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A Grain of Sand: Yingzao Fashi and the Miniaturization of Chinese Architecture Di Luo A Dissertation Presented to Faculty of the USC Graduate School University of Southern California In partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy (East Asian Languages and Cultures) August 2016 Dissertat... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
ii Acknowledgement s My sincerest thanks go to the three distinguished scholars on my dissertation committe e: Professors Dominic Cheung, Sonya Lee, and Bettine Birge, who have directed and supervised the entire process of my dissertation research and writing. Their remarkable scholarship in the fields of Chinese liter... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
iii assistance of my academic advisor, Christine Shaw. Chri stine critiqued my research proposal and agenda, helped me secure funding, and prepared necessary paperwork for my travel. Professors Li Luke, Fang Xiaofeng, and Liu Chang at Tsinghua University helped me contact local authorities to gain access to several res... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
ii Contents List of Figures ........................................................................................................................... vi Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 1 On Defining the Miniat... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
iii 2. Miniatures as Sacred Repositories, Part I: The Longxingsi Sutra Case ......................... 51 The Zhuanlun Jingzang (Wheel-turning Sutra Repository) at Longxingsi .............................................. 52 Dating the miniature: textual evidence ............................................................ | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
iv In houses ................................................................................................................................................................ 114 The Tamamushi Shrine: a distant echo from Japan ........................................................................................ 117 T... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
v The ideal city in miniature ................................................................................................................................... 172 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................................. | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
vi List of Figures 1 Illustration of tiangong louge fodaozhang ................................................................................................. 215 2 Illustration of tiangong bizang ................................................................................................................ 215 3 Re... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
vii 25 Rhino 3D model of corner bracket sets of Longxingsi sutra case ................................................ 231 26 Longxingsi sutra case, detail of column-top and intercolumnar bracket sets .............................. 232 27 Zhuanlunzangdian at Longxingsi, detail of exterior bracket sets .................... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
viii 50 Arching bridge of Huayansi sutra case .............................................................................................. 249 51 Huayan Plaza in front of Huayansi .................................................................................................... 249 52 Arching bridge of Huayansi sut... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
ix 75 Jingtusi Main Hall, interior view ......................................................................................................... 264 76 Miniature golden halls in central coffer of Jingtusi ceiling ............................................................. 264 77 Miniature Buddhas painted in central ... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
x 99 Plan of ideal cap ital city, according to Kaogongji ................................................................................ 278 100 Plan of imperial palace, according to Kaogongji ................................................................................. 278 101 Reconstructive plan of Northern Song... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
xi 124 Modern reconstruction of Su Song's clock-tower at Taiwan National Museum of Natural Science .................................................................................................................................................... 292 | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
1 Introduction Miniature architecture proliferated in China during 1000-1200 CE. Buddhist and Daoist icons were shelte red by mini wooden pavilions, holy scriptures were stored in architectural-shaped bookcases and cabinets, whereas the interior of a worship hall--especially the vaulted ceiling--was typically ornamente... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
2 of “a world in a grain of sand,” has been translated into distinctive motifs of art by means of miniaturization. The decrease in size allowed a much detailed display within a limited space; it signaled the uncanny, the illusory, and the sublime, which helped to convey abstract Buddhist tenets and assist one's visuali... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
3 On Defining the Miniature: Philosophical, Religious, and Architectural Perspectives The English word “minia ture” hardly finds any equivalent in classical Chinese. 1 The concept of being miniature, however, like in many other world civilizations, can be traced as far back as high antiquity. Chinese myth tells how the... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
4 anthropomorphize all forces, causes, and phenomena. 4 In other words, humans see themselves as “miniatures” of the cosmos and the natural order personified. The dialectic of microcosm-versus-macrocosm and small-versus-large has been contemplated in early Chinese philosophical writings. In one of Zhuangzi's most imagi... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
5 The same imagery is found in some Buddhist sutras claiming that the Sumeru mountain can somehow be placed inside a mustard seed. 9 To be enlightened is to cross the boundaries of things large and small, to transcend one's mundane perce ptions of the external world, and to see, or rather envision, “a world in a lotus ... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
6 The atomic view emerged in the classical world and was adopted in proto-astronomy. A good example is Archimedes's calculation of the volume of the celestial space containing the sun and the earth, a space so vast that it could be measured only by the infinitesimal. He reckoned that a total of 1063 grains of sand woul... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
7 1:1063), and an architectural miniature usually ranges from 1/100 to 1/2 of the regular size. Historical records in China refer to them using the prefix xiao-,15 sometimes xiaoyang 小樣 (small-scale prototype), which denotes architectural models. More specifically, in the Yingzao fashi, the term xiaomuzuo 小木作 (small-sc... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
8 Conceptual and Theoretical Framework: Deconstruction, Oneirism, and Simulation Modern critcis of architecture often debate the interrelationship of a pair of concepts: form and function. The form of a building, it has been argued, needs to follow the intended function, sometimes to the extreme that any type of orname... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
9 construction by demolishing or dissembling the whole into parts. Derrida himself, however, clarifies that the essence of deconstruction lies in neither archi tectural technology nor metaphor, but architecture itself can be a deconstructive discourse, a way of thinking, and a form of writing. 19 His theory has given r... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
10 maintained--bestows the architecture with a new identity and its observer a new spatial experience. In essence, miniature architectur e becomes non-architecture or anti-architecture in disguise; it embraces strict rules of construction for the sake of “deconstructing” architecture and destabilizing its very meaning.... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
11 be categorized as “imitations of imitations” since they are twice-removed from the truth. Suc h a hierarchical view of artistic creation, however, has become more and more problematic as we entered the age of new media. Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) has pointed out acutely the falsehood of the presumed dichotomy betw... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
12 Scholarship on the Miniature Scholars have approached the top ic of miniature art from various perspectives. Rolf Stein is perhaps the first to have commented extensively on Chinese miniatures from a cultural-historical point of view. His celebrated work, The World in Miniature: Container Gardens and Dwellings in Fa... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
13 theories and cosmographical models such as the Kunlun mountain or its Buddhist equivalent, the Sumeru. He accentuates that real architectural features have been rigorously incorporated to help worshipers visualize the sacred landscapes or intended world order; the sutra libraries in Beijing and Shanxi, for instance,... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
14 of time is manipulated--quickened, slowed, or stopped, as in dreams--generating a total interiority segregated from the external and the ordinary. 31 James Roy King's Remak ing the World: Modeling in Human Experience (1996) illuminates miniature-making from an anthropological perspective. He emphasizes the modeling ... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
15 In recent years, miniature art has started to receive increasing attention from art historians. Lothar Ledderose's Ten Th ousand Things: Module and Mass Production in Chinese Art (2000), though highlighting the concept of modularity rather than miniaturization, has in fact foregrounded many important issues regardin... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
16 were intentionally designed in diminutive forms based on the belief that the posthumous soul--a duality of the ascending, heavenly-bound hun 魂 and a descending, earthly-bound po 魄--was invisible and a m iniature itself. 39 Not only the mingqi but tomb objects that symbolically or physically contained the deceased--i... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
17 coffin has led her to believe that a miniature could mimic and deviate from the real at the same time, thus becoming a du al-purpose object which is both representational and decorative. 43 The existing scholarship has exposed many lingering issues: for funerary miniatures alone, the debates go on as how their socia... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
18 noted here that the Yingzao fashi has several limitations: first, it prescribes, instead of describes, methods and procedures of buil ding activities. The formulas and patterns listed in the text have been associated mainly with official and canonical--and to some extent, ideal--forms, whereas in real practice, we o... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
19 type of miniatures completely omitted by the text. While the scaling method will be analyzed for every example, the focus of each chapter is slightly different : the revolving sutra case is most ideal for illustrating the interrelationship between the concepts of m iniaturization and deconstruction; the sutra cabine... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
20 platforms, to be used in classrooms, libraries, and m useums. They not only encourage innovative learning and research modes but would assist in physical as well as digital conservation projects. | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
21 1. Miniatures in Texts Literary references to miniatures exist in abundance. They are, however, largely fragmentary in nature, and they simply do not adhere to a set of specific terms when describing different miniatures. For a start, it is necessary to narrow down the scope of research to targeted historical period... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
22 treatise on Chinese architecture. Ying 營 means to conceive, to plan, zao 造 is to build and make. Put together, yingzao is roughly equivalent to architecture in its broadest sense. The word fashi 法式 denotes law, rules, and standard forms and patterns to be followed; it excellently exposes the nature of this text bein... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
23 The Yingzao fashi categorizes architectural design and construction into a total of thirteen types of zuo作, or works. These include stonework, large-scale woodwork ( damuzuo 大木作 ), sma ll-scale woodwork ( xiaomuzuo ), woodcarving, bamboowork, plasterwork, brickwork, and so on. The text is a tripartite system which f... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
24 1a. Fodaozhang 佛道帳 (Buddhist/Daoist shrines); 1b. Yajiaozhang 牙腳帳 (aproned shrines); 1c. Jiuji xiaozhang 九脊小帳 (nine-ridged small shrines); 1d. Bizhang 壁帳 (wall shrines). 2. Jingzang 經藏, sutra repositories, which include two subtypes: 2a. Zhuanlun jingzang 轉輪經藏 (wheel-turnin g sutra repositories); 2b. Bizang 壁藏 (wall... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
25 and a miniature rafter directly a “rafter. ”7 It would seem that each miniature is a replica of some implied “prototype” or “original” found in real life--perhaps a pavilion, a tower, or a mixture of several buildings. Third, specific downscaling formulas have been prescribed in the Yingzao fashi for these structure... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
26 The other additional type of miniatures is the douba zaojing 闘八藻井 (eight-ribbed vaulted coffer) with its smaller form, the xiaodouba zaojing 小闘八藻井 (miniature eight-ribbed vaulted coffer), both to be installed in the center of the ceiling (figs. 3, 4). The coffers do n ot have an ostensible architectural appearance, ... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
27 3 7. 5 5 Three-and five-bay palatial halls; seven-bay ordinary halls 4 7. 2 4. 8 Three-bay palatial halls; five-bay ordinary halls 5 6. 6 4. 4 Small three-bay palatial halls; larg e three-bay ordinary halls 6 6 4 Gazebos, small ordinary halls 7 5. 25 3. 5 Small palatial halls and gazebos 8 4. 5 3 Vaulted ceiling cof... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
28 Take the Buddhist/Daoist shrine for example: for the majority part of the shrine, the size of the cai has to be decreased to 1. 8 by 1. 2 cun. This means that ideally, a Buddhist/Da oist shrine would be a 1:4 replica of a medium-size hall. 13 Moreover, when it comes to the tiangong louge ornaments and ceiling coffer... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
29 magical attributes. 17 The logic is reversed: the smaller the architectu re, the farther away it is dislocated from this world, and the more transcendent it becomes. It is therefore no coincidence that the “Heavenly Palace” has to be presented using the smallest scale possible. Meanwhile, the sumptuary law s must ha... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
30 altogether. This omission is to some degree compensated by other contemporary written sources such as Wen Ying's 文瑩 Yuhu Qinghua 玉壺清話 (Pure talk in a jade pot, 1078), which recounts an interest ing incident involving a model pagoda: Guo Zhongshu was good at painting multistory palace halls and pavilions, and when bu... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
31 Underlying all models and other miniature woodworks, however, was the basic scaling rules to be followed. It is not clear how the model pagoda in the text was made, but the author does tell us that it was used to “calculate ( ji 計)” and “inspect ( shen 審)” the dimensions of the real. In other words, there must have ... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
32 slightest. ” Guo must have been quite familiar with the actual scaling scheme of real wooden structures so that he was able to reproduce these structures in a miniature form--whether as painted objects or as fr eestanding models. Similarly remarkable is the implication from the text that Guo was able to apply his kn... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
33 Ducheng jisheng 都城紀勝 (Record of the famous sights in the capital, 1235) by Naideweng 耐 得翁 ; Xihu Laoren fanshenglu 西湖老人繁盛錄 (Xihu Laoren's record of prosperity, ca. 1253) by Xihu Laoren 西湖老人 (Elder at the West Lake) ; Menglianglu 夢粱錄 (Dream of the yellow mil let, ca. 1275) by Wu Zimu 吳自牧 ; Wulin jiushi 武林舊事 (Recollec... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
34 dead, or as channels for the living to communicate and interact with their deceased relatives and friends. While the earliest mingqi were often made of bronze and clay, the much more epheme ral paper-made mingqi started to be widely adopted in the Song. According to Zhao Yanwei 趙彥衛 (fl. 1163-1206), “the ancient ming... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
35 The second instance details the burning of paper mingqi during the Ghost Festival (fifteenth day of the seventh month). Though not mentioning architecture in particular, it helps to illustrate the social and religious setting wherein miniatures as surrogates were produced and used: Several days before [the Ghost Fes... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
36 the imagination. 30 It seems that two factors--the development of paper and printing industry on the one hand and the popularization of Buddhist rituals, stories, and related performances on the other--have encouraged the spread of paper goods as the new form o f mingqi. Edible architecture The Spring Fair was a tim... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
37 Architecture made of food was also produced on the Duanwu Festiva l (fifth day of the fifth month), a midsummer's day for people to row dragon boats and commemorate the great poet Qu Yuan 屈原. According to the Wulin jiushi, for the imperial family and the court officials, a certain food art was created using the zong... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
38 constantly sprinkled water over it with a sprig of willow tree. In this way they would go door to door to preach [Buddhist teaching] and convert [the townsfolk]. 以銀銅沙羅或好盆器, 坐一金銅或木佛像, 浸以香水, 楊枝洒浴, 排門教化. 35 According to the same text, the ritual of “bathing the Buddha” was also h eld in major monasteries of the city an... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
39 been adopted in the Yingzao fashi throughout to name many of the core components of the wooden architecture, such as the huagong 華栱 (floral bracket arms) and the huaban 華版 (floral-patterned or decorative panels). 38 In this light, the “flower pavilions” could mean either a structure made of real flowers, or a struct... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
40 appropriated from real wooden buildings and miniaturized for the encasement of religious icons. The silk gauze ( sha 紗) and the envelope ( long 籠), on the other hand, are m ore ambiguous terms. The character long literally means a cage, a bamboo basket, or a trunk. Put together, shalong could indicate a silk gauze c... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
41 Young boys and girls often wore short-sleeved coats made of lotus leaves and held lotus leaves in their hands to mimic Mohuoluo. These were perhaps old customs of Central China. Prior to the Qixi, as a tradition, the Department of the Construction and Repair of Imperial Buildings would present to the court ten table... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
42 dolls and the zhang in the Yingzao fashi shared a very similar function--to protect and enshrine. 44 This point becomes even more promin ent when we consider the meaning of the character chu 廚. The chu denotes a cabinet or cabinet-like structure for storage, usually with openable door leaves. A number of surviving h... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
43 之祥, 謂之化生. 本出西域, 謂之摩喉羅 ). 46 The same huasheng 化生, a child-looking figure, is included as one of the eight major woodcarving motifs in the Yingzao fashi (fig. 9). Scholars have confir med that Mohouluo was in fact none other than the historical Buddha's only son Rahula (Ch. Luohouluo 羅睺羅 ), who later converted to Bud... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
44 gems, were certainly “extravagant displays of upper-class ways of life. ”49 On the other hand, the “dollhouses” would arouse a sense of nostalgia by presenting an encapsulated childhood or infan cy. 50 Miniature gardens Another type of treasured items on the Qixi Festival were the miniature gardens, which seem to be... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
45 gardening and other leisure activities as aspects of “elegant living” started to flourish and came to be massively printed as manuals. 54 Stein speaks of two intertwining threads of themes found in these miniatures: one is the Daoist aesthetic associated with longevit y and immortality, and the other is the peasant ... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
46 were each meant to present or evoke a spectacula r “scene”--be it mythological or historical, imaginary or nostalgic. The magic of the miniatures in creating drama and stirring emotions and memories originates from their innate ability to mirror and distort the real world. The result of miniaturization, therefore, i... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
47 physical feats such as somersaults, walk ing on stilts, and playing fireworks. 59 Special performances involving the use of miniatures were called “puppet plays ( kuileixi 傀儡戲 )” or “shadow plays ( yingxi 影戲 ). ” A puppet play was a three-dimensional, miniaturized version of a normal play; but instead o f being perf... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
48 Emperor Xiaozong 孝宗 (r. 1162-1189) of the Southern Song to his father, the former emperor: “As the wine filled up the jade boat, mo st of the figurines on the boat were animated as if they were alive” (酒滿玉船, 船中人物, 多能舉動如活 ). 64 Could this be a remote echo of the show on the imperial lake? In this culture of drama, sp... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
49 repositories, and the “Heavenly Palace” were all created for “transcendent” or “sacred” c auses, especially religious rituals or practices. Paper towers and pavilions, in a similar manner, were “spiritual” items to function in the world of the dead. On the other hand were miniatures designed for overtly mundane purp... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
50 had no idea he was in a different world until the end of his dream, since his body was miniaturized into the scale of an ant. Also miniaturized was the length of time--the twenty-odd years in the dream actually lasted for only a few hours. In the beginning of those twenty-odd years, he married the king's daughter, b... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
51 2. Miniatures as Sacred Repositories, Part I: The Longxingsi Sutra Case This and the next chapters provide a close examination of the miniature woodwork known as jingzang (sutra repositories) in the eleventh-century China. Corresponding to the categorization in the Yingzao fashi, the chapters each focus on one of th... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
52 demonstrated in this chapter, the spiritual drive and materialistic concern lying behind the making of sutra cases cannot be fully exposed without an inquiry into function. A survey of historical examples preceding and following the Longxingsi sut ra case will help us to better determine the application and social s... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
53 this structure a “miniature,” a term which is usually associated with portable, hand-held items. Indeed, by what standards can one ident ify something several times larger than the human body as essentially small? Here I ask that we do not look upon this receptacle based on expectation or our conventional judgment a... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
54 22) by (15-18) centimeters. 4 This means that the smaller cai is roughly one-fifth of the larger cai. Since the sutra case is made up of columns, beams, brackets, rafters, and eave s like all Chinese wooden architecture, carpenters only had to produce miniature versions of these structural components to create the d... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
55 auspices during the Yuan, the Ming, and the Qing dynasties. The Northern Song also seems to be the earliest possible time any wooden structures on the premises could be traced back to; and because of centuries of expansi on, dilapidation, alteration, and repair (the most recent large-scale restoration took place in ... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
56 The dating of the sutra case, on the other hand, proves to be a lot more difficult. While Sekino Tadashi 關野貞 (1868-1935) asserts that this is a Qing woodwork, Liang, however, considers it to be a masterpiece of Northern Song carpentry, again based on his k nowledge of the Yingzao fashi. 10 Alexander Soper agrees wit... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
57 Liu's rebuttal is based on the inscription of a stele dated to 1259, titled “Dachao guoshi Namodashi chongxiu Zhendingfu Da Longxingsi gongd eji bei 大朝國師南無大士重修真定府大 龍興寺功德記碑 (Stele recording the merit of the Namodashi, State Master of the Yuan, who restored the Grand Longxingsi in Zhending Prefecture). ” It mentions t... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
58 the longevity of the Sage Lord, d. 1317),” which records that “the Sutra for Humane Kings, in fifty volumes and a hundred chapters, and the Sutra of t he Medicine Buddha, in fifty chapters, were printed and bestowed to this monastery, where rituals of reading, turning, reciting, and chanting these sutras for the Sag... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
59 Dating the miniature: a comparison with Yingzao fashi The size of each part of the Longxingsi sutra case can be extracted from the 3D Rhino model I have developed (fig. 18). 18 As mentioned earlier, the cai is 4. 5 by 3 centimeters; this is actually larger than the recommended value, 3. 2 by 2. 1 centimeters (1 by 0... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
60 layer of roof-top substructure ( pingzuo 平坐 ), and the Heavenly Palace ( tiangong louge ) as ornamentation of the crown ( zhangtou 帳頭 ). 23 These components are clearly identifiable from the Longxingsi sutra case, except that the latter has chosen not to include the Heavenly Palace, and has combined the inner core a... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
61 Qing carpenters. 27 Applying the scheme of “eight-tiered double-twig triple-arm counted double bracket ( bapuzuo shuangmiao sanxia'ang jixin chonggong 八鋪作雙杪三下昂計心重栱 ),” the brackets appear grander than the six-tiered brackets prescribed in the Yingzao fashi. A greater number of tiers usually signals a higher-rank bui... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
62 again, shows a striking conformity to the rules explained in the Yingzao fashi. 30 These brackets are placed tightly to each other, leaving no space to breathe; whereas all existing Northern Song buildings--such as the library hall--have fairly sparsely-spaced brackets (fig. 27). Such is the privilege of miniature a... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
63 Not only did the bracket set become increasingly miniaturized in comparison with the column, but the size of the cai (manifested as the cross section of the bracket arm) also gradually decreased with the passage of time. 32 This is ev idenced by the Tianwangdian 天王殿 (Hall of the Heavenly Kings) of the Longxingsi, wh... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
64 Coming to the Qing, even the bracket sets started to lose their original role and become largely ornamental components. The implication is that carpenters could now make m uch smaller brackets, since their size would not affect the validity of the structural frame. Indubitably, the experience accumulated over centur... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
65 revolving devices had come from local craftsmanship which gave birth to the chariot, the potter's whee l, the watermill, the wheelbarrow, the “taxicab ( jili guche 記里鼓車 ),” and the like. 38 The reason to make the bookcase turnable, he believes, was to assist translators and copyists of Buddhist sutras to quickly loc... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
66 different audiences. This will contextualize the Longxingsi sutra case in the historical development of this special device, leading to a better understanding of how it might have be en used. Meanwhile, it will give us a hint of how and why miniature-making came to be involved during the process. Sixth century: lege... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
67 the other in the Jingde chuandelu 景德傳燈錄 (Transmission of the lamp) by Daoyuan 道原 (fl. 1004), do not mention such an invention, which is why he cautiously considers Fu Xi's revolving sutra case a “legend. ”44 From the Northern Song onward, however, the account of Fu Xi's legendary invention became readily accepted an... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
68 only that it was a single-pivot, eight-sided “shrine ” (kan 龕), which was geometrically the same as the Longxingsi sutra case. The employ of the term kan suggests that the sutra case might have been modelled after some Buddhist halls or pavilions and was perhaps small in size like a niche. Clearly, what the texts fo... | di-luo-a-grain-of-sand-full-draft-3.pdf |
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