By contrast, a reference reuses a text without mentioning that it is being reused and usually in a looser way. No explicit appeal to the authority of the previous text is made, although in some cultural milieus (see again Freschi 2015 for the case of philosophical schools in Classical India) the reuse of materials of the same milieus is consciously or subconsciously recognised by the audience who thus accepts the new work as part of their own cultural milieu.

Amorino at Miran M III (wikipedia)

Last, the category of interlanguage points to a wide-spread reuse of a motif which is so common that authors just reuse it without any further thought, as if it belonged to their basic tool kit. Similarly, the audience does not perceive interlanguage as a distinct element of a given work and they do not acknowledge it as pointing to some other work.

Already Bignami 2015 (in the same issue of JIPh) has suggested to apply these category to the history of art. The following examples discuss possible applications:

1. the term quotation could cover cases such as Andy Warhol’s reuse of well-known works of art (notably the Mona Lisa) within his creations. In fact, in this case, the reuse is acknowledged and the viewers need to be aware of the original painting for the mechanism to work.
2. the term reference could cover cases such as the reuse of a content without a specific form, as in the above=mentioned case of Motycka’s Christ which reuses the motif of the crucified Christ although it does not reuse a specific representation of him.
3. the term interlanguage could cover cases such as the diffusion of Corinthian columns throughout the Roman Empire. Their use outside of Greece was in fact no longer linked to a specific geographic area and readers were not reminded of a single building whose style would have been reused. They were just the shared common language for prestige buildings.\footnote{By contrast, the reuse of the same Corinthian columns in Washington D.C. is a case of reference, since it did not represent the obvious way of building and it rather clearly referred to the classical model of ancient Greece, trying to evoke democracy and other classical ideas.

More in detail, the use of references may be part of an important legitimizing strategy also in history of art (as it is the case in Classical Indian philosophy, see above), since the conscious reuse of a motif which is familiar to one’s audience can be a device used by artists in order to be accepted by the audience. A typical example might be a religious work of art including iconographic elements of a well-known depiction of the same theme. This example also shows how the boundaries between quotation, reference and interlanguage are in art-history, just like in textual history, blurred. The reuse of the Amorini or of the garland-bearers in Buddhist art in Central Asia , for instance, seems today to be a case of interlanguage. However, for the coeval viewers of the paintings at the Miran’s shrines labelled as M III and M IV (see Lo Muzio 2014) the link with a single well-known model, perhaps circulating through note-books might have been so evident that we should rather speak of a quotation (see Filigenzi 2006 for the thesis that the paintings at Miran M III and M IV were inspired by Gandharan ones at Saidu Sharif, in Swat, perhaps through the medium of reproductions in painted albums), perhaps aiming at enhance the prestige of one’s site by linking it ideally with a famous one, as it happened in the case of Roman reproductions of Greek statues. Last, the same kind of reuses could be conceived as instances of reference if they were reusing a specific motif without reproducing it exactly nor presupposing that the viewers would have noted the reference, as perhaps suggested by Bussagli’s comparison of the same Miran paintings with the 1st–3rd c. Gandharan sculptures in Bussagli 1963.

As usual, categorizations are only useful if they serve to understand phenomena or to draw similarities and differences one would not have been able to understand otherwise. Do these categories help you in this sense?

This blogpost is part of my series on reuse in art (see here). It has further been inspired by a lecture at the ISTB by Ciro Lo Muzio (who is not at all responsible for my interpretation of the data, nor for the mistakes I may have added).

1. Yoga-Hayagrīva, seated in padmāsana, holding in the upper arms discus and conch and in the lower ones the Vedas (represented as a thin book) and the jñānamudrā
2. Lakṣmī-Hayagrīva, seated in padmāsana and with the same attributes, but with Lakṣmī sitting on his left knee

Both are very well-spread, in temples, paper and cloth paintings and both appear to originate from Veṅkaṭanātha’s writings, the Yoga-Hayagrīva from his Hayagrīvastotra whereas the Lakṣmī-Hayagrīva seems to be a modification of the first according to the theology of Śrī Vaiṣṇavism (in which Lakṣmī is inseparable from Viṣṇu) and is described in Veṅkaṭanātha’s Śatadūṣaṇī. The center of his cult seems to have been the temple at Thiruvahindrapuram, which is also considered the “home-temple” of the Vaṭakalai religion. Unfortunately, I have never been there, nor can I plan a trip there in the immediate future. Thus, I would welcome comments and corrections by the readers.

The following one is a photo of the whole temple.

Next follows the photo of (possibly, since I have not been there) the main icon of Hayagrīva found either in the main temple or in one nearby. Readers will immediately recognise that it conforms to the Yoga-Hayagrīva typology.

Last, an icon of Lakṣmī-Hayagrīva, whose origin I do not know. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find a good image of the Lakṣmī-Hayagrīva image in the Thiruvahindrapuram temple (it is reproduced as Fig. 12a in Sridhara Babu 1990).
For more information on Hayagrīva and his connection with Veṅkaṭanātha, you can see this presentation. On Hayagrīva in general, see the posts under this tag.

The occurrences of Hayagrīva in the Mahābhārata (henceforth MBh) have been neatly summarised in van Gulik 1935, pp. 10–15 and in Nayar 1994, chapter 3. Van Gulik notes that in different portions of the Mahābhārata we find Hayagrīva connected with the recitation of the Vedas and that in MBh 12.335.43–69 Viṣṇu horse-headed brings back the Vedas and kills their thieves, the two asuras Madhu and Kaiṭabha, who had stolen them from Brahmā. The following is an excerpts of the main action (my tentative translation):

Having entered the mythical stream, [Viṣṇu-Hayagrīva] performed the supreme Yoga |

Performing the sound according to the rules of phonetics, he pronounced the Oṃ || 12.353.50 ||

The sound was resonant and went in each direction and was charming |

It was in the whole earth and had all good qualities || 12.353.51 ||

Then, the two asuras, made up an agreement regarding the Vedas (presumably: regarding when to come back and pick them up) |

and having threw them on the bank of the mythical stream, they run whence the sound came from || 12.353.52 ||

At that point, the king god carrying a horse head, |

Hari, grasped all the Vedas which had arrived to the bank of the mythical stream || 12.353.53 ||

He gave them back to Brahmā and went then back to his own nature |

[…] Then, the two [demons] sons of Danu, Madhu and Kaiṭabha, who did not see anything [as the source of the charming sound they had head before] |

went back quickly to the place [where they had left the Vedas] and they looked || 12.353.55 ||

Where the Vedas had been thrown, the place was empty! |

[…] Then there was a fight between them and Nārāyaṇa |

The two Madhu and Kaiṭabha, whose bodies where filled with rajas and tamas, |

were killed by the [now become] ‘Killer of Madhu’ (Madhusūdana, a name of Viṣṇu), who thereby pleased Brahmā || 12.335.64 ||

rasāṁ punaḥ praviṣṭaś ca yogaṁ paramam āsthitaḥ |
śaikṣaṁ svaraṁ samāsthāya om iti prāsr̥jat svaram || 12.353.50 ||
sa svaraḥ sānunādī ca sarvagaḥ snigdha eva ca |
babhūvāntarmahībhūtaḥ sarvabhūtaguṇoditaḥ || 12.353.51 ||
tatas tāv asurau kr̥tvā vedān samayabandhanān |
rasātale vinikṣipya yataḥ śabdas tato drutau || 12.353.52 ||
etasminn antare rājan devo hayaśirodharaḥ |
jagrāha vedān akhilān rasātalagatān hariḥ |
prādāc ca brahmaṇe bhūyas tataḥ svāṁ prakr̥tiṁ gataḥ || 12.353.53 ||
[…]
atha kiṁ cid apaśyantau dānavau madhukaiṭabhau |
punar ājagmatus tatra vegitau paśyatāṁ ca tau |
yatra vedā vinikṣiptās tat sthānaṁ śūnyam eva ca || 12.353.55 ||
[…]
atha yuddhaṁ samabhavat tayor nārāyaṇasya ca || || 12.353.63 ||
rajastamoviṣṭatanū tāv ubhau madhukaiṭabhau |
brahmaṇopacitiṁ kurvañ jaghāna madhusūdanaḥ || 12.353.64 ||

The connection with the Veda, perhaps both with their oral and written form (although it is possible that what is rescued is still an oral version of the Vedas), is here very evident. It is also interesting that this version of the rescue of the Vedas is the only one which will be referred to in Pāñcarātra and in Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta texts. I will also come back (in a future post) to the motif of the ocean, which is sometimes connected with Hayagrīva (although the word rasā might also mean ‘lower regions, hell’, its connection with tala `bank’, as well as the evidence derived from parallel texts, seem to suggest the meaning ‘stream’). However, the rationale for the fact that Viṣṇu assumed exactly a horse head is altogether absent (unlike in the case of his Matsya or Varāha-avatāras, where the transformation had to do with the task to be accomplished).

Another mention of Hayagrīva in the MBh has it figure as the name of a demon slaughtered by Viṣṇu:

The two Madhu and Kaiṭabha have been slain by [Viṣṇu], who lies on the ocean |

Having reached a different birth, Hayagrīva has also been slain in the same way || 5.128.49 ||

Instead, the following one is a summary of the Hayagrīva story in one of its Purāṇic forms:

A horse-headed Asura called Hayagriva once invoked Brahma and sought from him [\dots] a boon by which he could be defeated by none other than another being who also had a horse’s head, also called Hayagriva. Such a creature did not exist […] The Devas did not know what to do. […] When they went to Vishnu, they found him taking a nap, resting his chin on his bow. Taking the form of termites, the Devas ate into the bowstring so that the bow shaft snapped with such force that it severed Vishnu’s neck. To save the headless Vishnu, the Devas sacrificed a horse and placed its head on his neck. Vishnu thus transformed into a horse-headed being. […] Vishnu challenged Hayagrīva to a duel, smote him with his mace and restored the Veda. […] Brahma then restored Vishnu’s head. (Skanda Purāṇa). (Pattanaik 2006, s.v)

There are various versions of this story (other versions have, e.g., Viṣṇu loose his head because of a curse and involve no good finality for it, see Nayar 1994, chapter 3) and in any case the story looks somehow strange, since:

• it looks like an ad hoc explanation for Viṣṇu’s horse head
• it looks like the conflation of three different stories, i.e., the slaughter of the demon Hayagrīva, the slaughter of Madhu and Kaiṭabha, who had stolen the Vedas, and the slaughter of the demon Hiraṇyakaśipu. As for the latter, according to the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, after years of ascesis, the demon Hiraṇyakaśipu had obtained from Brahmā a boon of his choice and asked for immortality, but Brahmā refused. Therefore, Hiraṇyakaśipu asked to be killed neither by a human being nor by an animal, nor by a demon, nor by a God. He is at last killed by Viṣṇu in the form of Narasiṃha, who is neither a human being, nor an animal, nor a God. The request by Hayagrīva seems very similar.

It may be objected that once one does not accept the Purāṇic versions of the story, it is difficult to make sense of Viṣṇu’s horse head. In fact, this might be due to either an ancient (Vedic or perhaps Indoeuropean) attribute of a deity, linking it to the horse because of the latter’s importance in the Vedic mythology or the inclusion of a pre-existing deity in the Smārta pantheon through the device of turning it into an avatāra of Viṣṇu.

Thus, in my opinion Hayagrīva is a (perhaps Vedic) deity, perhaps assimilated to Viṣṇu or always identical with him, and the horse head is linked to the importance of the horse in the Vedic culture. The same importance has led to the invention of several demons with horse attributes, until someone conflated the two stories into one, with added details from other demons’ slaughters (Madhu and Kaiṭabha and Hiraṇyakaśipu).

On Hayagrīva see also this post (about the Hayaśīrśa Saṃhitā) and this one (about Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta texts on him).

I received some interesting comments, both personally and on the blog, on my last post on the categorization of reuse.
Starting from the most basic type of re-use, Vitus convinced me to adopt “downcycling” for a destructive type of recycling, which brings a substance back to its raw materials.

Next would come what Philipp Maas and I had called “simple re-use”, i.e., re-use only governed by pragmatic and economic reasons (the old material is cheaper and closer). Now, Cristina Bignami suggested to me that “simple” in “simple re-use” seems to imply a judgemental value. She and EM suggested, instead “linear re-use”. I am not completely convinced by that, since I generally dislike “linear” as a description of historical processes (which tend to be more complicated than linear), but could go back to my initial suggestion (see this presentation), i.e., “pragmatic re-use“.

Next there is the adaptive reuse. Cristina suggested to read Julia Hegewald’s new life re-use as a subscategory of adaptive reuse, in case the adaption leads to a real new life of the object. The terminology seems to imply a radical change (i.e., “new-life” is not part of a continuous grey scale, like “adaptive reuse”).

A further point raised by Cristina regards the point of view from which we speak of reuse. She fears we are too much focused on the artist and not on the audience. I would say that I tried to speak of awareness of the audience while defining adaptive reuse, but perhaps this is not enough?

What do you think of this new terminology? Please note that “conventional re-use” would in this way be left out (and would be either a case of pragmatic re-use or of weak adaptive reuse —don’t forget that the two terms only delineate the two extremes of a continous grey scale).

For more on simple re-use vs. adaptive reuse you can read my Introduction to a panel I co-hosted together with Philipp Maas, here, or click “reuse” in the category list on this blog.

For the first conference of the EAAA, I hosted with Cristina Bignami and Julia Hegewald a panel on Reuse in art. In my paper, I started with the attempt to see whether the categories I had been elaborating for the analysis of textual reuse would have worked also in the case of artistic reuse. These are:

• continuous grey-scale between simple re-use and adaptive reuse

Simple re-use is the kind of reuse which is only determined by economic and pragmatic reasons, say, when I buy a used car because it is the cheapest available option. In simple re-use, the artist does not want the audience to recognise the reused elements as such and the fact that they are reused is not an explicit assett of the new composition. Adaptive reuse, by contrast, implies an explicit underlining of the reused element. The artist wants the audience to recognise what is happening and the fact that the element has been reused is part of the value of the new composition. Once again, the two are not aut-aut alternatives, but rather two extremes of a grey-scale.

simple re-use: pieces of Roman columns reassembled in early Christian buildings

adaptive reuse: an abandoned synagogue converted into a “food theater”, project by Diandian Ding.

I would have thought that the application of these categories to art would have been not controversial, given that Philipp Maas and I started using the term “adaptive reuse” after having read about it in texts about architecture (see for instance the work by Bie Plevoets, here). However, Julia A.B. Hegewald had already adopted a different terminology in her studies on re(-)use, starting from this one, distinguishing rather between:

1. recycling (when the row materials only are re-used, e.g., while melting a statue)
2. conventional re-use (when the purpose is not changed, e.g., a temple is re-used again as temple)
3. new life re-use (when the purpose is changed, i.e., a water tank is re-used as prison)

In my categories, I just did not take into account “recycling”, if this is limited to cases in which the original material is not recognised at all (e.g., by melting down a statue in order to use the metal for weapons). If it includes cases such as the reusal of columns (see image above), I would not label it “recycling” because the possibility that it is later reinterpreted as “adaptive reuse” by a different audience is open.
UPDATE: Vitus’ comment below makes me think that we could abandon the ambiguous term “recycling” and use instead “downcycling” for the case of melting statues to gain raw metal.
“New life re-use” seems quite close to what I call “adaptive reuse”.
“Conventional re-use”, by contrast, is not exactly tantamount to simple re-use, since the former points to the continuity of the purpose, whereas the latter to the awareness of artist and audience.

Comments on these and other terminological proposals are welcome. I will come back to the topic in a future post.

For more on simple re-use vs. adaptive reuse you can read my Introduction to a panel I co-hosted together with Philipp Maas, here, or click “reuse” in the category list on this blog.

1. Art scholars neither use nor appreciate hand outs (which I had prepared, following a comment here)
2. All art scholars, including the ones who do not discuss works of art, use slides and know how to do it (not too many, not too much text, not too few…), which is something I generally appreciate
3. Unlike scholars of Indian art (who do not generally feel they need to master an Indian language), it seems that many (or most) scholars of Chinese art master Chinese. Zhou Xiangpin even delivered (against expectations) his paper in Chinese language. If this had happened in a conference on Indian art, I imagine that most of the audience would have left, whereas in this case the audience seemed not to be distressed at all

The latter point, together with the presence of many young scholars from China, who probably had their travel financed by their home institutions, made me think a lot about the cultural agenda of the Chinese government. The Indian government seems much less interested in guiding Indological studies. (I can think of many reasons for that, but if you have further ones, please drop a comment below).

As for the contents of the conference, there were several parallel sessions, so that I could only attend some papers. I will dedicate a separate post on the topic of my panel, namely reuse. As for the others, I especially liked:

• Bianca Maria Rinaldi‘s paper on the Western reception of Chinese gardens: Bianca explained how the political attitude towards China modified the way the Western audience reacted to Chinese gardens. China was first presented by 17th–18th c. Jesuits as a model state, in which intellectuals ruled, whereas Europe was ruled by aristocratic feudataries. Chinese gardens were consequently appreciated for their simplicity, opposed to the magnitude of Versailles’ gardens. This meant that Chinese gardens were appreciated and their style was embraced by British planners as an alternative to the French (and Italian) style of gardening. Later on, namely by the end of the 18th c., however, the appreciation of China sinked and its gardens were rather blamed because of their lack of largeness and wide perspective. Bianca clearly explained how the latter was a conscious choice of Chinese gardeners who wanted to create one different scene after the other, highly valueing the surprise they would have generated in the viewers. However, Europeans rather decided to interpret it as a sign of the Chinese’s lack of courage, softness and decadence, with European gardens interpreted as more “adult” ones.

• (Here I am conditioned by my personal interests:) Valdas Jaskūnas’ paper on the influence of the Gurjara-Pratīhara dynasty on the structure and iconography in Early Medieval Vaiṣṇava temples and in the earliest Purāṇas. Valdas follows Ronald Inden’s idea that the Purāṇas were the result of an agency aiming at the creation of empires and consequently interpreted the earliest descriptions of temple-building in the Agni Purāṇa, the Matsya Purāṇa, the Garuḍa Purāṇa and —interestingly— the Hayaśīrṣa Pāñcarātra Saṃhitā. In fact, Vaslav argues, temples with an ambulatory around them constitute a three-level structure, with first the garbhagṛha, then the upper zone, to which only the emperor and his family could access, and then the outer level. Furthermore, the Pratīharas, maintains Vaslav, chose Vaiṣṇavism as a source of legitimation and this is reflected in the icongoraphy of the temple, especially in the dikpālas ‘direction guardians’.

As with previous conferences, this post only reflects my impressions of the conference. All errors (especially in fields I am not a specialist of, such as Chinese art) are entirely mine!
Should you be interested in my remarks on the history of gardens as a mirror of a society’s understanding of “nature”, read this article.

Hayagrīva at Khajurao

By contrast, after Veṅkaṭanātha, the iconography radically changes and two possibilities become fixed:

Yoga Hayagrīva: seated in padmāsana, carrying conch and discus in the upper hands and the Vedic book in the lower left one. The lower right one displays the jñānamūdrā or the vitarkamūdrā, both linked with the bestowing of knowledge.
Lakṣmī Hayagrīva: seated in lalitāsana, carrying the same attributes, displaying the same gesture, together with Lakṣmī.

Veṅkaṭanātha describes in his Hayagrīvastrotra the first one of the two, whereas the second form might be due to the fact that according to the Śrī Vaiṣṇava theology Viṣṇu is always connected with Lakṣmī. I could not detect any iconographic form of Hayagrīva previous to Veṅkaṭanātha and conforming to his description, thus:

What was the source of Veṅkaṭanātha’s precise description?

Probably an early and little studied Pāñcarātra Saṃhitā, the Hayaśīrṣa Saṃhitā (Hayaśirṣa means “horse-headed”, just like Hayagrīva and Aśvaśiras), of which only the first book has been edited (you can find it on Scribd). This describes Hayagrīva at least twice. First, in the first chapter of the first book, it says:

With four arms, carrying the club, the discus, the lotus and the bow (first part of v. 22ab)

caturbhujaṃ gadācakrapadmaśārṅgadharaṃ […]

However, in the 25th paṭala ‘chapter’ of the first book, the Hayaśīrṣa Saṃhitā describes Hayagrīva in a form very similar to the one found in the Hayagrīvastotra:

Or, one should let [an artist] make me with conch, discus, club and Vedas in the hands || 24 ||
Distinguished as having the face of a horse and four arms |
seated in padmāsana and connected in the upper part of the body with the Goddess || 25 ||

śaṅkhacakragadāvedapāṇiṃ vā kārayīta mām || 24 ||
aśvavaktraṃ caturbāhum evam eva vyavasthitam |
puṣkarāsanam adhyasthaṃ devīdvitayasaṃyuktaṃ || 25 ||

You will note that the two forms do not harmonise and that the first one seems more old-fashioned, insofar as it is closer to the pre-Veṅkaṭanātha iconography. The latter description, by contrast, is somehow intermediate between the Khajurao and the later ones, since it has too many attributes, so that it is at least possible to choose among them (whereas at later times the club is just forgotten). Furthermore, it is seated as in the Hayagrīvastotra, but connected to Lakṣmī. This shows that Veṅkaṭanātha probably had a precise model and that he chose to focus on what was according to him the real essence of Hayagrīva, with some specific attributes (I could imagine that the club was eliminated also because Veṅkaṭanātha wanted to be sure that the jñānamūdra and the Vedic book were always present) and without Lakṣmī.

I will discuss the iconography of Hayagrīva at the EAAA conference on Friday the 26th of September. You can read a preliminary draft of my presentation here. For another post on Hayagrīva, see here. I am grateful to Robert Leach and Marion Rastelli for discussing this issue with me.

CB: The project is aimed at identifying and contextualizing the emergence and the development of a Christian Iranian book culture as a result of the cultural-religious activities carried out by the Christian Iranian communities in the Turfan oasis (present-day Xinjian, Uyghur Autonomous Region, China), during late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Some background information: About 30–35,000 fragments have been found in Turfan, most of which extremely short [see Q2], in about twenty different languages and scripts. The Christian community in Turfan used Sogdian as a language of cultural exchanges among Christian communities. Thus, they never adopted Middle Persian (at the same age of the Sogdian documents, one already finds Neo Persian ones, so that it appears that the Middle Persian was already outdated as a spoken language and its choice by other communities was due to other reasons), whereas the Manichean (and, back in Iran, the Zoroastrian) church used Middle Persian. The project focuses on a corpus of nearly five hundred fragments in Sogdian language in East Syriac script and circa fifty fragments in Sogdian secular script. Furthermore, it examines also five hundred fragments in Easy Syriac script (out of which 400 are kept in Berlin, Turfan Collection and 100 are in Saint Petersburg).

Q2. EF: How do you feel about having to work with such a restricted corpus? Don’t you miss whole texts?

CB: Every single day. If I happen to find a fragment with 20 lines I have to be more than happy and this is surely frustrating. One works on some pages of the Bible in Middle Persian from the Turfan oasis, some inscriptions on the so-called Nestorian crosses in Pahlavi,
a short rock inscription…No other manuscripts were found, apart from Turfan, although we know —through Syriac witnesses— that there were Christian communities in Iran and that the Bible has been translated in Middle Persian around the 3rd or 4th century. One cannot avoid hoping that an archaeological expedition not focusing on Persepolis will finally uncover some documents even in Iran. Apart from the middle age zoroastrian literature and the Neo Persian one, all we know about Iran is due to fragments and we scholars need to be able to fruitfully compare small indications, e.g., a Middle Persian Psalter found in Turfan, although in the X c. Middle Persian was neither a liturgical language (the liturgical language was Syriac, although out of Syriac sources we know that local languages were admitted for some parts of the Mass) nor a spoken one (Neo Persian was already in use). Thus, one can speculate that the Psalter has been brought to Turfan by traders on the Silk Road or by missionaries accompanying them. The ductus of the Psalter resembles that of a cross found in today’s Afghanistan, so that this could be its origin…It is very frustrating, but it is also fun to reconstruct the puzzle.

Q3. EF: How many languages does one need to know in order to (try to) reconstruct the puzzle?

CB: Theoretically many: Middle Persian, Parthian, Bactrian, Sogdian, Khotanese… Since I focus on the phenomena of interculturation shown through Syriac elements in the Sogdian book culture, I also had to learn Syriac. People who focus on Buddhist Sogdian will have to know Sanskrit and in some case Chinese, too. In fact, the Sogdian corpus consists of translations and, thus, the resulting Sogdian is very much influenced by the source language. This is proved by the fact that the same language, at about the same time and in the same area looks very different according to the source language it translates. The Manichean Sogdian is easier, because the source language (Middle Persian or Parthian) is closer, since it is also a middle persian language of about the same period. Mani used Middle Persian and other middlepersian languages to spread his religion, because he understood himself as the “seal between Jesus, the Buddha and Zarathustra” and thus wanted his religion to be understood. It is not clear whether the invention of the so-called Manichean script (a script based on the Aramaic one) is also due to Mani’s circle as a part of this project (perhaps in order to characterise the new religion with a clear identity marker —-although other scripts were also used for missionary purposes— this topic is currently investigated in a PhD research project in Berlin). The Christian Sogdian has also a similar origin, since Christians also wanted their texts to be spread and understood. Within the Iranian area, the situation of the Zoroastrian religion is, instead, quite different, since Pahlavi texts are deliberately conservative, since one can only be born a Zoroastrian and conversions are not allowed.

Q4. EF: Until now, we have spoken of languages and of the scripts used to represent them. However, you also focus on other elements in your fragments, such as punctuation and the like. Which role do they play in your cultural reconstruction?

CB: A very important one. I have been, e.g., working on the small crosses drawn on some folia and have found them in Syriac and Sogdian texts. Where do they come from? Some scholars believe that the smaller ones mark the versum of manuscripts, but if so, why do they occur only on some folia? Perhaps they marked the end of a quire, but it is difficult to ascertain it, since we only have small fragments. Do they depend on the scribe? On the scriptorium? Are they the imprimatur sign of a certain monastery? These are the questions I will try to answer in my current project. As for punctuation, Christian Sogdian texts tend to follow the Syriac punctuation. Because it was more authoritative or because there was no Sogdian one? Some elements are found also in Sogdian Buddhist texts, e.g., four points building a square at the end of a text to indicare a pause. The opposite corners are, respectively, black and red and I am currently working on the meaning of such an alternation. Also the small points in Manichean texts probably had a meaning, but it is not clear what is the direction of the borrowings (Manichean and Christian texts are more or less contemporary). Similarly shared is the number of pages per quire and this time it seems that a certain usage has been brought to Turfan by the Christians.

Q5. EF: What needs to be done now in your area? Which priorities would you set?

CB: We can now build upon over one hundred years of decipherment works. The decipherment of the fragments, due to their paucity is thus almost completed and the critical editions are accurate. It is now time to reconsider the whole corpus and investigate on
1. which phenomena are due to the influence of the language one is translating,
2. which ones are due to contacts (as I said before, we must remember that those were bi- or trilingual communities)
3. which ones are common developments in the Iranian area.
For instance, certain phenomena are found in the Eastern Iranian area, but also in Iran, centuries before. This proves that the Eastern Iranian area remained for centuries more conservative. But how long? Other elements are found in some rather conservative dialects of central Iran (see my forthcoming article in the proceedings of the 7th International Conference of the Societas Iranologica Europaea). Such comparisons would enable the distinction between phenomena due to interferences (contact or translation) and ones due to inner developments of the Iranian Asia. As for 1, the influence of the language one was translating has often been underestimated. For instance, W.B. Henning has studied the sociolinguistic of Sogdian and decided that the Manichean Sogdian corresponded to a higher sociolinguistic level and the Christian one to a lower one. Among the elements he considered are the frequency of periphrastic constructions in Christian Sogdian. However, these differences might be explained also through the fact that the Manichean religion had its own Iranian terminology, whereas the Christian one needed to create one and thus used periphrastic verbs (e.g., “cross” + “to put” to translate “crucify”) and could thus avoid Syriac loanwords. Further periphrastic constructions (such as the periphrastic preterit of some verbs) could be explained diachronically rather than diastritically. It is also important to remember that these varieties of Sogdian were never spoken languages and that in this sense sociolinguistic considerations need to be supplemented with a translation-studies analysis. But in order to do that, one needs to master many languages and to be aware of the religious and historical background.

EF: One also needs to master many scripts…

CB: The various scripts might be of help, since for instance the Manichean and the Sogdian secular scripts are based on the Aramaic one and, thus, do not record vowels. By contrast, whenever Sogdian is transcribed in Syriac script (a script also derived from the Aramaic one, but with added diacritics), we can gather more information about the vowels through the diacritic signs.

Q6. EF: It is fascinating to see how you start from concrete elements in languages and scripts but interpret them in order to reconstruct a wider cultural scenario.

CB: Yes, through the study of linguistic phenomena and of scripts one can reconstruct the relations between communities and their nature. Were they due to trade? Did they imply bilingualism? An instance is the Sogdian Psalter written not in the eastern Syriac script (the standard one for Christian texts), but in Sogdian secular script [see above, Q 2]. Why writing it in a secular script, usually employed for letters, bills, etc.? Perhaps because the text was meant for a wider diffusion outside the monastic communities, e.g., for traders? This is confirmed also by the fact that the Psalter is the text more translated in the various languages of Turfan (Uighur, Neopersian and other spoken languages of that time). And also the most translated ones among Mani’s Psalms have been written using the Sogdian secular script instead of the Manichean one. Thus, through the script one can understand the reception and diffusion of a text. Through a linguistic study, one can further reconstruct that there were trilingual communities around Turfan, since after a certain point of time, turkish was also spoken there. In fact, one finds Turkish-Sogdian documents, bilingual letters in which the main language is Sogdian, but the morphology is halfway between the two and one notices phenomena of code-copying. Going back to the small crosses referred to above [Q 4], after some of them one finds a sign I interpret as the Syriac word hayé ‘life’ (I discuss this topic in my forthcoming book, The Sogdian Lectionary in E5). Why does the word occur only in some cases? Does this have to do with the kind of text (this does not seem to be the case)? Or with the scribe? The presence of the word hayé is anyway not out of place because the cross has a different meaning in the Oriental Churches, where it is never depicted with the dying Jesus on it and it is rather a symbol of life and glory.

Readers who work on manuscript fragments from Gandhāra and the like are also encouraged to answer Question 2!
For more on scriptoria and their cultural role, see also this interview.

This post is part of my series of Interviews. If there are additional questions you would like to ask or if there is someone, either a specific person (i.e., yourself), or a representative of a given category (e.g., “A scholar of Nyāya”) you would like me to interview, please let me know.

Gerald Kozicz discusses in “From Mainamati to Nyarma. Remarks on the Development from Cruciform to Oblong-shaped Temple Layouts” (Journal of Bengal Art, 13) some key transformations in temple architecture and their import. He notices that Buddhist temples around the 10th c. move from an initial structure where a solid stūpa lies at the middle and an ambulatory encircles it to one where the center is occupied by a cella. This is probably due to the influence of the maṇḍala-concept, in order to make it possible for the practitioner to access the center of the temple/of the maṇḍala (and, thus, to identify with its supreme figure). But can one convincingly argue that a practitioner was aware of the symbolic value of the spatial elements within the temple? Was not he just worshipping images, wherever they were put?

image by GK

The topic has to do with two of my pet-topics.

1. There are no “lay” users of “texts” (including in this definition whatever can be interpreted, be it a philosophical work, a work of art, a performance, an architecture) in Classical South Asia. The audience does not need to be furnished with all interpretative clues, it does not need any in-troduction (Ein-leitung) to lead him/her into the text. By contrast, the audience is usually made of educated people who know the context well enough.
2. Perception is not a natural, neutral (i.e., subject-independent) process. Rather, it depends on what the perceiver already knows about what s/he is currently perceiving. In my favourite example, one only sees a willow if one knows how it looks like. If not, s/he will not see the willow among other trees. Similarly, Gerald Kozicz comments about the fact that a practitioners perceives the architectural rendering of a maṇḍala also once put in an oblong shape because “the way we experience our environment largely depends on what we know. In other words: perception is not a passive act, but a reflective process. Thus, once the practitioner was initiated, i.e. had the ability to understand the architectural language that was underlying the process of transformation from an ideal diagram to an architectural plan, he was also able to perceive the spatial system as a maṇḍala“.

Do you know of other examples of knowledge-influenced perception?

For my discussion of the dependence of perception on Linguistic Communication, see this post on my previous blog. For other posts on Gerald Kozicz’ work on the spatial symbolism in Buddhist art, see here and here.

EF: In fact, it appears clearly from your work that plans, space, and drawing play an important role for you.
GK: I always start my articles and presentations with some drawings, plans or models. The text just flows automatically once these are ready.

EF: Two things have particularly impressed me in your articles. The first one is importance of architectonic space.
GK: Yes, one cannot understand architecture only through the surfaces, as if one were an ant climbing on the walls and unable to appreciate the three-dimensionality of space. The lantern ceilings which reproduce a maṇḍala in such a way as to unable the practitioner to actually be in its centre are a good example. One cannot achieve it just in a two-dimensional painting. And in order to understand the symbolic value of such a  maṇḍala, one needs to take into account the possibilities it opens for practitioners, possibilities which one would overlook if one were to focus only on the beauty of the paintings.

the sketch shows the approach of the practicioner to a two- or three-dimensional maṇḍala (drawing by GK)

EF: The other point which impressed me is the fact that your articles are not only descriptive. As in the example you just mentioned, one sees how you connect art and architecture with their symbolic value.
GK: I try to focus on the vision of the one who thought about building a certain temple, of what he wanted to achieve. Once I have produced a plan and then also a three-dimensional model of the building many things become apparent to me. For instance, it becomes clear that the 100-Stūpa temple must have impressed its visitors who were at first lost and needed to look for the main stūpa. This conveys the idea of the stūpa as a fundamental axis mundi (see image).

the many stūpas around the main one (drawing by GK)

EF: Now to your career. You have the uncommon specificity (among researchers) of having taken parental leave for two years when your daughter was born.
GK: Not even I did it, but I am so thankful for that. That step back from the academic milieu enabled me to focus on what I really liked, again, on drawing, descriptive geometry, history and Asia. And while my daughter slept I drew and wrote my first FWF application, on the development of the Vajrāyāna stūpa-architecture.

EF: Your work is so complex that I wonder how you manage to do all on your own…
GK: I have a good network of people I exchange information with. I show them my models or support them with plans and they help me with Tibetan inscriptions, material analysis of colours and so on. I do not value “interdisciplinarity” if it only means juxtaposition of different perspectives, but sharing expertise is of fundamental importance.

EF: You managed to find your own area of research bridging Tibetology, Buddhist studies, Art History, Architecture… What would you recommend to younger scholars?
GK: To ask themselves what motivated them at first. I managed to unite all my passions in one research and this is what makes it possible for me to enjoy my work.