early buddhism in china: daoist reactions 209
“divination board”^29 in this text, and not simply as a “gaming board”
as some scholars assume,^30 is corroborated by the association of this
board and its players with Xi Wang Mu on the same stone carving.^31
The guarantor of immortality and entrance into her paradise is shown
together with those who ask the divination board about their fate.
And the panic-stricken people on the streets who expect both the nal
cataclysm and the imminent theophany of the Queen Mother of the
West as their saviour are using the divination board to make inquiries
about their fate.
A comparable role among the population of the Han dynasty was
apparently attributed to the Buddha. Also coming from the West
he was considered a god (either as a consequence of the historical
Buddha’s transformation into a transcendent being in the Mahyna
or as a misunderstanding among the population), as can be seen in a
later source:
,
The Buddha emerged in the Western Regions, he [is] a foreign god (shen
).^32The Buddha thus must have been considered by many as another
saviour coming from far away and blessing those who believed in him.
Precisely as the sheng, the Queen Mother of the West’s crown (which
today serves to identify her iconographically), was carved above the
entrance of cliff tombs at Pengshan and Leshan , Sichuan,^33
so was the seated Buddha carved on the lintel above the entrance of
cliff tomb IX at Mahao and on other tombs in Leshan.^34 There
can be no doubt about the identi cation of the Buddha as he is rep-
resented in a typical position: with a halo surrounding his head and
the remnants of u
a—a knot of hair on the top of the head and
(^29) A liu bo board of Han times (found in a tomb in Hubei) is reproduced in Loewe
1979, p. 85, 30 g. 14.
E.g., Wu Hung 1989, p. 128.
(^31) James 1996, p. 83 and ink rubbing in Kaogu 1979.6, p. 500: the players sitting on
a mountain, at the right of the goddess.
(^32) See Fotudeng’s biography in Gaoseng zhuan 385c, translated in Wright 1948, esp.
p. 355.
(^33) Among them, Pengshan tombs 45, 166, 169, 530. Photograph in Wu Hung 2000,
p. 82, g. 5.
(^34) Photograph in Rhie 1999, g. 1.23.