Ping Foong

The biography of a Tang-dynasty Buddhist sutra manuscript fragment in the Seattle Art Museum collection is unique because its provenance can be reliably traced from the discovery of the Library Cave at Mogao in June 1900 to the fragment’s arrival in Hawaii around 1938. For decades, the fragment was mounted together with an English-language gift letter dated 1932. The fortuitous retrieval of the author’s identity—a twenty-year old student at Tsinghua University—leads us to their grandfather, provincial governor of Xinjiang and Gansu province, Rao Yingqi 饒應祺, who owned the scroll until his death in January 1903. The fragment’s ownership history is thus conclusively established between 1900 and 1903, before the arrival of Marc Aurel Stein at Mogao in 1907.

Governor Rao Yingqi probably obtained his scroll from one of three people who gained early access to the Library Cave’s contents: Governor-General Wei Guangdao 魏光燾; the Manchu prince Aisin Gioro Zailan 愛新覺羅 · 載瀾; and Belgian tax collector Paul Splingaerd 林輔臣, a long-term Gansu resident who appears the most likely source. This foreigner is known from Dunhuang oral history recorded by artist Xie Zhiliu 謝稚柳 in the 1940s, where Splingaerd was rumored to have received Library Cave scrolls from Manchu circuit intendant Yan Dong 延棟, which he then regifted to officials in Xinjiang. Xie Zhiliu’s description is substantiated by Splingaerd’s letters and that of Scheut missionaries in Gansu and Mongolia kept in the CICM archives. The European correspondence indeed places Splingaerd guiding an expedition in Northern Gansu in June 1900, coinciding with the Library Cave’s discovery, before reaching Xinjiang in July on the eve of the Boxer Uprising. This study of the SAM sutra fragment illuminates the Library Cave’s early dispersal period by recovering the heretofore unknown connection between Splingaerd and Governor Rao Yingqi.

The material presence of an artifact bears on our interpretation of the circumstances that comprised its “life,” from original function, manufacture, and artistic style to its later reception. This project centers on a type of Buddhist artifact rediscovered in the vicinity of the Great Goose Pagoda 大雁塔 in Xi’an and named shanyeni 善業泥 in the late Qing dynasty (1644–1911). Gains in the 20th-century archaeological record of a multitude of similar objects inspired a rich arena of East Asian scholarship based on etymological and scriptural sources, but few analyses provide more than perfunctory consideration of their making and materiality.

As our point of departure in this chapter, a Tang dynasty (618–907 CE) clay tablet in the collection of the Seattle Art Museum exemplifies how looking closely at an object enriches our historical analysis of the context for its creation and its eventual transformation into a collectible object. This tablet has an image of a Buddha triad molded on one face and an inscription stamped on the opposite face. A cloth label indicates that it once belonged to late-Qing bibliophile Ye Changchi 葉昌熾 (1849–1917), who enigmatically noted that it came from a “stone chamber of Dunhuang.” Accounting for the physical features of this clay tablet powerfully impacts what we might infer about its significances during different time periods, and the following focuses especially on its calligraphic objecthood. Indeed, systematic visual analysis of its molding process, the maker’s fingerprints, glaze enhancement, and stamped inscription reveals new avenues for thinking about the biography of a single object and its relationship to diverse varieties of 7th-century clay tablets. One notable finding is about the special importance of shanyeni whose inscriptions feature the distinctive imperial calligraphy style of Chu Suiliang 褚遂良 (596–658 CE), and thus hold status as elements of the Great Goose Pagoda’s religio-artistic program.

ISBN: 978-90-04-52133-9
https://brill.com/view/title/63088

In the middle period of China, rulers awarded titles to artists in order to show their authority as culturally distinctive and therefore enlightened and legitimate. This chapter highlights classical symbolism in the title sequences held by 10th-century Sichuanese painters from the kingdom of Shu in their emulation of Tang-dynasty nomenclature. To establish a basis for this comparison, we first focus on key titles awarded to the 9th-century Tang court painter Cheng Xiuji 程修己 (804–63), followed by those held by Lü Yao呂嶤 (9th century) and Zhu Qian 竹虔 (9th century) who served at the capital cities of both Tang and Shu. While there are parallels between Tang and Shu titular practices, departures emerge in the juxtaposition. Sichuan’s rulers regularized stipendiary titles for their court painters to a greater extent, and likely had their own motivations for doing so. By the 10th century, titular awards formalized Sichuan’s painting styles and family traditions as cultural products distinct to this geographic region. Now available to be deployed as diplomatic gifts to cultivate inter-kingdom relationships with Yangzi region neighbors, painting culture articulated the independence and regional power of Shu rulers just before Song reunification.

Association for Asian Studies: 2017 Book Prizes and Awards for Distinguished Contributions to Asian Studies

A large and appreciative audience attended the Awards Ceremony & Presidential Address at the Toronto conference. The event has been expanded in recent years to allow the addition of the best graduate student paper prizes, which had previously been awarded at the graduate student reception. Nine established book prizes administered by the regional councils of the AAS were awarded: the Harry J. Benda Prize and George McT. Kahin Prize (Southeast Asia); the Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Prize, Bernard S. Cohn Prize (South Asia); the John Whitney Hall Prize (Japan) and James B. Palais Prize for Korean Studies (Northeast Asia), the two Joseph Levenson Prizes and the E. James L. Huffman is a master interpreter, scholar, teacher, and professional good citizen. In addition to his three volumes on the history of journalism in Japan, he has provided an incredible service to the field through Modern Japan: A History in Documents, Japan in World History, Japan and Imperialism: 1853-1945 (an AAS publication), and Modern Japan: An Encyclopedia of History, Culture, and Nationalism, which allow non-specialists to bring Japan into larger historical discourses on empire and global history. Huffman writes lucidly and accessibly, without jargon, and his analysis presents Japan as significant in ways that do not obscure the issues behind a " cultural uniqueness " framework. As his forthcoming social history of " the people without names " shows, Jim's fundamental commitment is to understanding the experiences of ordinary people in times of great change. Now emeritus from Wittenberg University, he is the recipient of several teaching prizes, including the Ohio Academy of History's Distinguished Teaching Award. Within the field, Jim probably is best known for mentoring several generations of younger scholars, but he has also contributed his good judgment and professionally generous assessments through formal service, such as on the American Advisory Committee of the Japan Foundation, the Program Committee of AAS, the Midwest Japan Seminar, and various programs to train schoolteachers about East Asia. He is also the former Chair of the AAS Editorial Board and served as an AAS Distinguished Speaker. For both his individual scholarship and dedicated service to the field, James L. Huffman is richly deserving of the Association for Asian Studies' highest honor.

The Covid-19 pandemic offered one unexpected upside: some focused time for research. With a little perseverance, not to mention some Google good luck, I was able to resolve questions about the provenance of a Tang-dynasty Buddhist sutra manuscript in the collection of the Seattle Art Museum (SAM). The fragment was once part of a longer scroll stored sealed since the 11th century inside Cave 17, the “Library Cave,” at Mogao, Dunhuang. As well known, Daoist monk Wang Yuanlu discovered a cache hidden behind a false wall on June 22, 1900, and the thousands of manuscripts, paintings, and other materials contained within have since entirely transformed the study of medieval China. The SAM fragment can now be established as one of the first pieces from Cave 17 to pass into the hands of an individual, a prominent local official, who left it to his descendants. This project follows the fragment, evading war and mothballs, as it traversed epistemological and geographic realms—from creation as a religious text to conceptualization as a gift, migrating from Dunhuang to Beijing and eventually from Honolulu to Seattle.