The Making of a Savior Bodhisattva: Dizang in Medieval China (Studies in East Asian Buddhism)
Автор:Zhiru Год: 2007 Издание:University of Hawaii Press Страниц: 305 ISBN: 0824830458 In modern Chinese Buddhism, Dizang is especially popular as the sovereign of the underworld. Often represented as a monk wearing a royal crown, Dizang awaits the faithful to help them navigate the complex underworld bureaucracy, avert the sufferings of hells, and arrive at the happy realm of rebirth. The author examines this important Buddhist deity during his formative period - before he settled into his modern role as beneficent ruler of the underworld, when his iconography and hagiography were still rife with possibilities. She begins by problematizing the reigning evolutionary model of Xizang as the gradual sinicization of the Indian Ksitigarbha, a relatively unknown bodhisattva, into Dizang, an underworld deity. Such a model obscures the many-faceted personality and iconography of Dizang. Rejecting it, the author deploys a broad array of materials (scripture, epigraphy, art, ritual texts, and narrative literaure) to recomplexify Dizang and restore what this figure meant to...
