Since 1931, a very few research libraries with holdings in the East Asian field had a thick volume with a rough, yellow cover entitled Chinesische Pagoden I among the small number of books about Chinese architecture. Those who opened the book found a detailed, descriptive text organised regionally with superb photographs and drawings of pagodas in China. The Roman Numeral I, of course, is anticipatory, but those who have used the book have assumed, certainly after the author Ernst Boerschmann's death in 1949, that a book that perhaps was held up by war in the 1930s and 1940s would never be completed. As it turns out, the text of Vol. II had been largely written and the illustrations had been chosen by Boerschmann, but due to circumstances even beyond World War, it was never published.
The last ten years has seen an extraordinary interest in the writings of this man who worked in China as an architect of the German Legation in the early years of the twentieth century. His biography and much of his unpublished, seminal research on Chinese architecture, as well as challenges to getting the work published, are the subjects of an equally long book by Eduard Kögel reviewed in JRAS 2018 and several of Kögel's articles. Hartmut Walravens meanwhile worked through the sequel to the volume on pagodas. The result is a careful, accurate, edited, updated version of a book written more than eighty years ago whose contents is still valuable and includes material not otherwise available.
The introduction is a brief biography of Boerschmann and explanation of how Walravens understands his role as editor. He recognises not only that the manuscript is eighty years old, but more importantly, that Boerschmann had conceptions of architecture, the architect, authorship, China, Chinese religion, and pagodas that he as editor needed to attempt to convey, even as he wrote a book for publication in 2016. Walravens makes important and successful decisions: he tries to leave the text as close to the original as possible while adding footnotes with recent bibliographical information, changing the Romanisation system to pinyin, offering explanations when the counties or provinces in which buildings are located no longer are the same as they were when Boerschmann was in China, and occasionally adding much more recent photographs of buildings. The book reads clearly and the notes fill in necessary information for a reader outside the Chinese architecture field.
The book is divided into three parts: the Tianningsi pagoda, the Lamaist pagoda, and the monastery Biyunsi “in broad perspective”, the last a short essay on a subject about which Boerschmann had published in a two-part article in 1906. Mainly, this is a book about two fundamental pagoda forms.
The first is what Boerschmann calls the Tianningsi (Tianning monastery) pagoda. He gives it this name because pagodas of this type stand at Tianning Monastery in Anyang, Henan, and at Tianning Monastery in Beijing. The Beijing pagoda is one of the first buildings Boerschmann saw in China, in 1906, is the oldest monumental pagoda in that city, and is associated with the date 1048 of the Liao dynasty at a monastery founded in the Tang period (617-908). The pagodas discussed in the first four chapters of part one are of a form Chinese scholars today call miyan, densely-positioned eaves. The name is a reference to the many, often thirteen, narrow layers of eaves above a large shaft.
Boerschmann no doubt decided to begin here because the oldest brick pagoda in China is of this type. The pagoda on the sacred peak Mount Song in Henan province was built in 523. Today scholars see a completely refaced version of the building. When Boerschmann saw it in 1934, the Japanese research team headed by Sekino Tadashi and Liu Dunzhen's Chinese team had already been there. He used their descriptions in his discussion, but with just a few exceptions the photographs are his. These photographs are a primary value of the book. The first one, on p. 52, is one of the most extraordinary in the entire study. If it is accurate, it shows that the western side of the base of the pagoda had become detached. The other photographs are clear and sharp, and offer invaluable information about the pagoda before the twentieth-century restorations leading to its current appearance.
The chapter continues with the pagoda of Baimasi, the famous White Horse Monastery in Luoyang said to have been established by Eastern Han emperor Mingdi in 68 ce. Boerschmann's photograph of a structure in isolation could never be seen today. Probably Boerschmann selected this pagoda for the second in his book because of its association with the emperor who sent emissaries westward in search of knowledge of Buddhism. In other words, it is the choice of someone writing a book for readership beyond scholars. Last in Boerschmann's first chapter is the less-well-known pagoda of Tianning Monastery in Anyang, Henan. Dated 942, today as when Boerschmann studied it, the relief on its shaft is sharp and crisp.
Tianningsi pagoda in Anyang is a logical introductory building for the longer, more detailed discussion of the pagoda of Tianning Monastery in Beijing. Boerschmann includes a history of the monastery in his discussion. He had no reason to dispute the date 1048, that Sekino also liked for the pagoda. During research on site in 1991–1992, a stele was found in the chatra (spire) that records the date 1119–1120, now the accepted date of the structure.Footnote 1 Neither Boerschmann's chronology nor his discussion of Buddhism as it pertains to the pagoda is as relevant today as they were when he wrote, and yet the pagoda in Balizhuang, the subject of his next chapter, a pagoda he calls a “sister” of the Beijing Tianningsi pagoda, no longer stands. It is clear by this point in the book both that one of its strengths is the information that has been lost since Boerschmann studied it, and that the book is most valuable when its information is compared not only with studies by Japanese and Chinese scholars, notably Sekino, Liang, and Liu that Boerschmann used, but with the scholarship, primarily from China, of the last eighty years.
Boerschmann's next chapter deals with pagodas in Hebei, and a few others, mostly in the vicinity of Beijing. The Liao-Jin (907-1234)-style pagoda with later restoration, in Tongzhou, remains largely ignored in pagoda literature. Boerschmann's two photographs and citation of the description in a seventeenth-century text perhaps will bring it the attention it deserves. Changli Pagoda near the strategic pass of the Great Wall Shanhaiguan no longer survives. Boerschmann's photograph is the only picture this author knows of it. As for Boerschmann's group of six pagodas west of Beijing, the Lingguang Monastery pagoda at Badachu, today as then is the most significant pagoda in a group of eight monasteries in Beijing's western hills; the temple complex Jietaisi is still known for its “old” pagodas among which Boerschmann singled out four; and South Pagoda of Yunju Monastery at Fangshan, south of Beijing, is now studied as part of a complex whose history traces to the Sui dynasty and where on sees Liao-period sutras carved in stone. Boerschmann returns to this monastery later in this first part of the book. The pagodas in Zhengding and Zhao county remain as unstudied today as eighty-five years ago. Three pagodas in Yi county and one in nearby Laishui, all south of Beijing in Hebei, are discussed next. All octagonal, pagodas and other architecture in this region had been studied by the Society for Research in Chinese Architecture in the 1930s. These pagodas and the one in Hunyuan, Shanxi, that was restored in the Ming dynasty with which Boerschmann concludes this section, all had original dates from the Liao or Jin dynasties.
Scholars today know the pagodas in the last section of this chapter as some of China's most famous Liao pagodas, the pagoda on Mount Fenghuang in Chaoyang, Liaoning, the spectacular and smaller pagodas from the Liao central capital, today in Ningcheng, Inner Mongolia, then known as Damingcheng, and the pagodas in the Liao eastern and upper capitals, today Liaoyang in Liaoning and Balin zuoqi in Inner Mongolia, respectively. Boerschmann did not get far enough east, to Balin youqi, to see the white pagoda in Qingzhou.
The book continues with several unusual pagodas, a miniature pagoda from Anhui, a pagoda in Malanyu, Hebei, and one on Mount Wutai. The chapter ends with pagodas Boerschamnn describes as with noticeable curves, the white pagoda in Ji county, Hebei, near the Liao-period Guanyin Pavilion of Dule Monastery the prime example, and two pagodas of the form today known as huata, flowery pagoda. Boerschmann's discussion of the Jin-period octagonal Huata at Guanghui Monastery in Zhengding, Hebei, whose “flowery” upper section is decorated with animals and Buddhist deities, has both base stories of its outer enclosure plus four corner towers that had been lost by the late twentieth century and today are restored. Continuing with the flowery form, Boerschmann here discusses the North Pagoda of Yunju Monastery. The chapter ends with two pagodas in Shandong.
The subject of Chapter Six is what Boerschmann called storied pagodas (Stockwerktürme), for him a variant of the Tianningsi style. The named used in China today is louge, literally storied tower, which is a more accurate translation of türm than pagoda. Following a brief general discussion of this style, Boerschmann returns to towns whose pagodas he has discussed already to present their louge-style structures. Again, many are from the Liao dynasty. He begins in Yixian and Zhuoxian south of Beijing in Hebei and continues with a longer discussion of the iconography of Wanbu Huayanjing (Avatamsaka Sutra) Pagoda in Hohhot for which he quotes the relevant text about it.
The last subject of part one is the stone pagoda. Boerschmann's focus is the pagoda at Qixia Monastery in Nanjing for which he publishes images from Sekino's study of Chinese architecture. He also briefly mentions the heavily restored pagodas at Yuquanshan in Beijing and Avatamsaka Pagoda on West Lake in Hangzhou.
Part Two is devoted to Boerschmann's other major category, the Lamaist pagoda, a form that comes to China from Tibet. Divided into four chapters, Boerschmann's first category is “smaller” pagodas. They are still today some of the best known of this type, and still called chorten, in Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, Gansu, and Qinghai. Boerschmann did not see all of them, and sometimes uses others’ photographs in this section. His first-hand expertise and photographs begin again with pagodas closer to Beijing. His drawings and photographs continue with pagodas at the four Lamaist monasteries in Hohhot. He then turns to less well known Lamaist pagodas in south China, one in Wuchang, Hubei, two in Yangzhou, and two in Guilin, one of which no longer survives.
These contrast with the pagodas in the second chapter of this part of the book, monumental pagodas. Boerschmann begins with a detailed discussion of the Mongol-period white pagoda of Miaoying Monastery in Beijing. After a brief discussion of a white Lamaist pagoda in isolation near Xizhimen when Boerschmann saw it and that no longer survives, he has another longer discussion of the white pagoda on Beihai island. The photograph on p. 387 with Boerschmann in it shows the island before the extensive renovation one sees today. Boerschmann ends this chapter with a short discussion of the Black Pagoda in northwestern Beijing that also no longer stands. Boerschmann's discussion of Lamaist pagodas in Shenyang relies on research and photographs provided by colleagues.
Boerschmann had spent several weeks on Mount Wutai in 1907, six days of that period at Tayuan Monastery. The pagodas of this monastery are the focus of a chapter on Mount Wutai's Lamaist pagodas. His drawings and photographs of several of the less known Lamaist pagodas on Mount Wutai are some of the only information about these buildings. The chapter concludes with a short section on Lamaist pagodas in Daizhou and Taiyuan in central Shanxi.
The last chapter of the section on Lamaist pagodas is about those in Chengde, then known as Jehol, in Hebei province about 180 kilometres northeast of Beijing where Boerschmann spent three weeks in 1907. Here he focuses on pagodas at three of the Qing-period temple complexes. He starts with his drawing and descriptions of the layout of the entire site where Manchu emperors hunted during the summer months: palace, gardens, temples, and the lake. Boerschmann then offers plans, photographs, and drawings of Puningsi, Pulesi, and the complex inspired by the Potala in Lhasa. Chengde's architecture has been studied by many scholars in the century since Boerschmann was there. Boerschmann's photographs offer details and views that no longer can be seen. The brief essay on Biyun Monastery follows. The book ends with more than 100 pages of supplementary photographs.
From the first engagement with China and her architecture, pagodas have been both a defining monument of China and one of intrigue. The Porcelain Pagoda at Bao'en Monastery in Nanjing, perhaps played a significant role in this interest: Johan Nieuhof (1618-1672) and Johann Bernard Fischer von Erlach (1656-1723) published this building in books about China that had fairly wide circulation in numerous European languages.Footnote 2 By the early twentieth century when Japanese and Chinese research teams whose work was known to Boerschmann and other writing about Chinese architecture such as that of Gustav Ecke was pubished, the pagoda had already been singled out by non-architectural specialists. Arnold Silcock wrote one of the earliest monographic studies of the pagoda in 1928.Footnote 3 More recently, after open access and fieldwork made possible by the People's Republic, several monographs on pagoda have followed, the two most comprehensive by Luo Zhewen and Zhang Yuhuan.Footnote 4 Neither of these works however, has the lengthy text, plans, nor number of illustrations that are found in Boerschmann's book. Compared to publications in other subfields of Chinese architecture, studies of the pagoda are fewer and for this reason, too, Boerschmann's book has a place in twenty-first-century scholarly literature.
The more one knows about Chinese pagodas, the more this book is appreciated. This author sought published literature about pagodas discussed by Boerschmann as she read the book, and through that process, she realised how much he had accomplished on-site and in research in the first decades of the twentieth century. Produced by a scholar-architect and edited by a scholar, “Pagoden II” should be consulted in future research on Chinese pagodas, for its photographs of buildings or details that no longer exist, as well as its text.
