圣地与圣像：文殊骑狮图像与中国五台山信仰

讲座内容： As a site, MountWutai (“Mount of Five Terraces”), located in China’s northern province of Shanxi, extends over an extensive mountainousregion with its five prominent peaks. As early as the sixth century, themountain was identified as the holy domicile of Bodhisattva Mañjuśrī, since then turning it into one of themost important Buddhist sacred sites in China, drawing both domestic pilgrimsand foreign ones from neighboring countries. The sacrality of the mountain,however, was inseparably related to the sight of the bodhisattva, whosepresence was the raison d’être of the sacred site. Itis in this interrelatedness of the site and sight that this paper posits theimportance and necessity of the visual—both thereligious vision and visuality—in making the sacralityof Mount Wutai perceivable and transmittable. This paper moreover explores how,once sight gained the primacy in the sacred mountain cult at Mount Wutai duringthe Tang dynasty (618-907), the visual image in turn was crucial thereafter inshaping, or even recreating, the religious experience of the actual MountWutai.