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[Twitter, 6/11/19] Medieval Buddhists of the day: Qian’er Shenmeng 鉗耳神猛 and his aunt 姑, Qian’er Nüti 鉗耳女体. Shenmeng and his family sponsored this four-sided stele in honor of his recently deceased aunt in 584, during the Sui dynasty. It’s in the collection of the Beilin museum in Xi’an. It’s unusual (though not unheard-of) for a
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[Twitter 6/10/19] Medieval Buddhist of the Day: An anonymous donor from Niche 11 in cave 169 at Binglingsi, located southwest of Lanzhou in Gansu province. These paintings date to the Western Qin, about 440 CE. The donor’s cartouche was never filled in, so we do not know her name. Look at the rightmost of the
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[Twitter, 6/7/19] The Medieval Buddhists of the Day are a series of patrons from the stele dedicated in 530, at the end of the Northern Wei, by the monk Sengzhi 僧智 and the layman Xue Fenggui 薛鳳規 and a Buddhist charitable society of over 100 other members. It’s Friday, so I’m thinking about names, and
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[Twitter 6/6/19] Medieval Buddhists of the Day: Kong Que 孔雀 and Xue Mingling 薛明陵, of Boxing County 博興縣 in Shandong. This is a romance in three images across three dynasties, all gilt-bronze and all found in the caches on the grounds of the Longhua Temple 龍華寺 in Boxing. Two other things. First: Kong Que’s full
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[Twitter, 6/5/19] Medieval Buddhists of the Day: Gao Lang 高朗 and Cao Adai 曹阿待, a husband-and-wife duo. They are known by the rather jolly donor figures that depict them on the base of the Buddhist image they sponsored in 496. She is so ample, and he so slender, that they kind of look like Jack
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[Twitter 6/4/19] Medieval Buddhist of the Day, staying home with a feverish kid edition: Han Miaodong 韓妙動 was one of the donors of the well-known cache of white marble statues found at Quyang 曲陽, Hebei, in the 1950s, one of the first caches of buried sculptures to be found, and one of the few outside
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[Twitter 5/31/19] Medieval Buddhist of the Day, Friday onomastics edition: On the right is Liu Ayi 劉阿姨, also from the Zhai Xingzu stele of 523. What makes her noteworthy is that, thanks to drift in language usage and naming patterns, her personal name is now the word for “Auntie.” The name wasn’t remarkable at the
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[Twitter, 5/30/19] Dang Faduan 瓽法端 was a female official in the women’s quarters of the Northern Wei palace at Luoyang. Dang had planned to dedicate a Buddhist image but was unable to bring the project off before she passed away prematurely 不幸邁終. In answer to her wish, Cheng Siyun 承祀允, the leader of the imperial
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[Twitter, 5/29/19] Medieval Buddhist of the Day: Feng Bao 封抱, who died in 695, during the Zhou interregnum of Empress Wu. His age at death is given as 68 sui, so he was most likely born in 628, during the Tang. His epitaph is known from at least one rubbing, at Kyoto University. Here’s a
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[Twitter, 5/28/19] Meet Hedoulin(g) Sidiba 紇豆陵俟地拔, whose name appears twice (in two slightly different transliterations) on the stele of Zhai Xingzu, found in Yanshi, Henan, and dating to 523 CE, in the late Northern Wei. Here he is on the back of the stele: He was a major donor to the stele and his name
Medieval Buddhist of the Day 