Bian xiang: vivid transformative representation (more)
Buddhism at Dunhuang Workshop
D. Neil Schmid, University of California, Berkeley, 2006
Recent studies have examined the meaning of term bian in medieval China, defining it as “supernatural transformation” and exemplified by the phantasmagorical permutations of Sariputra and Raudraksa of the “The Magic Competition” (depicted textually as the “Transformation Text on the Subjugation of Demons” Xiangmo bianwen and visually in the form of a “transformation tableau” bianxiang).
This definition, highlighting the miraculous, has in turn informed subsequent research on medieval Chinese art and literature. I argue that such a definition is unnecessarily narrow in its scope and ignores a fundamental understanding of the term as soteriologically oriented and rooted in karma.
Analyzing a wide array of evidence from the High Tang to the Five Dynasties period, including Dunhuang narrative and ritual texts, epigraphy, élite eulogies on "transformation tableaux," and the pictorial programs of Dunhuang caves themselves, I demonstrate that bian also articulates a concern for personal welfare grounded in a corporeal soteriology of karmic transformation.
The goal of bodily perfection, either in the form of the marks of the Buddha (xiang, Sanskrit: laksana) or in rebirth in the Pure Land, is in keeping with general Chinese preoccupations with the afterlife. Although impressive and at times salvational, phantasmagorical permutations bian of various divine beings speak little to personal welfare, both individual and, crucially, familial (e.g., zhuifu).
As image, icon, and devotional object, bianxiang represent the transformative process made possible through the manipulation of karma. At the same time the pious creation and use of bianxiang, notably in mortuary rites and sacrifice, represent the ongoing vernacularization of ritual access to the supernatural which was to characterize the Song and subsequent dynasties.
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