The Landscape of Words: Stone Inscriptions from Early and Medieval China (review)

On July 13, 2008, the world's largest word emblazoned in landscape was revealed with great fanfare near Beijing. Carved into the cliff of Yunlongjian Peak, this word was the 2008 Olympic logo "Dancing Beijing," featuring the stylized calligraphic character jing 京 (capital). The carving project also included the Record of the Carving of the Olympic Logo, describing the circumstances under which it was produced. One may argue that the carving of the logo, so large and prominent that it is visible from miles away, is a product of modern commercialism. But in fact the simple concept of fixing memories and ideas on the surface of the earth through the carving of texts has deep roots in Chinese culture. This event illuminates the importance and relevance of Robert E. Harrist Jr.'s new book. The carved logo and the Record are recent additions to the centuries-old tradition of "polished-cliff carving" (moya 摩崖), the subject of Harrist's study. Moya, or moya shike 摩崖石刻, are texts carved into granite boulders and cliffs that are part of the natural terrain. They began to appear in China during the first century C.E. Over the course of the two thousand years since then, they have been carved in all areas of the country, and have become one of the distinguishing features of Chinese civilization.

Harrist's new book is the first monograph to tackle this subject from a cultural perspective. Although he draws upon traditional epigraphic studies as well as modern archaeological fieldwork, his excursion into the subject is also informed by social, religious, and political interpretations. The book deserves praise for expanding interdisciplinary inquiries into the history of writing, the art of calligraphy, religious beliefs, travel, and the perception of landscape in early and medieval China, and for developing insights that scholars from many fields will be eager to build on. The core of the book presents four case studies in the early history of moya inscriptions from the first through the eighth centuries "structured in the form of journeys to the locations of four very different types of texts from different monuments in the history of writing on stone" (p. 29). Harrist's lucid writing, masterful narrative skill, and historical sensibility take readers on a ride filled with surprises and inspired moments.

The four groups of moya inscriptions discussed by Harrist concern the public work of road building (Chapter 1), the Daoist cult of immortality (Chapter 2), the Buddhist practice of worshiping sutras (Chapter 3), and the exertion of imperial authority through autographic monuments (Chapter 4). Although the four groups of moya texts follow one another in chronological order, the arrangement of the chapters does not suggest a historical development. Rather, they manifest the vastly diverse purposes for writings on stone in China. Each of the four groups represents a genre of moya inscription that endures throughout imperial and modern China.

The key words that permeate all four chapters are "transform" and "transformation." Citing Simon Schama and Robert Pogue Harrison, Harrist argues early on in the introduction that it is through one's perception that the raw material of "nature" becomes "landscape" encoded with meaning, and through human intervention that undifferentiated "space" is turned into a "place." For the four cases discussed in The Landscape of Words, Harrist "interprets the moya inscriptions as part of the history of how, through the medium of the written word, the Chinese have transformed geological formations into landscapes imbued with literary, ideological, and religious significance" (p. 18).

In order to capture the transformative working of the written word, Harrist is "concerned with the experience of reading these texts in their original spatial contexts, in the places where those who composed and carved them expected them to be read" (p. 19). He discusses the topography, physical appearances, literary content, and cultural contexts of the moya inscriptions, differentiating himself from traditional scholars of epigraphy or calligraphy, who essentially study only ink rubbings. Ink...