. esoteric buddhist art up to the tang 257
Museum shows how the indigenous tradition interacted with the spirit
world of Buddhism and assigned a trigram from the Yijing (Book
of Changes) to each of the eight protecting spirits carved at its base
(figure 1).^4
Hindu divinities were imported into China together with Buddhism,
although for a long time they were mainly relegated to play minor (or
at least secondary) roles in the various Buddhist narratives and the
various attempts at portraying them. However, in the course of the
fourth to fifth centuries, these “buddhified” Hindu gods began to live
lives of their own. This does not mean that they were divorced from
their original Buddhist context, but rather that within it they attained a
certain functional and cultic autonomy. Exactly how this came about is
not clear, but in terms of art, we see Hindu gods appear with increas-
ing regularity in the sculptural material, just as was the case with the
spirits and demons discussed above. And not only that, where they
previously were represented as minor and small-sized images, they
now begin to attain more well-defined and personal characteristics
in accordance with the written tradition. The important encyclopedia
of spells, the Tuoluoni zaji ( ; T. 1336), dating from the
first half of the Liang dynasty (502–552), gives us a good idea of this
development.
At the Yungang Caves outside Datong in northern Shanxi,^5
several early examples of Hindu gods can be found as part of the
Buddhist pantheon that was carved in the cliff during the second half
of the fifth century.^6 On the one hand, the roles the Hindu gods are
assigned to here reflect their function as protectors in the traditional
sense, and on the other hand they presage their later upgraded roles
as primary Esoteric Buddhist divinities of the wrathful class. Signifi-
cant among these images are the reliefs of Maheśvara and Kārttikeya/
Kumāra, depicted as multi-headed and many-armed divinities riding
(^4) Yin 1997, 42–45. Comparable examples can be found in the Central Asian collec-
tion in the Dalem Museum in Berlin and at the local Dunhuang museum in Gansu.
See also Durt, Riboud, and Lai 1985; and Yin 1991. This material adds important
information to our knowledge of the cult of the stūpa and early Esoteric Buddhism.
(^5) For an up-to-date study of this site and its history, see Caswell 1988.
(^6) Cf. Li Zaiqian 1998, 69–71. See Shanxi sheng wenwu gongzuo weiyuanhui and
Shanxi Yungang shiku wenwu baoguan 1977, pls. 39–41, 52. Caswell 1988, 72, fig-
ures 52–53 expresses doubts as regards the identification and iconography of both
images.