Seeing Mahābodhi

JANICE LEOSHKO

University of Texas, Austin

 

ACTIVITY at Bodhgayā has increased at a truly astonishing pace ever since the Mahābodhi Temple Complex gained World Heritage status in 2002. The central shrine is now often crowded with devotees as well as many others who are simply curious to see the image there (fig. 1). The diverse character of those who visit Bodhgayā today was remarkably true as well for certain earlier periods, a view which reinforced by a spate of recent studies.[i] Scholars studying Tibetan sources have shed especially valuable light on the wide-Rranging and sustained interest in seeing and visualizing the place of the Buddhas enlightenment.[ii] Accounts studied by Kurtis Schaeffer, for example, richly augment the long known record of the Tibetan monk Dharmasvāmin (Chag Lo tsaba Chos-rje-dpal, 1197-1264).[iii] His thirteenth-century desription nonetheless remains striking testimony of seeing at the temple at Bodhgayā:

Inside the gandhola is the Mahābodhi image; it is two cubits in size. Upon seeing such an image, one will never be satisfied [that one has seen it enough] and one will have no wish to go elsewhere. It is said that even for those in a hurry who remain only briefly, no matter how small their faith, it is impossible that they not feel devotion and weep in the presence of that image. Its blessings are many.[iv]

We do not know, however, what Dharmasvāmin specifically saw. Certainly the awe that the image now enshrined there inspires seems to align with Dharmasvāmins earlier reaction. But Buddhist practice so diminished in later centuries that Bodhgayā eventually became largely ruined with many things no doubt moved, removed or destroyed. It was revived only in the nineteenth century by various parties leading to efforts that eventually transformed the site.[v] The relatively new technology of photography allowed some stunning views to be made before this rehabilitation happened, but much has been lost. We know that the British official in charge of restoring the temple moved the sculpture that is presently installed in the central shrine to that spot when work was completed, but we do not know what was previously located there.[vi] Although obscured today by ritual offerings and dress, it is a finely carved black stone sculpture of the Buddha in the earth-touching gesture (bhūmisparśa mudrā), likely made in the eleventh century. Unusually large and fully sculpted, it is otherwise similar to many stone images produced during the Pāla period (eight through twelfth centuries). Most of these sculptures are really deeply carved reliefs with finished back slabs as the stele was a common format used in the region. There is a range of imagery depicted in the known sculptures from Bodhgayā, but the majority depicts Buddha figures. Because of the disruptions at the site little survives to indicate where many of these sculptures were once placed, but clearly the repeated appearance of a Buddha in bhūmisparśa mudrā came to be a dominant theme after the eighth century.

The reverence for seeing Bodhgayāechoed in the Tibetan accounts examined by Schaeffer convey a distinct interest in imagining the site.[vii] Inscriptions on many surviving objects there are increasingly recognized as providing similar evidence. Particularly interesting is the work by scholars such as Peter Skilling about a phenomenal number of sealings that use the same inscription, what is known as the ye dharmā verse.[viii] Long thought to be of little importance, refocused attention highlights how its frequent appearance after the sixth century is meaningful in various ways. In particular is its significance for connoting the concept of dependent origination which was realized at Bodhgayā by the Buddha.[ix]The verse is found on many different types of objects becoming, as Skilling noted, the most inscribed in India before the end of the first millennium.[x] Increasing attention to the significance of ritual activity now casts the replication of this verse in a complex light.[xi] The sealings become especially interesting as the verse often appears in conjunction with a depiction of a Buddha enshrined in a temple shaped like the form of the Mahābodhi temple (fig. 2).

In addition to seals with depictions of the temple, a number of quite small but interesting works in stone replicate the form of the Mahābodhi Temple in three dimensions; their distinctive nature reinforces a sense of importance for this temple.[xii] Various scholars have discussed how these unusual objects have been found in a range of places, suggesting that they were sometimes carried away by visiting devotees and/or traveling Indian Buddhists.[xiii] Much of the previous attention, however, has been directed to the degree to which they replicate details of the architectural forms of the actual temple. This focus somewhat obscures the important fact of how these unusual objects demonstrate an emphasis on replicating a specific image enshrined in a particular place. Considering them in conjunction with the numerous depictions on sealings as well as the many surviving sculptures at the site can prompt further reflection on the striking depth of the interest in both this particular temple and the image it contained.

Further shaping such discussion is another small model, but uniquely it is made of metal and contains a Buddha figure inside it (fig. 3). This small object was found buried at a site quite near to Bodhgayā over forty years ago. The relative lack of attention it has received is a useful reminder of the need to continue reflecting on even seemingly well-known material. Measuring only fifteen centimeters high, this sculpture clearly depicts the form of the Mahābodhi temple. Accidentally discovered in 1976 by a farmer when collecting soil from a mound at Jaipurgarh, it was found in a pot with other images, all of which are now kept in the Gaya Museum.[xiv] Finds of such hoards nearby to Bodhgayā are especially significant as few metal objects are known from the site itself although it is likely they were once there. Although some works have been unearthed in archaeological excavations in eastern India, most have been found by accident as is the case here.[xv] Shortly after the discovery at Jaipurgarh, the Archaeological Survey Director General, Debala Mitra, wrote a brief but valuable article detailing the characteristics of this object. Shenoted that it was cast in three sections: shikara or tower, a hollow central chamber containing a small figure of a Buddha in bhūmisparśa mudrā and a base incised with a dedicatory inscription dating to the twelfth-thirteenth century CE.[xvi]

The three outer sides of the shrine present well shaped relief figures within trefoil arched frames; they were separately cast and then affixed to the shrines surfaces. Moving clockwise these depict a Buddha in dharmacakra mudrā, a Buddha in bhūmisparśa mudrā and Māyā giving birth. Dr. Mitra observed that there was likely once a small tree positioned above the relief of the Buddha in bhūmisparśa mudrā, fixed by a rod that remains.[xvii] It isa reasonable assumption as some of the small stone models have a tree so positioned. This feature along with the four small stūpas at the corners of the terrace and the towers shape, in fact, convey some sense of unanimity among the surviving three-dimensional replicas of the temple.[xviii] The metal material of which the Jaipurgarh example is fashioned, however, makes it easy to consider it as a work that presents the temple as image. This has not been a featured aspect of discussions often developed for depictions in sealings or the small stone models. Considered in this light as an image allows it to benefit from the interpretive move made in many recent studies of late Buddhist art: to understand how such visual works invoked presence. With such perspective we can reflect on the seeming desire to replicate the image of the Buddha contained in this particular temple at this particular site. Could this be motivated by an interest in the perception of the magical or miraculous quality of the vajrāsana so often noted as defining this distinctive place of enlightenment?

The significance of Bodhgayā as the place of the vajrāsana where Śākyamunis enlightenment occurred is well recognized and in many ways well studied.[xix] Questions about the miraculous quality of Bodhgayā and images found there – indeed the very definition of miraculous – have usually been framed by the testimony found in accounts of foreign pilgrims such as Xuanzang (602-664) or Dharmasvāmin who repeats something similar to the earlier pilgrims tale of the central image as self-manifested.[xx] But might we also take, as evidence of the miraculous, the overwhelming nature of the repeated form of the Buddha in bhūmisparśa mudrā after the seventh century in modes ranging from large sculptures to clay sealings?[xxi] Thinking in this way, depictions and models of the form of the Mahābodhi Temple specify the image of the Buddha contained as the central image of the site.

Refining such perspective is the fact that various scholars have suggested how certain images might be meant to copy a particular image once enshrined in the Mahābodhi temple at Bodhgayā. This line of thinking began in an excellent article by Hiram Woodward of so-called andagu plaques that are most often thought as Burmese in origin and dating from this same time, the eleventh through thirteenth centuries.[xxii] These small sculptures present a grouping of life scenes around a central Buddha in bhūmisparśa mudrā. Woodward suggested that the central figure of the Buddha might be meant to replicate an image form that originated at Bodhgayā.[xxiii] Other scholars then further explored the issue, such as Jane Casey Singer, who titled the form the Bodhgayā icon.[xxiv] Thinking about place as defining sacred space – and its miraculous nature – can help enrich thinking about depictions that seemingly replicate the form of the Mahābodhi Temple. Do these works that connote the site (and some even replicate a particular image there) thus make present its miraculous nature? If so, are these better termed the Mahābodhi or perhaps Vajrāsana icon? A tale about the great Indian monkAtiśa (982-1054) presents perhaps a relevant event recorded in an early Tibetan text. It concerns a dream by Atiśa (982-1054) while travelling in Tibet that supposedly caused him to request paintings be sent from India, one described as of the Mahābodhi.[xxv] David Jackson, the scholar who wrote about this episode, speculated that something more than the famous structure was meant which indeed seems reasonable.[xxvi]

Could the proliferation of the Buddha in bhūmisparśa mudrā after the seventh century be driven by desires to have beneficial visions such as that described by Dharmasvāmin about his experience at the Mahābodhi temple? This would accord with an increased emphasis on visionary experiences occurring at this time in ritual practices as evinced by sādhana texts.[xxvii] Looking again at well-known material in conjunction with newly emerging perspectives can help us rethink even seemingly straight-forward issues. Such effort can lead us to see the possible richness in even seemingly stable imagery. Reflection on the frequent replication of specific imagery of Bodhgayā and its implicit imagery can thus deepen our understanding of the continued centrality of the Buddha Śākyamuni and how the Mahābodhi temple and the place that it symbolized came to be depicted or referred to in a variety of ways, carrying the metaphysical across geography of space.[xxviii]

 

Figure list

Fig. 1 Sculpture of Buddha enshrined inside the Mahābodhi temple, Authors photo, 2005

Fig. 2 Sealing with ye dharmā verse and figure of enshrined Buddha, Cleveland Museum of Art, H: 15.2 cm, The Cleveland Museum of Art, #1985.219, Artstor, library-artstor-org.ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/asset/24618070

Fig. 3 Model of Mahābodhi temple (?), Jaipurgarh, 12thcentury, metal, H: 15 cm, Gaya Museum, Gaya, India. Authors photo, 1995

 


[i] The special nature of its history which gave rise to its reputation have resulted in a remarkable range of studies. Among those that have shed light on the different constituencies struggling to define it for today and for the past is that by N. Lahiri, Bodh-Gaya: An Ancient Buddhist Shrine and its Modern History (1891-1904), 33-44 in Case Studies in Archaeology and World Religion: The Proceedings of the Cambridge Conference, ed. by Timothy Insoll (Oxford: Archaeopress, 1999). Abhisekh Amar has, for instance, has well defined interesting struggles between Buddhist and Hindu practices are reflected in surviving imagery of the past (Abhishek S.Amar, Buddhist Responses to Brāhmana Challenges in Medieval India: Bodhgayā and Gayā, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 3d ser., 22 [2012]: 155-185).

[ii] Toni Huber, The Holy Land Reborn, Pilgrimage and the Tibetan Reinvention of Buddhist India (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2008). In this paradigm-shifting study Huber traced the Tibetans changing relationship with the vajrāsana as the center of the world in the Tibetan re-creation of Indias sacred Buddhist landscape. See also Roberto Vitali, In the Presence of the Diamond Throne: Tibetans at rDo rje gden (Last Quarter of the 12th Century to the Year 1300, The Tibet Journal, 34/35, no. 3/2, Special Issue: The Earth of Papers (2009-2010): 161-208.

[iii]Kurtis R. Schaeffer, Tibetan Narratives of the Buddhas Acts at Vajrāsana, Zang xue xue kan (Journal of Tibetology) 7 (2011): 92-125.The article explores the related nature of the texts, including a focus on guiding the visualization of the place of the Buddhas enlightenment which he notes is more popularly known as Vajrāsana. See also George Roerich, trans. Biography of Dharmasvāmin (Chag Lo-Tsaba Chos-rje-dpal), a Tibetan Monk (Patna: K.P. Jayaswal Institute, 1959), 67. Roerichs translation was, however, criticized by J.W. de Jong in his review of the work in Indo-Iranian Journal 6 (1962): 167-73.

[iv]As the translation by George Roerich has been noted as problematic, I am very grateful to Donald S. Lopez, Jr. for kindly making it possible to use his translation here.Lopezs retranslation of the interesting passage continues: It is a nirmāṇakāya. There are three types of nirmāṇakāya: the nirmāṇakāya that is crafted, such as paintings; the nirmāṇakāya that is living, such as a bird or a lion; and the supreme nirmāṇakāya, such as the teacher during his twelve deeds. The Ornament for the Mahāyāna Sūtras (Mahāyānasūtrālaṃkāra) says, Crafted, living, and the great enlightened one. Although this image is self-arisen, it is a crafted nirmāṇakāya. It was made by a young brahman boy eighty years after the Buddha passed into nirvāṇa.

[v]See Alan Trevithick, The Revival of Buddhist Pilgrimage at Bodh Gaya (1811-1949): Anagarika Dharmapala and the Mahabodhi Temple (Delhi: Motilal Barnasidass, 2006). This is a wide-ranging and well-developed study of Bodhgayās transition into modern age; the topic isof growing interest as there are now several other similar studies.

[vi]Sraman Mukherjee, Recollections of the Restorer: Joseph Daviditch Mellick Beglar and the Maha Bodhi Temple, 59-74 in Bodhgayā, Impression Within & Beyond, ed. by B.K. Choudhary (Patna: Bihar Heritage Development Society, 2016).

[vii]Schaeffer, Tibetan Narratives, esp. 106.

[viii]See Peter Skilling, Buddhist Sealings and the Ye Dharma Stanza, 503-525, in Archaeology of Early Historic South Asia, ed. by Gautam Sengupta and Sharmi Chakraborty (New Delhi: Pragati Publications, 2008).See also Yael Bentor, Consecration of Images and Stūpas in Indo-Tibetan Tantric Buddhism (Leiden: Brill, 1996).

[ix] The importance of the verse was first highlighted in Daniel Boucher, The Pratītyasamutpādagāthā and Its Role in the Medieval Cult of the Relics, Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies14,1 (1991): 1-27.

[x]Peter Skilling, Buddhist Sealings: Reflections on Terminology, Motivation, Donors Status, School-Affiliation, and Print-Technology, in South Asian Archaeology 2001, ed. Catherine Jarrige and Vincent Lefvre (Paris: Editions Recherche sur la Civilisations, 2005): 677-85.

[xi] For a valuable discussion of merit-marking in relation to ritual activity with images, see Jinah Kim and Todd Lewis, Dharma and Puṇya, Buddhist Ritual Art of Nepal (Leiden: Hotei Publishing 2019). Yael Bentor observed (Consecration of Images, 8) that although ritual has not always been a significant topic of Buddhist studies, the great majority of works in the collected writings of Tibetan teachers is devoted to rituals.

[xii] A small model now in the British Museum was found there during the restoration efforts, and it subsequently guided rebuilding the temple. The initial, good discussion of a number of these stone objects is found in John Guy, The Mahābodhi Temple: Pilgrim Souvenirs of Buddhist India, The Burlington Magazine 133 (1991): 356-368.

[xiii]A number, for instance, ended up in Tibet and are nowin the collection at the Potala. See the valuable documentation in Ulrich von Schroeder, Buddhist Sculptures in Tibet (Hong Kong: Visual Dharma Publications, 2001).These small models demonstrate a distinct status for Bodhgayās central monument, as do full-sized replicas built over the centuries in various Buddhist countries. See, for example, Alexander Griswolds study, The Holy Land Transported: Replicas of the Mahābodhi Shrine in Siam and Elsewhere,173-219 inParnavitana Felicitation Volume, ed. by N.A. Jayawickrama (Colombo, Sri Lanka: M.D. Gunasena, 1965).

[xiv] See for instance, Bhagwant Sahai, The Bronzes from Fatehpur, The Journal of the Bihar Purāvid Parishad1 (1977): 181-183.

[xv] Another hoard of significant metal images was found at another neighboring site; see Susan L. Huntington, Some Bronzes from Fatehpur, Gaya, Oriental Art n.s. XXV, 2 (1979): 240-247.

[xvi] Debala Mitra, A Miniature Reproduction of the Mahabodhi Temple from Jaipurgarh, 333-36 in Madhu: Recent Researches in Indian Archaeology and Art History, ed. by M.S. Nagaraja Rao (Delhi: Agam Kala Publishers, 1981). Mitra notes the script of the donative inscription which runs on all four sides is proto-Bengali.

[xvii] Mitra, A Miniature Reproduction, 334. She also notes that the detailing of the shikara in this area is less finished, perhaps because the tree would have obscured it.

[xviii] These works warrant much further study. Whether this uniformity corresponds to actual details of the temple as it was then is another matter. Close observation reveals other interesting details such as the depiction of the birth in the same position on number of examples.

[xix] The sites significance has been widely discussed; see, for example, Susan L. Huntington and John C. Huntington, Leaves from the Bodhi Tree: The Art of Pāla India (8th-12th centuries) and Its International Legacy (Dayton, OH: Dayton Art Institute, 1990).

[xx]Chinese accounts emphasize the importance of such seeing; e.g. Max Deeg, Chinese Buddhists in Search of Authenticity in the Dharma, The Eastern Buddhist 45 (2014), 11-22. Deeg is completing an important reassessment of Xuanzangs seventh-century account.

[xxi]I have written in various ways about the significance of the form; see, for instance, a discussion about its relationship to other Buddha sculptures in Janice Leoshko, About Looking at Buddha Images in Eastern India, Archives of Asian Art 52 (2001): 63-82. It is also productive to think about such images in conjunction with the act of darśan, seeing the divine, and the shower of benefits that results from such encounters with images at sacred places (tirthas).

[xxii] Hiram W. Woodward, Jr., The Indian Roots of the Burmese Life-of-the Buddha Plaques, Silk Road Art and Archaeology5 (1997/98): 395-407.

[xxiii]He also suggested some were even Indian in origin. In this article Woodward (The Indian Roots) cited as evidence a painted depiction of a Buddha with a shortened neck appearing in an Indian manuscript of the Aşţasāhasrika Prajāpāramitā dated to the thirteenth century by its colophon. The specific painting (in a manuscript in the collection of the Bharat Kala Bhavan, BHU, Varanasi) is not inscribed with a title as sometimes happens in these manuscripts.

[xxiv] Jane Casey Singer, Tibetan Homage to Bodh Gaya, Orientations 32,10 (2001): 44-51. There remain some difficulty in applying the term for all images of Buddhas with the identified characteristics such as the shortened neck. Claudine Bautze-Picron (Between India and Burma: the Andagu Stelae, 37-52 in The Art of Burma, New Studies, ed. Donald M. Stadtner, Mumbai: Marg Publications, 1999) usefully notes that we may be looking at evidence of differing attempts from different places meant to replicate the special image of Bodhgayā.

[xxv]See David P. Jackson with contributions by Christian Luczanits, Mirror of the Buddha, Early Portraits from Tibet (New (New York: Rubin Museum of Art, 2011), 75. There are also later Tibetan paintings that are identified as the Sage of the Vajrāsana. see M. Wilson and M. Martin, eds, Deities of Tibetan Buddhism: The Zurich Paintings of the Icons Worthwhile to See [Bris sku mthoṅ ba don ldan] (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2000), 243, fig. 14.

[xxvi]It is relevant here to remember there are sādhana texts describing a visualization of Shakyamuni titled Vajrāsana Buddha; these describe the form to be visualized as a Buddha in bhūmisparśa mudrā. There is various evidence about such visualizations describing a Buddha in bhūmisparśa mudrā as, for example, in a painted manuscript from the thirteenth century that has such a Buddha figure inscribed Mahābodhi Vajrāsana. It is illustrated by Marie Thrse de Mallmann, Les bronzes nepalais de la collection Sylvain Lvi, Artibus Asiae, XXVII (1964), 137.

[xxvii] See Jinah Kim, Receptacle of the Sacred, Illustrated Manuscripts and the Buddhist Book Cult in South Asia (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press 2013) for good perspective regarding the use of imagery in ritual practices.

[xxviii]Claudine Bautze-Picron, Śākyamuni in Eastern India and Tibet from 11th to the 13th Centuries. Silk Road Art and Archaeology 4 (1995-1996), 357-408. For extremely useful discussion of the Buddhist textual treatment of the Buddhas biography as well as the hagiographic process evident in surviving South Asian remains, see Vincent Tournier and John S. Strong, Śākyamuni: South Asia, 3-38 in Brills Encyclopedia of Buddhism, vol. II: Lives, ed. Jonathan A. Silk (Leiden: Brill, 2019).