讲座讲谈 翻越山丘,山东、四川石经的调查与研究(公元6-8世纪)

It was the time that paper writing was gradually taking over bamboo writing when Buddhism first spread into China. The normal cases were, monks translated Buddhist texts and sutras into Chinese language, and wrote them on papers. Before printing was invented, these texts could only be copied by hands. It was time consuming, and often times there were errors occurring. Inspired by Chinese poets and scholars carving texts on steles since Eastern Han Dynasty, Buddhists started to carve texts and sutras onto cliffs and steles in order to spread Buddhism further and to more people, also to provide standard benchmarks to those who copy texts.

After a while since Buddhism spread into China, its profound influence started to worry the secular. There were four major events with the intention to ban Buddhism in 444 AD, 574 AD, and 845 AD. Having been through these events, the sense of crisis arose in the minds of Buddhists, thus they decided to carve the most important Buddhist texts (and even with the hope to carve all texts) into stones on mountain cliffs, caves and steles with the idea that stone is meant to last forever. However, either stones that are located outside exposed to sunlight or rain or those are located inside caves, the stone carriers are often subjected to erosion of rainfall, water penetration, decay caused by moss, ichen, or fungi, erosion by wind, etc. Nowadays, many stone carvings are thus hard to recognize after suffering from erosion from above mentioned causes.

In order to keep and study these stone carvings, we use traditional rubbing techniques, and the later photograph techniques to record these damaged and eroded stone sutras so that the texts can be kept and be passed down. It is the main method to preserve, collect and study these Buddhist sutras. As modern technologies in 3D such as scanning, digital photography and multi-spectral photography applying to the field of art history and Buddhist history, the volume recorded and the accuracy of recording have been improved much. Also, as modern printing techniques rapidly develops and the prosperity in press industry, now images can be delicately and comprehensively printed into books and pass the information and knowledge to readers in the form of books. Now we can print those stone carvings into books. Through publishing these books, we can make sure these Buddhist texts can be spread and collected, not only providing reliable reference for researchers and scholars, but also contributing to preservation of Buddhist texts.

We now live in a digital era. Many paper based magazines and newspapers are replaced by e-books or online newspapers. Some may argue that it is not necessary to preserve texts using more costly traditional paper based books. Instead we could use CDs, hard drives, cloud services to store these information. I tend to disagree. A friend once told me during the 1990 Asian Games, many moments were recorded and stored in disks and CDs, but they are now no longer accessible because of technical failures. Paper based texts however, can be stored for more than a thousand years, while texts stored in microfilms can be preserved for more than a hundred years under normal circumstances. Files stored by digital means such as disks and CDs can only be preserved for a few decades, and even less if technical issues happened. Therefore using books as carrier to preserve and pass down valuable texts is still the safest and most reliable mothed.

Carrier of the Buddhist texts in Chinese changed from paper-based books to stone base, and change back to paper-based books again, thus formed a cycle of the history of Buddhist texts carriers.

Sichuan Basin is an independent geographical unit; from North West to South East there are plain area, mountain-hill area and ridge-and-valley area. Since the stone cave temples are mainly distributed in the central mountain-hill area, the stone sutras are therefore mainly scattered in that region. In 1997, due to the construction of China's Three Gorges Dam project, the mountain-hill area in the east basin together with part of the mountain-hill area in the middle basin were divided out of Sichuan Province and established the Direct-controlled municipality Chongqing City, among which contains the Dazu, Tongnan, Hechuan Districts, which originally belonged to the important stone cave temple region. Since the Dazu district was divided to Chongqing City, Anyue and Dazu, which were both in the range of Liubenzun religious flock mission district now belong to Sichuan Province and Chongqing city respectively，the remains of the religious mission district were therefore being separated administratively.

Considering the current administrative division and the fact that there’s already a book called the inscription of Dazu Stone Carvings (Chongqing Press, 1999), the book Sichuan Stone Sutras does not include the stone sutras in Chongqing area. Although the earlier published the inscription of Dazu Stone Carvings (Chongqing Press, 1999) had made great effort to guarantee an exhaustive record of the religious stone inscription in Dazu County, such as investigation, photo, rubbing, recording and research, however it failed to cover all the religious inscription in Chongqing City. Meanwhile, the record of inscription in Dazu took comprehensive contents including sutras, scriptures, Buddhist’s chant, travel literatures and many records of cave cutting, status carving and status make-up, which were not only about sutra and relevant contents. Since the publish-and-print technology was less developed in the 1990’s，most of the sutras, scriptures and eulogy were not set with corresponding rubbing pictures, even though there was a rubbing picture ,it was always small and vague, and lack three-dimensional digital records. Therefore, it is very necessary to re-record the stone sutras in the area of Chongqing City. 

Sichuan and Chongqing both belong to the Sichuan Basin, and it is taken for granted that we should add the sutras, scriptures, Buddhist’s chant, eulogy and so on in Chongqing City Area in the form of Sichuan Stone Sutras. Apart from that, there are many similar sutras, scriptures and Buddhist’s chant in Anyue County as that in Dazu Baoding Mountain, re-record and publish those would certainly help to keep the written texts of Liubenzun religious flock.

Buddhist stone sutras are comparable to paper or engraved wooden sutras collected in monasteries, is part of the “three jewels” of the temple.  The Sichuan Buddhist stone sutras, mostly found in cave temples, were being carved onto cave and cliff surfaces, and at times even on the exterior face of the Buddhist stupa, only very few Buddhist stone sutras were inscribed on stone slabs, stashed away in grottoes and dens of the monasteries, such as those uncovered at Lingyan Temple in Dujiangyan, Sichuan. Therefore, Buddhist stone sutras can often be found with Buddhist niche statues, in a cave temple, it is possible to find both stone sutras and statues; in a single cave or a group of grottoes, some of which can also have both statues and inscribed sutras.  The Grove of the Reclining Buddha (Wofowan) in Anyue County, Sichuan, is one such example.

安岳卧佛这样的石经与龛像皆有，石经与龛像还基本同时的石窟寺，开窟造像与开窟刻经应该存在着某些联系。全面记录造像龛窟与刻经龛窟，细致分析造像与石经的关系，对于我们深入理解这些石经出现的历史背景无疑会有帮助。在《四川石经》出版以后，我们还应该接着对诸如安岳卧佛湾这样的经像皆有的石窟寺，开展调查、记录、测绘和考古报告的编写工作，并争取这些考古报告能够早日出版，从而推进四川石经研究和石窟寺考古研究。

There should exist some kind of connections between the creations of the statues and inscribed sutras for cave temples such as The Grove of the Reclining Buddha in Anyue, where both stone sutras and niche statues that dated from approximately the same period can be found.  A complete documentation of the statue niche grottoes and inscribed sutras niche grottoes, where detail analysis of the relationship between the statues and stone sutras are being carried out, can no doubt contribute to our in-depth understanding of the historical background of the emergence of the stone sutras. Following the publication of the Sichuan Buddhist Stone Sutras, we should continue to carry out survey, documentation, mapping, and drafting of archaeological reports for cave temples such as The Grove of the Reclining Buddha in Anyue, and strive to publish such archeological reports, so as to advance the research for Sichuan stone sutras and archeological research for cave temples.

前面我们说过，石经中的一部分是徒们“末法危机感”的产物，他们希望依托于坚硬的石材，将长期保存下去。安岳卧佛湾最引人注目的除了石经外，就是那尊位于山谷北侧崖壁的巨大卧佛，这尊表现“释迦临终说法”场面的雕像，可能暗示着在佛法劫难之际，佛法暂时的终止，但通过雕刻在洞窟中雕刻，可使佛法长久流传的思想。在卧佛的两侧崖壁高处各有两个刻经洞窟，其中头端两个洞窟尚未刻经，显然这些刻经洞窟与卧佛具有经像一体的统一规划。在这尊卧佛斜对面，也就是山谷南侧的崖壁上，以及更东侧河湾北侧，分布着更多的已经刻经和尚未刻经的洞窟，不少洞窟还没有开凿完毕。这些洞窟应该也是统一规划，陆续开凿，只是由于某种缘故，统一规划的开窟和刻经活动曾一度中止。我们北京大学已有研究生探讨过安岳卧佛湾刻经与造像的关系，提出卧佛湾的石窟营建活动开始于唐代开元前期，最早开始于北崖卧佛和南崖刻有目录的三大窟，以后才从三大窟向两侧发展（任婧2014）。当然，这只是一个初步的结论，有的认识，还要随着卧佛湾石窟寺报告的编写，继续补充和深化。

As mentioned earlier, some of the Buddhist stone sutras are a product of the “Dharma annihilation crisis” felt by Buddhist followers, they hoped that the Buddhist sutras can be preserved in the long term through the survival of the hard and durable stone material. In addition to the Buddhist stone sutras, the most prominent feature at The Grove of the Reclining Buddha in Anyue is the large reclining Buddha located at the north cliff face of the valley. This sculpture that depicts the scene for “The last teaching before Siddhartha’s Parinirvana”, may possibly suggests the temporal interruption of Dharma during the catastrophe of Buddhism, but through the inscription of the Buddhist sutra in the caves, the Buddhist teachings can spread far and long. There are two inscribed sutra caves on the higher parts of the cliff face on either side of the reclining Buddha, the two caves above the sculpted head do not have inscribed sutras, apparently these inscribed sutra caves and the reclining Buddha statue have synchronized planning. Diagonally across the reclining Buddha statue, which is on top of the south side cliff face of the valley, and on the north side of the further east river bay, laid more caves that may or may not have inscribed sutras, the construction of some of these caves have not being completed.  These caves should also have being planned in a coordinated manner, and the digging of the caves began successively, but due to some uncertain reason, the synchronically planned cave digging and sutra carving activities were once terminated. At Peking University we already have a graduate student who studied the relationship between the statues and inscribed sutra at The Grove of the Reclining Buddha in Anyue, and proposed that the cave construction activities of the site began during the early period of Tang Dynasty Kaiyuan Period, the earliest activities began with the three major caves at the north cliff of the reclining Buddha, and those located at the south cliff that contain listing of the inscribed Buddhist sutra, and thereafter developed from both sides of the three major caves (Ren Jing, 2014). This is only but a preliminary conclusion, further understanding will be gained with the drafting of the report for the cave temples at The Grove of the Reclining Buddha.