Buddha's Life Relics Found in Antwerp

Relics of the Buddha’s life have been rediscovered in Antwerp.

Not that they were ever lost, mind you, just that sometimes through lack of attention, remarkable things escape us until someone points them out to us once more. Relics are more than just reminders. And really, anything that jolts us into remembering the Buddha has to be, even if for that reason only, effective in promoting Buddhist liberation. So, if you please, save those predictable knee-jerk Calvinist reactions for a more fitting occasion. This may be the story of a quest, but it’s a quest that can’t be undertaken for you. You have to participate. There are so many thousands of threads connected to treasures in worlds both yours and not yours. Pick up any thread you like, and be on your way.

In reading the Christian story, keeping the Buddhist original version in mind all the while, I’m inspired to contemplate the fictions of our as-usual lives, to reflect on how illusions can trap us, and how we can attempt to trap other people in our delusions, even under the guise of ‘protection.’ Several times dissimulations and pretenses become transparent to the hero. It isn’t simply through faith and humility that his sanctification comes about. It’s partly due to cognitive events and things of his own doing. There is something familiar about this kind of innocence and experience fable. ‘How was I to know that such a thing was even possible?’  ‘Who could believe that people would be so untrue?’  If you’ve ever needed to ask such questions, then you know what I’m talking about.

I’ll avoid insulting your intelligence, and just remind you politely that the young prince, the future Enlightened One, was carefully coddled inside the stone walls that surrounded the palace by his father, kept safe from all contact with the negative side of life. These precautions were motivated by a prophecy that said he’d either be a universal monarch or take up a life of renunciation. The king naturally wants his son to have it all, to become king. The prince feels trapped, so the king permits him, carefully supervised by his handpicked friends, to go on an excursion to a park outside the walls. There the innocent prince is confronted by a series of disillusioning meetings, with a set all Buddhists know as the four signs. The future Buddha encounters an old man, a sick man, and a corpse. And although this one is not always present immediately, he eventually meets an ascetic.

Quite similar to the Buddhist story, in the various Barlaam and Josaphat accounts the prince Josaphat comes in contact with the almost identical truth-dealing visions. In the Ismaili Arabic version, already, things had changed slightly, but not tooo much. The Prince goes out of the palace the first time and sees a sick man and a blind man. On a second excursion he meets an old man, which leads to a weighty discussion about death. Later on he learns about the existence of renunciates, and meets one by the name of Barlaam. So almost all the same elements are there, and they are very nearly identical in setting and tone.

In one version of the Buddhist story, the Bodhisattva meets the four on four successive days, each time going through a different gate of the palace.  At the eastern gate, he meets an old man, at the southern gate a sick man, the western gate a corpse, and at the northern gate a renunciate.

I'll leave you to explore the co-incidents and inter-connections, but I must say, in reading the first half of the account in The Golden Legend collection of saint stories I see India, and Indian origins, at nearly every turn.

Barlaam comes to the king offering a wish-granting jewel, one that looks just way too much like the Indian Buddhists' fabled cintamani (this Wiki entry is weak and inadequate, but anyway...it's something).

The episode of the archer and the nightingale immediately reminded me of Padampa's diamond-fed bird parable. I won't go into that any more right now since I've long planned a blog on that very theme. It can wait.

The cliff hanging episode is one that has a man fleeing a charging unicorn (it had been a rutting elephant before the Christians got ahold of it) fall into a pit. He grabs a branch, stopping his downward plunge, and just hangs there... but he sees that two mice,* one white and the other black, are gnawing away at the roots of the tree... Meanwhile, now and then, honey drips and dribbles from the tree into his mouth, and he imagines he’s happy. ‘My, isn’t life sweet?’ Well, alright, but he’s hanging over the open mouth of a hungry dragon hot to devour him. This story exists in both the Indian epic, the Mahabharata, and in the Indian Buddhist Lalitavistara.  Tibetan Buddhist teachers today tell the same story as part of the introductory Stages of the Path (lam-rim) teachings. Max Müller took notice of this migrating narrative well over a century ago in his well-known article.  

(*The white and black mice are the days and nights of our lives... Tibetan versions of this story may be found in Drolungpa’s extensive treatise on the Stages of the Path, in a collection of stories by Lorepa, and in a Mind Training text. For this last, see Thupten Jinpa's translation, p. 446.)

What’s missing from the Christian story, and had already started fading from view before reaching the borders of Christendom, is the account of Buddha’s Enlightenment. MacQueen explains how and why this happened very succinctly and nicely, so I'll just send you to his 2001 article to find out more.

It was in the middle of last year while reading Joseph Jacobs’ old and remarkable 1896 book that I ran across this passage on page xviii:

“In 1571 the Doge Luigi Mocenigo presented to King Sebastian of Portugal a bone and part of the spine of St. Josaphat. When Spain seized Portugal in 1580 these sacred treasures were removed by Antonio, the Pretender to the Portuguese crown, and ultimately found their way to Antwerp. On August 7, 1672, a grand procession defiled* through the streets of Antwerp, carrying to the cloister of St. Salvator the holy remains of St. Josaphat. There, for ought I know to the contrary, they remain to the present day.”

(*This, an out-of-date usage of the word, just means they went in single file.)

I was very much intrigued by those last words that kept echoing around inside the upper part of my ribcage and inside my skull cavity.

How to best explain this? Relics of a narrative? Corporeal relics of a literary corpus? Something like that, I suppose. Significant in a nearly intangible way. How to put a finger on it? A light goes on, goes off, goes on again...

So I fired off an electronic mail to my good friend Henricius Leidenensis (this being, in our vulgar Vulgates, Henk Blezer). Henk caught the fever, and before too long made the pilgrimage, for him not all that far, to the presence of the relics. It is entirely thanks to him and his gracious permission that I am miraculously able to present to you the amazing history of the relics as he has so far managed to trace them. Practically the only thing I would have to add to it is just the likelihood that the relics that first (?) surfaced in Venice had a prior existence in Constantinople, and before that the Holy Land. That is the way such things went — or, as they were wont to say, were translated — in those days.*

(*Over the centuries, the relics apparently have been making a very long and slow pradakshina of continental Europe, one that is not quite complete. Those who are familiar with the Vedic horse sacrifice, ideas about the Wheel Turning King, etcetera, will see the symbolism in it.)

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Henk's reports on the history of the narrative and its relics, as presented to Buddha-L on two different occasions:

The long itinerary of the legend to Europe presumably starts from Buddhist India and possibly proceeds through eclectic Manichaean hands, such as attested by documents from Turfan in Central Asia; but in any case the legends seem to have reached our earliest Christian versions, probably in the form of a Georgian text (see work by D.M. Lang), via earlier Arabic versions; and eventually continue to fan out into many, many European languages, via early Greek and further via Latin translations. Other itineraries exist for other regions of the world.

To my best present knowledge, in the Dutch language community, Philip van Utenbroeke may have first included a substantial version of the legend in his sequel to Jacob van Maerlant’s Spieghel Historiael, at around 1300.  Look here, here, and here.

The itinerary incidentally may also enlighten us on the possible transformation of the name Bodhisattva to Josaphat: 

E.g.: Bodhisattva (India)/ Bodisav (Turkish) / Budhasaf (Arabic) / Yudasaf (Arabic, apparently only one diacritical dot different)/ Iodasaf (Georgian)/ Ioasaph (Greek)/ Josaphat (Latin).

Particularly N. D. may find Almond's article 'enlightening,' for instance, for appreciating how Josaphat and Bodhisattva/Buddha possibly relate.

Almond, like Wilfred Cantwell Smith, takes care first to point out the immense popularity, starting at around the eleventh century AD, of these legends and the attendant narratives in Europe. Some of the attending stories and fables equally go back to Indian origins, and some also survived independently of the Josaphat legends. The stunning amount of extant manuscripts., translations, borrowings, and references amply underline their impact.

The Josaphat legends apparently were greatly loved and thus seem to have had a profound impact in Christian ‘Europe’, not only on story traditions, by their apparently enchanting fables and stories (some will beg to differ, of course), but certainly also vis-à-vis the main theme: appreciation of asceticism. They indirectly or directly influenced figures such as Shakespeare and Tolstoy.

One cannot help but wonder how this matrix of Buddhist-derived and otherwise accrued narratives may have facilitated later reception(s) of Buddhism in (Christian) Europe, which indeed is the question which incited Almond to embark on his journey. As said, I (still) feel little inclination to get into comparative study of this huge, multi-lingual, literary complex, but considering the apparent appeal and wide spread of the legends, its impact may be both considerable and considerably understudied. If not the legends and stories themselves, in any case the history of them may not only be ‘fascinating’ but also revealing.  

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Dear Josephists,

For the Buddha-L records, the history of the relics of Josaphat in a nutshell (from easily accessible secondary sources and certainly without doing any laborious archival researches):

1571 - Doge Luigi Mocenigo of Venice donated the relics (bone and piece of vertebra) to King Sebastian of Portugal (Jacobs 1896:xviii*1* and Lang 1966:9*2*), through the Spanish Envoy Pedro Velasco*3*

1580 - Spain seized Portugal and Don Antonio, Pretender to the Portuguese crown, removed the relics (Jacobs 1896)

1595 - Don Antonio of Portugal was defeated by Alva and fled to Paris, where he passed away*3*

1633 - Relics arrived from Portugal with the Cistercians in St. Salvator, in Antwerp (plaquette at the relic shrine? I am not completely sure about the date)?

1672 - August 7th 1672, the holy remains of St. Josaphat were carried to the cloister of St. Salvator*4* in a grand procession (Jacobs 1896:xviii)

Jacobs (1896:xix) presumes that the relics may then still be in St. Salvator. But they seem to have been removed, about a century before:

1796 - December 19th 1796, some time after the French revolution, during the French occupation, the monastics of St. Salvator were led out of the Abbey, with drums beating (Cruys and Cheron 2003:7)*5*

1797 - June 16th, 1797 the Abbey and its possessions were sold (ibid.)*6*

Already fearing that the 'paper' trail might stop here, much to my surprise, I found an on-line article by Wilfried Nijs and Rudy Janssens in a publication of a local history Circle in Holsbeek,*7* which indicated that all 36 relics at around that point in time had been relocated to the St Andrieskerk (see the section on "Relieken") - serendipity now!

(Tibeto-logic's note: You can see a photo of this reliquary if you look just below. Notice the words inscribed below the angels:  "Rel. XXXVI Sanctorum," which I take to mean ‘Relics of the 36 Saints’ — Hmm. See the bibliographical listing below, under Scholem...)

That's more or less what triggered our pilgrimage.

The present silver reliquary was produced around 1846 by J.B.A. Verschuylen (quite a stunning piece of craftsmanship in fact).*8* The angels adorning it were produced by others (Lodewijk Corijn and brothers de Cuyper). The shrine is carried around yearly, in the procession of "de parochie van miserie".*3*

For the legendary Indian Saint Josaphat, who is probably intended here, see the Martyrologium Romanum (1956), at the entry on Barlaam et Josaphat apud Indos, 27 Novembris (p.297f. of my Latin edition).

The bulk of the literature on the many versions of the legend, quite frankly, I find a bit intimidating, and much also has already been accomplished in previous scholarly publication.*10* But, if I ever have more time on my hands, I would enjoy tracking those relics back in time (and also filling up some of the gaps). This might even make for a nice documentary. There is more to be said about the history of the relics, of course. Just today, I spotted a small old (1901) local publication on the topic;*9* presently on route to my Leiden office.

However, the fact that the trail leads us to Venice in the 16th century AD does not bode well in this regard. Venice was a node in major trade networks and we are looking at the aftermath of a rich history and economy in mediaeval Europe of both trade and pilgrimage relating to relics -- or what had to pass for relics anyway. I am therefore not overly confident that we will find any useful antecedent trails. DNA testing of the relics would of course be very interesting; but then, permission and funding would become major issues.

As to N. D.'s doubts, I have not much to add or detract. I presume that if we would try to fit all the teeth and other relics ever presumed to be of the Buddha into a human figure, we would probably end up with an interspecies creature that would do well in the next sequel of Alien.

BTW, a nice project for retired scientists: trying to fit replicas of all the pieces of the Holy Cross together?! They could probably build a spacious wooden retirement home for themselves from that.

If anyone has seen some interesting leads, we would be much obliged. Many thanks to D. M. for arousing my interest, with a reference to Jacob's publication, and to S. D. for his great hospitality and company in Antwerp.

Namo tassa Josaphato Arahato Sammaasambuddhassa,

Henk

*1* See Joseph Jacobs's 1896 study on Barlaam et Josaphat here (thanks to Microsoft and the University of Toronto.

*2* Lang, D.M. (1966), The Balavariani (Barlaam and Josaphat) A Tale from the Christian East Translated from the Old Georgian, Berkeley 1966.

*3* From on-line description of "Tentoonstelling 'De augustijnen, de inquisitie en het ontstaan van de Sint-Andriesparochie (1514-1529)".

*4* Note that in the 17th century, St. Salvator changed from a Priory to an Abbey (Cruys and Cheron 2003:4).*5*

*5* Marc van de Cruys & Marc Cheron 2003: De Sint Salvator Abdij, in Heraldiek van Abdijen en Kloosters (series of 8), Vol.7, Wijnegem 2003.

*6* We visited the remains of the Abbey in the Grote Pieter Potstraat (Pieter Pot, 1375? - 1450, is the patron and founder of St. Salvator charity). Only the chapel presently still remains. It was last used as rentable office space. When we visited, last Saturday, the chapel looked empty and deserted. Particularly on a dark and rainy day in November the chapel appeared sadly dilapidated.

*7* Informatieblad Gemeente Holsbeek, 3de jaargang {2003}, nr. 1, p.21-23, with an entry on the relics of another one of those 36 Saints, to wit: Saint Hatabrandus or Hatebrandus (link not active).

*8* Nieuwsbrief, "Sint Andries 2000", eerste Trimester 2009, p.2.

*9* Geschiedenis van de Reliquieën der XXXVI uitmuntende Heiligen in St Andrieskerk, te Antwerpen alsmede Broederschap ter hunner eer opgericht, en van deszelfs Plechtige Diensten van 1671 tot heden. Antwerpen, De Vlijt, 1901.

*10* See, e.g., Dr. Ernst Kuhn, "Barlaam und Joasaph, Eine bibliographisch -literaturgeschichtliche Studie", in Denkschriften und Reden der K. Bayer. Akademie der Wissenschaften, 20. Bd. 1897 [= Denkschr. Bd. 67], pp.1-88.

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My note:  I highly recommend visiting this site to view the pages of the ca. 1476 Augsburg version of Barlaam and Josaphat.  This is probably the only way you will ever be able to see it. Our blog frontispiece was (ultimately) taken from it.  It shows Josaphat outside the palace with his father, the one with the crown, inside peering over the wall. Josaphat appears to be confronted at the gate by a blind man and a man with leprosy (I think the third person standing behind them is just an attendant).

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St. Josaphat as depicted in a painted mural in Serbia.  For the source, look here.  A photo of the place where it is found, the Studenica Monastery, is here.

Read me! Read me!

You'll find more articles than books here. For books, just try one of the internet booksellers and you will find quite a lot of them in a wide variety of languages. I've picked a few things that were for myself the most interesting. It's impressive to see just how much has been written about the Bodhisattva of Christendom.

Prosper Alfaric, La vie chrétienne du Bouddha, Journal Asiatique (Sept.-Oct. 1917), pp. 269-288. Based on the discovery of a Turfan Manichaean fragment of the story Alfaric argued that it reached Europe via Manichaeans, but not before the 3rd century AD. To read it, go here, type "269" in the small box, and hit return. Also, take some time to learn how to read French if you haven't yet, since you'll need it. It's awkward to navigate, but you can find all the content of the Journal Asiatique, starting with the 1822 issue and ending with the 1938, here, 199 issues in all.

P.C. Almond, The Buddha of Christendom: A Review of the Legend of Barlaam and Josaphat, Religious Studies, vol. 23, no. 3 (1987), pp. 391-406.

Enrico Cerulli, The Kalilah wa-Dimnah and the Ethiopic Book of Barlaam and Josaphat (British Museum Ms. Or. 534), Journal of Semitic Studies, vol. 9 (1964), pp. 75-99.  I found it here.

R. Chalmers, Parables of Barlaam and Joasaph, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, n.s. vol. 23 (1891), pp. 423-49.  I found an html version here.  Some of the ideas in it have passed their freshness date.

Abraham ibn Hasdai (d. 1240), Ben ha-Melekh ve ha-Nazir (The King's Son and the Monk).  This Hebrew translation/adaptation, made in early-13th-century Barcelona, is available here (click on the words next to the arrows and it will download for you in three parts if you have good karma).  It was eventually translated into Catalan...  There's a version in Occitan,  too, if you're interested: Barlam et Jozaphas.

Joseph Jacobs, Barlaam and Josaphat: English Lives of Buddha, David Nutt (London 1896). Go to the "Internet Archive" here, and download the PDF if you can. The scan is so beautifully done you can almost feel the paper.

Thupten Jinpa, tr., Mind Training: The Great Collection, compiled by Shönu Gyalchok & Könchok Gyaltsen, The Library of Tibetan Classics series no. 1, Wisdom (Boston 2006).  The story of the ‘Black and White Mice’ (byi-ba dkar nag) is found on p. 446.  One of the oldest records of it may be in the Mahabharata; look on p. 78, here.

 "To save himself from a wild beast, a traveller jumps into a dry well, but perceives at the bottom a dragon with open jaws, ready to devour him. Not daring to climb out of the well and in order not to be devoured by the dragon, the man catches hold of the branches of a wild shrub growing in a crack in the wall of the well. But his arms grow tired, and he feels that he must soon succumb to one or other of the menacing dangers. He holds on, however, when he sees two mice, one white and one black, at the foot of the shrub, steadily running around it and gnawing it through. He sees that at any moment the shrub may topple over, and he must drop into the jaws of the dragon. The traveller feels that he is inevitably lost ; he gazes around and discovers a few drops of honey on the shrub. He can reach them with his tongue, and licks them up. Thus do I cling to the branches of life, knowing that the jaws of death may close on me at any moment, and I cannot understand why I am in such torture. I am trying to suck the honey which used to comfort me, but now I do not enjoy it. The black and white mice continue day and night to gnaw the branch to which I cling. I clearly see the dragon and the mice, and cannot take my eyes off them. This is not a fable, but a clear, indisputable truth, evident to everybody."  The Death of Ivan Ilyich, by Leo Tolstoy. 

D.M. Lang, The Life of the Blessed Iodasaph: A New Oriental Christian Version of the Barlaam and Ioasaph Romance (Jerusalem, Greek Patriarchal Library: Georgian Ms. 140), Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, vol. 20, nos. 1-3 (1957), pp. 389-407. Try JSTOR if you can. Notice especially on the final page the stemma that had to be redrawn to accommodate the (as of then then) newly available and lengthier 11th-century Georgian manuscript, microfilmed for the Library of Congress. The scribe's name was Davit', or if you prefer, David.

Graeme MacQueen, Changing Master Narratives in Midstream: Barlaam and Josaphat and the Growth of Religious Intolerance in the Buddha Legend's Westward Journey, Journal of Buddhist Ethics, an online journal, vol. 5 (1998). If you want to read it now, go here.

Graeme MacQueen, Rejecting Enlightenment? The Medieval Christian Transformation of the Buddha-Legend in Jacobus de Voragine's Barlaam and Josaphat, Studies in Religion, vol. 30, no. 2 (2001). Look here.

Graeme MacQueen, The Killing Test: The Kinship of Living Beings and the Buddhalegend's First Journey to the West, Journal of Buddhist Ethics, vol. 9 (2002). Download the PDF version here.

Francis Mershman, Barlaam and Josaphat, Catholic Encyclopedia. This encyclopedia entry is available all over the internet. Here, for example.

M. Pitts, Barlâm and Josaphat: A Legend for All Seasons, Journal of South Asian Literature, vol. 16 (1981), pp. 1-16.

E. Rehatsek & T.W. Rhys Davids, Book of the King's Son and the Ascetic, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (January 1890), pp. 119-155.  Translation of an Arabic version that has been in some degree Islamicized, even if sometimes it seems to me ambiguous whether 'religion' might mean Buddhism or Islam.

Gershom Scholem, The Tradition of the Thirty-Six Hidden Just Men, contained in: Gershom Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism, Schocken Books (New York 1974), pp. 251-256.  I'm just wondering if these "Lamed-Vav-nikim"  otherwise known as the Hidden Tzadiks, have something to do with the "36 Heiligen" that St. Josaphat numbered among. I doubt having this common number is just a sheer coincidence, don't you?  But who started it?  Wait, I know someone I can ask.

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An Edifying Story from the Inner Land of the Ethiopians, Called the Land of the Indians, Thence Brought to the Holy City, by John the Monk (an Honorable Man and a Virtuous, of the Monastery of Saint Sabas); wherein are the Lives of the Famous and Blessed Barlaam and Iosaph. Read it at the Online Medieval and Classical Library, here. This other link seems to take you to the very same book.

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Apparently it's true, there are also St. Josaphat relics in the Vatican.

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A musical program will soon take place in Vancouver under the title Barlaam and Josaphat, inspired by the legend, and resuscitating some of its actual music that was long ago inspired by it.  That's on January 24, 2010.  With 11 days remaining, there may be just barely enough time to order tickets and jump on a plane for British Columbia.  In the Ensemble Dialogos, are two musicians from Köln, the other from Croatia.  Their schedule is here.  And what do you know?

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Of course they're going to be in Antwerp in February 2010 (doing sacred songs from Dalmatia). I guess we understand, perhaps better than they, why that is.  Reminds me of that old quip, ‘If it's Tuesday it must be Belgium.’  The premiere of Barlaam and Josaphat took place in Köln, Germany, on June  5, 2009, by chance about the same time I noticed that passage on the relics in Jacobs' book.

Entrance to the chapel at the Monastery of the Cross, Jerusalem (lots of nice photos, if not this one, are here). This is where the wood of the Cross grew, as you may see in the painting above the doorway. It was here, too, that sometime in around the 11th century the lengthier Georgian-language Barlaam and Josaphat legend was scribed (see Lang's article and especially the stemma on p. 407). This, being the more complete legendary cycle, proved crucial to understanding the historical transmission. I'm not sure, but it may have been the very first written text of the legends in their Christian conversion. It went on to inform all the later European retellings. Also, in this same chapel you can see a tiny painted portrait of Shota Rustaveli, the most famous poet of old Georgian.

Rustaveli

Bell Envy

This engraving is from the German-born Jesuit Athanasius Kircher's ground-breaking book in oriental studies entitled China Illustrata. It was first published in Amsterdam in 1667 CE in Latin, and almost immediately translated into Dutch, French and English. In its day, it was a publishing success. It exerted a significant influence on people's ideas all over Europe.

When I look at this engraving, it seems to exude rich odors of old, but not-all-that-old European stereotypes about heathen idol worship. To be sure, portraits such as this one doubtlessly had their own influences on the negative mental images lurking in occidental minds. If there is something Egyptian-looking about it, that's not accidental. One main thesis of Kircher's book is that all of oriental religion actually came from the west and had its origins in Egypt. Bits of Egyptianizing, Persianizing and Sinicizing tendencies may be discerned here. Europeanizing, too. Do you see it? One thing that appears — to my eye at least — to be missing is any visual clue that would tell us that this scene is supposed to be taking place in Tibet.

While Kircher's ideas about Egyptian hieroglyphics and their relation to Chinese ideograms were later discounted and today regarded as highly laughable, to give just one example of the colossal wrong turns his brilliant mind sometimes took, it would be wrong of us to forget his positive role in widening knowledge of Asia in Europe. This would be just another tediously predictable example of the modern world's complex that consists in building up its self-image by dismissing the past with a sneer. We post-moderns need to get past it, really. Otherwise what would the "post-" mean?

(Right, some say it's code for 'hyper-' and that might not be far off.)

Looking at this picture also reminds us that there were problems in the transmission of knowledge that resulted in distorted pictures such as this. It wasn't all the fault of deliberate misrepresentation, either. Kircher never visited Asia, and the bulk of his book is in fact devoted to a Chinese & Syriac inscription made by Nestorian Christians during the Tang Dynasty. 'Discovered' in 1625, it had created a sensation and a little controversy in Europe (Hsia's article in Findlen's book, and also the Billings article).

This news was considered by some 'too good to be true.' In particular, a Protestant scholar named George Horn accused the Jesuits of self-interested fraud. Since Kircher had written on this monument before, he had both a personal and institutional stake in the arguments that had been made meanwhile. I suppose he needed to defend his honor and his credibility, as we all do, or think we do, from time to time. It might also be significant that as a young man he twice petitioned his Jesuit order to send him as a missionary to China, but was both times turned down.

He sat in his library and his museum in Rome. He based what he knew on missionary and travelers' reports both oral and written, most important for Tibeto-logical purposes being those of John Grueber who journeyed together with Albert d'Orville in 1661 from Peking, past the Blue Lake (Koko Nor, or in Tibetan Tso Ngön) to Lhasa, to "Necbal," to India, where d'Orville understandably expired from sheer exhaustion. In those days, people took notes on what they saw and often made sketches as best they could. When it came time to publish their books, the engravers took their clues from the notes and sketches and did the best they could. This meant considerable leeway in interpretation, Europeanizing things or otherwise distorting them in curious directions.

This engraving, a prime example, is supposed to depict the god Manipe. The name Manipe, not a name known to Tibetans, results from a misinterpretation of the Six Syllable Mantra that then as now was and is most likely to be on Tibetan lips: Om Mani Padme Hum (Tibetans pronounce Padme as pemey). Kircher mistakenly thought the mantra meant, "Manipe save us!"

Donald Lopez, in his book Prisoners of Shangrila (page 117), quotes from the 1669 English version of China Illustrata, part of its description of the "Tangut" religion of Lhasa:

[It] hath a King of its own, and is altogether intangled with the foul Errours of Heathenism, it worshippeth Idols with the difference of Deities; among which they call Menipe, hath the preheminence, and with its ninefold difference of Heads, riseth or terminateth in a Cone of monstrous height... Before this Demon or false God this foolish people performeth their Sacred Rites with many unwonted Gesticulations and Dances, often repeating of these words: O Manipe Mi Hum, O Manipe Mi Hum, that is, O Manipe, save us; and these sottish people are wont to set many sorts of viands and meats before the idol for the propitiating or appeasing of the Deity, and perform such abominations of idolatry.

We ought to compare Van Tuyl's (p. 65) independent translation into modern English, but here we will just supply a part that immediately follows. By "our fathers" he means, of course, Grueber & d'Orville. From this part, at least we may know that there were some drawings for the engraver to work from. Evidently it was Grueber who had the artistic talent:

Our fathers, to illustrate the blind folly of these nations worthy of the pity of lamentation, drew the idol in the form they saw it. Figure XVII shows the idol in the form they saw it. However, they also sent it to me in the form shown by Figure XXI. (These figures, combined in a single engraving, will be reproduced below.)

In Tibetan culture, since at least the 11th century (and probably as tradition would have it going far back into the time of the Tibetan Empire) Buddhists have been repeating the Six Syllables as part of the cult (not in the scary journalistic sense of the word 'cult' of course, but here corresponding to devotional and/or sadhana practice) of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, particularly in the 4-armed form Mahakarunika (Thugjé Chenpo), Great Compassion. It should suffice to say that Tibetans won't recognize anything of themselves in Kircher's description, and would be very right to take offense with him, or even with me for bothering to type it out for the whole world to read.

Now look again at the picture, try to temporarily overcome your revulsion, however righteous, and see how the decapitated heads are piled up as if they were cannonballs on top of the altar together with the offerings. Think for a moment, how many cannonballs would it take to make such a pyramid? I know, you can see that six heads are visible, but how many more would it take to complete the three-dimensional pyramid? Got it? Hold that number securely in your mind.

Now have a look at this detail from a 15th-century image of 11-faced Avalokiteshvara from the Rubin Museum (item no. 88, with many more examples here).

If you are still with me, I guess by now you've understood that the placement of the heads on the altar, weirdly separated from the body of the Bodhisattva, is entirely due to the engraver's misunderstanding. He was very literally unable to imagine the form of the deity correctly on the basis of the directions he received. That the illustrations in China Illustrata were not satisfactory was noticed by the surviving Tibet-traveler Grueber, who wrote to Kircher saying,

I wish you had at least sent me the headings of the chapters before going to press; I should certainly have supplied you with several data of no small importance. These I intend to send you at some future time — perhaps shortly, together with the whole of my journal, which as yet I have not been able to finish on account of my continuous work among the soldiers. (Note: he served as an army chaplain for Austrian soldiers in Transylvania.)

There are certainly points in China Illustrata that need correction, especially the drawings, but it is better to leave things as they are, though I shall send you the emendations for insertion in case the work should be reprinted. (See the Wessels book, p. 168.)

One of those points that required correction was, if you've been paying close attention, the number of heads, which Kircher — once again mistaken — counted as nine. Neither Grueber's book manuscript nor his journal has ever been found, and we are largely reliant on Kircher (and of course on a few surviving letters) for the little we know of his travels.

I don't want to lock horns, not today at least, with Kircher about whether or not the Egyptians were the first or, failing that, the most influential people to conceive the idea to build dwellings for divine or spirit presences of one kind or another and then treat them to human hospitality.

(Anyway, ancient Israelite temple cult wasn't all that different from other parts of the Middle East... The incense burning, lamp lighting, food offerings and prostrations in our frontispiece were all done there as well. Only the 'empty niche' syndrome would seem to have set Jerusalem apart; see Haran.)

I'll just state what I know with assurance to be true, by saying I don't know who started it or where. I doubt you do either.

I also don't want to get into one of those very important 'Big' debates about intellectual or theological or moral superiority of one religion over another. Not today. In modern inter-religious dialog, we don't speak of arguments for religious supremacy or superiority, but talk instead about problems with "triumphalism." Wording seems significant, significance not that much...

Today I intended to talk about something immensely more trivial, touched off by this and another recent blog entry from Tibetan Buddhist Digital Altar about the Chinese-style bell at Tandruk Temple near Tsetang. A photograph of that bell, taken by the late Hugh Richardson, shows a strange and inexplicable hand-print that at least appears to be impressed into the metal, just as we often see handprints (and footprints) in Tibet pressed into solid rock. (I hate to ask you to take my word for it, but anybody who has spent much time around Tibetans knows how ordinary and common these miraculous objects are.) This bell, like the earlier and very similar one at Samyé Monastery, was sponsored by an Empress, a Queen of Trisongdetsen, one of five, who later became a nun (her story is told in Uebach's essay, pages 40 to 42).

That these bells are in the usual Chinese style, as we can know by just looking at the overall shape, is underlined by the fact that the Tibetan sources even borrow the Chinese name for 'bell' which is otherwise but rarely encountered in Tibetan. The Chinese word is:

鐘

zhōng "bell"

The Tibetan borrowing is pronounced chong:

ཅོང་

The usual Tibetan word for the bell, usually meaning the small handbell that looks like this — ࿄is drilbu:

དྲིལ་བུ་

***These Tibetan words and images were produced on what is known as a "unicode picker," which you can try for yourself at this site.

So, anyway, what is this we see near the back of Kircher's book?

• You can see a later engraving of the same scene here.

On your left, the "Campana Erfordiensis," and on your right, weighing in at an amazing 120,000 pounds is the "Campana Pekinensis." Well, translating the Latin labels into English, what we have here are a Bell of Erford and a Bell of Pekin[g] (which would be Beijing to you younger people). In the text of the accompanying letter by Brother Ferdinand Verbist in Pequin (!) to Brother Grueber in Siganfu, as translated by Van Tuyl, we read:

In the year 1403 A.D. the king of China named Yum lo [i.e., Yung-lo, or Yongle, my note] was the first to move the royal court from Nankin to Pekin. In order to leave an eternal name for posterity he caused huge bells to be cast of bronze, all of them of equal size and weight... Kircher on page 522 of his Musurgia mentions the largest European bells. There is none greater, according to Fr. Kircher, than that of Erford. Of this he says, "The Erford bell is the queen of bells." Just before this he says, "The Erford bell is the greatest, not only of Germany, but of the entire world." These bells of Pekin, however, are larger, since each weighs 120,000 pounds, and each pound is equal to sixteen European ounces...

Now the name "Erford" as a name for a place in Germany will prove fairly fruitless when placed in today's Schmooglebox. Try "Erfurt" instead. The Erfurt Cathedral bell — like most Catholic bells it received a name, generally at a kind of christening or "bell blessing" (whether or not it receives, or ought to receive, a proper consecration or a "baptism" is a matter of contention) — was named Maria Gloriosa. We may learn from the "Catholic Encyclopedia" that the Maria Gloriosa was cast in 1497, and weighed 13 tons. It was rung for the first time two years later.

Some at least of the Yongle bells are still in existence, along with the tower built for it or them (how many were made and how many of them survive in which places?), in Beijing, due north of the Imperial Palace.

You can compare the numbers for yourself:

Erford Bell: 8 cubits, 5 fingers high.

Pekin Bell: 12 cubits.

Erford Bell: 7 cubit, 1 finger diameter.

Pekin Bell: 10 cubits, 8 digits diameter.

Erford Bell: approximately 25,400 pounds in weight.

Pekin Bell: 120,000 pounds.

Let's just state briefly that bells have, at least in more recent centuries, come to have similar central symbolic meanings in the two religions. In Buddhism, the bell is one of the most important symbols (along with the cry of the cuckoo, the beat of the drum...) of the awakening sound of Buddha Speech (among other things). In Christianity, it has come to symbolize the 'good news' of the Gospels (among other things). Both religious cultures also use them as 'time markers' to mark off regularly scheduled prayers or chanting sessions... Medieval Christians believed the sound of the bell exorcised the surroundings of evil spirits and kept thunderstorms at bay. Similar, but OK, also different... I'll save the documentation and arguments about usage and symbolism for another time.

Of course bells with their comparative weights and sizes were not the only calculations taking place in those days between the two religious cultures. By the late 17th century, Europeans had been made aware of Chinese written records that pushed their continuous history back to 2952 BCE, which very closely mismatched Christian calculations of the date of the Noahide flood at 2957 BCE (Hung's article, p. 258). Europeans started asking questions that sometimes ended in reassessments or even major readjustments of their then-scientific understandings of the universal flood (perhaps it didn't reach as far as China?) and the tower of Babel (perhaps the Chinese lived too far away to help build it, and so preserved a more pristine and 'unconfused' language?).

(And just as an aside, these arguments are hardly over and finished. In the contemporary debates in the U.S. between creationists and evolutionists the former have resurrected some of those very old arguments from the 17th century. Like the interpretation of a Chinese word for 'boat' analyzed into parts that then is read "boat eight mouths." Just try Schmoogling something like "Noah China Flood" and you'll find quite a few webpages devoted to this. I remember first seeing it as a child, in a late 19th-century edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica, and found it quite impressive at the time. This Christian search for 'signs' in Chinese ideograms, and its selective appropriation of Chinese mythology, is a fascinating field for research in its own right. For the moment I'll just say that stories of floods in extra-Biblical sources do not go toward proving the Biblical flood any more [or less] than Biblical flood stories prove any particular story of extra-Biblical floods...)

I wonder, could this episode of Christian bell inferiority be the 'primal scene' (to take a page from Freudian depth psychology only to crumple it up) or historic trauma that would explain the psychological complex that has gone on to motivate Christian-Buddhist bell exchanges in subsequent history? Could it take part in explaining how a Buddhist bell cast in 1750 ended up at the Maryknoll Seminary in Palo Alto, California? Along with other examples we've considered in earlier blogs.

But history is a complex subject, too complex to reduce to singular psychic complexes, I would insist. We could say that the Buddhist and Christian worlds experienced phases of bell exchange followed by bouts of bell competition, perhaps (I say "perhaps" because I actually detest these broad historical strokes and the grand theories that drive them) mirroring the phases of openings and closures of their respective cultures vis-a-vis one another.

Think, too, about international political positions such as "Open Door Policy" and "containment." Think about the early Sinophiles (Liebnitz & Voltaire being the most prominent, they often argued for Chinese priority and superiority) and subsequent Sinophobes in Europe. I'm just saying, Think about it.

Perhaps these are just the shy first steps of hope and fear that make so many of our human relations so anxiety ridden. Perhaps they are just signs of the future happiness of living together, or even a lasting marriage, between Buddhists and Christians, between Asia and Europe? I guess we'll see. I'm guessing, too, that it will have a lot to do with what we do meanwhile. Perhaps, perhaps & perhaps.

As you might have expected, the Euro-bell size-deficiency trauma was definitively dissolved when it was pointed out that the Great Bell of Moscow (first made in 15th century and recast in 1653?) was bigger than either the Maria Gloriosa or the Yongle bell[s]. Hurrah for Russia! (But this only holds for Kircher's time... even bigger bells have been made since, but why should we care about them?)

The Catholic Encyclopedia discounts this and all those other eastern bells by saying something that may hold truth, although rather beside the point if you ask me and a prime example of what I like to call definitional gerrymandering,

The gigantic bells cast in Russia, China, Japan and Burma seem only to be struck with a hammer and never properly 'rung'.

Notice that word "properly," which allows the Catholic writer to ignore bells that after all are bells that are indeed larger than the Catholic bells that he had just finished listing along with their respective tonnages. Anyway, with all their careful measurements in cubits and pounds they forgot to measure the decibles, or even more useful, I'd say, they forgot to say which rang more true. On that last point, you will be the judge, I'm sure.

§ § § § §

• XVII. The idol Menipe in the city Barantola of the Kingdom Lassa.
• XXI. Another idol of Menipe.

More books & stuff you might want to add on top of that ever-growing pile on your desk until you finally get around to reading it all:

Athanasius Kircher, S.J., China Illustrata with Sacred and Secular Monuments, Various Spectacles of Nature and Art and Other Memorabilia, translated from the Latin by Charles Van Tuyl, Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies (Bloomington 1987). The only nice online version of the original Latin publication I could find is this one. Try this link to go directly to the page with the bells. You might also try this one. There used to be an Athanasius Kircher Society, but it went the way of the dinosaurs.

Adolf Müller, Athanasius Kircher, The Catholic Encyclopedia, Robert Appleton Co. (New York 1910), accessed June 28, 2009 here.

C. Wessels, S.J., Early Jesuit Travellers in Central Asia, 1603-1721, Asian Educational Services (New Delhi 1992), reprint of 1924 edition.

Paula Findlen, ed., Athanasius Kircher, the Last Man Who Knew Everything, Routledge (New York 2004). Lots of interesting writing here, but most relevant is the article by Florence Hsia — Athanasius Kircher's China Illustrata (1667), an Apologia Pro Vita Sua. And Haun Saussy's paper "Magnetic Language" is also fun to read, considering the part Kircher may have played in imagining computers and 'artificial intelligence.'

Donald S. Lopez, Jr., Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West, University of Chicago (Chicago 1998).

Timothy Billings, Jesuit Fish in Chinese Nets: Athanasius Kircher and the Translation of the Nestorian Tablet, Representations, no. 84 (Summer 2004), pp. 1-42. A fascinating study showing how Kircher reframed the Xi'an inscription as a proto-Jesuit document, glossing over doctrinal controversies associated with the Nestorians.

Menahem Haran, Temples and Temple Service in Ancient Israel, Eisenbrauns (Winona Lake 1985). One of my favorite books ever, right up there with The Art of Memory by Frances A. Yates. I've read it twice. I'm thinking I'll read it again very soon.

Helga Uebach, Ladies of the Tibetan Empire (Seventh to Ninth Centuries C.E.). Contained in: Janet Gyatso & Hanna Havnevik, eds., Women in Tibet, Hurst & Co. (London 2005), pp. 29-48.

Ho-Fung Hung, Orientalist Knowledge & Social Theories: China and the European Conceptions of East-West Differences from 1600 to 1900, Sociological Theory, vol. 21, no. 3 (September 2003), pp. 254-280.

Christopher Hutton, Human Diversity and the Genealogy of Languages: Noah as the Founding Ancestor of the Chinese, Language Sciences, vol. 30 (2008), pp. 512-528. There was in Europe a "craze for identifying legendary Chinese emperors with Biblical patriarchs," that "declined by the second half of the eighteenth century." Another work by the same Hong Kong professor (no access so far) deals with the ways some of these same people engaged in "etymological readings of Chinese characters as encoding the story of Genesis."  (As of 2017, I can at long last say that I have obtained access to C. Hutton's paper "Human Diversity and the Genealogy of Languages: Noah as the Founding Ancestor of the Chinese," Language Sciences, vol. 30 [2008], pp. 512-528.)

Wendel Westcott, Bells and Their Music, G.P. Puttman (New York 1970), available online here.

From the end of Chapter Two:

The fourteenth century seemed, indeed, to mark a turning point in the development of bells. It was now possible to cast tower bells weighing several tons. This was to lead, later, to rivalries between churches, and even cities, to see who could boast the largest bell. Perhaps by this time the artisans of Europe had learned that the Chinese had long since cast large bells, or perhaps economic conditions were more favorable.

(Note: I don't think this is quite right, or it is too easily misread. The late 17th century, not the 14th, was when Europeans realized how small their bells were compared to those of China.)

"Great Bells of Europe by Country." Press here.

Catholic Encyclopedia, "Bells." Press here.

§ § § § §

There is a truly dreadful legend about how the bell caster's daughter had to sacrifice her life in the casting the Yongle bell[s]. This legend may be found in various forms around the internet, with perhaps the most detailed version here. (If the link doesn't work, go to Googlebooks and search for A Chinese Wonder Book by Norman Hinsdale Pitman.) Another version says that it has its sweet sound only because eight men were sacrificed in the making of it. So I don't know which legend is more true or more dreadful.

If you find time, try Schmoogling for "Yongle Bell Tower Beijing" or "Erfurt Cathedral Bell." You might be amazed what you can come up with. If you're equipped with German I recommend this video at You-Tube about how the bell was removed for repair. Once you get there, have a look at the prose description (by clicking the words "more info"), where there is a transcription of the Latin inscription on the Maria Gloriosa, with a German translation:

Aufschrift: Laude patronos cano gloriosa / Fulgus arcens et demones malignos / Sacra templis a populo sonanda / Carmine pulso / Gerhardus wou de Campis me fecit. / Anno Dni M. CCCC.XCV II.

Mit ruhmreichem Lob besinge ich die Schutzherren, wehre Blitze und böse Geister ab, läute m.hl. Gesang, der im Dom vom Volk erklingen soll. Gerhardus Wou aus Kampen hat mich gemacht. Im Jahr des Herrn 1497.

Note: Kampen is not far to the east of Amsterdam.

§ § § § §

Another interesting bell inscription from the Catholic Encyclopedia "Bells" entry:

Funera plango fulmina frango sabbata pango

Excito lentos dissipo ventos paco cruentos.

At obsequies I mourn, the thunderbolts I scatter, I ring in the sabbaths;

I hustle the sluggards, I drive away storms, I proclaim peace after bloodshed.

§ § § § §

Postscript...

Schuyler Cammann, in a brief article entitled "The Bell that Lost Its Voice," published in 1947 in the journal called Folklore, reported on a visit to a bell tower in Kunming, provincial capital of Yunnan. Let me quote him exactly on what he found there, since it is all rather curious:

It is a triumph of casting. At least ten feet high, and fully eight feet in diameter, its blue-green surface is perfectly smooth except for the dragon-loop by which it is hung, and a narrow vertical band running down each side with Tibetan-style Buddhist thunderbolts (dorje), in low relief. This unusual motif would suggest that the foreign wizard [my note: Cammann mentioned a legend that said it was made by a foreigner, but read further on] was probably a Tibetan, though the lama's great skill at metal-casting seldom extends to objects as large as this bell.

Notice the size, which anyway is a guesstimate. Although large, it would seem to be significantly smaller than the Yongle bells. But then look what he says at the end of the article. The bell actually has an inscription:

A panel on the upper side of the bell gives the date of its casting as "the twenty-second year of Yung-lo in the Ming Dynasty," or 1422 A.D....

It is a Yongle bell.

§ § § § §

Post-postscript!

For a continuation of the story, adding in essential Burmese episodes from the bell history between Buddhists and Christians, go over to Tibetan Altar blog by pressing the link here.

§ § § § §

Post-Post-Postscript!!

William Rostoker, Bennet Bronson & James Dvorak, The Cast-Iron Bells of China, Technology & Culture, vol. 25, no. 4 (October 1984), pp. 750-767, at p. 751:

The epitome of this practice was the great bronze bell cast in the Yongle period (1403-24) of the Ming dynasty, now housed in the reconstructed Jueshing Temple in Beijing. [here footnote 5 says this temple has been renamed "Temple of the Great Bell"] Perhaps the largest bell ever made, it is 6.75 meters in overall height, 3.3 meters in base diameter, and 18.5 centimeters thick at the lip, and it weighs 46.5 metric tons. The metal is bronze with 16.4 percent tin and 1.12 percent lead. Cast onto its outer and inner surfaces are the texts of seventeen Buddhist scriptures and prayers comprising a total of 227,000 characters. As is characteristic of such bells, the inscriptions are not impressed into the surface but rather raised above it, showing clearly that they were cut or stamped into the face of the mold before the bell was cast.

Of course the words "the largest bell ever made" are not true. But then who's keeping track?

I'm interested to know more about which Buddhist scriptures were inscribed, and in which language (some of it was in Sanskrit language, they say, but which script? Sanskrit in Chinese ideograms? Sanskrit in Tibetan letters, perhaps? Lantsa? Siddham?). Some say that the Lotus Sutra "and six others" were inscribed. I haven't yet gained access to any detailed description or study. I imagine there ought to be plenty.