Transcultural Visions of a Buddhist Mountain

Wen-Shing Chou

Panoramic Map of Mount Wutai

Cifu Temple, Mount Wutai, China 1846

Monk Lhundrub, engraver of Sanggai Aimag (Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia); Panoramic Map of Mount Wutai; Cifu Temple, Mount Wutai, China; 1846; woodblock print on linen, hand colored; 47 1/8 × 68 in. (119.7 × 172.7 cm); Rubin Museum of Art, Gift of Deborah Ashencaen; C2004.29.1 (HAR 65371)

Summary

Mount Wutai is a sacred mountain range in northern China, revered by Chinese, Tibetans, Mongols, and Manchus as the realm of the bodhisattva Manjushri on earth. Descriptions and paintings of Wutai and its monasteries go back more than a millennium, but this 6-foot hand-colored printed map for pilgrims made in 1846 by a Mongolian monk gives the mountain a distinctly Tibetan Buddhist identity. Art historian Wen-shing Chou examines numerous visions of this sacred mountain as both a record of personal experience and a powerful sacred icon.

Key Terms

Khalkha

The Khalkha are one of the major historical subgroupings of the Mongols. Historically ruled by leaders descended from Chinggis Khan, the Khalkha inhabited a territory roughly the same as the country called Mongolia today. Other important Mongol groups after the fall of the Mongol Empire include the Chahars, who lived in what is today the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in China, the Oirat or Dzungars, who lived in Central Asia, and the Khoshut, who lived in the northern Tibetan Plateau.

Manjushri

Manjushri is one of the most important bodhisattvas in Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism. Considered the embodiment of wisdom, Manjushri is often recognized by his attributes: a sword which cuts through ignorance and a book, the Prajnaparamita (Perfection of Wisdom) Sutra. Emanations of Manjushri can also be recognized by these same attributes. Another important Chinese iconographic tradition depicts a youthful Manjushri riding on a lion. This form is associated with Manjushri’s abode on earth, Mount Wutai in China, one of the few Buddhist sites in China visited by Tibetan and Mongol pilgrims among others from all over Asia. Manjushri was seen as the protector deity of China, and the Manchu emperors of the Qing Dynasty who claimed to be emanations of Manjushri emphasized/promoted this association.

merit

In Buddhism, merit is accumulated positive karma, or positive actions, that lead to positive results, such as better rebirths. Buddhists gain merit by reciting mantras, donating to monasteries and those in need, performing pilgrimages, commissioning artworks, reproducing and reciting Buddhist texts, and other deeds with good intentions. It is believed that merit can also be transferred to others through rituals performed to gain merit for deceased family members help them achieve a better rebirth. Merit making is an important motivation for positive ritual action, and is a prerequisite for success of religious and even secular activity.

monastery

A monastery is a place where monks live, study, and perform ritual. It includes temples and other structures. Monasteries are central to Buddhism, and are also important in Bon, Hinduism, and Daoism. In Himalayan, Tibetan, and Inner Asian areas, some monasteries are enormous, wealthy, and powerful institutions, with branches of satellite monasteries forming networks across regions, often with thousands of monks, many decorated chapels, and huge holdings of land. Other monasteries, called hermitages, can be extremely simple, little more than a cave where hermits meditate. Generally, a Tibetan Buddhist monastery will have an assembly hall, several temples (Tib. lhakhang) for worship of specific deities, a protector chapel, as well as monks’ accommodations. A related institution in Newar Buddhism are the baha and bahi.

stupa

Stupas are monuments that initially contained cremated remains of Buddha Shakyamuni or important monks, his disciples, and subsequently other material and symbolic relics associated with the Buddha’s body, teaching, and enlightened mind. As representations of the Buddha’s presence in the world, stupas with their contents—texts, relics, tsatsas—continue to be important objects of Buddhist worship in their diverse forms of domed structures, multistoried pagodas, and portable sculptures. The original form of stupas was an earthen dome-shaped mound containing the remains in reliquary vessels or urns deposited within the innermost core. The dome would often be successively enlarged and surrounded by a path for a walk around in a clockwise direction and veneration (circumambulation)

Tibetan Buddhism

Historically, Tibetan Buddhism refers to those Buddhist traditions that use Tibetan as a ritual language. It is practiced in Tibet, Mongolia, Bhutan, Ladakh, and among certain groups in Nepal, China, and Russia and has an international following. Buddhism was introduced to Tibet in two waves, first when rulers of the Tibetan Empire (seventh to ninth centuries CE), embraced the Buddhist faith as their state religion, and during the second diffusion (late tenth through thirteenth centuries), when monks and translators brought in Buddhist culture from India, Nepal, and Central Asia. As a result, the entire Buddhist canon was translated into Tibetan, and monasteries grew to become centers of intellectual, cultural, and political power. From the end of the twelfth century, Tibetans were exporting their own Buddhist traditions abroad. Tibetan Buddhism integrates Mahayana teachings with the esoteric practices of Vajrayana, and includes those developed in Tibet, such as Dzogchen, as well as indigenous Tibetan religious practices focused on local gods. Historically major traditions of Tibetan Buddhism are Nyingma, Kagyu, Sakya, and Geluk.

This panoramic map depicts the sacred (Wutai Shan, literally the Five-Terraced Mountains) in Shanxi Province in northern China (fig. 1). The map is a six-foot-wide print on linen that has been hand colored. It contains some one hundred and fifty sites in a mountain range filled with travelers, festivities, flora and fauna, and cloud-borne deities. The woodblock panel was carved in 1846 by a Mongol named Lhundrub at Mount Wutai’s Cifu Temple (Benevolent Virtues Temple). The hand-colored print is among numerous examples from the same woodblock panel in collections around the world. A trilingual title, “The Panoramic Picture of the Sacred Realm of the Mountain of Five Terraces” in Tibetan, Chinese, and Mongolian, runs across the top register of the composition, and a trilingual donative inscription at the bottom of the composition details the purpose of the mapping project. The map encapsulates the cosmopolitan reality of Mount Wutai in the nineteenth century as a vibrant center of economic trade and religious devotion for different groups of people in , including Manchus, Tibetans, and Mongols above all. As a depiction of holy landscape and architecture, it bears witness to a millennium-old, pan-Asian practice of picturing the sacred mountain. The map’s global circulation attests to the efficacy of the woodblock medium in disseminating knowledge, mediating pilgrimage experience, and redefining sacred geography.

Tibetan Buddhism on Mount Wutai

Located in Shanxi Province in northern China, Mount Wutai was recognized as early as the fifth century as the earthly residence of the of Wisdom , one of the most important deities of (fig. 2). By the early eighth century, Mount Wutai rose to prominence as a center of monastic learning, royal patronage, and Pan-Asian international pilgrimage. was first established on Mount Wutai during the (1271–1368), when Mongol emperors invited Buddhist ritual masters from Tibet to the mountain. Mount Wutai developed into a center of Tibetan Buddhist pilgrimage and monasticism in the (1644–1911). The early emperors, who fashioned themselves as kingly emanations of Manjushri, promoted Mount Wutai through the production of mountain gazetteers, imperial tours to the mountain, and patronage of its monasteries. As a result of the Qing support of the Gelukpa monastic order of Tibetan Buddhism, monks and pilgrims from Tibet and Mongolia populated the mountain. Their presence continued in the nineteenth century even as imperial support waned, earning Mount Wutai the appellation “China’s Tibet.”

Fig. 2. View of Western Terrace of Mount Wutai, from Central Terrace; Mount Wutai, China; 2004; photograph by Wen-shing Chou

Mount Wutai’s Tibetan Buddhist transformation is nowhere more evident than in the map in the Rubin Museum collection. The sites and miracles depicted on the map are predominantly associated with the tradition of Tibetan Buddhism through the display of apparitions, such as that of the Gelukpa founder Tsongkhapa on each of the five peaks and elsewhere on the mountain. The yellow-roofed just to the left of the center of the map represents Bodhisattva’s Peak (Pusa Ding). As the unchanged center of worship and imperial sponsorship since the Tang dynasty (618–907), Bodhisattva’s Peak was extensively renovated into the chief Gelukpa monastery and official imperial establishment (with yellow-glazed tiles) to house Mount Wutai’s , the highest religious officials of the mountain. The monastery also included an imperial traveling palace (xinggong) for the visiting Qing emperors. During the Qianlong reign, Bodhisattva’s Peak housed approximately one-third of the three thousand lamas (with Tibetan, Mongol, Manchu, and Chinese ethnic markers) residing at Mount Wutai. A procession and a masked ritual dance (tsam) descend from the Bodhisattva’s Peak and wind their way down to the mountain’s most prominent landmark of Tibetan Buddhism, the White Stupa (figs. 3 and 4). It was first built by the famous Nepalese artist Anige (1245–1306) in 1301 at the behest of the Mongol Yuan emperor Temür (r. 1294–1307). The White striking new Himalayan architectural form towered over existing Chinese-style architecture and remains the most iconic monument on the mountain today.

Fig. 3

Monk Lhundrub, engraver of Sanggai Aimag (Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia); Detail of Panoramic Map of Mount Wutai, showing masked ritual dancers of the Maitreya procession; Cifu Temple, Mount Wutai, China; 1846; woodblock print on linen, hand colored; Rubin Museum of Art; Gift of Deborah Ashencaen; C2004.29.1 (HAR 65371)

Fig. 4 View of the White Stupa in the Taihuai Valley, Mount Wutai, China; 1301 (Yuan dynasty); masonry; height 167 feet (51 meters); photograph by Wen-shing Chou, 2006

The Practice of Picturing Mount Wutai

For as long as Mount Wutai has been a pilgrimage destination, its pictures and models circulated all over the Buddhist world, serving variously as surrogates, souvenirs, and guides for pilgrims and devotees.The Rubin map descends from a long-standing tradition of imageries combining landscape elements, miraculous apparitions, and the built environment of majestic monasteries and stupas to highlight the numinous quality of Manjushri’s earthly abode. The Chinese Central Asian desert oasis of Dunhuang contains a large cache of paintings of and texts on Mount Wutai. Among them, a monumental mural stretching the entire forty-five-foot (fourteen-meter) span of the west wall of a cave shrine (Mogao Cave 61) (fig. 5), which was dedicated to Manjushri between 947 and 951, simulates the experience of pilgrimage to the mountain. The Cave 61 mural from Dunhuang and the Rubin map, created more than a thousand years apart and more than a thousand miles from each other, share remarkable similarities. Their composition of a mountain range filled with apparitions, auspicious clouds, prominent temples, stupas, and miraculous sites, their comparable positioning of the terraces (from left to right, following the same order of south, west, central, north, and east) and mountain gates, and their details of tireless travelers all point to an enduring vision of the mountain as the abode of Manjushri’s enlightened activities regardless of the changing cultural and sectarian affiliations.

Fig. 5.

Panoramic View of Mount Wutai; Mogao Cave 61, Dunhuang, northwestern Gansu Province, China; ca. 948; ink and pigments on earthen plaster; 13 × 3.6 m. (7 ¾ in. × 11 ft. 9 ⅝ in.); photograph courtesy Dunhuang Research Academy

Yet despite these similarities, what makes the Rubin map unique, and its woodblock carvings a particularly widespread source of influence, is that the image was created from the mapmaker’s firsthand knowledge of the mountain range, rather than based on earlier pictorial models or textual sources, as scholars believe to have been the case for many images from Dunhuang. From the delineation of the precise number of bays and halls of temples, and the inclusion of otherwise little-known hamlets and villages around the mountain, to the lively and often humorous depictions of popular pilgrimage activities and local legends (fig. 6), elements of the map display an intimate knowledge of Mount Wutai from the unique perspective of the mapmaker that is not seen in any other extant visual or textual materials. The woodblock carver’s home monastery of Cifu Temple, built only thirty years before the block panel was carved, is prominently situated just to the right of the central dividing line, in a position that counterbalances Bodhisattva’s Peak, the millennium-old locus of pilgrimage and imperial authority at Mount Wutai. In addition, many (non-Buddhist), Tibetan Buddhist (non-Chinese), and nonreligious sites (out-of-the-way hamlets and villages), which did not appear in Chinese-language mountain gazetteers because of their lack of proper religious affiliation or significance, are included on the map, and each site is carefully labeled with a bilingual inscription in Chinese and Tibetan. The map’s inclusive view of the mountain contrasts sharply with purely Buddhist portrayals of the mountain by Buddhist authorities and imperial officials from the outside.

Fig. 6.

Monk Lhundrub, engraver of Sanggai Aimag (Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia); Detail of Panoramic Map of Mount Wutai, showing the Qing Kangxi emperor mistaking Manjushri for an indecent monk; Cifu Temple, Mount Wutai, China; 1846; woodblock print on linen, hand colored; Rubin Museum of Art; Gift of Deborah Ashencaen; C2004.29.1 (HAR 65371)

Efficacy of the Map Image

The carver’s comprehensive and inclusive approach speaks to the use of the map as a surrogate for the experience of a pilgrimage to the mountain. The trilingual donative inscription on the bottom spells out the efficacy of the map, but differs slightly in the three languages. The Tibetan and Mongolian inscriptions, which parallel each other, stress the efficacy of coming into sensory contact with the map through “seeing, hearing, touching, and remembering” as means to receive the bodhisattva’s blessing, while the Chinese version elaborates on the benefits from peregrinating the mountain and proliferating the image:

Benefactors everywhere who make a pilgrimage to the sacred realm of Clear and Cool [alternate name for Mount Wutai], who view this picture of the mountain in order to listen to and recount the numinous efficacy and wondrous Dharma of the bodhisattva, will in this life be free from all calamities and diseases, and enjoy boundless blessings, happiness and longevity. After this life, they will be reborn in a land of fortune. . . .Should a person make the vow to print this image, they will accumulate immeasurable .

The map image proliferated just as the inscription had encouraged. While the woodblock panel remained at Cifu Temple until the early part of the twentieth century, prints of it were hand-colored, collected, and sold by artisans, pilgrims, and merchants, and widely circulated around the globe. As many as thirty separate impressions from the same carving and later copies in a variety of mediums present different schemes and styles of coloration, selective highlighting of sites, figures, narratives, and languages, and various modes of display and usage. An impression of the same woodblock panel now in the National Museum of Finland, Helsinki, exemplifies a contrasting afterlife of the carved image (fig. 7). While the Rubin print is mounted with brocades in the format of a painting that was likely hung as an object of veneration, the Helsinki print exhibits multiple traces of creases, indicating that it was folded up for prolonged periods and may have been stored in a pilgrim’s amulet box. The difference in the coloration, physical condition, and handling of the maps suggests divergent uses, one as an iconic image of the holy mountain to be venerated as a surrogate of the mountain itself, and the other as a guide for actual pilgrimages. In sum, each act of carving, printing, coloring, framing, copying, and circulating the map image presented a new vision of the mountain. The collaborative and accretive process of mapmaking highlights the roles maps and their makers and users play in Mount Wutai’s transcultural place making.

Fig. 7.

Monk Lhundrub, engraver of Sanggai Aimag (Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia); Panoramic Map of Mount Wutai; Cifu Temple, Wutaishan, China; 1846; woodblock print on linen, hand colored; 47 1/8 × 68 in. (119.7 × 172.7 cm); National Museum of Finland, Helsinki, VK4851:95; photograph by Markku Haverinen, Antell Collection, National Museum of Finland

Digital Resource Permalink

To further explore the map of Mount Wutai, visit the Wutaishan Map Blockprint interactive.

Image from Wutaishan Map Blockprint interactive. Base layer image: Monk Lhundrub, engraver of Sanggai Aimag (Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia); Panoramic Map of Mount Wutai; Cifu Temple, Mount Wutai, China; 1846; woodblock print on linen, hand colored; 47 1/8 × 68 in. (119.7 × 172.7 cm); Rubin Museum of Art, Gift of Deborah Ashencaen; C2004.29.1 (HAR 65371)

Footnotes

For Buddhist scriptural justification of Manjushri’s presence on Mount Wutai, see Étienne Lamotte, “Mañjuśrī,” T’oung Pao 48 (1960): 1–96.

See Raoul Birnbaum, “The Manifestation of a Monastery: Shen-Ying’s Experiences on Mount Wu-t’ai in T’ang Context,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 106, no. 1 (1986): 110–37 and Raoul Birnbaum, “Secret Halls of the Mountain Lords: The Caves of Wu-t’ai Shan,” Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie 5 (1989): 116–40; Robert Gimello, “Chang Shang-Ying on Wu-t’ai Shan,” in Pilgrims and Sacred Sites in China, ed. Susan Naquin and Chünfang Yü (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 89–149; Daniel Stevenson, “Visions of Mañjuśrī on Mount Wutai,” in Religions of China in Practice, ed. Donald S. Lopez (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 203–22.

For more on Mount Wutai in the Qing, see Gray Tuttle and Johan Elverskog, eds., “Wutai Shan and Qing Culture,” Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 6 (2011); Isabelle Charleux, Nomads on Pilgrimage. Mongols on Wutaishan (China), 1800-1940, Brill’s Inner Asian Libraru 22 (Leiden: Brill, 2015); Wen-shing Chou, Mount Wutai: Visions of a Sacred Buddhist Mountain (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018).

See the imperial stele Qingliangshan ji by the Qing Jiaqing emperor (1760–1820, r. 1796–1820), compiled in Zhou Zhenhua 周振華, Wutai Shan Beiwen, Bian’e, Yinglian, Shifu Xuan 五臺山碑文匾額楹聯詩賦選 [Selection of Stele Inscriptions, Placard Inscriptions, Couplets, and Poems from Wutai Shan] (Taiyuan: Shanxi jiaoyu chubanshe, 1998), 81; cited and translated in Isabelle Charleux, Nomads on Pilgrimage. Mongols on Wutaishan (China), 1800-1940, Brill’s Inner Asian Libraru 22 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 110. See also Lin Shi-hsuan, “Zhonghua Weizang: Qing Renzong Xixun Wutai Shan Yanjiu.” 中華衛藏: 清仁宗西巡五臺山研究 [Making Tibet inside the Frontier: On the Last Western Tour to Wutai Mountain of Emperor Jiaqing],” Gugong Xueshu Jikan 故宮學術季刊 28, no. 2 (2010): 147–212.

Wen-shing Chou, Mount Wutai: Visions of a Sacred Buddhist Mountain (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018), 20.

Gray Tuttle, Tibetan Buddhists in the Making of Modern China (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 22.

Natasha Heller, “Visualizing Pilgrimage and Mapping Experience: Mount Wutai on the Silk Road,” in The Journey of Maps and Images on the Silk Road, ed. Philippe Forêt and Andreas Kaplony (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 29–50; Dorothy C. Wong, “A Reassessment of the Representation of Mt. Wutai from Dunhuang Cave 61,” Archives of Asian Art 46 (1993): 27–52.

See Wei-Cheng Lin, Building a Sacred Mountain: The Buddhist Architecture of China’s Mount Wutai (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2014), 18; Ernesta Marchand, “The Panorama of Wutaishan as an Example of Tenth Century Cartography,” Oriental Art 22, no. 2 (1976): 158–73; Dorothy C. Wong, “A Reassessment of the Representation of Mt. Wutai from Dunhuang Cave 61,” Archives of Asian Art 46 (1993): 27–52; Zhao Shengliang 赵声良, Dunhuang shiku yishu, Mogaoku di 61 ku 敦煌石窟艺术·莫高窟第 61 窟 [Dunhuang Cave 61] (Nanjing: Jiangsu meishu chubanshe, 1995); Natasha Heller, “Visualizing Pilgrimage and Mapping Experience: Mount Wutai on the Silk Road,” in The Journey of Maps and Images on the Silk Road, ed. Philippe Forêt and Andreas Kaplony (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 29–50.

Su Bai 宿白, “Dunhuang Mogao Ku Zhong de ‘Wutai Shan Tu’” 敦煌莫高窟中的 ‘五臺山圖’ [Pictures of Mount Wutai in Mogao Caves of Dunhuang],” Wenwu Cankao Ziliao 文物參考資料 5, no. 2 (1951): 49–71; Zhang Huiming 張惠明, “Dunhuang ‘Wutai Shan Huaxian Tu’ Zaoqi Diben de Tuxiang Jiqi Laiyuan” 敦煌 ‘五臺山化現圖’ 早期底本的圖像及其來源 [The Origin and Iconography of the Representations of Apparitions of Mount Wutai in Dunhuang],” Dunhuang Yanjiu 4 (2000): 1; Mary Anne Cartelli, The Five-Colored Clouds of Mount Wutai: Poems from Dunhuang (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 180–91.

Wen-shing Chou, Mount Wutai: Visions of a Sacred Buddhist Mountain (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018), 153–55.

On the trilingual donative inscriptions, see Wen-shing Chou, Mount Wutai: Visions of a Sacred Buddhist Mountain (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018), 156. For their transcription and translation, see Karl Debreczeny, “Wutai Shan: Pilgrimage to Five-Peak Mountain,” Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 6, no. December (2011): 30–39, 52–26; Isabelle Charleux, Nomads on Pilgrimage. Mongols on Wutaishan (China), 1800-1940, Brill’s Inner Asian Libraru 22 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), online appendices, 152–53; Wen-shing Chou, Mount Wutai: Visions of a Sacred Buddhist Mountain (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018), 177.

Wen-shing Chou, Mount Wutai: Visions of a Sacred Buddhist Mountain (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018).

For more on the comparison, see Wen-shing Chou, Mount Wutai: Visions of a Sacred Buddhist Mountain (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018), 155–64.