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Chinese. Indian Buddhism arrived as a complex footprints, the wheel that stands for his preaching,
religious system based on a variety of doctrines,
practices, and premises that the ancients would or the stupa, a tumulus-like monument erected over
never have understood. The new faith assumed that
life was transitory and illusory, essentially painful, his holy bodily remains. During the time of the
and thus inevitably unsatisfactory. It offered, Kushan empire, established in the latter half of the
however, the consoling prospect of finding release first century ce, the worship of images at last
from fatal destiny and breaking through the endless triumphed, and soon thereafter iconographic
chain of causality in the illusory world of schemes and forms of great intricacy and
phenomena, in Sanskrit called samsara. complexity rapidly evolved. Buddhism's historic
—Following the Noble Eightfold Path that is, the founder, known as Sakyamuni, or Gautama
—Buddha's rules for right living one could escape
Siddhartha, is naturally the most widely worshiped
the perpetual cycle of rebirth by the virtues of
sincere belief, compassion, meditative discipline, figure of the Buddhist pantheon. He is said to have
exemplary moral conduct, accumulation of
religious merit, development of wisdom, and —lived between 565 and 486 bce the dates are not
renunciation of worldly wealth and status in order —precisely fixed in what is now southern Nepal.
to seek the truth. The doctrine of karma (literally, Sakyamuni achieved enlightenment in his lifetime
"work" or "action") was thought of as a system of by discovering the middle path between severe
moral causalities. Good or bad actions of an ascetic self-mortification and self-indulgence. After
individual would be rewarded or punished either in
this life or in the next. To attain supreme spreading his new insights, performing miracles, and
enlightenment was the ultimate goal for the gathering disciples, he entered into nirvana at the
age of eighty and receded far beyond the
practitioners of the faith. A person who had imagination and reach of mortal believers. His truly
unfathomable reality could only be experienced
reached this awakened stage became a Buddha and and visualized through supreme insight, assisted by
sacred images and rituals, by magic words, gestures,
qualified for entering into nirvana. For the first and symbols, by the mysteries of faith and worship.
time the Chinese had to come to grips with totally BUDDHIST CULTURE IN CHINA
FORMATIVE STAGES, EXPANSION,
alien beliefs and highly sophisticated religious CURTAILMENT
concepts. The success of Buddhism in China was In Buddhism's formative stages in China, Buddhist
due mainly to its tolerance for other philosophical imagery appears only sporadically, and mingled into
paths and religious practices, its readiness to adopt
and adapt to Daoism and Confucianism. indigenous Han contexts. Traditional Buddhist
This exposure to foreign ideas and images, motifs of Indian origin were fused with Daoist
languages and metaphors inevitably caused a radical
transformation of older traditions in Chinese beliefs, figures, and customs, and rendered in
culture and art. In India, the homeland of faith,
mysticism, and magic, Buddhism was originally an stylistic and technical patterns familiar from tomb
aniconic religion. Since the Buddha stood
ultimately for an abstract, metaphysical concept, decoration and furnishings. Buddhist imagery had
initially he was not depicted as a human figure. to be translated into forms and modes that Chinese
Rather, his salvific presence and power were
could understand, as was true tor Buddhist
evoked by such representative symbols as Ins
Wescriptures. must assume that the early
missionaries from the West knew little if any
Chinese and that their local collaborators probabr)
had no comprehensive knowledge of Central \sian
or Indian languages. Pertinent Daoist terms and
metaphors as well as loanwords from the Cotlfui ian
classics were appropriated in the attempt to rendei
TRANSFIGURING DIVINITIES: BUDDHIST SCULPTURE IN CHINA 145
