My liaison to Dunhuang
can be traced back to high school era. During the busy period of preparing for
the National Exam, I bumped into an article titled “Mogao Caves” 莫高窟by Yu Qiuyu. The beginning of the article stroke
me: In 366AD, a monk called Lezun 樂尊went
to the area of Dunhuang. When he arrived there, it was getting dark. As the sun
was setting down, it shone light onto the mountain that Lezun was facing. The
reflection of the sunray from the mountain suddenly presented Lezun a
phenomenal image: he saw thousands of golden Buddha emerging in front of him.
Taking this as a clear message from Buddha, the monk realized how special this
place was and began to construct caves in which he offered service for Buddha.
Hence the beginning of the Mogao Caves.
Whether this story is
true or not, nobody can tell. But certainly it has the appeal, for monks
following the footprint of Lezun, and for a teenager living at the end of the
20th century, that is, me. What Lezun witnessed, we might say from
our modern perspective, is a religious experience. The image of Buddha in his
mind somehow, with the timely aid of external force, transformed into a physical
image, a “real” presentation in front of his very eyes. There is something
mysteriously beautiful produced from this process, isn’t it? The dessert, the
setting sun, the mountain, and most importantly, the light, the combination of
them creates a surreal scene. That scene, obviously, is created by the account
of Lezun, and further beautified by Yu Qiuyu. Yet that scene, my first
association with Dunhuang, has been engraved on my mind ever since.
Perhaps at the same
period, or a bit earlier, I encountered the music of Kitaro 喜多郎. His silk-road album, based on the namesake NHK
documentary, was quite impressive, and I immediately became a fan of a song
called “Mirage” on that album. The rhythm feels vast and grandiose, but at the
same time a melancholic sensitivity for something that is forever lost. The
music fits Dunhuang perfectly.
I always wanted to go to
Dunhuang. I used to tell my friends that it is the number one place in China I
want to visit. Because of this, I have been postposing the trip, saving the
best for the last. I hope I can wait until a perfect time, at a perfect age in
my life, to pay the tribute.
The pilgrimage still
hasn’t happened yet. But something else happened, which made the past four days
very special in my life.
Fast winding of time
forward, from teenager to adult. Almost twenty years passed. Now I am studying
history. Unplanned but possibly a play of fate, I began to work on medieval
Chinese history, which inevitably brought me to the Dunhuang manuscripts.
Although it is hard to explicate, I can try to rationalize this choice. Maybe
deep in my heart I am always longing for something mysterious, strange, or even
spiritual that cannot be easily explained by the material world. There is
something beautiful in that realm that attracted me throughout my life.
Medieval history is full of strange things: miracle tales, ghost stories,
unrestrained behaviors, etc. It might be a cliché already: the period from the
Six Dynasties to the Tang is as confusing as exciting; it was a world free of
controls, producing all kinds of extraordinary things 異相.
This attracts me.
So here I am, in London,
the British Library, reading some Dunhuang manuscripts. These are obviously
very special documents, preserved in the cave 17 and later scattered all over
the world. The collection at the British Library, often referred to as the
Stein Collection, mainly contains the Buddhist scriptures. Although they are
not directly related to my work, there are from time to time some non-Buddhist
materials embedded in these scriptures. Medicine is no exception.
3 October, 2012. A
Wednesday. A day to be remembered in my life. This is my first time to read a
Dunhuang manuscript, making it my first time to read any manuscript prior to
the 10th century. Yes, these manuscripts are indeed very old (from
the 5th to the 11th century). Honest speaking, I don’t
think the content of these manuscripts are essential for my research.
Nevertheless, the very act of taking a look at them, together with touching
them and smelling them, is an illuminating experience. In fact, this is a
ritualized research for me. I don’t mean that I bowed before opening the
scroll. That would make a scene in the library. I mean I somehow “experienced”
these texts as objects, which brought me closer to people in history. Look at
them! The writings by the monks who lived more than 1000 years ago have been
preserved, unedited, to our own time, and to my very hands. When I read these
manuscripts, I cannot help imagining the monks who wrote them; the historical
distance between me and them suddenly collapsed. Look, the handwriting of this
scroll is not so neat. Are you doing it in a rush or are you not very well
educated? See, the drawing of that scroll is quite interesting. Why do you draw
these animals along with the talismans? How do you use them? Of course there
are no answers from the other side of the dialogue. But never before did I feel
so close to the people who lived in so early an era. Anyone who reads these
manuscripts cannot help imagining his/her relation to these copyists. And
imagination is a powerful thing.
Since the library does
not allow taking photos, I needed to copy these manuscripts, by hand. It sounds
laborious, and it is, but it is a very special experience. It is part of the
ritual. Think in this way: Most of the Dunhuang manuscripts are copies of
Buddhist scriptures, made by the pious monks. So what I did in the library is
essentially the same as what these monks did more than 1000 years ago. I
entered history for a moment, and became part of them! Moreover, as I was doing
this, I realized how important copying is. It slowed down your mind, giving you
more time to digest the meaning of the text. Perhaps the motivation of those
monks to copy down the scriptures is not so far off from mine. [In Japan, this
is still an active practice. When I was in Kyoto, I found some temples offered
opportunities for visitors to copy scriptures.]
So in the past few days,
I have been sitting in the library, copying these manuscripts (five
altogether), quietly and carefully. It is a sublime experience. Under one hand,
I held the millennium-old manuscript (The oldest one I read was written in 545
AD, the time of the Western Wei西魏. That
is almost 1500 year-old.). Under my other hand, a pencil was copying down the
text, word by word, line by line, on a modern notebook. Just be absorbed in the
text. Nothing else. For two manuscripts, it involved drawing the animals and
talismans, which was challenging for me. I may not catch the very spirit
embedded in these pictures, but I was giving my best try.
Hence the highlight of
my London trip, if not of my life. Saying farewell to my friends in medieval
Dunhuang here in the UK, I hope I will meet them again in Paris soon.
The picture below: the British Library, view from outside.
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