Zhenru ZHOU

The famous Dunhuang library cave epitomizes not only the adaptive reuse of caves in late-medieval China, but also, as I would argue, the epistemological shifts from religious artifacts to works of art and cultural heritage in the long twentieth century. Multiple interventions in the library cave were conducted by the local clergy and laity who aimed to revitalize the sacred site, by explorers who searched for antiquities, by artists who looked for lost art, and by researchers who retrospectively narrated the history of the legendary cave. Despite their different goals and means, all claimed to have restored the cave and revealed some truths about it. As byproducts of the restorations, the inscribed objects were mobilized, rewritten, added, and made to refer and respond to one another. By analyzing the inscriptions and the inscription-bearing objects, the study shows the triangulation of international, national, and local interventions that have been continuously reshaping the library cave.

This article explores the pictorial representation of the Buddhist hell in Kamakura (1185–1333) Japan, with a focus on a mid‑thirteenth century rokudō‑e, or Pictures of the Six Realms, preserved at Shōjuraigōji Temple. The examination revolves around how these scroll paintings convey messages of salvation by representing the symbolic architecture of the hell realm, the lowest level within the six realms. By scrutinizing the visual representation of hell landscapes in four hell scrolls in the Shōjuraigōji set, the study unveils the architectural symbolism of boundaries and pathways. A visual analysis of two hell‑tearing narrative scrolls further reveals that the key iconography involves the destruction of the architectural symbols of hell. Through tracing the concurrent processes of
constructing and destroying the imaginary space of hell, the study demonstrates that the conceptual and visual construction of hell is coupled with an equally pronounced intent for hell‑tearing. Lastly, based on the visuality of the hell‑escaping narratives, the medium of hanging scrolls, and the centrality of an Enma scroll within the Shōjuraigōji set, the author proposes a spatial arrangement of this set of fifteen scrolls that could systematically convey the visual massage of “escaping from suffering in the six courses”.

窟前建筑指紧贴崖壁修建于石窟寺前的窟檐、栈道、窟前殿堂与大像楼阁，曾构成莫高窟“波映重阁”的壮观景象，是敦煌石窟艺术的有机组成部
分，却因木结构保存较难，而今鲜有遗存。本文梳理自西魏至归义军时期莫高窟窟前建筑的发展沿革，并探讨其在石窟寺空间序列与整体景观中的作用、多种类型窟前建筑之间的互动关系，以及营造宗教意象方面的作用。北朝至隋代的莫高窟沿水平发展，石窟群通过木构窟檐与廊道衔接，整体建筑外观有助于
塑造山水间的寺院意象。而唐代以降，窟前建筑通过凸显高度、增加层次、引入巨大尺度，逐渐勾勒出兼具整体性与多样性的建筑景观，反映了造窟者对天上宫阙的丰富想象。结合木构窟檐构件的新考古发现，对归义军至西夏时期的大像阁进行复原设计。大像阁作为关键要素，不仅在崖面外观中创造了视觉秩序，还在视觉上影射了佛教重层天宫之景象。通过营造、改建、维护和使用，窟前建筑成为莫高窟建筑与社会景观的载体。

The pagoda-temple, a type of Buddhist architecture that flourished in early-medieval China, evolved from the Indian stupa prototype during the spread of Buddhism along the Silk Road. The Mogao caves near Dunhuang, an oasis town in present-day Gansu province in northwest China, preserve various images of Buddhist architecture in mural paintings and cave forms, all of which provide invaluable insight into how the dome-shaped stupa was adapted to the timber-structured construction system in China. Based on textual, visual, and archeological evidence from 5th-century Dunhuang and beyond, this article proposes a theoretical reconstruction of the prototypical pagoda-temple. Digital imaging allows us to see what the non-extant architecture would have looked like, and to ponder how Chinese pagodas have interacted with multiple architectural forms.

Buddhist Utopian vision shaped the art of Pure Land; so did many other factors, including the actual locale. Taking Mogao Cave 172 as the main case study, this article deciphers a visual paradigm of a Pure Land painting and cave in Dunhuang (Gansu, China) from the high Tang period (710–780 CE). By analyzing the visual contents and compositions, the painting medium, the cave spaces, and the cliff site, this study investigates the ways in which the architectural images and spaces in Cave 172 helped to convey the invitation to Pure Land. A close reading of the Western Pure Land painting in Cave 172 reveals the spatial construct of the Buddhist paradise that encouraged a transformative viewing experience. A situated visual analysis of Cave 172 with its auxiliary cave and neighboring caves illustrates the historical procedure in which Pure Land imageries were further integrated with the architectural spaces of caves and cave suites. As this study demonstrates, strategies of spatial layering, self-symmetry and scaling, and plastic and multimedia practices of cave-making enhanced the situatedness of the utopian vision.

This paper investigates the architectural turn of the largest Buddhist cave complex in late-medieval Dunhuang (in Northwest China) with a focus on the contemporaneous exterior structures. The structures include timber facades that cover the caves’ antechambers cut out from the vertical cliff, timber-structured ante-halls on the ground, and earthen shrines and pagodas on the cliff top. These exterior structures, albeit mostly non-extant, constituted the comprehensive built environment of the Mogao cave site. This paper first overviews the diversity of exterior structures through a theoretical reconstruction of several building types including gable-sided facades, eave-sided facades with baosha-dormers, and compound architecture comprising a double-or-triple-level pavilion-like facade and a cliff-top shrine. I then look into one of the three zones where the multiple façade types congregate. The three zones, namely, cave cloisters centered around the Southern and Northern Colossal Buddha Caves and “the Three-Story Pavilion,” defined and redefined the appearance of the mile-long complex by means of vertical extension against the pre-existing horizontal passageways and skylines. As the paper argues, the exterior structures were a collective attempt to transform the cave site into a palatial complex amid mountains, which was motivated by a longing for synchronizing the earthly and the heavenly realms.

This paper analyzes the roles architectural renovation played in the revival of Longchang Monastery of Mount Baohua (Jiangsu), a major Chinese monastery of the Vinaya School and an ordination center in Late Imperial China. Based on temple gazetteers, monastic memoirs, and modern documentation of monastic architecture and life by Prip-Møller, the author reveals the formation of a spatial system that centered at the threefold ordination rituals. It took the entire seventeenth century for the system to take form under the supervision of a Chan monk-architect Miaofeng and three successive Vinaya abbots, Sanmei, Jianyue, and Ding’an. The spatial practices, comprising a series of reconstructions, reorientations, redesigns, re-demarcations, and refurbishments, have not only reconciled fractures and defects in the monastic architecture but also built a history for the rising institute. This article examines the construction of and the narratives around three centers of the Monastery, namely, the Open-Air Platform Unit where Miaofeng erected a copper hall, the Main Courtyard where Sanmei reoriented the monastic layout to follow the Vinaya tradition, the Ordination Platform Unit where Jianyue rebuilt a stone ordination platform, and again the Open-Air Platform Unit that Ding’an had refurbished and reunited with the later centers. The forces that have driven this seemingly non-progressive history, as the author argues, are not only the consistent efforts to counteract the natural course of material decay, but also the ambition of making a living history without beginning or end.

Caves, cut into a cliff rather than built on the ground, provide an alternative approach to defining space. The most provocative of them provoke fundamental questions about the very nature of architecture—what it is and how it functions. This dissertation investigates how the architecture of the Mogao caves near Dunhuang—a major cave complex in northwest China built from the fourth to the fourteenth centuries—transformed a desert cliff site into a Pure Land, a Buddhist paradise on earth. Through analyzing five selected landmark caves, cave composites, and cave clusters at Mogao, this dissertation locates the architectural turn in new design and construction paradigms of the Tibetan (778–848) and the Guiyijun (848–1036) periods. The new architecture played critical roles in the history making and placemaking of Mogao by mediating between the past and present times and bridging actual and visionary places. Because it evolved from the particular site of Mogao and was paradigmatic in the Dunhuang-Anxi region, this mode of architecture is termed the Dunhuang style.The dissertation begins by investigating a special cave composite as a microhistory that epitomizes the architectural transformation of the Mogao cave complex. Known as the three-story pavilion, this composite comprises three decorated caves arranged vertically plus the famous Dunhuang library cave, all covered by a three-level timber façade. Chapter 1 reconstructs the process of the pavilion’s becoming, highlighting its continual redevelopment and reintegration throughout the ninth to eleventh century. The next four chapters contextualize the pavilion’s complex form and the changes in the architectural developments of the Mogao cave complex during the Guiyijun period. It examines how four new paradigms—synthesis of pictorial and spatial arts, competition for verticality, externalization of Pure Land imagery, and cave grouping—made the cave architecture more comprehensive and the Mogao site more wondrous. Chapter 2 investigates how a pagoda-themed cave could embrace multiple pagoda imageries that are conveyed through pictorial, plastic, and architectural mediums and that institute a ritual place endowed with miraculous forces. Chapter 3 demonstrates the leading role of the colossal-image caves and their multilevel porches in shaping the overall imagery of the Mogao complex as heavenly palaces of unparalleled height. Chapter 4 understands the sweeping refurbishments of the Mogao cliff of the tenth century as a new paradigm of Pure Land art, which integrated the interior and open-air murals and the timber-framed porches into a tangible image of the sacred realm. Chapter 5 discusses the key roles that the central-altar caves that were commissioned by the Guiyijun leaders played in shaping the old district of Mogao into an allusion to the future Buddha Maitreya’s Pure Land, the only Pure Land prophesied to appear in the mundane world.

Book review of TRACES OF THE SARVĀSTIVĀDINS IN THE
BUDDHIST MONASTERIES OF KUCHA
Vignato, Giuseppe, Satomi Hiyama, Petra Kieffer-Pülz, and Yoko Taniguchi.
Traces of the Sarvāstivādins in the Buddhist Monasteries of Kucha, New
Delhi: Dev Publishers & Distributors, 2022