Material Culture Studies,; Chinese Art; Tibetan Buddhism; Late Imperial-Modern China; Tibetan Art; Sino-Tibetan Relations
摘要
Thanks to the New Qing historians, it is widely known that the Manchu emperors have two different images: the benevolent emperors of Chinese and the bellicose Khans of Inner Asian peoples. The first one was the continuity of Chinese political traditions. On the other hand, for Manchus, Mongols and Tibetans, the Qing emperors were deemed as fearless warriors and Buddhist protectors. These two political images of the Qing emperors reflected a critical tension between Chinese and Inner Asian traditions; however, compared with their Chinese counterparts, the Inner Asian factors of the Qing dynasty have relatively been ignored, especially the unique ethnicity and the spiritual world of the Manchu emperors. Although the Qing emperors acted as Confucian literati in certain occasions, they collected and worshiped thousands of Tibetan Buddhist statues, portraits and instruments in the imperial palaces. Comparing with related literal records, these materials can truly mirror the innermost world of the Qing emperors. In addition to the personal beliefs of the Manchu emperors, the Tibetan Buddhist material culture also manifested the diverse legitimacy of the Qing dynasty. For instance, the Qianlong emperor identified himself as the incarnation of Mañjuśrī Bodhisattva, one of the most famous deities in Sino-Tibetan Buddhism, in Buddhist paintings. The Buddhist identifications of the Qing emperors were not only related to the personal beliefs, but also to the imperial legitimacy. In Tibetan and Mongolian literature after 1652, when the 5th Dalai Lama visited the Shunzhi emperor and built the patron-priest relationship with the Qing dynasty in Beijing, the Manchu emperors were consecrated as the incarnations of Mañjuśrī. After that, the Qing emperors were not only political leaders but also religious figures to Inner Asian peoples. Consequently, the Qing emperors did a series of political and religious actions in order to legitimize their rulerships. For instance, they patronized monasteries and temples in Wutai Mountain, which was associated with the residence of Mañjuśrī. Moreover, the Qing emperors also reconstructed the identifications of Manchus through historiography and philology in order to consolidate the Buddhist legitimacy of Qing.
