Buddhist Art of Tang China and South Asia

My paper will examine both textual and material evidences of cultural and artistic contacts between the Tang Dynasty (618-907) of China and South Asia. During the Tang Dynasty, maritime trade between China and South Asia was flourishing, which also facilitated material and cultural exchanges along the trade routes. I will focus particularly on comparison between Borobudur, the single largest monument in the Buddhist world, with a “secret disc” known as "shi" described in an important but previous neglected Buddhist text of the Tang Dynasty. I contend that "shi" is a prototype of the Buddhist mandala (a cosmological diagram), and it provided the underlying structure for the early surviving mandalas of the Tathagata family centering on the Buddha Vairocana, including Borobudur and the various versions of the Two World Mandalas now in Japan. It is also the structural basis for later different versions of Tibetan mandalas of the Vajra family centering on the Buddha Akshobhya.

The affinity between shi and Borobudur in both totality and details points to a different model of Buddhist diffusion. New Buddhist ideas clearly did not spread just one way from the west to the east but sometimes vice versa. The westward flow of ideas may have reached as far as Ellora in Western India, as shown in some nine-fold mandalas in the Ellora Buddhist caves. It was in this mode of cultural exchanges that the concepts, texts, models, or practitioners of the “secret disc” or shi must have reached the site of Borobudur.

Department of Art and Art History Michigan State University, USA.
Anning Jing received his Ph. D. degree in Chinese art from Princeton University in 1994. He has been teaching Asian art in the Department of Art and Art History at Michigan State University since 1995. His books include The Water God's Temple of the Guangsheng Monastery: Cosmic Function of Art, Ritual, and Theater  (Leiden: Brill, 2002), and Yuandai biha “Shenxianfuhui tu” (The Yuan Murals “Assembly of the Immortals”) (in Chinese), (Beijing: Beijing University Press, 2002). His most recent book, titled “Temples, Images, and Patriarchs of the Complete Realization School of Daoism” (in Chinese), will be published by Zhonghua shuju in Beijing in 2011. Recently he co-edited a book titled Studies in Sino-Tibetan Buddhist Art
(Shanghai: Shanghai guji chuban she, 2009).
jinga@msu.edu

Tara: at home in London?

Tara is a female Bodhisattva, the most beloved goddess of the Mahayana pantheon and a female Buddha in the Tantric tradition. She appears in several of her manifestations in Sri Lanka where the earliest evidence for her presence is probably from the eighth century. She was first acknowledged by scholars, only in 1951. Sri Lanka’s best images of Tara, the almost life size standing image and a seated gilt bronze one, said to be the ‘finest known Sri Lankan bronze’, are in London, in the British Museum. A museum presentation claimed that Tara is no longer venerated in Sri Lanka. Very little is known about how she was worshipped in Sri Lanka but, in a different guises, Tara is still, if marginally, revered in Sri Lanka and it is none other than her companion Lord Avalokitesvara, not to be seen by the public, who resides in the prestigious Natha devale in Kandy. It is intriguing that no Sri Lankan government has seriously requested the return of the images held in London. In the changing landscape of both Theravada studies and historical studies engaging the colonial production of knowledge, the observation that ‘the role of the Mahayana in the cultural development of Sri Lanka is grossly underrated both in the traditional histories and in modern commentary’ gains a fresh resonance. This paper considers the theme that the interpretive framing of colonial and nationalist historiography in Sri Lanka is implicated in the neglect of Tara studies and her western sojourn.

Dr. Shanti Jayewardene Pillai
UK & Sri Lanka

Shanti Jayewardene Pillai trained as an architect in Sri Lanka and London. She has an MSc in the history of modern architecture from University College London and a DPhil from the University of Oxford. She has worked as an architect in Sri Lanka and the UK, taught architectural history at University College London and contributed as an editor for Mimar Architecture in Development. Her research interest is the intersection of architectural and imperial history in South Asia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. She recently published a book Imperial Conversations: Indo-Britons and the Architecture of South India. She is an independent researcher currently engaged in teaching history at the faculty of architecture, University of Moratuwa, and working on a book chapter on the monastic gardens of Sri Lanka.
shantipillai@yahoo.com

The Decorative Art Tradition in Ola Leaf Manuscripts

Writing on palm leaf was an ancient tradition in Asia.  As recorded in Sri Lankan chronicles, the Thripitaka doctrine of the Buddha was written on palm leaves as early as 1st century BC.  Since then preparing and writing palm leaf manuscripts in Sri Lanka has continuously developed as a science and art.

The preparation of a palm leaf book is a combination of many components, prepared palm leaves for writing, calligraphy, metal writing style, timber covers, three colored binding cord, sakiya or end hole and a special box to store books.  In addition to the science of making these books, it was colorfully and artistically decorated, forming a part of the traditional art of Sri Lanka. In addition to the traditional calligraphy of Sinhala letters, the writer has decorated the manuscript with traditional design motifs and pictorial illustrations highlighting the different episodes described in the written part.

Professor Nimal de Silva
Sri Lanka

Professor Nimal de Silva is the Director General of the CCF- Central Cultural Fund, and Senior Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Architecture, University of Moratuwa.  He had held the positions as Director, Postgraduate Institute of Archeology (PGIAR), University of Kelaniya; Chairman, National Design Center; and Chairman, Urban Development Authority.  He is a chartered architect specializing in conservation, archeology, and art history, and he is the author of many publications.
nimaldes@pgiar.lk

The Simhala Avadana and the Myth of Arrival ,Pilgrimage, Transmission and Mythology in Ancient India and Sri lanka

Every country has its national myth,which is then  gradually absorbed into the artistic inheritance of its homeland. Sri Lanka has legend of lion. The arrival of Price Vijaya, his subjugation of the demons and the conquest of the island of sri lanka. Although it is so deeply embedded on the island’s literature, history and folklore, this tale has hardly ever been depicted visually.

In the 5th century AD however, this seminal event is recorded in a series of murals on the walls of the monastery of Ajanta in western India. Called the Simhala Avadana, it tells the story of the arrival of Prince Simhala in Lanka, his encounter with the Queen of the Rakshshis and her she devils and his later conquest of the island. Part this mural is also embodied in a jataka Tale, The Valahassa jataka,. However the main source for this series is the Chinese pilgrim, traveler and Buddhist monk Hsuan-tsang (c.602-664s)Although he never travelled to the island, it is this Chinese monk who is our principal authority for the national myth of Lanka. Crisscrossing the heart of Asia in search of knowledge, he is the very embodiment of the theme of this symposium, the diffusion of cultures through the power of travel and transmission.

Dr. SinhaRaja Tammita-Delgoda
Sri Lanka

B.A. Hons (Wales), M.A. Medieval Studies (York), Ph.D. History (London).
Writer, historian and art historian, SinhaRaja Tammita-Delgoda has produced three major works on the art and culture of Sri Lanka, The World of Stanley Kirinde (2005) Ridi Vihare, The Flowering of Kandyan Art (2007), and Eloquence in Stone, The Lithic Saga of Sri Lanka (2008) in collaboration with Nihal Fernando.
He has lectured in the USA, UK, India and Sri Lanka and in 2005-2006 he was Visiting Fulbright Scholar at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he taught the first course given in the west on the Evolution of Art and Architecture in Sri Lanka. (500 BC-1815 AD). During Asian Art Week in London 2009, he delivered the first series of lectures entirely on the art and culture of Sri Lanka at SOAS, Institute of Archaeology, the Nehru Centre and Royal Asiatic Society.
srtd@eol.lk

Significant Images, Signifying Representations: Syncretism, Accommodation and Marginalization in Cōḻa Iconography'

There has been scholarly scrutiny of the Cōla period as one of imperial expansion marked by the growth of territorial and administrative power, legitimized by the use of religious ideological devices. The building of temples across the Tamil macro-region and the grandness of scale that was effected allowed for the creation of visual canvases to explicate the mythologies related to the deities in whose honour the temples were constructed. This was a period in which what I call the 'the transformation of the cultural landscape' was clearly manifested, when brahmanas and the brahmanical temple became prominent actors in Tamil society, and the Vedic and Puranic ideas were translated and Tamilized. In the process, there was an interesting integration of traditions that cannot be understood through watertight concepts for cultural interaction such as Great and Little traditions or Sanskritization or brahmanization. I will be looking at iconographic representations of goddesses, both consort and independent female deities, in Saiva temples to unravel the semiotic interplay of the image and the signification rendered through the mythic canvas, where Siva and the goddess(es) are alternatively seen as complementary, as adversaries and as a hierogamous couple.

Dr. R. Mahalakshmi
India

Dr. R. Mahalakshmi teaches at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She has specialized on the political economy and religious culture of early medieval Tamilnadu. She has recently published a monograph on the myths, rituals and iconography of the goddess Lakshmi (The Book of Lakshmi) Penguin Viking, 2009). Her book on The Making of the Goddess in Early Medieval Tamilnadu (Penguin Viking) is in press. She has recently been working on Sakta and tribal goddesses and religion in the Chotanagpur area of India, and on Brahmanical temples in Sri Lanka.
mahaarakesh@gmail.com

The Corners of the Empire: The Sri Lankan Impact on Early Modern Japanese Decorative Art

Sri Lanka and Japan were two islands on the edges of the Dutch East India Company Empire. Sri Lanka is often lost in the shadow of its neighbor, the Indian subcontinent but its impact on the early modern world was far ranging.  Japan is an excellent case study that demonstrates this.   In the early modern world, neither the Sinhalese nor the Japanese had large ocean-going vessels of their own but were connected through the European trading empires.  The Company promoted trade that had not historically existed between these two regions but ultimately had significant impact on Japan, a country that was theoretically closed to foreign trade.  

A number of Sri Lankan products were exported to Japan, including the best-known and studied commodity, cinnamon.  This paper will focus on commodities that are less commonly studied but had a significant impact on the material world of early modern Japan:  tortoiseshell, stingray skins and ivory.   Primary source documents in Dutch, Japanese and English about geography and customs as well as trade documents and objects will be used to show the extent of this trade and an awareness of Sri Lanka among the early modern Japanese and document how these raw materials were extensively incorporated into Japanese culture.

Dr. Martha Chaiklin
USA

Martha Chaiklin has an undergraduate from Washington University in St. Louis and a Masters Degrees from the University of Michigan and Seijo University (Tokyo). She obtained her PhD at Leiden University. She is currently an assistant professor at the History Department, University of Pittsburgh.  Her research focuses on the impacted of global trade on local material culture in Asia.  In addition to the monograph Cultural Commerce and Dutch Commercial Culture—The Impact European Material Culture on Japan, 1700-1850, she has authored, most recently, articles on mermaid exports from Japan, ivory in world history, Japanese hair ornaments, and the ‘opening’ of Japan.  She is currently writing a book about ivory trade and consumption in early modern Asia.
chaiklin@pitt.edu

Ceylonese Ivory Carvings in Dutch Collections

In Dutch museums and few private collections, a number of Ceylonese ivory carvings are preserved, dating from the late 17th to the third quarter of the 18th century. They are examples of Company art, art objects made in Asia for European customers in the era of the European East India companies. The Dutch company, the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC), was during its 150 years presence in Sri Lanka (1658 -1798) the sole European East India company represented in the country - and the de facto ruler of the island. Quite a number of Ceylonese ivory carvings are preserved, which were manufactured between c. 1670 and the third decade of the 18th century to the order of employees of the Dutch East India Company. In style and execution these carvings, which adorn caskets and small cabinets, are rather different from those from the preceding, Portuguese period of Ceylon, which were made for the court of Portugal and for further trading in Lisbon. They testify to the changes in Europe in the taste for luxury goods from Asia.

Some groups can be distinguished in the carvings manufactured under Dutch patronage, which were often intended fur further trading in Amsterdam, particularly with regard to their iconography and style. Accordingly, it is possible to allocate two groups of these ivory carvings to places, which were traditionally known as centres of this craft, that is Jaffna and the Matara - Galle area. A third group was possibly made in Colombo and/or Kalutura.

A few ivory combs will also be discussed, which were made in Ceylon without European intervention. These were brought to the Netherlands in the 18th century as ‘curios’, objects of ethnographic interest. They were placed in Dutch cabinets of curiosities.  

Ebeltje Hartkamp-Jonxis
Netherlands

Ebeltje Hartkamp-Jonxis studied Art History and South East Asian Art at the University of Amsterdam. She worked as scientific assistant at the Institute for South and South East Asian Archaeology of University of Amsterdam, as liaison officer for museums at the Dutch Ministry of Culture and consequently as Curator of Applied Art at the state owned Art Collections, present day The Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage (ICN). Since 1992 until her retirement (2010) she was Curator of Textiles at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Her publications mainly relate to Indian export textiles, European tapestries and contemporary Dutch design. In 2004 she published European Tapestries in the Rijksmuseum (co-author Hillie Smit), a catalogue of the holdings of the Rijksmuseum. In 2009 she published Weaving Myths. Ovid’s Metamorphoses and the Diana Tapestries in the Rijksmuseum. In 2010 she was Co-Curator of the exhibition Tijdloos Trendy (Timeless Trendy) in Duivenvoorde Castle, near The Hague. A book about Company Art in the Rijksmuseum, co-authored by Jan van Campen, will appear in September 2011.
hartkamp-jonxis@hetnet.nl