KIM Youn-mi 金延美, Assistant Professor in the Department of History of Art at Ewha Womans University, is a specialist in Chinese Buddhist art, but her broader interest in the cross-cultural relationships between art and ritual extends to Korean and Japanese materials as well.
關鍵詞
Buddhist Ontology; Miniaturization; Nonhuman Agency; Material Agency; Ritual
摘要
This paper aims to theoretically explain the ways in which a ritual was enacted (or believed to be enacted) primarily through non-human agency in medieval Buddhism. Focusing on the miniature ritual altar installed in the relic depository of Chaoyang North Pagoda (1043–44), this paper addresses an academic lacuna in current ritual theories. Ritual theories almost always assume that ritual is a kind of human action, which makes it impossible to explain ritual spaces or objects that were designed to enact the ritual without human participation. The relic depository of Chaoyang North Pagoda was a completely sealed stone box that was clearly designed as a ritual space for chanting the Superlative Spell (Skt. Uṣṇīṣavijayā dhāraṇī). This ritual space occluded from human access contradicts with contemporary understandings of ritual. By illuminating the relic depository from the emic perspective of medieval Buddhists and applying anthropological theories, this paper offers theoretical explanations for conditions in which religious rituals were primarily enacted through non-human agency.
目次
Abstract Introduction 41 Buddhist Ontology of Things 44 Material Agency 51 Miniaturization, Materialization, and Virtualization 54 Epilogue: Retrospective and Prospective Remarks 60 References 65
