Surviving Nirvana: Death of the Buddha in Chinese Visual Culture by Sonya S. Lee is the first book-length study of the nirvana image in Chinese art, examining carefully chosen works from the sixth to twelfth centuries. In her exploration of this motif, which represents the final extinction of the historical Buddha Śākyamuni, Lee’s methodological approach mediates the interactions between the monastic community, lay patrons, and artisans in articulating the particular resonance that this motif had in China, where it materialized in a broader range of architectural, material, and visual forms than had been the case in South and Central Asia. Lee thus responds to earlier works on the nirvana motif that were grounded chiefly in iconography and doctrinal history, and in the process largely overlooked the significance of localized context. (As one instance of the significance of localized context, Lee notes the use of the term “nirvana” rather than the technically precise “parinirvana” in donative inscriptions, a precedent that she follows in her book—as do I in this review.) As a result, Lee demonstrates how a historical event was transformed into a fully fledged pictorial motif many times over. The use of the word “surviving” in the book’s title is meant to evoke the possibilities that Buddhist devotees in China sought above and beyond the constraints of their immediate circumstances and the death of the historical Buddha; throughout the course of the book, it may also be understood as a metaphor for the continued appropriation of this motif in its localized socio-cultural contexts.

The nirvana image first became popularized in China in the second half of the fifth century. Unlike South Asian representations in which the Buddha’s nirvana was referenced both in anthropomorphic and aniconic forms, the preference in China was to represent this narrative moment in anthropomorphic fashion. The general conventions of the anthropomorphic representation entailed the Buddha reclining with his head pointing to the left and his feet pointing to his right accompanied by mourning observers. Among the members of the group of mourners who became more prominent in later depictions were the Buddha’s mother Queen Māyā and his eldest disciple Mahākāśyapa.

Surviving Nirvana is divided into four chapters, each of which focuses upon a group of objects in analyzing a specific theme related to nirvana imagery. Chapter 1, titled “Doubles: Stone Implements,” provides a close reading of a stone stele dated 551, originally from Shanxi Province and now in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. In this chapter, the nirvana motif is analyzed in conjunction with the contemporaneous belief in Maitreya, the Buddha of the future who follows after Śākyamuni. The sixth century marked a transitional and turbulent period in Chinese dynastic history, coinciding with prophecies regarding the end of the Buddhist dharma, or mofa, to be relieved only by the salvific presence of Maitreya. The dedicatory inscription on the obverse of the stele expresses a wish for the manifestation of Maitreya’s Tuṣita Heaven and for a manifestation of the nirvana of Śākyamuni. The obverse of the stele contains relief carvings of two seated bodhisattvas identified as Maitreya, whereas the reverse side contains a nirvana image in one niche in the uppermost register, mirrored by an image of Śākyamuni’s coffin on the left. Thus, the continuity between the historical Buddha (reverse) and the Buddha of the future (obverse) is expressed verbally, spatially, and visually. Lee argues for the key transition that took place in the rhetorical doubling of Śākyamuni and Maitreya, for it isolated the nirvana motif from the immediate personal history of Śākyamuni and instead placed it within the more complex continuum of the Buddhas of the past, present, and future. To reinforce the unmooring of the nirvana motif from its biographical context, Lee references other examples of stone altars in which scenes from the birth and early life of the Buddha are emphasized, but the nirvana itself is excluded. The iconic independence of the nirvana motif is underscored once again in Lee’s analysis of a stone pillar dated 582 from the Henan Museum in which the nirvana scene takes its place in one of twelve niches distributed on the pillar’s four sides, each of which housed images of Buddhas and bodhisattvas.

Chapter 2, titled “Transformation: Pictorial Narratives,” focuses upon the narratological elaboration of the nirvana motif during the seventh and eighth centuries. The simultaneous appearance of Śākyamuni’s nirvana and his coffin on the Chicago stele, as noted in the previous paragraph, anticipated a three-stage pictorial sequence that began with the reclining Buddha, proceeded to the coffin, and finally ended with the relics that resulted from the cremation of the Buddha’s body. Described as a niepan bian, or “nirvana transformation,” this is characterized as a ubiquitous pictorial idiom in stone carvings and cave shrines during the late seventh to eighth centuries. This is also the period overlapping with the political ascendancy of Wu Zetian (r. 690–705), who laid claim to the throne as the first and only female emperor in Chinese history. Toward this unprecedented end, she marshalled resources such as a commentary on the Great Cloud Scripture which foretold the coming of a wheel-turning ruler whose legitimacy was to be recognized by possession of the Buddha’s relics. In this next stage, special emphasis was placed upon not just the nirvana image, but also upon the discovery of the Buddha’s relics. Carved on the surface of a stone stele dated 691, now in the Shanxi Museum, scenes of the funerary procession and cremation of the Buddha’s body were located adjacent to the actual nirvana scene. During this period, the pictorial sequence of events pertaining to the nirvana did not necessarily adhere to the textual sources—the textual narratives began with the Buddha’s last lecture, continued with his nirvana, and ended with the division of his relics, whereas the pictorial narrative template tended to follow the aforementioned three-stage sequence, thereby shifting priority to the Buddha’s relics.

Chapter 3, titled “Family Matters: Nirvana Caves,” primarily addresses two cave shrines from Dunhuang in Gansu Province, Mogao Caves 332 and 148, both of which were “family caves” sponsored by the prominent Li clan. Each contains a large sculpted nirvana image. The date of Cave 332 is 698 CE, and Cave 148 dates to the second half of the eighth century. The incorporation of a prominent nirvana image in a cave shrine seems apt, given the architectural plans of cave shrines in India that contained rock-cut stūpas in emulation of the original hemispherical earthen mounds that housed the Buddha’s relics; however, Lee rightly notes the problems in establishing a clear-cut definition of a “nirvana cave.” In addition to a nirvana narrative mural on the south wall, the nirvana sculpture in Cave 332 was located on the rear, or west, wall of the cave, hidden from immediate view by a square pillar but rendered accessible through the act of circumambulation. Cave 148, however, had an open plan, and the monumental nirvana sculpture against the rear, or west, wall of the cave was directly accessible to viewers; the accessibility, in turn, demanded a different type of viewer participation in which the viewer was now part of the assembly of believers in what was effectively a reenactment of the Buddha’s nirvana. Lee relates the earlier cave to the Li clan’s support of Wu Zetian and the later cave to the Li clan’s wish for endurance throughout the Tibetan invasions of Dunhuang from the 760s onward.

Chapter 4, titled “Impermanent Burials: Relic Deposits,” continues to explore issues of viewership. In this chapter, Lee examines the insertion of the nirvana image into relic deposits of the tenth through twelfth centuries. One example is the Jingzhi Monastery pagoda crypt of 977, located in Hebei Province. An inscription on a gilt silver incense burner and a silver pagoda that were interred at this time expressed the donors’ wish to “reach the city of nirvana,” thereby identifying nirvana—uncharacteristically—as a place rather than as a state. The relic container was placed against the north wall of the crypt, framed on either side by a mural painting of the Buddha’s ten disciples in veneration. Following earlier terminological precedent, the cartouche at the top of the painting proclaimed the contents of the container as “The True Body Relics of Śākyamuni Buddha.” In Jingzhong Monastery, also located in Hebei Province, a pagoda deposit made in or before 995 contained not the relics of the Buddha but rather those of a monk named Yiyan. Nevertheless, the monk’s relics were commemorated in a similar manner to those of the Buddha. The crypt also contained a mural on the north wall; but rather than simply depicting the Buddha’s disciples, as was the case in the Jingzhi Monastery pagoda crypt, the very figure of the reclining Buddha entering nirvana surrounded by mourning disciples was depicted. Thus, the Buddha’s nirvana was treated as a model for the commemoration of the monk Yiyan.

Lee’s book succeeds in highlighting the “polysemous nature of the nirvana image” as well as redefining “the tenor of the image-text dialectic” by “emphasizing the agency of real people in the creative process” (11). Lee acknowledges that: “While there is no question that the nirvana image, especially in its narrative format, bore a close relationship to various kinds of texts on the Buddha’s life, it did not always function like a linguistic sign. It is precisely because the motif had such a long history and wide geographic distribution, neither of which had guaranteed a closed-circuit type of transference of form and meaning from one place or period to another” (11). Yet while problematizing the authority of Buddhist canonical texts in interpreting Buddhist devotional objects and sites, Lee relies heavily upon donor inscriptions in “shifting the critical focus to the realm of patronage” (9). While her argument concerning the localization of the nirvana motif is a significant contribution, one wonders whether the donor inscriptions—so crucial to determining the nature of localized contexts—should not, given their often public and generally visible nature, also be understood as performative or as staking out rhetorical positions in their own right.

The production of this substantial book is impeccable, with plenty of black-and-white illustrations and color illustrations for the mural paintings. Of particular note are the many diagrams that guide the reader expertly through Lee’s arguments, most of them produced by Lee herself. Finally, an index of Chinese inscriptions provides a useful reference for the specialist reader. The many illuminating insights of Lee’s work result in a book that succeeds at causing the reader to unlearn this most basic motif of Buddhist iconography and to look at it anew with fresh eyes. Surviving Nirvana: Death of the Buddha in Chinese Visual Culture is a thoroughly researched and welcome addition to the current scholarship on Buddhist art in China.