Page 29 - Chinese Decorative Arts: The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, v. 55, no. 1 (Summer, 1997)

Jade Book
as
together with cloth straps, or, here, tablets
(1736-95)
Qing dynasty, Qianlongperiod
enclosed in paper mounts and bound together
Nephrite
accordion-style. The inscription on the top of
51/2 x3 3/4 in. (14 x 9.5 cm)
the wood cover indicates that this book con-
R.
Gift ofHeber Bishop, 1902 tains text composed by the Qianlong emperor
02.18.527 for a stone stele that he placed in front of a
pagoda. He built the structure to house a scroll,
ooks composed of jade tablets were giving the genealogy of the Seven Buddhas of
numerous during the reign of the Qian- the Past, that he had received from the Panchen
long emperor, whose fondness for the stone Lama of Tibet.
and partiality to all sorts of extravagances are According to certain Buddhist scriptures,
well recorded. The earliest extant jade books Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism
date from the middle of the seventeenth cen- (worshiped as the Buddha Shakyamuni), had
tury, although historical documents suggest that many predecessors who achieved enlighten-
they were made as far back as the Tang dynasty. ment in previous ages. Seven of them were
They often have page shapes derived from the particularly revered, and their role in the cos-
wood and bamboo slips that were inscribed mic history of Buddhism is often described in
with some of the oldest extant Chinese texts. texts. Worship of the seven flourished in China
Jade books known from the Tang period during the sixth and seventh centuries, when
were in two formats: individual tablets held for the first time they were represented in the
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