Tangut Pillars of <i>Uṣṇīṣavijayā</i> in Baoding Prefecture: The Last Monuments of Xixia Descendants

Abstract

In the Park of Lotus Pond in the Baoding city of China, there is a pair of stone pillars of Uṣṇīṣavijayā erected in 1502, which proves to have been the latest Tangut relics existing so far. A textual investigation of their inscriptions indicates that they were built in memory of two monks of the Xingshan Temple, which was first established in the southeastern corner of the city in the 13th c. and repeatedly rebuilt later. After a reconstruction at the end of the 15th c., three Tangut monks first came and lived in the temple, two of whom died within a dozen years, and they were the buried monks for whom the pillars were erected. The pillars were originally located in a graveyard next to the Hanzhuang village outside the city, and, as mentioned in the inscription, near the village there was a considerable settlement of descendants of the Tangut warriors conscripted and transferred by the Yuan government to protect the Central Kingdom.