Manichaean Painting of the Buddha Jesus
Manichaean Painting of the Buddha Jesus | |
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Chinese: 夷數佛幀, Japanese: キリスト聖像 | |
Artist | Unknown |
Year | 12th to 13th centuries |
Type | Hanging scroll, colours and gold on silk |
Dimensions | 153.5 cm × 58.7 cm (60.4 in × 23.1 in) |
Location | Seiunji Temple, Kōshū |
The Manichaean Painting of the Buddha Jesus (
Description
The painting depicts a monumental, solitary figure, with glittering lines of gold and various colours. The upper half is occupied by a cloaked deity seated in lotus position and hands held close to one another in front of the chest. He is holding in his left hand a red lotus pedestal on where a small gold cross (Cross of Light) is seated. In addition to the nimbus around the head, there is a faint outline of a large mandorla that frames the body and reaches the upwards, where a tasselled canopy hung above the nimbus. The lower half is filled by an elaborate pedestal, which is a multilayered hexagonal stand supporting a lotus with lush sets of petals that open in five orderly rings. Each petal evokes the form of a miniature altar.
Background
According to the Song Huiyao Jigao, there were six paintings in the possession of a Chinese Manichaean church used as objects of learning and veneration:[3]
- Silk painting of the buddha Wonderful Water (妙水佛幀)
- Silk painting of the buddha First Thought (先意佛幀)
- Silk painting of the buddha Jesus (夷數佛幀)
- Silk painting of Good and Evil (善惡幀)
- Silk painting of the Royal Prince (太子幀)
- Silk painting of the Four Kings of Heaven (四天王幀)
History
The history of this hanging scroll represents a unique case of religious metamorphosis, for it has been used by three religions. It can be divided into three episodes: before ca. 1552, the image was venerated by
Analysis
The painting was identified earlier by the Japanese art historian Takeo Izumi as a Yuan dynasty Christian work of art. Zsuzsanna Gulácsi notes that the highly sinicised character of this painting weakens this idea, "since Nestorian Christianity in China maintained a foreign identity and produced art with relatively small degree of integration compared to the arts of other originally foreign but later fully integrated religions, such as Buddhism and Manichaeism."[2]
After studying and comparing the scroll with a number of Buddhist, Church of the East Christian and Manichaean works of art, Gulácsi concluded in her article A Manichaean Portrait of the Buddha Jesus: Identifying a Twelfth-Thirteenth-century Chinese Painting from the Collection of Seiun-ji Zen Temple, that the painting is a Manichaean work of art:
Despite the fact that it features a figure seated on a lotus pedestal with a cross statuette in his left hand, this painting is neither a Buddhist nor a Christian work of art for three reasons: first, it can be linked with contemporaneous Chinese textual and visual sources that support its creation and used in a Manichaean context; second, it displays iconographic and compositional continuity with earlier Manichaean art; and third, it depicts a Manichaean subject (the prophet Jesus) with symbols that allude to two fundamental Manichaean teachings (
Dualism and the Cross of Light) that are well documented throughout the history of this religion. Based on a contemporaneous inventory of paintings in the possession of a Manichaean temple in Wenzhou, this hanging scroll may be titled Yishu fo zhen (Silk Painting of the Buddha ["Prophet"] Jesus). Its attribution and identification help us to confirm that the Jesus subject had a long history in Manichaean devotional art, which now can be seen through two fragments from East Central Asia and a third, exquisitely well preserved, from southern China.[2]
Excursus
Eight silk hanging scrolls with Manichaean didactic images from southern China from between the 12th and the 15th centuries, which can be divided into four categories:
- Two single portraits (depicting Mani and Jesus)
- Icon of Mani
- Manichaean Painting of the Buddha Jesus
- One scroll depicting Salvation Theory(Soteriology)
- Four scrolls depicting Prophetology (Prophetology)
- One scroll depicting Cosmology (Cosmology)
See also
Notes
- ^ "夷數" (pinyin: Yíshù; Wade–Giles: I-shu) is the Chinese translation of the name Jesus by the Manichaeans.
References
- ^ "天目山栖雲寺 宝物風入れ展:虚空蔵菩薩画像(キリスト聖像)特別公開" (PDF). tenmokusan.or.jp (in Japanese). Archived from the original (PDF) on 6 July 2018. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
- ^ a b c d e Gulácsi, Zsuzsanna (2009). "A Manichaean Portrait of the Buddha Jesus". academia.edu. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
- ^ Lin, Wushu. "摩尼教華名辨異". cciv.cityu.edu.hk (in Traditional Chinese). Retrieved 28 November 2018.[permanent dead link]
- ^ Gulácsi, Zsuzsanna (2008). "一幅宋代摩尼敎《夷數佛幀》". academia.edu (in Traditional Chinese). Translated by Wang, Yuanyuan. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
External links
- Media related to Manichaean Painting of the Buddha Jesus at Wikimedia Commons