212 stephan peter bumbacher
Museum, Harvard University Art Museum.^46 In this example, the ames
range from the shoulders down to the middle of the upper arms. A
series of ve different types of ame-shouldered deities are shown by
Wu Hung as they appear on Chinese bronze mirrors:^47 These examples
range from Xi Wang Mu-/Dong Wang Fu-like examples (without the
typical sheng crown, nota bene) sitting on a dragon,^48 to a more stylised
deity,^49 to clearly de ned Buddha-images^50 presented with crossed legs
and the hands in dhynamudr of which g. b^51 has well-de ned ames
leaving the shoulders. Shoulder- ames seem to be an attribute of the
Buddha Dpakara, the “light producer”, the Buddha of the far remote
past who was the rst to ignite the light of the dharma in the world. A
drawing after a Gandhra sculpture is to be seen in Schumann (1995).^52
To some degree both, the Buddha and the Queen Mother (or the King
Father) were even exchangeable, as Wu Hung’s series shows.
- The LIVES of Laozi and the Buddha
Another saviour coming into prominence during the Han dynasty was
Laozi , the mythical author of the classic Daode jing (Scrip-
ture of the Way and the Virtue). Sources of the rst century BC still
simply said that he had lived an extraordinarily long life: “Laozi prob-
ably lived over a hundred and sixty years of age—some even say over
two hundred—as he cultivated the dao and was able to live to a great
age”,^53 and that he nevertheless died in the end. It was only during the
Later Han that Laozi became an immortal. Within both the early Daoist
communities active in present-day Sichuan in the early second century
AD and the imperial court, Laozi by then had become an entirely divine
protagonist. As such he was identi ed with the dao itself and was thus
considered the ultimate cause of creation, that which existed before
creation took place, and capable of transforming into anything at any
(^46) Colour photograph in Rhie 1999, pl. 1; black and white photographs in Rhie
1999, gs. 1.44 and 1.45.
(^47) Wu Hung 1986, p. 277, g. i.
(^48) Loc. cit.: g. a 1.
(^49) Loc. cit.: g. a 2.
(^50) Loc. cit.: gs. b–d.
(^51) Loc. cit.
(^52) Schumann 1995, p. 129.
(^53) Shi ji 63.2142, tr. Lau 1984, p. 9.