Maṇḍala within the Rock: The Visualization of the Mahāmāyūrī-vidyārājñī and its Altar in Southwestern China, 9th–13th Centuries

Abstract

Abstract This paper considers visualizations in Chinese medieval esoteric Buddhism in seven sculptural tableaux of the Mahāmāyūrī-vidyārājñī (Peacock Wisdom King 孔雀明王) from rock carving sites in the Sichuan Basin, Southwestern China. Early scholars highlighted the authority of Amoghavajra’s ritual manual for the Mahāmāyūrī images in this area, yet divergences between text and image hold them back from further interpretation. This paper reinvestigates these Mahāmāyūrī shrines “dialectically” by considering the text-image relationship. While keeping Amoghavajra’s ritual manual as a reference, it attempts to decode the meaning of the images and sites based on their own content, and to extrapolate from the text-image divergences how artistic productions and esoteric practices could lead to the presence of such divergences. This involves discussing artistic forms and decorative elements appropriated from exoteric Buddhism, as well as adjustments to the central icon and adjacent narrative scenes weaved within the temporal and spatial transitions. It also includes observations on the grouping between the Mahāmāyūrī and other deities in the larger iconographic program in their affiliated rock-cut sites, which reflects the interaction between this esoteric teaching and other popular beliefs. At least four out of seven examples share the same hierarchical iconographic programs or signature spatial structures similar to the Mahāmāyūrī altar prescribed in Amoghavajra’s ritual manual. It takes these visual or spatial similarities as concrete evidences that the construction of these shrines intended to make altars/maṇḍalas, although in two different ways to represent the esoteric altar and to create a space to conduct such a ritual.