Dunhuang Studies Research Articles

On Jan Yün-hua’s (Ran Yunhua 冉雲華 [1923-2018]) scholarship in Chinese Buddhism

ABSTRACT Jan Yün-hua is an internationally renowned scholar who has conducted exquisite research in the fields of Buddhist studies, Chan Studies, Dunhuang Studies, and Daoist Studies, among which Chinese Buddhism in particular is renowned. This paper discusses the life of Jan Yün-hua, his academic achievements, and his exploration of ‘transformation of Buddhism from India to China’ in three aspects. This paper argues that during his decades of academic career, Jan has focused on the ambitious academic goal of ‘the transformation of Buddhism from India to China and its process,’ which is the original purpose of his Buddhist studies and the theme of his lifelong exploration. According to Jan, the core idea of Chinese Buddhism, the idea of ‘one mind’, was formed in the eighth century. This idea was first established by Chengguan and finally completed by Zongmi and Yanshou. The concept of ‘one mind’ was first propagated by Tiantai, then supplemented and enriched by Huayan Buddhism, and after the incubation of the unification of meditation and doctrines, and the addition of Chan Buddhism, it became the mainstream development of Chinese Buddhism, and finally became the core thought of Chinese Buddhism.

Visualizing Dunhuang: The Lo Archive Photographs of the Mogao and Yulin Caves

Visualizing Dunhuang: The Lo Archive Photographs of the Mogao and Yulin Caves

Perception of the Mogao Caves’ Art Heritage in Republican China (1911–1949): From Obscurity to National Treasure

This paper examines the history of the re-discovery of the Mogao murals and how the public’s perception of their artistic value changed over the course of the first half of the 20th century. The analysis of primary sources shows that the evolution of that perception coincided with the shift in the understanding of art, national identity, and history in China. The cave-temple complex of Mogao in Dunhuang (Gansu province, China) contains more than a thousand cliffside caves which were excavated and decorated between the 4th and 14th centuries C.E. The murals and sculptures in these caves demonstrate a unique multicultural exchange that took place along the Silk Road trade routes for a millennium. By the beginning of the 20th century, the Mogao complex had fallen into neglect. In 1899, the Daoist monk Wang Yuanlu discovered a “library-cave” with thousands of manuscripts and fragments of paintings. The encounter of Chinese intellectuals with manuscripts from the library cave in the 1900s launched the beginning of the Dunhuang studies, which for the next few decades remained highly text-oriented. After the Qing empire fell in 1911, the public associated the Mogao complex primarily with the looting of cultural relics by “foreign imperialists.” It was only towards the end of the 1930s that the intellectuals of Republican China became interested in the murals. This interest grew into a series of expeditions led by Chinese artists and archaeologists. Multiple exhibitions of copies of the murals introduced the art of Dunhuang to the Chinese public, and by the time of the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, they had become a national cultural symbol.

The Taming of the Demons: Violence and Liberation in Tibetan Buddhism by Jacob P. Dalton (review)

Reviewed by: The Taming of the Demons: Violence and Liberation in Tibetan Buddhism by Jacob P. Dalton Matthew T. Kapstein The Taming of the Demons: Violence and Liberation in Tibetan Buddhism BY Jacob P. Dalton. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011. Pp. x + 311. $40.00. In The Taming of the Demons, Jacob Dalton offers an innovative and provocative investigation of what he terms a "history of violence" in Tibet (or, more accurately, in Tibetan Buddhism). Dalton qualifies this project, noting that it "traces just one narrative line through a myriad of possibilities. The resulting story is a construction, and in places probably an arbitrary one determined largely by the present author's own interests" (pp. 18-19). All histories, however, are constructions, and Dalton's interests, arbitrary or not, touch upon troubling issues of considerable importance for our understanding of Tibetan religions. As suggested by the title of his book, Dalton's foremost interest is in the ubiquitous Tibetan theme of demon taming and its elaboration in ritual, narrative, history, and law. It is a leitmotif in the tales of [End Page 177] Buddhism's implantation and development in Tibet, of the activities of saints and wonderworkers down through the ages, of the founding of temples and pilgrimage sites, and of much more. In essence, Dalton's questions are: what accounts for the prominent emphasis on the violent quelling of demons in the Mahayana culture of Tibet—a culture that represents itself as fundamentally "compassionate"? And what lends coherence to its innumerable iterations of religiously sanctioned violence? In constructing his response, Dalton has chosen to privilege a selection of key texts, traditions, and historical moments. Of central concern to his account is the myth of the demon Rudra (Chapter 1, "Evil and Ignorance in Tantric Buddhism"), which originated in Indian Buddhist tantric tales of the Buddha's subjugation of the Hindu divinity Siva (usually called Mahesvara or Rudra in this context) and was enormously expanded in a scripture entitled the Mdo dgongs pa 'dus pa, probably a Tibetan apocryphon of the late first millennium. (Its lengthy retelling of the story of Rudra is translated in Appendix A.) The unbridled struggle of the gods and buddhas to defeat the monstrous Rudra provides a founding myth for Buddhist tantrism. This narrative is explicitly invoked, or at least plausibly presupposed, in a broad range of Tibetan tantric rituals, especially those seeking to control demonic forces. Parts of Dalton's account, as developed in Chapter 2 ("Demons in the Dark") in particular, depend upon material gleaned from his previous collaboration with Sam van Schaik at the British Library.1 One of the important conclusions of their work is that, despite the tendency of earlier scholarship to assign Dunhuang Tibetan manuscripts to the period of Tibetan imperial rule in Dunhuang (ca. 781-848), most of the tantric materials more likely dated from the post-imperial "age of fragmentation" (ca. 850-1000). (It may be remarked in passing that this corresponds with a more general trend in Tibetan Dunhuang studies to reassess the dating of the manuscripts, pushing a large proportion of them to post-imperial times.) In the present context, this provides Dalton with plausible evidence through which he argues that [End Page 178] tantric demon taming, as evidenced in the Dunhuang texts, becomes prominent only in post-imperial sources. Such materials subsequently gave rise to the well-known legendary accounts that were retrojected by later Tibetan historians to the imperial age. It is precisely the turbulence of the age of fragmentation, in tandem with the waxing hegemonic presence of the ritual technologies of the tantras, that generates the polarities upon which the myths of demonic subjugation depend. Dalton's argument in this respect reinforces a broad reappraisal within recent Tibetan studies of the relationship between the history of the Tibetan empire and its later mythology. But what is new and exciting in his contribution is his use of the Dunhuang texts, many of them previously unstudied, to clarify developments during the obscure "dark age" of the late ninth and tenth centuries. Indeed, illuminating the darkness is a key metaphor here, both for some of the sources Dalton considers and for Dalton himself. Tibet...

A Report on the 1985 Conference of the Chinese Association of Dunhuang and Turfan Studies at Urumqi

A Report on the 1985 Conference of the Chinese Association of Dunhuang and Turfan Studies at Urumqi