The Agency of Relations at Baoshan

Abstract

For medieval Chinese Buddhist practitioners, carving inscriptions and images in stone was an important part of devotional and mortuary practice. In this paper I discuss sixth- and seventh-century mortuary niches at a site known as Baoshan 寶山 [Treasure Mountain], in Henan, China. At sites such as this, stone-working techniques went hand-in-hand with the technologies of realisation, shaping one another to shape the landscape. Three kinds of ‘work’ linking word and image are highlighted. Buddhist textual and visual ‘good works’ are supported by the Buddhist doctrines of merit (puṇya) and skilful means (upāya). At Baoshan, there is the work of memorialisation, the processes of transmuting deceased members of the practice community into enduring presences through the carving of mortuary niches. Second, the work of carving eulogies and images is part of the transformation of a landscape into a collective responsive field of merit, an ongoing process that I characterise as a ‘practicescape.' Finally, there is the individual practitioner’s process of transforming ‘self’ into realisation of buddha-nature, which the founder of the site describes using metaphors connoting both individual effort and natural response. These three related Buddhist works of word and image involve a shift in focus from the agency of actors to the agency of relations, which I discuss with reference to the work of Bruno Latour and Andrew Pickering.