Medieval Buddhist of the Day

[Twitter, 10/18/19] Medieval Buddhist of the Day: the nun Faguang 法光, who commissioned two images in 532 (late N. Wei). It’s always interesting when a donor dedicates an image in honor of a living beneficiary. So many of them are given in honor of the dead that the living are the exception. The inscription is recorded in 金石補正 13, in a section of inscriptions from Longmen, but the specific location isn’t noted.

Her dedication: 比丘尼法光，為弟劉桃扶北征，願平安還，造觀世音像一區，又為亡父母造釋迦像一區，願見在眷屬一切眾生共同斯福。普泰二年四月八日造記. “The nun Faguang, her younger brother Liu Taofu being on the northern campaign, prays for his safe return, and commissions a figure of Guanyin; and for her deceased parents commissions a figure of Sakyamuni, in hopes that her living relatives and all sentient beings should share in the same blessing. Inscribed on the eighth day of the fourth month of the second year of the Putai reign [532, but see below].”

Putai was the era name for the very short-lived emperor Jiemin 節閔帝, who was put on the throne by the Erzhu clan of Xiongnu aristocrats in 531, and deposed by them a little over a year later. After the general Gao Huan 高歡 deposed the Erzhus in 532, Emperor Jiemin was imprisoned and subsequently poisoned shortly after the accession of his successor, Emperor Xiaowu 孝武帝. It was an era of poisonings and Xiaowu himself would die three years later as another aristocratic clan (the Yuwen 宇文) tried to put a puppet on the throne. But it seems pretty clear that Liu Taofu was probably a soldier serving in the battles of the rebellion of 532.

I’m not sure if we can tell here whether he served under Gao Huan, then technically the rebellious faction, or under the (formally legitimate) Erzhu generals. But most of the battles of this conflict ranged across territory to the north of Luoyang, from Yecheng to Jinyang (i.e. from modern Linzhang in southern Hebei to Taiyuan in Shanxi). So “northern campaign” would have been accurate in either case. Because the decisive battles took place in spring 532, they may have been happening even as Faguang commissioned her images. So the inscription captures the impact on one family of a historically decisive moment. We don’t know if Liu Taofu ever made it home, but it is to be hoped that he was unimportant enough to be spared some of the worst of the blood-soaked 530s, and to come home to his sister.