Washing the Elephant
Washing the Elephant (variants: "sweeping", and "white" or "sacred" elephant) is a subject in Chinese Buddhist painting, showing a group of men washing a white elephant with brushes, under the supervision of the bodhisattva Manjushri and an arhat with a khakkhara staff. The Buddhist meaning of the subject relates to "sweeping away illusion". One painting is inscribed with the explanation “wash off the dust and see the Buddha of thusness”.[1]
The white elephant, widely regarded as sacred in Buddhism, may be shown as having six tusks, a form that Buddha himself took in an earlier life recounted in the Jataka tales.
History
The subject is restricted to China, and was most popular during the 16th century. Ding Yunpeng, a devout Buddhist, painted the subject several times.[2]
The earliest record of the subject in art dates from the 6th century.[3] Tang Dynasty paintings of the same theme have a traditional colour scheme of red and white with some green.[3] A Ming Dynasty painting of the same scene by Chen Hongshou in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art has an inscription suggesting that Ming intellectuals considered this scene to represent "sweeping away illusion".[4]
There is little literary evidence for the origins of the elephant tale, but researchers speculate a connection with one of the stories of the Nirvana Sutra. The story is the blind man who feels an elephant (Chinese: 盲人摸象; Jyutping: mang2ren2mo1xiang4)—the elephant in this tale symbolizes the "Buddha nature". A group of blind men reach touch a different part of the elephant—one feels the tusk and thinks it is a carrot, another mistakes the elephant's belly for an urn, and so on. The king seeks that Shakyamuni (Buddha) illuminate their limited perception (symbolized by blindness in the parable) that permits only partial truths.
Li Gonglin
There is a Yuan or Song Dynasty ink on silk hanging scroll attributed to Li Gonglin. The painting depicts 8 foreign grooms, 2 foreign observers, four monks, and two Chinese attired in loose robes. The heavy labor is left to foreign grooms. It is in the collection of the Indiana University Art Museum.[4]
The silk painting attributed to Li Gonglin was at one time in the collection of Xiang Yuanbian (1525-1590),[3] and this and other works were scattered as a result of subsequent military invasions, with some passing into the hands of other collectors.[5]
Notes
- ^ Tsinghua
- ^ Tsinghua
- ^ a b c Patricia Ann Berger; Helen Foresman Spencer Museum of Art; Asian Art Museum of San Francisco (1994). Latter Days of the Law: Images of Chinese Buddhism, 850 - 1850 ; [exhibition, August 27 - October 9 1994 ...]. University of Hawaii Press. p. 2. ISBN 978-0-8248-1662-9.
- ^ a b Berger, Patricia Ann (1994). Latter Days of the Law: Images of Chinese Buddhism, 850 - 1850. University of Hawaii Press. p. 405. ISBN 0824816625. Retrieved 6 August 2019.
- ^ "The Ming Dynasty Legacy of Xiang Yuanbian". National Palace Museum. Retrieved 6 August 2019.
References
- "Tsinghua": Tsinghua University Art Museum, another version by Ding Yunpeng