Woodblock Printing and State Protection in the Inclusive Buddhist Culture of the Tanguts

Kirill Solonin and Elena Pakhoutova

A Pancharaksha Print from Khara-Khoto

Khara-Khoto, Tangut Kingdom (Xixia) Gansu Province, China ca. late 12th century

A Pancharaksha Text with Frontispiece Illustrations; excavated from Khara-Khoto, Tangut Kingdom (Xixia), Gansu Province, China; ca. late 12th century, reign period of the emperor Renzong (1124–1193, r. 1139–1193); xylographed ink on paper, concertina binding, 60 pages of text and 4 illustrated pages; 10 7/8 × 4 3/8 in. (27.5 × 11 cm); Institute of Oriental Manuscript Research; P. K. Kozlov Collection; Russian Academy of Sciences, Saint Petersburg, Russia; Tang 214, n40–41/1

Summary

The Tangut state served as an important link along the trade routes connecting cultural regions of Central and Inner Asia with the Western world. Between the foundation of the Tangut state in the eleventh century and its destruction by the Chinggis Khan’s armies in the thirteenth, the cosmopolitan Tangut state embraced diverse sources of Buddhist culture and systematically integrated them into its own cultural production. Historian Kirill Solonin and art historian Elena Pakhoutova examine a printed image of state protection from the lost desert city of Khara-Khoto.

Key Terms

deity

Different Asian religious traditions posit different types of divine beings. Hindus generally believe in an all-encompassing God-like being, called Brahman. They also believe in a variety of other gods (deva), including Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. Early Buddhists denied the existence of a single, all-powerful creator god. Nevertheless, they always recognized a variety of powerful spirits, like gandharvas and nagas. Mahayana Buddhists came to see bodhisattvas as beings of enormous power, and buddhas themselves as cosmic beings with the ability to create entire universes. Buddhist and Bon traditions in Tibet worshiped a variety of other gods (Tib. lha), like the mountain gods, or gods of the land. According to Buddhist tradition, enlightened deities are seen as beyond the cycle of death and rebirth, whereas gods (including Hindu gods) are not.

dharani

In Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism, a dharani is a short, Sanskrit language text or spell-like formulas thought to have protective power when written or recited out loud, often as part of a ritual. Often inscribed on objects or at sacred sites, their power through the written physical presence is associated with long life, purification, and protection. Dharanis are similar to mantras, but usually longer. One important dharani is the Ushnishavijaya Dharani. The Pancharaksha is another important text that contains five dharanis of protection.

iconography

In the Himalayan context, iconography refers to the forms found in religious images, especially the attributes of deities: body color, number of arms and legs, hand gestures, poses, implements, and retinue. Often these attributes are specified in ritual texts (sadhanas), which artists are expected to follow faithfully.

patronage

A practice of hiring and commissioning artists to create works of art. In religious context patrons were often rulers, religious leaders, as well as ordinary people. (see also donor)

sutra

Sutras are written down words spoken by the Buddha Shakyamuni, narrated by his disciples. Sutra texts comprise the foundation of the textual canon of all Buddhist traditions. Sutras generally begin with the words, “Thus have I heard,” and continue to describe the place, time, and context in which the Buddha gave the teaching. Important Mahayana sutras include the Avatamsaka Sutra and the Prajnaparamita Sutras, as well as many others. Other important types of Buddhist text are avadanas, dharanis, as well as tantras.

Tanguts

The Tanguts were an ethnic group in medieval East-Central Asia, who called themselves Minyak and spoke a language distantly related to Tibetan. Between 1038 and 1227 CE the Tanguts ruled a state in what is now the Chinese provinces of Ningxia, Gansu, and Qinghai. This state took the Chinese dynastic name of Xia, also called Xixia “Western Xia.” The Tangut-Xixia emperors were major patrons of Buddhism, inviting both Chinese and Tibetan monks to teach in the capital, and instituting major Buddhist translation and printing projects in three languages. The Tangut state was destroyed by the armies of Chinggis Khan, leading to their absorption into the Mongol Empire, where many Tanguts served as officials.

This printed image and a text it illustrates offer one example of many prints from carved woodblocks produced in the Tangut state of Xixia and excavated from the ancient city of Khara-Khoto. The multiethnic state formed by the Dangxiang, a Tibeto-Burman-speaking people, was known in Chinese sources as Western (Xi) Xia. Its Tangut name means the Great State of White and High, and its territory stretched west of the Yellow River’s (Huang He) northern bend known as (Hexi, “west of the river”), flanked by the Mongolian and Tibetan Plateaus. The area served as an important link along the so-called Silk Roads, the trade routes connecting cultural regions of Central and with the Western world.

Chinese records indicate that the Tangut state was established in 1038, when the Tangut emperor Li Yuanhao (r. 1032–1048) officially informed the Northern Song court of his new status, but Tangut texts count the state’s chronology from Yuanhao’s grandfather Li Jiqian (963–1004). Tangut script was created not long before 1038. Mongol invasions of 1215 and 1227 destroyed the Tangut state; its population was assimilated into the or integrated into Tibetan areas.

Fig. 2 The Tangut state of Western (Xi) Xia and Khara-Khoto in relation to various geographical landmarks

Khara-Khoto

The city of Khara-Khoto was an important northern outpost of the Xixia state through the mid-fourteenth century and remained populated even after the state’s demise in 1227. Studies of a large cache of multilingual printed and written Buddhist texts, documents, and printed and painted images offer insights into the ’ history, religion, art, literature, economy, and cross-cultural connections.

was crucial for unifying and protecting the Tangut realm and maintaining its prosperity. The state propagated Buddhist teachings by acquiring Buddhist texts inviting foreign monks to assist in translation projects, building temples, and importing .

Tangut Buddhism

Chinese texts served as the initial source of Buddhism among the Tangut elite, as confirmed by acquisitions of the Buddhist canon in Chinese and its translation into Tangut. The cosmopolitan Tangut state embraced diverse sources of Buddhist culture—Indian, Tibetan, Chinese, and Khitan (Liao)—and systematically integrated them into its own cultural production. Several tantric Buddhist texts were translated from Tibetan and some probably from .

The Tanguts’ expansion westward brought them into direct contact with Tibetans of the eastern Tibetan region () and facilitated connections with central Tibet, increasing exchanges with Tibetan Buddhist traditions. , , and Buddhist lineages spread in Xixia alongside Chinese Buddhist traditions. Tibetan and Tangut sources indicate that some Tibetan monks served as Imperial and State Preceptors in the Xixia court.

Tangut Buddhist hierarchy was headed by the State Preceptor, a position of “supreme” rank, according to Tangut legislation. Another important figure was the imperial preceptor. It seems that in practice, the imperial preceptor’s single duty was to perform tantric empowerment () rituals for the emperor, and the highly prestigious position included an assigned temple.

Triggered by the inflow of Tibetan texts during the reign of Renzong Renxiao (r. 1139–1193), new translations of canonical scriptures continued, with the focus shifted to revise earlier translations. The arrival of the Indian translator Sumatikirti in the late eleventh century and the Kashmiri Buddhist scholar (pandita) Jayananda with his Tibetan disciples in the 1140s perhaps enabled the Tangut transcription of invocation spells () and mantras to more closely reflect Sanskrit sounds.

The Amended and Revised Legal Code of the Tiansheng Reign Period, promulgated in the mid-twelfth century, stipulated regulations for monastic ordination as well as the curriculum of Buddhist doctrinal learning and mandatory texts for monastic communities’ recitations. The list included several texts associated with the protection of the state and the well-being of sentient beings, as indicated by the Tangut imperial preface to the publication.

Woodblock Prints (Xylographs)

The method of printing text and images by pressing paper to carved wooden blocks that have been inked and the movable-type method were well documented in the region. Tanguts made a significant contribution to the development of printing technology as early as the beginning of the twelfth century. In Khara-Khoto, texts in Tibetan and translated into Tangut and Chinese had been printed from woodblocks by the mid-twelfth century.

The printing of images was widely practiced, and images often served as frontispieces of the printed Buddhist texts, as in this example. The origins of the printed images’ compositions remain in question, but portable scroll paintings and illuminated manuscripts were among the sources of the prints’ . Mass-produced printed images, in turn, helped to propagate the iconographies, visual conventions, and messages these images and texts conveyed.

Most of the printed publications in Xixia were distributed by the imperial court for several statewide Buddhist assemblies in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, but some texts may have been published through alternative venues. The names of the temples mentioned in the publications’ colophons indicate the translators’ affiliations and, possibly, publication sites.

Many of the materials discovered throughout the former Tangut territory, especially the texts of tantric instructions, were not listed in the legal regulations for the monasteries. This suggests that Buddhism in the Tangut state performed two functions. “Popular” Buddhism utilized various manuscripts and printed esoteric instructions (). Worship of , broadly popular in Xixia, may have been expressly intended for the well-being and good rebirths of the royal family. Though not officially sanctioned, Maitreya-related were published and widely distributed during Buddhist assemblies. “Official” Buddhism employed the sanctioned canonical texts, including the state protection texts of Tibetan and Chinese origin.

The Illustrated Buddhist Text for Protection of the State

This printed work of the Five Sutras was published on the order of the Tangut emperor Renzong for nationwide distribution. Its title and the opening line of a preface, composed by Qi Qiu, appear to the left of the image. The sutras, known as Five Protections (Pancharaksha), are associated with Five Protector Goddesses and their specific mantras. Chinese and Tibetan traditions include translations of the Pancharaksha texts with dharani and instructions for their use, and various Tangut texts have similar content.

This Tangut translation of the discourse (sutra) from Tibetan, printed in a folded (concertina) format, sets up the text’s narrative. The Buddha and the Four Great Kings offer protection in the aftermath of an earthquake at Vaishali. The frontispiece combines two images rendered in a seemingly Chinese mode. The left frame (fig. 3) shows a semiwrathful seated on a large throne with left leg pendent, surrounded by her retinue. Dressed in Indic fashion, she has four heads, each with three eyes; her hair is standing on end; and her eight arms hold various implements. This is one of the five goddesses, Mahasahasrapramardani. The cartouche reads, “Root Dharani Heavenly Mother ‘protecting the Great Thousands of States.’” The tantric iconography of the deity stems from Indian and Nepalese models, as in the illuminated manuscripts of Pancharaksha in the National Museum in Delhiand San Diego Museum of Art(fig. 4). In the lower corners of the image, two figures in Tangut royal attire sit with their hands in supplication, and the whole tableau is framed by a fence. The image diverges from earlier prints of Pancharakshadharanis found in Dunhuang.

Fig. 3

Goddess Mahasahasrapramardani; detail of A Pancharaksha Text with Frontispiece Illustrations; excavated from Khara-Khoto, Tangut state of Xixia; Institute of Oriental Manuscript Research; P. K. Kozlov Collection; Russian Academy of Sciences, Saint Petersburg, Russia; Tang 214, n40–41/1

Fig. 4

Sri Ananda Buddhi, Nepalese (b. 12th century); Goddess Mahasahasrapramardani, detail of a folio from a Pancharaksha (Five Protections) illuminated manuscript; Nepal; 1138; ink and opaque watercolor on palm leaf; 2 1/4 × 23 5/8 in. (5.6 cm × 60 cm); San Diego Museum of Art; Edvin Binney 3rd Collection; 1990.156.1; photograph courtesy of the San Diego Museum of Art

The right frame image (fig. 5) follows the previous modes of Chinese sutra frontispieces in printed form (fig. 6). A kneeling royal figure in front of replaces the elder Subhuti, depicted in another sutra. To the right of the Buddha are Ananda and Bodhisattvas and , identified by cartouches. The convention of depicting royal figures as participants inserted into the scenes in Tangut Buddhist images indicates imperial . The whole group faces the goddess and the text, denoting their importance.

Fig. 5

Buddha Shakyamuni with Retinue and Tangut Emperor in Supplication, detail 2 of fig. 1, A Pancharaksha Text with Frontispiece Illustrations; excavated from Khara-Khoto, Tangut state of Xixia; Institute of Oriental Manuscript Research; P. K. Kozlov Collection; Russian Academy of Sciences, Saint Petersburg, Russia; Tang 214, n40–41/1.

The cartouche reads, “Buddha Shakyamuni preaching the Sutra of a Thousand States in Vaishali” (the sutra text itself states that the Buddha taught it in Rajagriha).

Fig. 6

Frontispiece of the Chinese translation of Vajracchedika Prajnaparamita Sutra (Diamond Sutra); Dunhuang, present-day Gansu Province, China; 11 May 868 CE; woodblock print, ink on paper; fully unrolled 10 7/8 × 196 1/4 in. (27.6 × 499.5 cm); British Library, London; Or.8210/P.2 recto, detail; image from British Library / Granger. All rights reserved

During the two hundred years of the Xixia state’s existence and well after its destruction in 1227 by the expanding Mongol Empire of Chinggis Khan, the Tangut people and their Buddhist culture, with material objects like this print, produced a lasting sociopolitical legacy in Central Asia, including in their conqueror’s culture, religious authority, and state rituals.

Footnotes

Russian scholars date the Tangut state from 982 to 1227.E.I. Kychanov, Каталог Tангутских Буддийских Памятников Института Bостоковедения Российской Академии Наук. [A Catalogue of the Tangut Buddhist Texts in the Institute of Oriental Studies Russian Academy of Sciences], [In Japanese and Russian] (Kyoto: University of Kyoto, 1999), 49–58; Imre Galambos, Translating Chinese Tradition and Teaching Tangut Culture: Manuscripts and Printed Books from Khara-Khoto (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015), 102–8.

See Imre Galambos, Translating Chinese Tradition and Teaching Tangut Culture: Manuscripts and Printed Books from Khara-Khoto (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015), 120–28.

See Shen Weirong, “Studies on Chinese Texts of the Yogic Practices of Tibetan Tantric Buddhism Found in Khara Khoto of Tangut Xia [I],” Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie 15 (2005): 187–230, 189.

Imre Galambos, Translating Chinese Tradition and Teaching Tangut Culture: Manuscripts and Printed Books from Khara-Khoto (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015), 17–96.

Kirill Solonin, “The Glimpses of Tangut Buddhism,” Central Asiatic Journal 52, no. 1 (2008): 64–74, and Kirill Solonin, “The Formation of Tangut Ideology: Buddhism and Confucianism,” in Buddhism in Central Asia I: Patronage, Legitimation, Sacred Space, and Pilgrimage, ed. C. Meinert (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 129–35; Shi Jinbo, The Economy of Western Xia: A Study of 11th to 13th Century Tangut Records (Leiden: Brill, 2021).

Leonard W. J. van der Kuijp, “Jayānanda. A Twelfth Century Guoshi from Kashmir Among the Tangut,” Central Asiatic Journal 37, no. 3/4 (1993): 188–97; Solonin, Kirill [Suoluoning 索羅寧], “Xixia fojiao xitong xing chutan” 西夏佛教系統性初探 [Sinitic Buddhism in the Tangut state],” Shijie zongjiao yanjiu 2013, no. 4 (2013): 22–39. On the complexity of the Buddhist sources in Xixia, see Kirill Solonin, “The Glimpses of Tangut Buddhism,” Central Asiatic Journal 52, no. 1 (2008): 67–70; Peter Kornicki, “Steps Towards a History of the Tangut Book: Some Recent Publications,” East Asian Publishing and Society 2 (2012): 85; E.I. Kychanov, Каталог Tангутских Буддийских Памятников Института Bостоковедения Российской Академии Наук. [A Catalogue of the Tangut Buddhist Texts in the Institute of Oriental Studies Russian Academy of Sciences], [In Japanese and Russian] (Kyoto: University of Kyoto, 1999).

On Tangut texts of Tibetan origin, see Kirill Solonin, “Local Literatures: Tangut/Xixia,” in Brill’s Encyclopedia of Buddhism, ed. Jonathan A. Silk, vol. 1 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 844–59.

Elliot Sperling, “Lama to the King of Hsia,” Journal of the Tibet Society 7 (1987): 32–33; Ruth Dunnell, “The Hsia Origins of the Yüan Institution of Imperial Preceptor,” Asia Major 5, no. 1 (1992): 85–111.

E. I. Kychanov, “Novye Zakony” Tangutskogo Gosudarstva [“New Laws” of the Tangut State] (Moscow: GRVL, 2013), 227.

Wei Wen 魏文, “Zuishang le ji benxu xianshi ji yichuan yuanliu kao” 最上樂集本續顯釋記譯傳源流考,” in Studies on Chinese and Tibetan Buddhism, Han Zang Fojiao Yanjiu 漢藏佛學研究 / Sino-Tibetan Buddhist Studies, ed. Shen Weirong (Beijing: Zhongguo Zangxue chubanshe, 2013), 317–18.

See Kirill Solonin, “Local Literatures: Tangut/Xixia,” in Brill’s Encyclopedia of Buddhism, ed. Jonathan A. Silk, vol. 1 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 844–59. An early monument of Tangut epigraphy, the “Inscription Commemorating the Renovation of Ganying Stupa of the State Protection Monastery” marks the importance of this function of Buddhism. See Ruth Dunnell, The Great State of White and High: Buddhism and State Formation in Eleventh-Century Xia (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1996).

K.M. Bogdanov, “Nekotorye Otogi i Perspectivy Issledovania Materialov Tangutskogo Fonda [Some Results and Perspectives of Research of the Tangut Collection],” in Tanguty v Tsentralnoi Asii [Tanguts in Central Asia], ed. I.F. Popova (Moscow: GRVL, 2012), 78n26; Imre Galambos, Translating Chinese Tradition and Teaching Tangut Culture: Manuscripts and Printed Books from Khara-Khoto (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015), 178–82; Peter Kornicki, “Steps Towards a History of the Tangut Book: Some Recent Publications,” East Asian Publishing and Society 2 (2012): 84–88; Agnieszka Helman-Ważny, The Archaeology of Tibetan Books, Brill’s Tibetan Studies Library 36 (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 121–23, 68, fig. 28.

Such as the temples Daduminsi 大度民寺 and Xiansheng Wuming Jingshe 顯生五明精舍

See Kirill Solonin [Suoluoning 索羅寧], “Xixia fojiao xitong xing chutan” 西夏佛教系統性初探 [Sinitic Buddhism in the Tangut state],” Shijie zongjiao yanjiu 2013, no. 4 (2013): 22–39 and Kirill Solonin, “Local Literatures: Tangut/Xixia,” in Brill’s Encyclopedia of Buddhism, ed. Jonathan A. Silk, vol. 1 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 844–59.

E.I. Kychanov, Каталог Tангутских Буддийских Памятников Института Bостоковедения Российской Академии Наук. [A Catalogue of the Tangut Buddhist Texts in the Institute of Oriental Studies Russian Academy of Sciences], [In Japanese and Russian] (Kyoto: University of Kyoto, 1999), 245–46. The title’s Tangut transcription is from the original Sanskrit title, generally thought to represent a translation from Tibetan.

Gergely Hidas, “Buddhism, Kingship and the Protection of the State: The Suvarṇaprabhāsottamasūtra and Dhāraṇī Literature,” in Śaivism and the Tantric Traditions: Essays in Honour of Alexis G. J. S. Sanderson, ed. Dominic Goodall et al., Gonda Indological Studies 22 (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 237–40; Gergely Hidas, “Rituals in the Mahāsāhasrapramardanasūtra,” in Puṣpikā: Tracing Ancient India through Texts and Traditions, ed. Nina Mirnig and M. Williams Szántó, Contributions to Current Research in Indology 3 (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2013), 225–32.

Her front right hand holds a vajra, the other three hold a sword, arrows, and a goad/trident. Her front left hand holds a noose, displaying a gesture of vigilance (tarjani mudra), and the other three hold a jewel, a bow, and a trident. Jinah Kim, “A Book of Buddhist Goddesses: Illustrated Manuscripts of the Pañcarakṣā Sūtra and Their Ritual Use,” Artibus Asiae 70, no. 2 (2010): 265–66; Benoytosh Bhattacharyya, Sadhanamala, Facsimile, vol. 2 (New Delhi: Gyan Books, 1928) 2017, 2: 406.

See Benoytosh Bhattacharyya, The Indian Buddhist Iconography (Calcutta: K. L. Mukhopadhyay, 1958), fig. 197; Jinah Kim, “A Book of Buddhist Goddesses: Illustrated Manuscripts of the Pañcarakṣā Sūtra and Their Ritual Use,” Artibus Asiae 70, no. 2 (2010): fig. 1.

The Mahapratisara dharani print is discussed in Camillo A. Formigatti, “A Forgotten Chapter in South Asian Book History? A Bird’s Eye View of Sanskrit Print Culture,” in Tibetan Printing: Comparisons, Continuities, and Change, ed. Hildegard Diemberger, Franz-Karl Ehrhard, and Peter Kornicki, Brill’s Tibetan Studies Library 39 (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 79–80, fig. 6.1; Paul Copp, “Altar, Amulet, Icon. Transformations in Dhāraṇī Amulet Culture, 740–980,” Cahiers d ́Extrême-Asie 17 (2008): 243–44, 257–58.

See Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra in the British Library, London, Or.8210/P.2 recto. For examples of the Yuan and Ming periods, Shih-shan Susan Huang, “Reassessing Printed Buddhist Frontispieces from Xi Xia,” Zhejiang University Journal of Art and Archaeology 1 (2014): figs. 6, 13, 14, 18, 35.