Buddhist Stone Sutras in China: Sichuan Province ed. by Lothar Ledderose and Sun Hua (review)

This first volume of a series of four that is to appear on Buddhist stone sutras in Sichuan Province is the result of research jointly conducted by the Heidelberg Akademie der Wissenschaften, the Institute of Archaeology and Museology at Peking University, and the Chengdu Municipal Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology. It presents the stone sutras that are located at the northern side of the Grove of the Reclining Buddha (Wofoyuan) in Ziyang City, Anyue County, in the eastern part of Sichuan Province. The complex, to which the Grove of the Reclining Buddha belongs, also includes caves on the southern side of the valley, some of which have sutras engraved in their walls, and some of which are filled with sculptured images and miniature relief pagodas. With a total number of 341,000 characters divided over sixty-nine caves—of which, actually today only fifteen contain sutras—this complex contains the largest quantity of sutra texts ever engraved in a single Buddhist cave precinct in China.

In line with the overall feature of this series, before turning to a detailed description and interpretation of Wofoyuan, the volume starts with a topographical introduction to all the caves in the valley, including a detailed description of their physical features and measurements, and the layout of the contents of each wall of each engraved cave. Having gained a general picture of the layout of the site, in this tremendously helped by the wonderful and lavish photography that characterizes this series, Lothar Ledderose touches upon the chronology of the grove. As he mentions, “most scholars accept a Kaiyuan era (713–741) date for the main figure, it is also a common opinion that changes and additions were made later. It has even been suggested that the entire figure may only have been carved in the tenth century, or even later” (p. 19). This, along with the presence of nine Tang dynasty inscriptions (five of which are dated to the first half of the eighth century), five colophons from the Five Dynasties, and nine from the Song dynasty, and the fact that, “[i]n front of the colossal statue, Ming dynasty stone buildings facing south have come to light” (p. 34), shows the extended development in time of this grove—and thus of the history of Buddhism in this part of Sichuan Province. It therefore is a pity that “[t]he chronology will be discussed systematically in a later volume” (p. 33; repeated on p. 63). Even though the other groves of the volume are discussed later (see Tsai Suey-Ling and Sun Hua, eds., Buddhist Stone Sutras in China, Sichuan Province, volume 2 [Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag; Hangzhou: China Academy of Art Press, 2014]), a short chronological summary of the grove would have been welcomed here. As things are presented now, a full appreciation of the significance of this Wofoyuan is not really possible.

While an important part of the second volume on Sichuan is devoted to the discussion of the Great Parinirvāṇa Sūtra (which forms an exemplary pair with the reclining Buddha), the bulk of the present volume (pp. 39-426) is dedicated to the Lotus Sutra of the Wonderful Law (Miaofa lianhua jing). In its 406 c.e. translation by Kumārajīva in twenty-eight chapters and seven scrolls, the Lotus Sutra covers the six walls of two adjacent caves on the northern edge of the valley. In his contribution to this volume (pp. 39-67), Stephen F. Teiser provides us with some reflections on the possible reason for the positioning of the Lotus Sutra at the feet of the reclining Buddha, on the possible place the Lotus Sutra (and other texts carved in other caves in the valley) had in the Tiantai system (both the Lotus Sutra and the Great Parinirvāṇa Sūtra occupied the uppermost position in Zhiyi’s [538...