Imaging Wisdom by Jacob N Kinnard

Author:Jacob N Kinnard [Kinnard, Jacob N]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9788120817937
Google: uzZM9ZK-R1QC
Publisher: Motilal Banarsidass Publ.
Published: 2001-01-15T03:37:58+00:00

Chapter Five

REPRESENTING

PRAJÑĀPĀRAMITĀ

A person will indeed know this: When the noble, perfectly enlightened Tathāgata was training in the way of the bodhisattva, he learned this Prajñāpāramitā, [and so] we too should learn it, thinking, “This is our teacher."

Astasāhasrikāprajñāpāramitā1

I have argued in the last chapter that Śākyamuni is from the very beginning intimately associated with prajñā, and that this association, furthermore, was also at play in even the earliest images of the Buddha. It is wisdom that ultimately enables him to attain enlightenment, that enables Gautama to triumph over Mara and to become the Buddha. And it is wisdom that is at the heart of the dharma that he first makes known at Sārnāth. With the rise of the Mahāyāna, prajñā moves to the center of Buddhist discursive and ritual practice as the perfection par excellence. I have also explored in the last chapter the ways in which - through the use of what I shall call “resonant iconography” - this abstract cognitive faculty is indirectly visually expressed, represented, and presented when the Buddha is sculpturally represented. I have thus argued that during the Pāla period, when prajñā is very much at the center of Buddhist discourse and practice, to see an image of the Buddha was to see wisdom, since the essential quality of the Buddha is this prajñā that leads him (and, ideally, the viewer of, or participant in, such an image) to enlightenment.

In this chapter, I explore the direct representation of prajñā itself, specifically in the form of the deity Prajñāpāramitā, who first emerges in India sometime around the eighth century. I pay close attention here to the textual discourse on prajñāpāramitā, particularly that contained within the Astasāhasrikāprajñāpāramitā and related texts, since it is this discourse, I argue, that underlies and leads to the sculptural representation of what is frequently called in Western scholarship the “Goddess of Wisdom,” the “Mother of the Buddhas,” even “Mother Wisdom."

I have divided the present chapter into three main parts. First, I examine the textual discourse on the supremacy of the prajñāpāramitā as an object of veneration. An important component in this discourse is the ideological shift away from the veneration of the physical remains of the Buddha to the veneration of the prajñāpāramitā text itself. An essential component in this shift, in turn, is an amalgamation of the received conceptions of the rūpa and dharmakāyas; both become contained in a single object, the Prajñāpāramitā book.

Second, I will examine the essential rationale for this shift, a topic I have touched on in the last chapter: namely, the conception of the prajñāpāramitā as the source and origin of the Buddha's enlightenment, as the teacher of the Tathāgatas, as their “mother". Western scholars have frequently taken this discourse literally, and discussed Prajñāpāramitā as some sort of a mother goddess. I will, in this regard, examine in detail the specific passages that employ such “mother language,” and I will argue that in fact such interpretations -prajñāpāramitā as Mother Wisdom, the Mother of All Buddhas, etc. -is often

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