THE FUNERARY BUDDHA: MATERIAL CULTURE AND RELIGIOUS CHANGE IN “THE INTRODUCTION OF BUDDHISM TO CHINA”

摘要

This dissertation is an inquiry into the significance of the record of the earliest objects bearing Buddhist motifs for our understanding of what is commonly known as the “introduction of Buddhism in China. It argues that the earliest Chinese material Buddha images were innovations that both resulted from and triggered synergistic cultural interaction. This means, that far from being only a case of cultural misunderstanding or random borrowing, as has generally been stated, they gave expression to a re-envisioning of the relationship between human and supernatural beings, and contributed to transformations in the Chinese religious praxis of the period.udIndeed, it has been noted that the funerary use of Buddha figures in China represented an unorthodox usage in relation to Buddhist traditions. What has not been noted, however, is that they also represented an innovation in the Chinese funerary context, since apotropaic beings were mostly represented in hybrid or animal form, while human form was generally used for mimetic or didactic purposes.udIn order to understand the role of the earliest Chinese objects bearing Buddhist motifs in the “Introduction of Buddhism in China,” previous scholarship placed these objects within a historical narrative that saw them as being the outcome of cultural misinterpretation. Consequently, earlier scholarship supported the view that Buddhism was initially understood from a Daoist perspective. This dissertation argues that in order to understand the role of the funerary Buddha figures in the “Introduction of Buddhism in China” we need to, paradoxically, first extricate the analysis from the traditional historical narrative that has shaped our thinking. ud