大足寶頂「毗盧道場」和「圓覺道場」圖像內容、源流新探索──破譯「六代祖師傳密印」謎底

A New Exploration of the Contents and Origins of the Vairocana Practice Hall and the Perfect Enlightenment Practice Hall An Answer to the Riddle of the “Sixth Huayan Patriarch's Transmission of the Esoteric Seal”

The present article is divided into two sections. The first deals with Cave no. 14, the Vairocana Practice Hall, in six different aspects: 1. The structure of its images; 2. The contents of its pillar; 3. The relationship between the Vairocana Practice Hall and the Huayan jing transformation tableau; 4. An analysis of the Mogao Huayan jing transformation tableau's content and structure; 5. A comparison of the image structures of the Vairocana Practice Hall imagery and the Huayan jing transformation tableau; 6. An analysis of the Japanese image of the Huayan oceanic convocation of spiritual friends. From these, two conclusions can be drawn. First, source material for Cave 14 comes from the transformation tableau “Seven places and nine meetings.” Second, imagery on the second grouping on the right side of Cave 14 is similar to the Japanese image in terms of the form of Vairocana, Mañjuśrī, and Samantabhadra. These images have precursors from an earlier period in the imagery of the Feilai Peak in Hangzhou with a Huayan convocation and also in the imagery from caves in the Anyue region.
The second section of this paper addresses six aspects of the Perfect Enlightenment Practice Hall in Cave 29: 1. Imagery in the Baoding Perfect Enlightenment Cave; 2. A comparison of imagery with the Huayan Cave in Anyue; 3. The contents and dating of the imagery of the two caves; 4. Insights from the Japanese transformation tableau of the Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment held in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts; 5. A study of the Huayan statues at Anyue and Dazu; 6. A resolution of the riddle of the “Sixth Huayan Patriarch's Transmission of the Esoteric Seal.” In conclusion, the source material for the Perfect Enlightenment Cave at Baoding and the Huayan Cave at Anyue are derived from the transformation tableau of the Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment. When differences are found, the latter is taken to be the earlier version.
In a side-by-side comparison of the Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment transformation tableau and the Huayan convocation imagery found at Anyue and Dazu, both have an incarnation of Master Liu as buddha on their crowns. The sixth section of the second part of this paper, which deals with the “Sixth Patriarch's Transmission of the Esoteric Seal,” looks at the close relationship between the Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment and folk esoteric Buddhism in Sichuan. It is possible to determine that the esoteric Master Liu of Sichuan Esoteric Buddhism (Chuan mi 川密) during the late Tang and early Five Dynasties not only was a practitioner of esoteric Buddhism, but also esteemed the Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment and the Lengyan jing. The sect that he created privately received property from the court, which made it possible for him to be considered the sixth Huayan patriarch after Zongmi (780–841), the fifth. This is confirmed in the Dazu image, the “Sixth Huayan Patriarch's Transmission of the Esoteric Seal.”