a forged buddhist stele inscription as a case study in chinese epigraphy

A Forged Buddhist Stele Inscription as a Case Study in Chinese EpigraphyAuthor(s): Kenneth GanzaSource: Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 111, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 1991), pp. 512-522Published by: American Oriental SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/604268 .

Accessed: 12/06/2014 21:06

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

American Oriental Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal ofthe American Oriental Society.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 62.122.73.86 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 21:06:29 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=aos

http://www.jstor.org/stable/604268?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


A FORGED BUDDHIST STELE INSCRIPTION AS A CASE STUDY IN CHINESE EPIGRAPHY

KENNETH GANZA

COLBY COLLEGE

Traditional literature on the connoisseurship of Chinese antiquities addresses Buddhist sculpture from the standpoint of epigraphy rather than aesthetics. A forged Chinese Buddhist stele in the collection of the Indiana University Art Museum provides a revealing example of how epigraphical analysis can play an intriguing role in the connoisseurship of Chinese religious sculpture. It can be shown that the inscription carved on the Indiana University piece has been copied from an existing inscription in the Lung-men cave-temple complex but with certain variations that offer considerable food for epigraphical thought.

FOR CENTURIES CONNOISSEURS OF Chinese antiquities have been wary of the pitfalls posed by fakes and forgeries. Chinese authors, both traditional and con- temporary, have devoted considerable attention to estab- lishing standards by which to appraise the quality and authenticity of works of art while at the same time exposing the deceptive techniques through which the unscrupulous forger attempts to dupe the connoisseur. A well-developed knowledge of stylistic history and a keen sensitivity for artistic quality are usually regarded as the most potent defenses against the forger, but style can be an inconclusively subjective criterion, and so the connoisseur must stock a knowledge of more empirical, technical matters in his arsenal as well.

Not surprisingly, furthermore, forgers of Chinese antiquities have traditionally devoted their energies to those art forms for which there has always existed an eager market of collectors within the elite segment of Chinese society: primarily paintings and calligraphy, bronze vessels, ceramics, and the accoutrement of the scholar's studio. Accordingly, traditional Chinese literature on connoisseurship has tended to focus on these areas to the near exclusion of all others. But as the demand for Chinese antiquities became global, so did the Chinese forger's market expand, encouraging him to extend his efforts to objects beyond those traditionally favored. Buddhist sculpture, for example, is an art form for which a market was virtually created by the acquisitiveness of European and American mu- seums and private collectors in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Perhaps because of their popu- larly devotional function or because they were mass- produced by commercial workshops, sculpted religious images were not viewed in the same light as secular

works of fine art by Chinese scholars and collectors, and so they have not drawn the same kind of attention from traditional writers on connoisseurship.

In the study of religious sculpture, stylistic and iconographic analyses are the primary means through which the artistic and devotional significance of an object become understood, but it is precisely these areas about which traditional Chinese scholarship has largely remained silent. It is rather the epigraphical dimension (chin-shih hsiieh Tid ) of religious sculpture that has a long and respected tradition in Chinese scholarly literature. Chinese Buddhist sculptures, especially vo- tive stelae, usually were carved with dedicatory inscriptions, and because of its inscription a stele or a statue is not only an icon but a historical monument; not only an image intended to elicit feelings of piety but a record of people, places, and events at a particular time. The epigraphical aspect of a Chinese Buddhist sculpture is thus not only a key element in understanding the historical, cultural significance of the piece, but it can also provide one of those important empirical tools of connoisseurship, in some cases lending interest to an other- wise unprepossessing piece of sculpture.

A stele in the collection of the Indiana University Art Museum, Bloomington, Indiana, provides an example of a piece in which this is the case (figs. 1, 2).1

I would like to acknowledge gratefully the advice of Profs. Susan Nelson and Lynn Struve of Indiana University in pre- paring this study and the cooperation of Mr. Thomas Solley and the Indiana University Art Museum for granting permis- sion to publish it.

' Indiana University Art Museum accession no. 64.47.

512



GANZA: A Forged Buddhist Stele Inscription as a Case Study in Chinese Epigraphy 513

?4~ ~~~~4M

Fig. 1. Stele. Early 20th century? Grey schist. Indiana University Art Museum. Photograph by Ken Stroth- man/ Harvey Osterhoudt.

The stele is 92 cm. high with a base 19 cm. x 30 cm. and is composed of a grey, schist-like stone. It is splashed with a rust-colored encrustation that parti- ally obscures the inscription around the lower tier of the base and on the rear face of the tall main slab. There are seated bodhisattvas with standing attendants around the upper tier of the base and on the other faces of the main slab, and the entire piece is surmounted by a roof.

- Fig. 2. Reverse side of fig. 1. Photograph by Ken Strothman/ Harvey Osterhoudt.

Even a cursory stylistic analysis of the piece clearly reveals anomalies suggesting that it is a relatively re- cently carved pastiche rather than a representative of any consistent period style. For example, some of the figures combine the facial expression, body ornament, and flat drapery typical of Six Dynasties (A.D. 220- 580) style with the corporeality, iconographic attributes, and contrapposto stance of mature T'ang dynasty (A.D.

618-907) figures. Furthermore, the dragon-shaped fin- ials at the ends of the roof ridge represent a type that did not appear in China before the middle of the thirteenth century.2 But if the stele's authenticity may be

2 See Ch'i Ying-t'ao, "Chung-kuo ku-tai chien-chu te chi- shih" [Ridge decoration in ancient Chinese architecture], Wen-wu, 1978.3: 62-70.



514 Journal of the American Oriental Society 111.3 (1991)

discounted fairly easily through its style, its inscriptions provide more challenging food for connoisseur-like thought. If the sculptor of this piece had done a more competent job stylistically-if the visual evidence for the authenticity of the piece was deceptive or at least inconclusive-the connoisseur would then need to turn to the inscriptions for his clues. The purpose of this study is to use the inscriptions on the Indiana Uni- versity stele as an example of just such a case-to examine the inscriptions as if independent from the statuary in order to illustrate the potential importance and interest of the epigraphical element in Chinese Buddhist sculpture.

The base inscription records thirty-two names, osten- sibly of those who donated money for the carving of the stele. The primary inscription, on the main slab, consists of the following dedicatory prayer:

On the thirtieth day of the fifth month of the third year of the Ching-ming f 0 reign [20 June 502], the kung-ts'ao jj for the county of Hsin-ch'eng M 1 4-Sun Ch'iu-sheng BO fk I and Liu Ch'i-tsu N i! Vd -with thirty-two others respectfully erect a stone statue in the hope that the nation may have innumer- able blessings, that the Three Treasures5 may be abun- dantly manifest, and that disciples may be as flourishing as acacia trees in a courtyard. May their numerous descendants leave good reputations through prosperous years. May they all ascend to brilliance in the reign of our emperor. May ten thousand blessings gather like clouds to their present households. May they ride in rows of scarlet-wheeled carriages [chu-lun X ].6 May

the reincarnated spirits of disciples, their ancestors, and parents ascend to the Nine Heavens, and may they mount up through the Ten Stages.7 May it be thus for all sentient beings of the Five Destinies8 as well. Cal- ligraphy by Meng Kuang-ta T . it .9

While all inscribed Buddhist dedications express sen- timents generally similar to these and may even share terms and phrases common in Buddhist vocabulary, one prayer is virtually never a verbatim copy of another. Yet a nearly identical version of the prayer on the Indiana stele exists, on another stele carved amidst an elaborate program of figures and ornament some ten meters above the floor of the Ku-yang-tung -NM ffa cave within the cave-temple complex of Lung-men E PI in Honan province near the Northern Wei dynasty (A.D. 356-534) capital, Loyang (figs. 3, 4).'1 The Ku- yang-tung (KYT) stele is larger because it accommodates the names of one hundred forty donors," and it

3 A title roughly equivalent to Director of the Public Affairs Office. This office existed from the Han dynasty (206 B.C.-

A.D. 220) to the Sung (960-1279) and supervised public pro- jects such as parks, schools, ceremonies, sacrifices, elections, and funerals. See Denis Twitchett, "Local Financial Admini- stration in Early T'ang Times," Asia Major 15 (1969): 86-87.

4 The geography treatise of the Wei-shu, the official history of the Wei dynasty (386-534) written in the late sixth century, lists nine countries with the name Hsin-ch'eng. A commentary by Wang Ch'ang in Chin-shih ts'ui-p'ien [Collected Inscrip- tions] (preface dated 1805; rpt., Taipei, 4 vols., 1964), 1:501, states that the Hsin-ch'eng county here was that located in Kao-yang prefecture, but that may be the result of misreading a character. It is more likely that the Hsin-ch'eng county in question was in Hsin-ch'eng prefecture in the vicinity of Lo- yang, Honan.

5 That is, the Buddha, the dharma (law), and the sangha (monastic community).

6 In the phrase chu-lun here, the first character probably should be written without the water radical. The allusion is to

carriages of the nobility, the wheels of which were decorated with cinnabar.

7 Dagabhimi: The steps in the development of a bodhisattva into a Buddha.

8 The five gati, or destinies of rebirth: hells, hungry ghosts, animals, human beings, and divinities.

9 That is, the calligraphy of the text on the document that was transposed onto stone by a anonymous carver.

10 The KYT inscription is well recorded in the literature of Chinese historical epigraphy. The Chin-shih ts'ui-p'ien was the first to transcribe it and contains the most extensive commentary on it. For a bibliography of references to the inscription, see Mizuno Seiichi and Nagahiro Toshio, Kanan Rakuy5 Ryamon sekkutsu no kenkyfi [A study of the Buddhist cave temples at Lung-men, Honan] (Tokyo, 1941), 246, 365. This source includes a rubbing of the stele (p. ix, no. 10). Other rubbings appear in: Tokiwa Daijo and Sekino Dada, comps., Chfigoku bunka shiseki [Traces of Chinese culture] (reprint of 1939 ed. published under title Shina bunka shiseki; Kyoto, 15 vols., 1975-76), 2:68; the series Shoseki mehin sokan [Com- pendium of famous calligraphic works], no. 7 (1970); Tuan Wei-i, comp., Pei- Wei Lung-men nien-p'in ch 'ian-chi [Com- plete collection of twenty Northern Wei dynasty works from Lung-men] (Taipei, 1975); and Shih Shu-ming, "Pei-t'ieh ping tsun-shuo" [Stele rubbings and dedications], Ku-kung wen- wu yueh-k'an [The National Palace Museum Monthly of Chinese Art] 22 (January, 1985): 22. There is also a fine rubbing of the stele in the collection of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.

" The inscription states that there were "two hundred" others who subscribed. This may simply be a case of rounding the number off to its nearest larger equivalent, a practice not unknown in Chinese documentation.




E4

Fig. 3. Stele. Northern Wei dynasty, A.D. 503. Ku- yang-t'ung cave, Lung-men, Honan. After Tokiwa Daijo and Sekino Sada, Chugoku bunka shiseki, vol. 2, pl. 68.

records at its head the names of a district magistrate and two other persons whom the Indiana University (IU) stele does not mention. The main text of the KYT stele states that it was commissioned by the same two officials cited on the IU piece-Sun Ch'iu-sheng and Liu Ch'i-tsu-but on a significantly different date. Like the IU inscription, that on the wall of the KYT cave begins with the date of the stele's inauguration, but it adds at the very end another date-that of its actual carving. The first date is the seventh year of the T'ai-ho tf reign of the Wei dynasty (A.D. 483), while the latter is the twenty-seventh day of the fifth month of the third year of the Ching-ming reign, which is in A.D.

502, exactly three days before the dedication recorded on the IU stele.

The point to question here is not why a nineteen- year interval may have occurred between the time the

-~~~~~~~ 4

:

Fig. 4. Dedicatory prayer, Ku-yang-t'ung stele. Cour- tesy Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago.

KYT stele was first planned and the day it was actually completed-for work on the Lung-men caves proceeded intermittently over a long period of time-but whether it is likely that the same two kung-ts'ao for Hsin-ch'eng county who oversaw the inauguration of the KYT project in 483 were both still alive and in office to dedicate the IU stele in 502-with a prayer, moreover, that had just been used for the KYT carving three days before. Sun Ch'iu-sheng and Liu Ch'i-tsu, the two officials in question, do not appear in any other sur- viving records, so their death dates or terms of office cannot be established. The possibility of two lengthy, concurrent tenures such as these is not inconceivable, but it is sufficiently questionable at least to begin to raise doubts about an inscription making such a claim.

Another problem involving persons mentioned on the two stelae concerns the IU stele's alleged calligrapher, Meng Kuang-ta. The KYT stele also records Meng's name, but it calls him the composer (wen PC) of the inscription rather than its calligrapher (shu *). The man mentioned as the KYT stele calligrapher does not appear in the IU inscription at all. The KYT stele itself clearly was planned in 483 and completed in 502, but it is not clear when the dedication was composed or written. It is equally possible, since there is no bio- graphical information about the men involved, that the text was produced when the stele was first proposed, as a sort of subscription record, or when it was finally carved, to consummate a project that had begun nineteen years earlier. If the former is true, it implies that




Meng penned for the IU stele in 502 the text of the same prayer he had composed (but had not done the calligraphy) for the KYT piece in 483. This means that he would have remained in the same capacity (as a composer/ writer of Buddhist dedications) in the same place over a period of nineteen years, as the two officials Sun and Liu had remained in their respective capacities. If the other alternative is true, that the dedication of the KYT stele was concurrent with its actual comple- tion in 502, the implication is that the text was indeed used twice, but for occasions only three days apart. In either case, the fact that the two stelae cite two different calligraphers means that the text carved into the stone of the IU stele would have been copied from one written source and that into the KYT stele from another. The matter of Meng's professional longevity is no more or less questionable than that of Sun's and Liu's, but the implication that the IU and KYT inscriptions came from two different textual sources is much more prob- lematic, for reasons that will be expanded below.

Problems with the dates on the two stelae raise fur- ther questions. As mentioned, the date of the KYT stele's carving is recorded as the twenty-seventh day of the fifth month of 502 and that of the IU stele's dedication as the thirtieth day of the same month. However, according to several Chinese chronological concor- dances the fifth month of 502 had only twenty-nine days.'2 Now this does not automatically establish the date on the IU stele as false, because due to vagaries of the Chinese lunar calendar and problems of historical transmission, the number of days in that particular month is open to question. Rather, the IU date is suspicious for a different reason that will be explained shortly. But to address first the question of whether there were twenty-nine or thirty days in the fifth month of 502-because a calendar based on twelve lunar cycles does not synchronize with the seasonal realities of the solar year, it is necessary periodically to add to a lunar calendar a thirteenth month, an intercalary month, in order to maintain correct alignment. The Chinese calendar simply adds this month at irregular but pre- determined intervals and calls it by the same number as the month it follows, e.g., first month, second month,

intercalary second month, third month, etc. Those sources that record the fifth month of 502 with only twenty-nine days apparently are based on the standard history of the Wei dynasty, the Wei-shu Ad , which says that 502 contained an intercalary fourth month of thirty days followed by a fifth month of twenty-nine. However, several nineteenth-century treatises on Chi- nese historical epigraphy state that this Wei-shu reckoning is mistaken: i.e., that the thirty-day month in 502 was not an intercalary fourth but the proper fifth, and that the following twenty-nine day month was not the fifth but an intercalary fifth. 3 Their contention that the fifth month of 502 did indeed have thirty days has been corroborated by the discovery of other inscriptions in the Lung-men caves that are likewise dated third year of Ching-ming, fifth month, thirtieth day.'4

Thus the presence of this date on the IU stele need not challenge the authenticity of the piece, and since it apparently reflects historical reality more accurately, it could even argue in favor of it, if the inscription were simply taken at its face value. In fact, it is only the glaring inconsistency of the Wei dynasty date with the T'ang dynasty features of the sculpted figures that pre- cludes this possibility. On the other hand, the date could be evidence that the piece is a forgery, carved after the treatises noted above had pointed out the Wei-shu's faulty reckoning. This would establish a con- venient terminus post quem date for the piece, but it rests on the unlikely implication that a forger would take the trouble to research the historical accuracy of his bogus date. If the date and inscription are false there is always the possibility that the former was chosen quite arbitrarily, but then why after being so scrupulously faithful to the text of the KYT inscription, which he presumably was using as his model, would a forger suddenly and arbitrarily change the date in the inscription from the twenty-seventh day to the thirtieth? Following the forgery premise, the most likely explana- tion seems to be that the carver of the IU inscription changed the date because "thirty" can be written in Chinese with only one character, whereas "twenty-

12 Including Hsueh Chung-san and Ou-yang I, comps., Liang-ch'ien-nien Chung-Hsi 1i tui-chao piao [Two thousand year Chinese-Western comparative calendar] (Shanghai, 1940); Ch'en YUan, comp., Erh-shih-shih shuo-jun piao [Table of intercalary months from the twenty dynastic histories] (2nd ed., Peking, 1978); and Tung Tso-pin, comp., Chung-kuo nien-li tsung-p'u [Concordance to the Chinese calendar] (2

vols., Hong Kong, 1960).

13 Including Hung I-hsuan, ed., P'ing-chin hsu pei-chi [The author's supplemental stele collection] (1885; Shih-k'o shih- liao ts'ung-shu ed., Taipei, 1966), vol. 368, 2.10b, and Lu Tseng-hsiang, ed., Pa-chiung-shih chin-shih pu-cheng [The author's epigraphical supplement] (n.d.; Shih-k'o shih-liao ts'ung-shu ed., Taipei, 1966), vol. 127, 12.26-27.

14 A list of these appears in a work by Lu Wei-t'ing (fl. c. 1870) entitled Lung-men tsao-hsiang mu-lu [Record of statuary at Lung-men], reproduced in an article with the same title in Wen-wu, 1961.4-5: 88-108.




seven" requires two. This was important to our forger because of other changes, to be mentioned shortly, he had made in copying the KYT inscription onto the IU stele.

The idea that the IU inscription was copied directly from the KYT stele (or from a rubbing of it) is strongly supported by several epigraphical and physical differences and similarities between the two inscriptions. For example, the text on the IU stele is arranged grid-like in seven columns of sixteen characters, except for the second column from the right, where there is a character absent in the thirteenth position (see fig. 2). This gap corresponds to a blank spot in the same textual position in the KYT inscription, occurring between the phrases " . . . Sun Ch'iu-sheng and Liu Ch'i-tsu-with thirty-two others" and "respectfully erect a stone statue...." The reason for the gap in the KYT inscription is probably that without it the character for "respectfully" would fall at the very bottom position in its column, whereas with the gap it jumps to the very top position in the next column-a more honored place- ment for a character with honorific meaning. However, in the IU inscription the gap is only a gap-the different grid arrangement in the IU text gives no honorific advantage to a blank spot before "respectfully" and in fact only pushes it farther down in its own column. The gap therefore appears to be a functional idiosyncrasy of the KYT text that has been copied blindly in the IU inscription. Furthermore, the fifth and sixth characters in the second column of the IU inscription are effaced, and the two characters that would correspond to those places in the KYT text are illegible in rubbings of the KYT stele-a coincidence that only reinforces the su- spicion that whoever carved the IU inscription was using the KYT text as his source.

Certain differences between the two strengthen the suspicions raised by the above similarities. For example, a character from the KYT inscription that should follow the tenth position in the IU stele's sixth column has been omitted. This could of course indicate simple carelessness on the part of the carver, but it seems more likely that the omission was deliberate: the IU inscription appears to have been very purposefully and economically condensed into its grid of seven sixteen- character columns. It eliminates, as mentioned, refer- ence to the KYT stele's calligrapher, and in addition to changing the date designation from the two-character "twenty-seven" to the one-character "thirty," it does not include the cyclical names of dates, as does the KYT stele. But even with the date and calligraphic attribution pared to a minimum, the IU text is exactly one character too many for the stele's 112-character

grid. Ironically, that blank spot in the thirteenth position of the second column throws everything off by one, so that if the carver's primary concern was keep- ing his neat layout intact, even at the expense of faith- fulness to his text, he had to compensate by eliminating one character somewhere after the blank. The character that should appear in the IU stele's sixth column, tenth position is the suffix teng X, which simply makes plural the compound ti-tzu A fh, meaning "disciple." Since Classical Chinese is an uninflected and fairly pliable language, this character is one of the most expendable in the body of the text, and so it appears to have been jettisoned for the good of the grid. One can only imagine a forger's frustration at having faithfully produced the KYT stele's blank spot only to discover that he had to alter the text by one character so that it would come out even.

Another revealing difference occurs in the twelfth position of the third column on the IU stele. The corresponding character in the KYT inscription is now nearly illegible, but it has been transcribed in Chin- shih ts'ui-pi'en as hsien A, meaning "radiant." This character on the IU stele reads not hsien, but yuan Xi, a character here meaning "would hope that" or "vow to," which is used elsewhere in the text to preface the peti- tions of the donors. Hsien clearly is a correct transcription because it makes sense in the context of this prayer, while yuan would be quite out of place. The two characters are similar in form-in fact, their right halves consist of the same element-and their confusion could again indicate the inattention of the carver towards his written text. But there is just enough of the KYT stele character legible that a carver copying from a rubbing of the stele itself and not paying attention to the sense of his text could easily mistake it for another occurrence of yuan, which appears in three other places. 15

Indications that the IU stele's inscription was copied from the KYT stele grow even stronger turning from the main text to the donors' names inscribed around the base (figs. 5-8). Twenty-five of the thirty-two names that appear on the base of the IU stele are legible, and of those twenty-five, twenty-one also are

5 Another possibility is that the IU inscription could have been copied from the transcription published in Chin-shih ts'ui-p'ien, but this does not appear to be the case. There are several instances in which the transcription renders archai- cally written or simplified characters from the KYT stele in their modern or standardized equivalents, but in each of these cases the IU text agrees with the original KYT versions.




Fig. 5. "Donors' names," Indiana University stele. Photograph by Ken Strothman/ Harvey Osterhoudt.





NW

Fig. 9. Donors' names, Ku-yang- t'ung stele. Courtesy Field Mu- seum of Natural History, Chicago.

recorded in the ranks of donors on the KYT stele. As suggested earlier in the cases of Sun Ch'iu-sheng, Liu Ch'i-tsu, and Meng Kuang-ta, the appearance of so many identical names on both stelae may or may not be noteworthy in itself, but here the physical distribu- tion of some of the names is more indicative.

The rear face of the IU stele's base records ten names, of which the first nine, right to left, are legible (fig. 6). The donors' names on the KYT stele are organized below the prayer in fifteen columns, each headed by the two-character honorific wei-na t$ ~I, the title of a

middle-level Buddhist functionary (fig. 9).16 Each of the nine names on the rear of the IU stele is the first name in one of the columns of the KYT stele, immedi- ately following the honorific (compare figs. 6, 10). Furthermore, the nine names occur in the same se- quence on both stelae, the IU stele's names appearing

16 In Sanskrit, karmaddna, i.e., administrative clergymen who ranked below the elders and-abbots and who supervised monks and distributed monastic duties.




FIg. 1 Detal of ig. Coutesy ield useu of NturalHistoy, C i

Fig. 10. Detail of fig. 9. Courtesy Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago.

at the head of columns two, three, six, seven, eight, nine, eleven, twelve, and thirteen (right to left) on the KYT stele. This arrangement suggests that a copyist arbitrarily lifted names from the KYT stele ranks, se- lecting those at the top simply for convenience.7

A few names, in particular, clearly indicate that the IU-stele carver was not copying deliberately from a legitimate list of subscribers' names but randomly from the face of the KYT stele. Nearly all Chinese names consist of two or three characters, but the first name listed in column two of the KYT stele is a far less

common one, comprised of four characters-the surname Hsia-hou A f and the given name Wen-te S: A. However, only the first three characters of this name appear on the IU stele (position 1), creating an entirely new name, Hsia Hou-wen. This suggests either that the carver did not know he was dealing with a four- character name or that he chose to ignore the fourth character because, since the base of the IU stele where the names are recorded accommodates names of no more than three characters, he did not have room to include it.

In another example, the fourth name from the right on the front of the IU stele base consists of three characters: Tzu Chia-wan #f W ) (fig. 5). Towards the bottom of one of the KYT stele columns appear two names, apparently members of the same clan: Chia K'uan-tzu R f -T followed by Chia Wan-shou Xl X t (fig. 11). Comparing these two names with that on the front of the IU stele, it appears that the latter is nothing more than a mixture of the former-comprised of the last character of the first name and the first two characters of the second. This is not the only instance of

'7 Nor is it inconceivable that the carver was illiterate, in which case he could recognize at least that anything directly beneath the distinctively consistent row of wei-nas would have to be a person's name. This conjecture is not a compel- ling one in light of the overall pattern (or rather, the lack of it) that marks the similarities between the donors' names on the stelae, but it would suggest at least one reason for the remark- able coincidence of an entire side of IU stele donors' names occurring in the same top file on the KYT stele.



Journal of the American Oriental Society 111.3 (1991)

Fig. 11. Detail of fig. 9. Courtesy Field Museum of Fig. 12. Detail of fig. 9. Courtesy Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago. Natural History, Chicago.

donor's name hybridization on the IU stele, and again it suggests a random plagiarism by someone who did not care where one name ended and another began.

A similar example, this time with an appealingly suggestive twist, involves the name Li Hu-tzu 4E J #, located towards the lower left on the KYT stele (fig. 12). The second two characters of this name, the given name, appear second from the left on one of the side faces of the IU stele but below a different surname: Tu 4 (see fig. 7). This surname appears also on the KYT stele, diagonally adjacent to the position of Li Hu-tzu. Unlike the preceding example, these two names are in different columns, so their confusion could not simply be a matter of failing to acknowledge the division between two names. Since they more or less adjoin one another, though, it could well be that the copyist care- lessly lost his place and accidentally combined them. This conjecture is logical, but the erroneous surname here, Tu, has among its meanings the connotation of "counterfeit" or "fabrication." Far more intriguing than

logical conjecture, therefore, is the romantic notion that this error is the deliberate design of a perversely clever forger, leaving a clue for the detection of his misdeed like some detective-fiction master criminal.

Romance notwithstanding, the evidence thus suggests that the source of the dedication text and the donors' names inscribed on the IU stele is the face of the KYT stele itself, altered and edited to fit into a reduced space, and the stele's stylistic evidence, which has been ignored for the purpose of the exercise, only reinforces the conclusion of forgery. Certain questions remain that may never be answered definitely: the matter of those four names on the IU stele that do not appear on the KYT stele, for example, as well as those that do appear but seem to have been borrowed with no recognizable pattern. Questions such as these do not appreciably challenge the conclusions reached here, but their persistence helps to illustrate the potential of epigraphy as a source of information in the study of Chinese Buddhist sculpture.



a forged buddhist stele inscription as a case study in chinese epigraphy

Documents