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December 03, 2006
Inscribed Landscape in 6th century China
---two groups of religious inscriptions in Shandong
Li Min
Stone Classics and the Fairyland of Zheng Daozhao
The first group of inscriptions was attributed to Zheng Daozhao (455-516) of the Northern Wei period. The original stones were located on the stony mountains of the Laizhou region in the Shandong Peninsula of eastern China. These inscriptions were produced during an era of political turbulence and social tension. After the collapse of the Han Empire in the 3rd century, several shorted lived attempt to establish an empire in its model were eventually overrun by tides of foreign invasions. One of these foreign dynasties was the imperial court of Northern Wei, established by the Xianbei tribes from northeast China. These foreign dynasties employed Confucian scholars in the government as the latter mastered the knowledge and the philosophical trappings for operating an empire like Han. As same political knowledge also threatened to deny the rulers legitimacy and authority, tension always existed between the Xianbei rulers and the native Confucian scholars.
The prominent Zheng family of Yingyang (present day Kaifeng, Henan) produced generations of Confucian scholars who advised rulers of the Han Empire and the successive dynasties. At age 24, Zheng Daozhao followed the steps of his father and brother to become a high ranking official in the Northern Wei court. His appointment in the court coincided with period of the social reforms implemented by the Xiaowen Emperor to adopt the Han political, social, and cultural institutions. The emperor was deeply impressed by his talent. To consolidate ties with this prominent family, the Xiaowen Emperor even married Zheng Daozhao’s sister.
After the death of Xiaowen Emperor, Zheng’s political career entered a downward spiral. He was first demoted for a cousin’s involvement in a failed coup plot. Then, the Xuanwu Emperor, who was indulged in his royal patronage of Buddhism, turned a deaf ear to his multiple proposals of reviving the imperial college and promoting the Confucian classics. In addition to providing education to students in the imperial college, he proposed to continue the Han tradition of carving the Confucian classics on stone tablets for public to access. The carving of these Stone Classics was once central to Han imperial politics, whereas the prevailing school got to inscribe their version of classics on the stone thus establishing cultural legitimacy. Against the backdrop of imperial patronage of Buddhism, Zheng’s proposal revealed a strong self-awareness of the political power of historiography and classics.
At the age of 55, the disheartened Zheng Daozhao left the capital to be the governor for the region of Guangzhou (present day Laizhou). In this land endowed with legends of immortals and fairy land, Zheng Daozhao found inspirations in the local religious ideals and turned local stones and landscape as media of his personal expression. With a profound tradition of religious Daoism, the Shandong Peninsula had been a favorable destination for those in the pursuit for immortality long before the First Emperor of Qin made his personal visit. Zheng Daozhao found escape from the harsh political realities through his own self-indulging quest for immortality and spiritual freedom. Accompanied by his deputies and Daoist priests, the governor roamed around the mountainous terrains of Guangzhou, composing poetry, playing music on zither, debating philosophical matters from Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, and enjoying the beautiful landscape.
Zheng Daozhao left over forty inscriptions on cliff faces and large boulders within the last five years of his life. Scholars have not reached a consensus on the authorship of the calligraphy. It was generally attributed to Zheng himself, but his deputies could have lent their hands. Two of large cliff inscriptions each served as monuments to commemorate his late father, in which Zheng subtly defied the charges of corruption against his late father by the emperor. The rest of inscriptions were primarily romantic commentaries from his enlightening journey through the mountainous terrain. The choice of their locations were well integrated with the landscape. At the top of Yunfeng (the Cloudy Peak) Mountain is a group of inscriptions carved on natural granite, which list the names of nine immortals. One of them states “the Mountain of Taishi where the Prince of Jin resided riding a phoenix,” “the Mountain of Kunlun where the immortal Xianmenzi resided riding the sun,” and “the Mount Hua where the philosopher Lie-tzu resided riding a phoenix,” and “the Mountain of Yuegui where the immortal Fuqiuzi resided riding a wild swan.”
Zheng Daozhao’s imagination is best represented in the inscription “Up the Heavenly Pillar and down the Cloud Peak,” which combines the spectacular landscape, the dynamic calligraphy, the poetic expression, the rich stone texture, and the masterful carving in a single piece. Here the governor portrayed himself as a fairy riding the cloud, ascending freely among his favorite mountains. In other inscriptions, he named the natural peaks as gates to his imaged mountain home and identified locations of altars where he might take off into the land of the immortals in the mid night. When examined against the backdrop of his failed political career in promoting the tradition imperial order framed on Confucian classics and the increasing imperial patronage of Buddhism, Zheng Daozhao’s declared pursuit of spiritual freedom can be seen as deliberate defiance of the prevailing state ideology.
The inscriptions, the calligraphy, and the locations reveal a scholar official seeking spiritual escape from the disappointing social realities during the last years of his life. It is a tradition increasingly popular among literati of later historical China. Centuries later, we found similar quests in the poems of Li Bai. By then, however, the Zheng Daozhao inscriptions themselves have fall into oblivion. The inscriptions were first documented by scholar Zhao Mingcheng in the 11th century, whose antiquarian pursuit of ancient bronzes and steles became the prelude to China’s archaeological research.
The Stone Sutra and the Mission of Seng An Daoyi
The second group of inscriptions centers in the southern slope of Mount Tai region, centered at the city of Zouxian, the home of Mencius. In the final decades of the sixth century, local patrons and monks transformed the mountains and hills around Mount Tai into a sacred landscape with religious inscriptions of unprecedented scale.
In the 560s, the concept of mofa, the eminent destruction of the Law and the complete extinction of Buddha’s teachings, became popular in northern China. Two tragic episodes of religious persecutions against Buddhism in 446 and 574, along with the carnage of foreign invasions and domestic unrests, demonstrate the inevitability of the destruction. Inside the state of Northern Zhou, a religious persecution against Buddhism and Taoism was launched as an imperial verdict in 574.
Monasteries were confiscated and monks and nuns forced to return to secular life.
In the neighboring state of Northern Qi, where Buddhism enjoyed the state patronage, religious devotees became seriously concerned over the prophecy and the threat perpetrated by the impinging Northern Zhou state, which eventually conquered the Buddhist country. At the critical time, a highly respected monk Seng An Daoyi undertook a monumental effort of carving passages of Buddhist sutra on granites hills, cliff faces, natural boulders, in numerous places of Shandong and Hebei, some covering an area of 6000 sq. meters. The project was aimed at using the enduring quality of granite and the monumental scale of the inscription to preserve and promote Buddhism teaching against apocalyptic dangers.
We know little about Seng An Daoyi as a historical figure other than the small amount of information mentioned in the inscriptions. However, many patrons enlisted for support were prominent historical figures in the Northern Qi state, their associates, as well as elite women. Influential local clans were also named in the sponsorship, indicating that Seng An Daoyi was actively soliciting support both in the capital and in the local communities. The project went on as the region fell to the Northern Zhou invasion, and terminated soon after the emperor died in 578 and policies of religious persecution were reverted by his successor.
At Tieshan (the Iron Mountain), the relief image of a giant stele was carved on a large granite slope. The stele, which has dragons on the top and turtles at the bottom, features passages from the Great Collection of Sutras (Dajijing), nearly a thousand characters in 16 columns. Each character measures nearly two feet wide, and the whole text covers an area of 1000 sq. meters. Next to the Stone Sutra was the Stone Eulogy (Shisong), a 700 character essay written by a disciple or someone very closely associated with the project documenting the effort. Two pieces displayed here comes from the Stone Eulogy, “silk and bamboo can easily perish; metal and stone are hard to destroy,” highlights the materiality of the religious text, which aims to “preserve (the sutra) on the high mountain and to survive forever” (Stone Eulogy).
The Stone Eulogy also placed the giant Buddhist stele in the historical context of stone inscriptions in early China, claiming that it dwarfs the predecessors by the King of Zhou and the First Emperor of Qin, who were seen as self-promoting rulers in contrast to the religious mission of the religious undertaking. The author further draws attention to the artistic achievement of Seng An Daoyi’s calligraphy: Master An “whose practice of the Way mirrors non-duality and whose virtue shows enlightenment from the single source… whose skill in calligraphy is also of highest order, who was requested, with the sagely brush, to transcribe the sutra passage” (translation from Harrist 2003). The author places Seng An’s brushwork at the highest rank among the canonical masters from the second century onward. The long scroll on display claims that
Its qing (elegance) surpassed Wang Xizhi and Wei Yan.
And miao (refined) goes beyond Zhang Boying and Zhong You,
Like a dragon coiling in the mist,
Like a phoenix leaping over the clouds.
This statement adopted established vocabularies for evaluating artistic talent, which were first used in calligraphy and later used in paintings. Particularly noteworthy among the canonical masters was Wang Xizhi of the fourth century, who was regarded the most talented calligrapher in Chinese history. The Neo-Daoist aristocrat was best known for his Lan-Ting-Xu, a treatise on the leisure of a scholarly gathering and a masterpiece of Chinese calligraphy in history. Wang’s free-flowing style and religious aspirations resonated well with people like Zheng Daozhao, but not in sync with the Buddhist doctrine.
It is significant that the undertaker of the project sorted to enhance the religious experience with the art of writing along with the choice of the content, the media, and monumental scale. The emphasis on calligraphy, even over issues concerning the very existence of the universe and laws, reveals the critical awareness of style as an importance source of legitimacy, which is deeply rooted in the culture of literati. While Buddhism changed the sense of scale for Chinese culture, it was being transformed by the latter in its effort of evoking the aesthetics of writing to convey its religious message.
Inscriptions at other locations also took on breathtaking scale and thought-provoking layout. At the Gangshan, giant boulders and cliff faces scattered around the hilltop and steep valley were inscribed with a passage, a word, or a character from the sutra. These apparent scatter of texts only became meaningful once connected in one’s mind. Thus the whole hill, which was a symbolic representation of the sacred mountain in Buddhism, amplifies the beautiful message whereas “hundreds and thousands of wonderful sound, of beautiful fragrance, fill in the grottos and crevices of mountain.”
At Mount Tai, the inscriptions took on an even grander form, where the 3000 characters passage from the Diamond Sutra was carved onto a large sheet of granite of 6000 sq. meters at the streambed of the Sutra Stone Valley. As the mountain creek emerges from the forest and approaches this open field of granite, the water fans out and flows over columns of large characters, a symbolic metaphor for the passage of time against the enduring wisdom. Examples of these large characters are present here at the exhibition. In contrast to the dynamic style of Zheng Daozhao, the calm beauty of Seng An Daoyi’s writing appears far detached from worldly concerns.
From the Stone Classics as an ideal in Zheng Daozhao’s political aspiration, to Zheng’s playful addition of his own inscriptions on stones in their natural landscape, and finally to Seng An Daoyi’s monumental effort to carve sutra over huge granite slopes and stream beds, the established genre of inscribing text on stone has gone through dynamic transformations during the 6th century. Through this transformation, writings on stone have gone beyond simply conveying permanence and public access. In the case of Stone Sutra Valley, whereas the water ran over the text on granite, the materiality of text is manifested in a fascinating interplay of media, space, time, and motion.
Although the circulation of these writing in the form of ink rubbings during the recent centuries could not capture the full spectrum of motions involved, the connoisseurship of these writing in their paper form established a social life of its own right. The rubbings of the Zheng Daozhao inscriptions and the Stone Sutras became the subject of intense study by scholars of late 19th century. After over a millennium in oblivion, their artistic achievements became highly promoted by scholar and political reformer Kang Youwei (1858-1927), for whom the vitality and originality of these works represented the art of writing at the highest rank. Even the deformation on the ink rubbing caused by texture of granite and the weathering of carving were appreciated as part of the aesthetics. For Kang, these mountain inscriptions represent a new and original source of artistic inspiration in contrast to the misrepresentation and corruption of the masterpieces by repeated effort of reproduction after 8th century.
Since the aesthetics based on the corrupted reproduction of Wang Xizhi’s calligraphy was established as canonical for writing the imperial civil servant system, Kang Youwei’s radical rebuttal of the canon and high-profile promotion of these inscriptions was clearly aimed at undermining the status quo and advancing his reform agenda in political as well as cultural arena. These two groups of calligraphy, each a product of the intense political circumstances of its time then silent for a millennium, were finally placed on the center-stage of art and political discourse of a modernizing China in late 19th century.
References:
Harrist, Robert 2003. The virtual stele on Tieshan and the engraved sutras of Shandong province. Oriental Art 49(4): 2-13.
Jiao Desen and Wei Guangping (eds.) 2003. Beichao moya kejing yanjiu xu (research on the cliff inscriptions of Buddhist sutra II). Hong Kong: Tianma Publishing Co.
Shandong shike yishu bowuguan and Zhongguo shufajia xiehui Shandong fenhui (eds.) 1985. Yunfeng zhushan beichao keshi taolunhui lunwen xuanji (collection of papers from the conference on Northern Dynasty inscriptions of the Yunfeng and other mountains). Jinan: Qilu shushe.
Zhongguo shufajia xiehui Shandong fenhui and Shandong shike yishu bowuguan (eds.) 1991. Beichao moya kejing yanjiu (research on the cliff inscriptions of Buddhist sutra). Jinan: Qilu shushe.
Posted by limz at December 3, 2006 12:32 PM