Stephen F. Teiser
Stephen F. Teiser teaches history of religions at Princeton
University, where he is D.T. Suzuki Professor in Buddhist Studies
and Director of the Program
in East Asian Studies. He is interested in the
interaction between Buddhism and indigenous Chinese traditions,
brought into focus through the wealth of sūtras, non-canonical
texts, and artistic evidence unearthed on the Silk Road. An updated
edition of his 1994 book on concepts of hell (The
Scripture on the Ten Kings and the Making of Purgatory in
Medieval Chinese Buddhism) will soon be published in
Chinese translation. His current research, tentatively
entitled Curing with Karma, focuses on
Buddhist liturgical manuscripts from Dunhuang.
His chosen item
is Pelliot chinois 2583, a Chinese scroll from the
collections of the Bibliothèque
nationale de France.
Stephen F. Teiser writes:
Pelliot chinois 2583is a scroll composed of thirteen
sheets of paper originally written one at a time. Each sheet was
a liturgy accompanying a single ritual act of donation on behalf
of Dunhuang’s nuns, monks, and laypeople. Some of the rites were
intended for healing sickness; others were documents used in
memorial observances or the distribution of nuns’ clothing after
death. Most of the prayers are short, occupying less than half a
sheet. The detail of the page shown here (verso, sheet 4) opens
by listing the type and amount of items offered: 'One piece of
purple hanging silk (crossed out and corrected: cotton), one set
consisting of official robe and silk skirt, one silk
side-buttoning blouse.' The next two lines contain the liturgy
proper, explaining that a nun named Mingqian has been sick,
dedicating the donation’s merit to her cure, and asking that
chanting accompany the rite. The fourth line records the donor’s
name, the date, and a benediction. The last line seems to be the
signature of the monastic official responsible for the
disposition of the gift, a monk Huiyan.
Both sides of this
fourteen-foot long scroll are fascinating. The side now labeled
verso by the Bibliothèque nationale was actually composed first,
each sheet a written artifact of a ritual performance. The rites
were undertaken on behalf of otherwise unknown local people
during the period of Tibetan rule (786-848). The prayers provide
refreshingly concrete, direct witness to the worries and hopes,
the simple words and possessions of the performers. Later,
someone collected all thirteen liturgies and pasted them
end-to-end in scroll format, whose verso side (now labeled
recto) was used for recording two more texts. The first, main
text is a Chinese-language commentary authored by the most
prolific bilingual monk at Dunhuang (Tibetan name: Gö Chödrup,
Chinese name: Wu Facheng), on a Buddhist scripture on causality
and the Four Noble Truths, The Rice Stalk
Sūtra (Skt.: Śālistambhaka-sūtra). The second, shorter text on
this side of the manuscript is a partial calendar for the year
821, written upside-down and beginning from the end of the
manuscript. For each day the almanac lists reigning deities;
correlates for cycles of weather, sun, and moon; types of
activities deemed lucky or unlucky; and so on.
The
ensemble of the scroll’s two sides makes this my favorite
manuscript in the Dunhuang collection. The texts offer
elaborations of core Buddhist teachings plus hemerological
calculation of lucky and unlucky days, all constructed on the
back side of humble liturgies transferring merit to nuns, monks,
and laypeople.
Link to original post on IDP blog.