The Buddha's Nirvana and Medieval Chinese Relic Deposits

Conférence de Sonya Lee, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, enregistrée le 30 avril 2008, à l'EFEO. Dans le cadre des Conférences Iéna : Art, archéologie et anthropologie de l'Asie (EFEO – MUSÉE GUIMET) Cycle de conférence 2007-2008 : Images et Imagination : le Bouddhisme en Asie. The Buddha Sakymuni's entry into nirvana was a moment of great significance in the history of Buddhism. Pictorial representations of this event began to gain prevalence in China in the sixth century and had remained a major subject in Chinese Buddhist art ever since. In this talk, Sonya Lee focuses on nirvana images especially made for underground pagoda crypts with Buddhist relics enshrined inside. From painted murals to decorations on reliquaries and freestanding sculptures, the many variations in which the motif appeared in relic deposits point to sophisticated uses of visual images to define the kind and symbolic values of the relics that they accompanied. Selected examples from the eighth to twelfth centuries are examined to better illuminate the material dimensions of relic worship as well as some fundamental changes that Buddhism underwent in its continued engagement in medieval Chinese society. Sonya Lee is Assistant Professor of Chinese Art and Visual Culture at University of Southern California in Los Angeles (U.S.). She specializes in religious art and architecture of pre-modern China, with particular focus on the material culture of medieval Chinese Buddhism along the ancient Silk Road. Currently, she is completing a book entitled “Surviving Nirvana: Death and Transfiguration of the Buddha in Chinese Art,” in which she discusses how the Buddha's absence was made into a simple yet powerful allegory of survival in pre-modern China through images of the Buddha's nirvana.