Medieval Buddhist of the Day

[Twitter, 1/23/23] Medieval Buddhist of the Day: Lei Mingxiang 雷明香, who sponsored a stele in 571 under the N. Zhou. I’ve been thinking all week about visible and invisible women and Chinese Buddhist monuments; in particular about the way in which a closed oxcart can be a portrait. Lei Mingxiang’s stele is from Yaoxian 耀縣 in Shaanxi and is held at the Yaowangshan museum. She dedicated it to the memory of her deceased husband Tongti Qianchi 同蹄乾熾, along with a group of her relatives including members of the Lei, Tongti, and Fumeng 夫蒙 families. Lei herself is clearly the principal donor of this monument: she and her husband are represented front and center of the monument, he as a mounted man with several attendants, and she in the usual enclosed oxcart – except she is not totally concealed. Here is a detail of a rubbing (as published in 顏娟英，北朝佛教石刻拓片百品 p.224) in which you can see her face peeking out of the window of the oxcart. She seems to be holding up one of those strange little asymmetrical fans with the stick on the side like a flag:

It’s totally normal for the beneficiary of a monument like this to be represented as one of the donors. Tongti Qianchi was already deceased when the monument was dedicated. Lei Mingxiang expressed her wishes for her late husband thus: 願亡夫託生西方無量壽國，眾惡崩消，萬善慶集。”May my deceased husband be reborn in the West, in the land of Amitayus [or, the land of infinite longevity]; may the multitude of evils be swept away, and may the myriad blessings gather around him.”

Including the deceased beneficiary among the donors reminds us that the point of donors was not simply to represent those who paid for the monument, but rather to represent those involved in the project in the act of making merit – here, by offering reverence to the Buddha – so given that the point was to make merit for the benefit of Tongti Qianchi, why shouldn’t he be represented participating in that merit-making, however fictively? He may also have done so in life, though we should remember that representation can be aspirational: a widow who wished her husband had been more devout in his lifetime, for example, could certainly represent him that way on a monument like this. We’ll never know. But an interesting detail of these figures is their orientation to each other and the Buddha above.

They are arranged symmetrically, in keeping with the dominant symmetry of such monuments, facing each other toward the center. But Lei Mingxiang appears on the Buddha’s left hand, Tongti Qianchi on his right. That’s the reverse of the usual arrangement of men and women The general rule is 男左女右, men on the left and women on the right, in keeping with the greater prestige of the Left as a position over the Right (among court officials – East over West, based on the ruler’s position in the north, facing south 南面而王) So Lei Mingxiang is in the prestige position here, over her deceased husband. And why shouldn’t she be? She’s the principal donor, as the inscription declares. All the other donors are identified by their relationship to her and not to her husband: The donors surnamed Lei include her brothers (兄，弟), male cousins (從弟), and nephews in the male line (姪), whereas her daughter’s son, surnamed Fumeng after his father, is identified as 外孫. The only other Tongti among the donors is her father-in-law (妐).

Kinship terms are always relational, and every one of these terms is being used in relation to Lei Mingxiang herself. It’s not surprising, then, that she placed herself in the dominant position on the front of the stele. She’s done something similar for her daughters: they appear below her and her husband while their husbands are relegated to the back side of the stele. (There do not seem to be any sons.) It’s interesting because it suggests that, as the donor, she had the ability to dictate the placement of individual figures even where that contradicted usual practice. Some monuments of this period seem to be made first and purchased/inscribed later, but this one seems to be entirely bespoke – which gives us more direct access to Lei Mingxiang’s intentions. This makes me want to dig more deeply into the substance of the dedication inscription, but that’s for another day and another thread. There’s some ethnohistory here too in that Tongti and Fumeng are apparently Qiang 羌 surnames. Maybe later; this has gone on long enough!

P.S. for anyone who looks this up in Yen Chuan-ying’s book – I disagree with some details of the transcription of kinship terms – let me know if you want to get into it.