Reinventing the Wheel: Paintings of Rebirthin Medieval Buddhist Temples

REINVENTING THE WHEEL: PAINTINGS OF REBIRTH INMEDIEVAL BUDDHIST TEMPLES

By Stephen F. TeiserSeattle and London: University of Washington Press,2006.Pp. xv + 319. $60.00, ISBN-10 0-295-98649-2; ISBN-13978-0-295-98649-4

REVIEWER: Kate A. LingleyUniversity of Hawai’i at ManoaHonolulu, HI 96822

The recent growth of interest among art historians in thesocial history of Chinese Buddhist art (Lingley, 2007) hastended to be marked by a move away from studies whichinvestigate the theological or doctrinal implications ofBuddhist images in favor of a focus on social life andpopular practice. Yet, simultaneously, the “visual turn” inthe humanities and the social sciences has meant that schol-ars of religion are increasingly turning their attention toBuddhist visual culture. The main challenge of this approachis finding a way to incorporate images, on their own terms,into a field that has historically been strongly orientedtoward textual sources. Success here often depends on somedegree of familiarity with the methods of art history andvisual culture studies, which may be creatively integratedinto the framework of religious studies.

Stephen Teiser’s Reinventing the Wheel approaches thisproblem in what, on the surface, appears to be a convention-ally art-historical way. It is set up as an ordinary icono-graphic study, tracing the history of the motif of the wheel ofrebirth in the art of India, Central Asia, China, and Tibet. Instructure, therefore, the book is a classically framed art-historical study constructed in the service of a Buddhologicalinquiry. However, within this framework, Teiser’s selectionof visual and textual material, and particularly his creative“solution” to the hypothetical problem of wheels of rebirth inTang China, distinguish his work from traditional icono-graphic studies. An innovative sense of what is and is notrelevant to the study of the wheel of rebirth helps Teiserbreak some of the limitations of the iconographic genre, andleads to some of the book’s most interesting conclusions. Thetension between textual and visual evidence tends to beresolved differently at different points in the argument,

which can be frustrating for the reader, particularly where itis unclear what may have been left out of the story Teiser istelling. Still, ultimately, it is the author’s willingness tomuster a wide range of materials to his project that movesthis study beyond the scope of old-fashioned art history.

As the D. T. Suzuki Professor of Buddhist Studies atPrinceton, Teiser is a well-respected scholar of Chinese Bud-dhism, with a history of incorporating visual and materialperspectives into his work. In particular, his 1994 The Scrip-ture on the Ten Kings and the Making of Purgatory in MedievalChinese Buddhism is a study of a medieval text that alsoconsiders contemporary images of the Ten Kings, particu-larly the famous illustrated scrolls from Dunhuang. In thepresent volume, Teiser begins with the object and proceedsto the question of what it can explain. Specifically, he askswhat we can learn about medieval Buddhism from a study ofimages of the wheel of rebirth.

His answers, in the main, have to do with the relation-ship between the transregional and the specific, the canoni-cal and the local, in a religious tradition that spans the Asiancontinent. Because the appearance of images of the wheel ofrebirth follows, more or less, the spread of Buddhism acrossAsia, it is an ideal case study for the relationship betweenBuddhism taken as a whole and its particular local instan-tiations. In addition, the author takes on the art-historicalquestion of how religious images and the spaces they occupyimply particular experiences on the part of the viewer orworshipper. The wheel of rebirth is a motif which comeswith its own explanation as to location and function: theBuddha Sakyamuni explains that it should be placed inthe entryway of a temple and used as a tool for explainingthe cycle of samsara to laymen (53-56). Since most of theimages Teiser is studying appear more or less where theBuddha suggests that they should (he explicitly sets asidescroll paintings and other portable formats as lacking incontext), the question of how space structures experiencebecomes secondary to the discourses of rebirth implicit inthe experience of viewing these images.

Setting aside for the moment chapters one and ten,which are the introduction and conclusion, the main body ofthe book arranges the relevant evidence in a chronologicalstructure. The nature of the evidence Teiser musters to histask is one way in which this work diverges from the strictlyiconographic model. Each body chapter takes on a particularpiece of evidence, some visual, some textual, and in one case

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(chapter five) constituting the absence of visual evidence ina place where one might expect to find it. This is occasionallyconfusing, especially because Teiser does not always explic-itly discuss his methodology; it can sometimes be difficultto see how one chapter leads to the next. However, theapproach is ultimately fruitful. Rather than privileging textover image, or indeed image over text, this approach seesthem both as instantiations of the religious phenomenawhich are the author’s ultimate objects of inquiry.

Chapter two introduces the “canonical version of thewheel of rebirth,” by which Teiser means a passage from theMulasarvastivada vinaya containing Sakyamuni’s exhorta-tion to paint images of the wheel of rebirth, and his descrip-tion of its iconography. That the “canonical version” of theimage is in fact a text at first suggests a relatively traditionalapproach to the iconography of the wheel, in which images ofthe motif proceed from an authoritative textual source; butthis is precisely the assumption Teiser intends to question,and he proceeds to do so in later chapters, particularly chap-ters four and five. However, at this early point in the book,framing the vinaya account as the “canonical version” tendsto invite questions about how seriously the author wishes toproblematize the question of what, exactly, is canonical.

It seems clear that the definition of “canonical” which isbeing used here is “coming from the textual canon.” But theterm is also used, particularly in art history, in its widersense of “authoritative,” a definition which has relevance forthe related problem of the transregional vs. the local. Theauthor’s intentions might have been clearer at the outset ifhe also addressed the formation of the visual conventions(which might also be seen as canonical) that connect laterversions of the wheel of rebirth motif. While a scarcity ofevidence would probably limit his ability to document oreven identify the first appearance of the image the Buddhadescribed, a discussion of the problem would more effec-tively counteract the impression that each version of thewheel must be seen as a particular local interpretation of acanonical text (as opposed to the possibility that artisticconventions for representing the wheel might have influ-enced each other).

Chapter three examines what the reader assumes is theearliest surviving example of the wheel of rebirth motif, inthe fifth-century Cave 17 at Aja

� �nta, in India. Whether it is in

fact the earliest or not is a question not addressed by theauthor, and in general this is true of the book as a whole: thelack of explicit discussion of why these particular exampleswere chosen, and whether and why other examples mighthave been omitted, makes it difficult to contextualize thematerial. This issue is treated briefly in the preface, wherethe author writes that he has chosen specific “examples ofthe wheel of rebirth that I believe are particularly instructiveabout Buddhism” (xii), but the reader remains curious about

what has been left out. Chapter one juxtaposes a close studyof the image in Aja

� �nta Cave 17, its history of patronage, and

its later viewership, with some roughly contemporary liter-ary accounts of the wheel of rebirth, including the fourth-century Divyavadana, as a way of examining the ideassurrounding the motif, and the didactic uses to which it wasput, in the early Indian context.

While the art-historical reader will find this looseframing of the material evidence somewhat frustrating, itserves Teiser’s interests well. Because he is concerned withdocumenting the relationship between the transregional andthe specific, it is natural to consider all the evidence from aparticular time and place together. Chapter three sets up thepattern for those later chapters that focus on particular sitesand particular paintings (chapters six to nine). Each of thesechapters considers three types of evidence from a particularplace: local images, their architectural contexts, and contem-porary literary accounts, particularly those dealing withideas about samsara and the function of images. Althoughthe titles of the chapters suggest that the local images are themain subject of inquiry, the author’s approach implies thatthe ultimate subject is considerably more abstract, and bothimages and texts are merely the vehicles for inquiry. At thesame time, the two chapters which follow do give images akind of primacy which suggests that they are, after all, theprincipal subject of study.

In this vein, the story which is the subject of the nextchapter seems at first to be a strange diversion from theoverall structure of the book, in which each chapter focuseson a particular time and place in the history of the wheel ofrebirth. Chapter four is a brief study of an anecdote,recounted in both the Mulasarvastivada vinaya and theDivyavadana, which tells the story of another didactic imagepainted at the behest of the Buddha, King Rudrayana’s paint-ing of the Twelve Conditions. The story is found representedin narrative paintings and carvings from sites as disparateas Kizil and Borobudur, but the relationship between textand image is different from that of the wheel of rebirth.Images of the Rudrayana story are just that: visual narra-tives recounting the tale of the king, not images made inobedience to the Buddha’s injunction within the narrative.By contrast, images of the wheel of rebirth do not depict theBuddha in the act of ordering the wheel to be painted. Thenarrative portion of the vinaya text, in other words, remainsunrepresented.

While Rudrayana’s painting is not itself a direct ana-logue of the image of the wheel of rebirth, despite parallels inthe way they are introduced, it is another example of con-temporary thinking about the power of images: what theycan accomplish and, particularly, how. In both cases, imageshave the power to move the viewer along the path towardenlightenment, when presented properly. Bringing this

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story in is a way of talking about what pictures can do, in theearly Indian context. Given that this is also the context forthe vinaya account Teiser presents as canonical, it makes acertain amount of sense to devote an entire chapter to thestory, even though it tends to disrupt the structure of thework as a whole. Once again, some minor questions aboutscope and completeness remain unanswered: are theresimilar works from the later times and places that the authorstudies? Is the Rudrayana story particularly significant(perhaps because of its location in the same sources thatdescribe the wheel of rebirth), or is it simply a thematicallyappropriate work that can be used to set the stage for laterdiscussion?

Chapter five addresses a problem of absence, ratherthan presence. In this book, Teiser examines survivingexamples of the wheel of rebirth motif found in a fifth-century cave temple at Ajanta, in India (chapter three); in aninth-century meditation cave at Kumtura, in Xinjiang(chapter six); in a tenth-century cave temple at Yulin, inGansu (chapter seven); in an eleventh-century temple atTabo, in Western Tibet (chapter eight); and among thethirteenth-century cliff-face carvings at Baodingshan, inSichuan (chapter nine). This progression of time and geog-raphy has an obvious gap between the fifth and ninth cen-turies. Given the history of transmission across the Asianmainland of other Buddhist art forms, ideas, texts, and prac-tices, it would be reasonable to guess that the missing pieceof the sequence here might be found in Tang China (618-907). That no images of the wheel of rebirth survive fromTang China presents the author with a challenge. His answerto the challenge is provocative and interesting.

The first mention of the wheel of rebirth in the Chinesehistorical record predates the translation of theMulasarvastivada vinaya into Chinese by several hundredyears. It is located in a miracle tale, where it appears as ascroll painting in the dream of an imprisoned governmentofficial. This alone is interesting for the way it calls thecanonicity of the vinaya account into question. Clearly, theidea of the wheel of rebirth (here, the “Wheel of the FivePaths”) was circulating independently of the vinaya account,which implies the question of what medium was responsiblefor its circulation. Were scroll paintings or artists’ copy-books the vehicle here, or were accounts of the image and itsuses in India making their way to China in the fifth century?In a study which is concerned with the relationship betweenthe canonical and the local, such questions would seem to beimportant ones.

There are apparently no contemporary descriptions ofimages of the Wheel of Rebirth in Chinese Buddhist templesbefore the tenth-century example at Yulin. To get aroundthis, Teiser instead considers three bodies of visual evidencefrom the Sui and Tang. These are hell images and Pure Land

images, which both represent ideas about rebirth; images ofthe cosmological Buddha, which represent the paths ofrebirth as components in the cosmological order; and templeplans, which represent the logical space into which Tangimages of the wheel of rebirth would have been placed, ifthey had been made. The result is inconclusive but verythought-provoking, because it enables the author to ask thesame kinds of questions (about how the wheel of rebirth wasunderstood and how it was used) in the absence of actualexamples.

The remaining chapters of the book take up laterexamples of the wheel of rebirth from Kumtura, Yulin, Tabo,and Baodingshan, and these are considerably more conven-tionally art-historical treatments of their subjects than whathas come before. They focus mostly on the sites in question,their history, and what can be gleaned about the circum-stances of production of the images and the context of reli-gious practice in which they were situated. The impressionone gets is that there are relatively few truly local textswhich address the ideas about rebirth and the power ofimages that Teiser is investigating. In these cases, the localand the specific are considerably easier to investigate thanthe transregional or the canonical. The latter is generallyassumed to reside in the Mulasarvastivada vinaya text, bythis point widely circulated in Chinese and Tibetan transla-tions. Again, a further consideration of visual sources thatmight have been understood as authoritative (“canonical” inthe art-historical sense) would only add to the author’s largerargument.

The introduction and conclusion of this book are par-ticularly important for framing and situating the amazingamount of material that lies between them, which mightotherwise overwhelm the reader. The introduction lays outthe author’s interests for the investigation to come, in par-ticular the conceptual properties of the wheel of rebirth andthe power and authority of these images, as well as ideasabout rebirth, and the importance of visual representationsof Buddhist ideas. It is here that the dualities of canonical/local and transregional/specific are articulated, which en-courages the reader to understand what follows through thatparticular lens. But the complexity of what follows suggeststhat these dualities are, as Teiser reminds us, only one ofmany points to be made from this material.

Rather than being focused on a single analytical point,the conclusion of the book revisits some of the themes laidout in the introduction, this time in greater depth. The authorproposes a dual notion of discourse, in which the image ofthe wheel of rebirth is simultaneously a tool for imaginingdifferent understandings of life and death, and a social con-vention for the transmission of those understandings. Thereis a revisiting of the question of the local and the canonicalthat reflects a considerably more complex idea of the canon

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than was articulated at the beginning of the book. Thissegment would have been more useful if it had appearedearly on in the book, because it answers some of the difficultquestions raised by the earlier discussion. Finally, theauthor concludes with a discussion of the mode of engage-ment which the wheel image demands of its viewer, in itsmany different historical and architectural contexts. Ulti-mately, he maintains, its meaning is fully realized within alarger didactic system concerned with Buddhist morality.

The wheel of rebirth is a particularly knotty subject fora writer interested in considering both texts and images in astudy of larger religious issues. This is not least because thewheel of rebirth is an image even when it is a text. That is, inthe earliest history of the motif, when it is first set out in thevinaya account, it is already explicitly described as animage, to be painted in a specific way and in a specificlocation, and used for a specifically didactic purpose. This isby contrast with many of the themes derived from Buddhisttexts which become conventional subjects of art, such as thedebate between Vimalakırti and Mañjusrı, or the apparitionof the jeweled stupa of Prabhutaratna, in which incidentsrecounted in text are interpreted in visual form by artists.This imbrication of the literary and artistic in the story of thewheel of rebirth perhaps accounts for some of the method-ological knottiness of the present work.

Professor Teiser is to be praised for his willingness totake on such an interesting problem in spite of its potentialmessiness. His book is richly researched and deeply infor-mative, and will be a thought-provoking read for scholarsof Buddhism and of art history alike. Problems of religiousiconography are sometimes perceived as old-fashioned andconservative in a postmodern era. Reinventing the Wheel isa prescient title for the way in which it signals the work’sintentions, which are to ask traditional questions inmodern ways. When we speak of “reinventing the wheel,”we usually mean a needless revisitation of work that hasalready been done. By contrast, the present volumeexplores the new possibilities of traditional forms ofinquiry, with rich results.

REFERENCES

Lingley, Kate A.2007 “Social Histories of Buddhist Art in Medieval China.”

Religious Studies Review 33, 1, 9-15.

Teiser, Stephen F.1994 The Scripture on the Ten Kings and the Making of

Purgatory in Medieval Chinese Buddhism. Honolulu:University of Hawai’i Press.

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