Medieval Buddhist of the Day

[Twitter 3/28/23] Medieval Buddhist of the Day: Zhang Yongnu 張永奴, who dedicated a white marble image in 564 under the Northern Qi. It survives as a broken base, part of the Xiudesi hoard found in Quyang in 1954, and kept in the collection of the Palace Museum in Beijing. In earlier MBOTD posts I’ve pointed out how all kinship terms are relational, and how they’re used can suggest who’s at the center of a dedication. Zhang Yongnu uses kinship terms in his dedication to divert focus from himself as patron to his daughter as beneficiary.

His dedication reads: 河清三年歲在甲申四月九日，比丘尼法莿因患身喪，父張永奴敬造玉像一軀，立侍圓滿，真相精奇。緣此功果作資亡者；並沾法界含生，願同歸聖路. “In the third year of the Heqing reign (564), on the ninth day of the fourth month, the nun Faci passed away from illness. Her father, Zhang Yongnu, reverently made one marble image, complete with all its attendants, a true and marvellous likeness. Let the fruits of this merit provide for the deceased one; moreover, let it also benefit all living things in the universe, in hopes that they all together join the pathway to Buddhahood.”

On one level, this is a pretty conventional dedication by a parent for a child. But the genuinely conventional way of saying this would be something like 張永奴為亡女比丘尼法莿敬造玉像一軀 “Zhang Yongnu reverently made a marble image for his deceased daughter, the nun Faci.” The difference is who counts as “ego” (the focal person in a kinship diagram) Zhang Yongnu’s dedication reminds us of the bonds that routinely remained in place between monastics and their families in early medieval China, despite the stereotype of the 出家人 “family-leaver” (another name for monk or nun). In addition, it shifts the focus away from his patronage to his daughter’s passing, which is oddly affecting. All patrons who donate for another person’s benefit are transferring their earned merit to someone else’s karmic account, but nevertheless the focus tends to remain on their merit, their action. Zhang Yongnu has put himself in second place here, which seems more in tune with what he is actually trying to do, and his inscription thereby speaks with the voice of a grieving parent.

(This inscription can be found in 定州白石佛像, no. 290. The second character of the nun’s name is a difficult-to-identify 碑別字, so Faci is a guess and I welcome alternate suggestions if you are a medieval onomastics nerd like me)