a painted mural in a cave temple, were the product of social interactions, religious institutions, and artistic practices prevalent in a given historical context. They were also cogent responses to the fundamental anxiety about the absence of the Buddha and the prospect of one's salvation. By reinventing the nirvana image to address its own needs, each community of patrons, makers, and viewers sought to recast the Buddha's "death" into an allegory of survival that was charged with local pride and contemporary relevance.- -Thoroughly researched, this study engages methods and debates from the fields of art history, religion, archaeology, architecture, and East Asian history that are relevant to scholars and students alike. The many examples analyzed in the book offer well-defined local contexts to discuss broader historical and theoretical issues concerning representation, patronage, religion and politics, family values, and vision.--Sonya S. Lee is assistant professor of art history and East Asian languages and cultures at University of Southern California.-- -
Sacred Traces
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Author : Janice Leoshko
language : en
Publisher: Routledge
Release Date : 2017-07-05
Sacred Traces written by Janice Leoshko and has been published by Routledge this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2017-07-05 with Art categories.
In his novel Kim, in which a Tibetan pilgrim seeks to visit important Buddhist sites in India, Rudyard Kipling reveals the nineteenth-century fascination with the discovery of the importance of Buddhism in India's past. Janice Leoshko, a scholar of South Asian Buddhist art uses Kipling's account and those of other western writers to offer new insight into the priorities underlying nineteenth-century studies of Buddhist art in India. In the absence of written records, the first explorations of Buddhist sites were often guided by accounts of Chinese pilgrims. They had journeyed to India more than a thousand years earlier in search of sacred traces of the Buddha, the places where he lived, obtained enlightenment, taught and finally passed into nirvana. The British explorers, however, had other interests besides the religion itself. They were motivated by concerns tied to the growing British control of the subcontinent. Building on earlier interventions, Janice Leoshko examines this history of nineteenth-century exploration in order to illuminate how early concerns shaped the way Buddhist art has been studied in the West and presented in its museums.
Figments And Fragments Of Mahayana Buddhism In India
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Author : Gregory Schopen
language : en
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Release Date : 2005-01-01
Figments And Fragments Of Mahayana Buddhism In India written by Gregory Schopen and has been published by University of Hawaii Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2005-01-01 with History categories.
In these articles, Gregory Schopen once again displays the erudition and originality that have contributed to a major shift in the way that Indian Buddhism is perceived, understood, and studied.