Orientations - The magazine for collectors and connoisseurs of Asian art

Asia Society Museum's first major exhibition devoted to the impact of Buddhist pilgrimage on artistic production across Asia, 'Pilgrimage and Buddhist Art' features more than ninety objects, including sculptures, paintings, prints, ritual implements, photographs and maps. The objects, dating from the 1st to the 20th century, are on loan from thirty museums and private collections in North America.

Pilgrimage is both a physical and a spiritual journey; the sacred sites which are the pilgrim's destination may be of this world or beyond. For Buddhists, Mount Meru represents all of these. Works referencing Meru attests to the diversity of Buddhist imagery featuring depictions of the mountain. The site is both common in Buddhist imagery and multifaceted. It is in a multitude of ways the quintessential example of a pan-Asian Buddhist pilgrimage site.

Tracing Buddhist Devotion in South Asia
Janice Leoshko

While it became increasingly clear to the Western world in the 19th century that the remains of Buddhist monuments could be found in many parts of South Asia, it was also apparent that there were virtually no practising Buddhists, except for those in the northern parts of the subcontinent or far south in Sri Lanka. The article follows the activities of English artist William Simpson (1823-99) and army engineer-turned archaeologist Major Alexander Cunningham (1814-92) in the region and discusses ritual objects' role in the display of other Buddhist art traditions.

Among the nearly one hundred objects and images related to the places and practices of Buddhist pilgrimage in the exhibition 'Pilgrimage and Buddhist Art' are numerous mandalas. Mandalas have been used throughout the Buddhist world to consecrate and circumscribe the ritual space of altars, initiation platforms, temples and pilgrimage. This article explores how in Japan, mandalas were used to map local landscapes as sites of Buddhist pilgrimage. Like a religious map or ground plan, the two-dimensional mandala, painted on cloth or paper, always refers to the third dimension - a topographic, architectural or ritual space - beyond the painted plane. The mandala spatializes Buddhist thought, providing the tools for drawing the cosmos into the ceremonial act and for establishing correspondences between the macrocosm and the microcosm. Through rites of consecration, visualization and veneration, the mandala advances a totalizing vision of the religious environment and provides a universalizing map for a particular religious landscape.

Buddhist Imagery in the Koguryo Tomb No. 1
at Changchuan, Ji'an, Jilin
Ariane Perrin

Changchuan tomb no. 1, located in today's Ji'an city, Jilin province in China, stands out as having the earliest known painted representation of a Buddha figure in a funerary context, and the easternmost one on the Asian continent. General consensus ascribes this tomb to the Koguryo kingdom (37 BCE-668 CE) and dates it to the mid-5th century, based on iconographic study of the Buddhist elements and on the tomb construction type. The later Korean source of the 12th century, the Samguk sagi, mentions the official entry of Buddhism to the Korean peninsula through the northern kingdom of Koguryo in 372, but it is unknown precisely what form of the Buddhist faith spread to Korea or what were the most popular visual representations of that time. The Buddhist scenes in Changchuan tomb no. 1 thus offer a rare insight into Buddhist iconography in a funerary context in 5th century northeast Asia.