—Buddha’s instruction to Ānanda, Prajñāpāramitā (Perfection of Wisdom) sūtra, chapter 32
This book is an art historical and material cultural study of the Buddhist book cult in South Asia, whose adherents consider a book not only a text but also a sacred object of worship. The core materials examined in this study are illustrated Buddhist manuscripts prepared during the eleventh through the thirteenth centuries in the ancient regions of Magadha, Aṅga, Varendra (Gauḍa), Vaṅga, and Samataṭa (present-day Bihar, West Bengal, and Bangladesh; see map 3–1). During this period of late Indian Buddhism, books containing important Mahāyāna sūtras, especially the Prajñāpāramitā (Perfection of Wisdom) sūtra, were produced in abundance, some with beautiful paintings. The cult of the book (Sanskrit, pustaka), the core idea for which dates to the inception of Mahāyāna Buddhism during the early centuries of our Common Era, witnessed its heyday during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, when Tantric or Esoteric strands of Buddhism were in full bloom in the region. At the heart of this age-old cultic practice, which still continues today in Nepal, lies the book, a physical object that we can touch, carry, open and close, read, use, and even worship.2 Worship of a book is not unique to the Buddhist tradition. Other world religions, especially Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the so-called religions of the book, put much emphasis on their respective scriptures—the Torah, the Bible, and the Qur’an—as sacred objects. In Sikhism, another Indic religion, the book, the Guru-Granth, is the central focus of worship and the ultimate teacher. In Jainism, too, the books are treated as sacred and ritually worshipped in jñānapūjā. What may be unique to the Buddhist tradition is that in the long history of the Buddhist book cult in South Asia, an individual, physical book has survived in worship for over eight hundred years (fig. 0–1). This study investigates the ways in which Buddhist books were constructed and maintained as sacred objects in medieval South Asia and locates them in their historical context. In particular, I consider the mutually reinforcing roles of text, image, and book as the major impetus behind the longevity of the book cult in South Asia. The book’s objecthood, that is to say, its nature as a three-dimensional object that can be animated by various means, is one of the primary concerns of this study.
That one can animate a book is not just a rhetorical proposal. A book’s inherent function is to be read, and the act of reading requires both the physical handling of a book and the turning of its pages by the reader. The simple act of going from one page to the next involves sound and motion. In a ritual context, for example in recitation, the accompanying sound can amplify the motions involved in the use of the book. When a book is not bound as a codex (the format used for modern books with the pages more or less permanently bound together) but is made in pothi format (which allows for separation of the individual leaves), the possibility for movement increases considerably. Moreover, the spatial limits of a book in pothi format are rather fluid. A book in traditional pothi format, like those from ancient and medieval India, was made from birch bark or palm leaves cut to a uniform shape and size, often in long rectangular folios. Once the scribing and illustrating were completed, the folios were bound with a cord or metal sticks through one or two holes in each folio and often enclosed between two wooden end boards. While a book in codex format is confined to the physical limits set by its binding, a book in pothi format enjoys a certain fluidity and flexibility in its physical dimensions, allowing for a greater range of uses (fig. 0–2), just as a sari is a loose garment that fits almost any body type. Using a book of this type involves a lot of active motions. As a user opens a palm-leaf manuscript of the Perfection of Wisdom sūtra, unfolding its cloth wrapper and untying the cord or pulling the metal rods out of their holes, she can pick up and put the wooden end board to the side and lift the first folio from the stack of two to three hundred folios. Flipping it horizontally, she reveals the text that runs from left to right on the two open pages—the verso of the first folio and the recto of the second folio—as well as any illustrated panels if the manuscript was commissioned with paintings. This action is repeated with subsequent folios, and if the user has been careful about putting the folios down neatly, she will have two stacks of equal height in front of her when the middle of the text has been reached. But a user can also divide the text into sections and put them into separate stacks, or remove a single folio for special study. The fluidity in the structure thus means that it is easy to deconstruct and reconstruct a book. This is demonstrated in a thirteenth-century painting from a Kalpasūtra manuscript in which a Jain monk, instructing a princely figure, holds a folio in his right hand while the rest of the book remains on a book stand (fig. 0–3).3
FIGURE 0-1A 13th-century manuscript of the Prajñāpāramitā sūtra taken out for ritual worship, Prajñāpāramitā pūjā, Kwā Bāhā (Golden Temple), Patan, Nepal. June 30, 2004.
FIGURE 0-2A 12th-century illustrated manuscript of the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā sūtra (AsP) laid out during research, National Archive, Kathmandu, Acc. No. 5.196. July 5, 2004.
FIGURE 0-3Jain monk instructing a princely figure with a book, a folio from a Kalpasūtra Ms, ca. 1300. Edwin Binney 3rd Collection. The San Diego Museum of Art, 1990.179.
A BOOK THAT DOES WONDERS
A book is a semiotically interesting object, as it foregrounds “the oxymoron of the sign.”4 A book is simultaneously content (text) and form (object) and thus embodies the classic tension between idea and material. When we talk about a book, we are often concerned with the book as idea, not as material. In this age of digital texts and electronic books, a book’s materiality may soon become an obsolete concern for many of us, and it may seem that the book as idea is ultimately prevailing over its materiality. But the invention of digital reading devices such as the Kindle and the iPad also suggests that a book’s material aspect will not disappear easily. What all the digital readers have in common with a traditional book is the fundamental function of the book as a vessel or container of content (i.e., text). Like traditional books, they are compact and portable, yet they can contain hundreds of texts or e-books at once. Using digital books may seem to diminish the kinds of physical interactions hitherto typical of book use, but the introduction of a touch-sensitive product like the iPad ensures that our interaction with a book remains as tactile and “real” as possible.
The concept of a book as an application, or app, designed for an electronic device in fact introduces the possibility of truly interactive books, as seen in the “Alice in Wonderland” app, a virtual storybook that translates physical inputs by the user into visual responses:
Tilt your iPad to make Alice grow big as a house, or shrink to just six inches tall. . . . Throw darts at the Queen of Hearts—they realistically bounce off her. Witness the Cheshire Cat disappear, and help the Caterpillar smoke his hookah pipe. . . . Watch as full screen physics modeling brings illustrations to life.5
Here a “book” becomes a magical, wonder-working device. Although not as interactive as a virtual storybook of Alice in Wonderland, books that are perhaps just as magical and wondrous are mentioned in an eighteenth-century Tibetan account of the manuscripts made at Nālandā, a famous Buddhist monastery in Bihar (eastern India):
In Ratnōdadhi, which was nine-storied,