Publication of this book has been aided by a grant from the Millard Meiss Publication Fund of the College Art Association.
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RECEPTACLE OF THE SACRED
SOUTH ASIA ACROSS THE DISCIPLINES
Edited by Dipesh Chakrabarty, Sheldon Pollock, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam
South Asia Across the Disciplines is a series devoted to publishing first books across a wide range of South Asian studies, including art history, philology or textual studies, philosophy, religion, and interpretive social sciences. Contributors all share the goal of opening up new archives, especially in South Asian languages, and suggesting new methods and approaches, while demonstrating that South Asian scholarship can be at once deep in expertise and broad in appeal.
Funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and jointly published by the University of California Press, the University of Chicago Press, and Columbia University Press. Read more about the series at http://www.saacrossdisciplines.org.
Extreme Poetry: The South Asian Movement of Simultaneous Narration, by Yigal Bronner (Columbia University Press, 2010)
The Social Space of Language: Vernacular Culture in British Colonial Punjab, by Farina Mir (University of California Press, 2010)
Unifying Hinduism: Philosophy and Identity in Indian Intellectual History, by Andrew J. Nicholson (Columbia University Press, 2010)
Secularizing Islamists?: Jama‘at-e-Islami and Jama ‘at-ud-Da‘wa in Urban Pakistan, by Humeira Iqtidar (University of Chicago Press, 2011)
Islam Translated: Literature, Conversion, and the Arabic Cosmopolis of South and Southeast Asia, by Ronit Ricci (University of Chicago Press, 2011)
Conjugations: Marriage and Form in New Bollywood Cinema, by Sangita Gopal (University of Chicago Press, 2011)
The Powerful Ephemeral: Everyday Healing in an Ambiguously Islamic Place, by Carla Bellamy (University of California Press, 2011)
Receptacle of the Sacred: Illustrated Manuscripts and the Buddhist Book Cult in South Asia, by Jinah Kim (University of California Press, 2013)
RECEPTACLE OF THE SACRED
Illustrated Manuscripts
and the Buddhist Book Cult in South Asia
Jinah Kim
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESSBerkeleyLos AngelesLondon
University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu.
South Asia Across the Displines
University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England
© 2013 by The Regents of the University of California
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kim, Jinah, 1976-
Receptacle of the sacred : illustrated manuscripts and the Buddhist book cult in South Asia / Jinah Kim.
pages cm. — (South Asia across the disciplines)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-520-27386-3 (cloth : alk. paper)
eISBN 9780520954885
1. Buddhist illumination of books and manuscripts—South Asia—History. 2. Books—Religious aspects—Buddhism. 3. Manuscripts, Sanskrit—South Asia—History. 4. Buddhism—South Asia—Rituals—History. I. Title.
ND 3246.K56 2013
745.6’708829430954—dc232012027299
Manufactured in the United States
22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R 2002) (Permanence of Paper).
To my parents, Drs. Kim, Seongsoo & Kim, Jeong-guk
CONTENTS
| Acknowledgments | ||
| List of Maps and Figures in the Printed Book | ||
| List of Figures and Diagrams Online | ||
| Introduction: Text, Image, and the Book | ||
| PART ONE. | THE BOOK | |
| 1. | Buddhist Books and Their Cultic Use | |
| 2. | Innovations of the Medieval Buddhist Book Cult | |
| PART TWO. | TEXT AND IMAGE | |
| 3. | Representing the Perfection of Wisdom, Embodying the Holy Sites | |
| 4. | The Visual World of Buddhist Book Illustrations | |
| 5. | Esoteric Buddhism and the Illustrated Manuscripts | |
| PART THREE. | THE PEOPLE | |
| 6. | Social History of the Buddhist Book Cult | |
| Epilogue: Invoking a Goddess in a Book | ||
| Notes | ||
| Bibliography | ||
| Index |
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
On one sunny afternoon on Berkeley campus more than eleven years ago, I sat down with my advisor and mentor Joanna Williams on a bench outside the Kroeber Hall, asking a question about the lecture she just gave. In her erudite lecture, Joanna showed the class a number of images of Indian Buddhist manuscript paintings, many of which I saw for the first time, and mentioned that some images are placed in reverse direction to the text. This perplexing, paradoxical phenomenon of unrelated nature of the text and images in Buddhist manuscripts was enough to hook me to delve further into the world of illustrated Buddhist manuscripts. It is hard to believe that I spent more than ten years working on illustrated manuscripts and the Buddhist book cult, but it is equally hard to believe that the book is done.
From this quotidian beginning, Joanna has been a great mentor and an enthusiastic supporter of my project. I thank her for her wisdom and warm support throughout my graduate years and beyond. I was fortunate to have another great mentor, Patricia Berger, and I thank Pat for her continuous encouragement and insights. I thank Alexander von Rospatt, also at Berkeley, who has provided much needed guidance and resources for this project in its initial stage. Perhaps due not to my own merit but to the merit of the project, I have met many scholars of great wisdom and erudition whose research and intellectual rigor have improved my understanding of the material at hand. I thank Gregory Schopen for always inspiring me to look and think beyond the obvious with wit and rigor. I also thank Rob Linrothe for his scholarship on Esoteric Buddhist iconography and for answering my endless questions and queries. I am grateful to Christian Luczanits, who has been extremely patient and generous with resources. My understanding of the Pāla manuscripts owes much to Janice Leoshko’s rigorous studies of the Pāla material. My initial introduction to the field of Indian Buddhist art owes much to Juhyung Rhi, who remains a great mentor. I am grateful for the generous help I got from Phyllis Granoff, Tamara Sears, and Andrew Quintman in solving various problems this book posed to me. Further away from home, Gerd Mevissen, Eva Allinger, and Jorrit Britschgi have been generous with their time and resources, and I thank them sincerely.
Much