How artistic styles travel and why they are adopted — or not — in other cultures is central to our understanding of much of art history. In this detailed study of Buddhism and Buddhist art during a short period in east Asia, Dorothy Wong provides a comprehensive narrative exploring these issues.
Her book concerns Buddhism and the state during the 8th century, and the links and influences between Tang China, Nara Japan and United Silla in Korea. The Tang depiction of certain Buddhist figures in particular poses, informed partly by the translation activities of a cosmopolitan group of influential monks and by the ambitions of China's empress, Wu Zetian (r. 690–705), was copied by sculptors and painters in both Nara and Silla. This, Wong informs us, is commonly known as the ‘Tang East Asian Buddhist International Art Style’. While I rather regret this unnecessarily cumbersome term — why not simply ‘Tang style’? — and have questions about its origins which are not addressed here, this does not detract from the detailed argument and evidence presented by Wong.
Wong concentrates on transmission by people, most especially Buddhist pilgrim monks. She looks first at the period from the return of Xuanzang to the Chinese capital of Chang'an in c. 645 and his subsequent activities, most especially in producing thousands of images of the Buddha using clay plaques. New sutras and translation and new representations of the Buddha, such as the bejewelled Buddha in earth-touching gesture, subsequently became popular in China during the reign of the empress Wu Zetian and along with the idea of Buddhist kingship. Wong discusses the origins of these images in ‘Afghanistan and Greater Kashmir’(p. 82). Unfortunately, as throughout the book with the use of such broad geographical references, historical context for any regions outside east Asia is lacking. It would have been helpful at the very least to have had the names and dates of the kingdoms to which she is referring. Also, in this context, a map would have been useful.
In the second section Wong moves to the influence of these development in China on Japan in the following few decades, again concentrating on the influence of Buddhist monks. Chief among these is Dōji (d. 744), a Japanese monk who visited China on an official delegation and who, on his return, helped shape Buddhist art and practices in Japan. Among his achievements was supervising the rebuilding of the Nara state monastery, Daianji, from 729. Wong notes that the monastery has buildings and materials common to most monasteries of east Asia in this period, “yet it shows great variations in the arrangements of these key components” (p. 144). Among these is the decision to include two storeyed stupas. Wong's conclusion that “Dōji designed a monastery with symbolic spaces inspired by Daoxuan's teachings” (p. 147) is interesting but, I think, needs further argument to be compelling. Although mainly about the transmission of painting and sculpture, architecture is part of this story and it would have been useful if this had been used to explore further the argument concerning transmissions and influences. For example, the desire by Xuanzang that Ci'en stupa be modelled on the stupa of Kaniska that he had seen on his travels, raises questions about the prevalence by this period of the pagoda-stupa in east Asia and why Xuanzang's request for a central Asian-style tower-stupa was not more influential (if indeed, that is the case, since we have so few stupas extant from this period). This would also have potentially been relevant to the discussion of the use of a domed ceiling at the Seonurgam in Korea, discussed briefly by Wong in the following section.
The third and final section moves on the second half of the eighth-century, the Buddhist state and the role of women in both China (Wu Zetian) and Japan (Kōmyō, consort of emperor Shōmu). This section identifies as key the translation of a new copy of a sutra brought from Khotan. I would have appreciated some discussion here of the influence of Khotan more broadly, even though I realize it is outside the east Asian focus of the book. This led, argues Wong, to the depictions of Vairocana at Longmen in China and Tōdaiji in Japan, and of the growing popularity of esoteric Buddhism. The site of Seonurgam is discussed in this context. The final chapter considers the influence of the Chinese monk Jianzhen, especially on the building and art of Tōshōdaiji, following his arrival on his sixth, but first successful, attempt to reach Japan in 754.
Sadly, as is often the case today, this book is badly let down by the index. As a very dense book, replete with names, a full and precise index is an essential tool for its navigation. Yet the index does not include many of the names or subjects mentioned nor does there seem to be any logic to these omissions. The omissions are too many to list here, but typical examples are the lack of entries for Gandhāra, Khotan, Ribao and other names, and for techniques such as lacquer/dry lacquer or printing. Curiously, there are separate entries for postures of the Buddha, so ‘left-leg pendant’. This might be art-historical practice, but I would expect to look for this under some generic heading such as postures of Buddha (and, indeed, would rather see it under ‘Buddha, postures’). Again, this limits the usefulness of the book to a wider audience. The index would also have been the most economical place to cross-reference between Japanese/Korean/Chinese names of monks and to give dates for people and regimes, but these are also lacking. They are given in the text but this is cumbersome and interrupts the narrative flow. There are also several infelitious points of style that I would have hoped a copy-editor would have changed, such as the use of a.k.a, an abbreviation which I would normally associate with criminals or actors. Also, why enclose inside inverted commas terms such as “internationalism” and “cosmopolitanism”?
These issues distract from the narrative and thus reduce the force and clarity of the author's arguments — while also making it less accessible to a general audience. I hope that at least some of them can be addressed in a future edition. But, despite this, here is an important and interesting book with much to tell us about how the many new ideas brought by pilgrim monks and others were adopted and adapted in Buddhist art and architecture across east Asia.
