2022.07.12 (火)

English Version | Transmitting Numinous Aura through Contact: A Replica Produced from the Mold of the Original Statue

Exploring Art: Discover the Buddhist Pantheon opens this month at the Nara National Museum (Narahaku). Among the objects on display is a recent replica of a thirteenth-century nude statue of the buddha Amida Nyorai (Skt. Amitābha). Copies of religious icons are rarely afforded anything close to the reverence shown to original works, and even less value is given to replicas —including the so-called “cultural heritage clones,” which are nearly identical copies of original works produced with 3D-modeling and other technologies. In contrast, Narahaku’s replica was made by taking a mold from the surface of the original statue. In light of its production process, this new statue—which we might call a “contact replica”—perhaps shares in the numinous aura of the thirteenth-century image.

How objects shaped from wood or stone by human hands can become enlivened objects of worship is a major issue in religious art and material culture. In Buddhism, one means of transforming matter into sacred presence is the eye-opening ceremony (J. kaigen kuyō) performed for statues and paintings after their completion or repairs. However, there seem to be other sources of sacred efficacy as well. Physical contact with a sacred prototype is one such source of authenticity and divine presence.

The Chinese Buddhist priest Xuanzang 玄奘 (602–664) is said to have encountered the footprints of the historical Buddha Śākyamuni in Pataliputra and carried their ink rubbings to the Tang-dynasty capital of Chang’an.  In fact, the rubbings were more likely brought back by the seventh-century diplomat Wang Xuance 王玄策, who is thought to have made several missions to India. The rubbings themselves were revered as objects of Buddhist faith, and a Japanese envoy to Tang transmitted their iconography to Yakushiji Temple in Nara. There, the footprints were carved into stone and enshrined as buddhapada (J. bussokuseki). Because the rubbings had touched the actual sacred footprints of the Buddha, it was not merely the iconography that was conveyed to China and then Japan, but something of the Buddha’s enlivened traces as well. 

Similarly, when the eighth-century Taima Mandala tapestry was removed from the wooden board to which it had been affixed for centuries while undergoing conservation in the 1600s, the board itself became an object of worship.

When we think that Narahaku’s replica was produced using a mold that touched the actual surface of the original statue, it is tempting to consider that some faint echo of the original statue’s sacred efficacy (J. reigensei) reverberates in its copy.

Mary Lewine, Research Fellow

Curatorial Division of the Nara National Museum

Originally published in Japanese in the Morning Edition

of the Yomiuri Shimbun’s Nara Section on June 29, 2022