Shaping the Stein collection’s Dunhuang corpus (2): the items from Cave 17’s ‘miscellaneous’ bundles
Shaping the Stein collection’s Dunhuang corpus (2): the items from Cave 17’s ‘miscellaneous’ bundles
In a previous blog post , we looked at the instrumental role played by Wang Yuanlu during the selection of the items from the Cave 17. Wang, who directly chose from the small repository what to hand over to Stein for inspection, was very keen to divert his attention from the so-called ‘regular’ bundles, which were composed for the most part of Buddhist sutras in Chinese and Tibetan. During their first ever transaction, which took place between 21 May and 6 June 1907, Wang Yuanlu therefore began by handing over the ‘miscellaneous’ bundles, which he seemed to hold in low estimation. To Stein’s delight, these contained mixed and diverse materials, such as manuscripts in non-Chinese languages, illustrated scrolls, paintings, drawings, ex-votos, textiles, etc. Stein picked out any of the items that jumped at him as being particularly interesting and made sure to put them aside for ‘further examination’, the phrase that he used to refer to their removal in his transaction with Wang. This
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Indeed the arrow points in the right direction. While poorly sketched, I suggest it might represent a trident arrow, similar to "vajra" or jingang arrows well known from Tang era in mijiao iconography alluding to the lighting bolt itself (not so different from the thunderbolt of Jupiter/Vajrapani or similar deities).
ReplyDeleteTrident arrow was my first thought also. The end does not look like fletching to me, but then the drawing is very poor. The trident arrow-head is not one mentioned, as I recall, in the Arthaśāstra, or in the early Buddhist references to types of arrow (which I explored in an article for JOCBS http://www.ocbs.org/ojs/index.php/jocbs/article/view/54)
DeleteMany thanks for these suggestions. I'll look again at some of the contemporaneous drawing of tridents/thunderbolts and look forward to reading the article. It is an extraordinarily poor drawing - also curious.
DeleteOf course the triśula/vajra arrow remains an hypothesis but given the context (the figure of Dianshen) an the subject of the text, I still think it's quite likely. Also, the arrow is not back to front, as stated above, so the drawing clearly represents some kind of specially designed arrow. While indic antecedents would be crucial, later chinese iconography is not always directly traceable in in indian sources. However, Tang era mijiao texts and manuals introduced a plethora of new "vajra" attributes and weapons for deities, which definitely includes "thunderbolt arrows". In this respect an ideal bridge between indian and chinese iconography would be the work attributed to Śubhakarasiṃha (Shanwuwei) about vajradhātu mandala (edited by L. Candra) but the examples proliferated, and actual weapons of this sort became part of chinese and later japanese panoplies.
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