Giuseppe Vignato (魏正中) is a Professor at the School of Archeology and Museology, Peking University. He has been researching for over 20 years on the Buddhist caves of Kucha (Xinjiang-China). He is the author of Districts and Groups, an Archaeological Investigation of the Rock Monasteries of Kucha (in Chinese) Shanghai Classic Publisher, 2013. He has also co-authored two books: one with A. F. Howard, Archaeological and Visual Sources of Meditation in the Ancient Monasteries of Kucha, Brill, 2015; another with S. Hiyama, Traces of the Sarvāstivādins in the Buddhist Monasteries of Kucha, Dev Publishers & Distributors, 2022. In addition, he has also published several articles in Chinese and English. He is co-director of EurAsia Series (亞歐叢書), which publishes Chinese translations of Western scholarly publications.
關鍵詞
Kucha caves; rock monasteries; voids; monastery layout; archaeoacoustics
摘要
This paper interprets the relationship between built masses, “solids,” and “voids.” Through a biography of the rock monasteries analyzed from the perspective of “voids,” it intends to reach a deeper understanding of the monastery territory and the activities carried out within it. Several facets will be taken into consideration, starting with the reason why a monastery was built in a certain location and the extent of its “territory,” that is, the domain enclosed by the monastery’s boundaries. Then, the fact that natural features were manipulated to simplify the layout of the monastery and reach an intended result will be analyzed. The layout was certainly deemed very important because it had to answer the needs of a small community of monks as well as welcome large crowds during festive days; it required careful planning since it needed to be easily navigable. In a monastery, empty spaces were used to enhance specific areas of crucial buildings, link or separate particular areas, and smooth the use of some of its parts. The monastery was a place that aimed at fostering religious experiences and impressing vivid “memories of place” in the mind of the person living there or visiting it. To reach this goal, the monastery planners used their skills to stimulate all sensorial experiences. Among them, we consider hearing, since sound could be measured. In fact, archaeoacoustics studies have been carried out in archaeological contexts. I will argue that sound—and its opposite, silence—were conceivably reckoned in the planning of a rock monastery. In sum, in this paper, a rock monastery is understood as the summation of caves, free-standing buildings, as well as the unbuilt spaces around and between them.
目次
Abstract 166 Choice of the Location 168 The “Territory” of the Monastery 169 Manipulation of the natural environment 171 The layout of the monastery 172 Sense of Direction, Symmetry, and Repetition 174 Sound and Silence 176 Void as Loss 178 Conclusion 179 References 190
