Afterlives of Broken Buddhist Icons in Medieval China

In this talk, Dr. Yulia Mylnikova (Director of the Eide Library) will explore the burial of broken Buddhist statues in sealed-off chambers within pagodas or subterranean pits— a widespread phenomenon in China and its neighboring states during the 10th–12th centuries. The value of these burials, apart from the outstanding artistic quality of its contents, lies in the wealth of information these sculptures yield about their original purpose, destruction (and subsequent repair) and the nature of their interment. Were these icons victims of iconoclastic episodes? Why were they collected, preserved until the appropriate moment, and carefully interred with a certain ritual? What drove this obsession with sculptural fragments? To address these questions, I suggest returning to a basic question: What is a Buddhist statue?

Host or Publisher Elling Eide Center