도상, 기능, 맥락: 중국 승가(僧伽) 이미지를 보는 또 하나의 시각 (Iconography, Function, and Context: Sengqie Imagery in Buddhist Art and Visual Culture in Tang and Song China)

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 미술사와 시각문화학회
· 수록지 정보 : 미술사와 시각문화 / 12호 / 228 ~ 259페이지
· 저자명 : 이승혜

초록

신적 존재를 재현적으로 묘사한 ‘상(像)’은 종교 시각문화를 형성하는 여러 요소 중 하나였으며, 이러한 범주를 벗어나는 다양한 시각적 이미지가 존재했음은 부인할 수 없는 사실이다. 이 논문은 8세기 중국에서 부상한 승가(僧伽)에 대한 신앙과 그를 시각화한 이미지의 사례연구를 통해 도상학적 미술사 연구방법론과 그 대상의 외연을 넓혀보려는 시도이다. 승가 사후 조성된 그의 육신상(肉身像), 이를 모사한 상(像), 그리고 그가 보였다는 환영 사이의 상호보완적인 관계와 이에 대한 당대 불교도들의 인식에 새롭게 주목한다. 또한 승가가 다면적인 기능적 페르소나에도 불구하고 매우 제한적이고, 일관된 도상으로 재현되는 현상에 주목한다. 이 논문은 그 연유를 승가상의 모델이 되었던 사주의 승가 육신상에서 찾으며 그 의미를 당대의 종교적·문화적 맥락 안에서 해석한다.

영어초록

Identifying various divinities in Buddhist pantheon through iconographic or typological analysis has been a major concern for scholars of Buddhist art. This line of inquiry is more often than not devoted to sculptures and paintings, which are deemed ‘aesthetic' and thought to function as cult images. Such focus inevitably reduces subjects of research to art objects made by human hands, while leaving significant constituents of religious visual culture such as lacquered bodies and apparitional visions understudied. This paper attempts to reconsider and complement narrowly defined iconographic analysis through a case study of the cult of Sengqie(僧伽, 617-710) and his imagery in Chinese Buddhist art during the Tang and Song periods. Extant historical sources relate that the monk Sengqie, of Central Asian origin, came to China in the mid-seventh century and founded a monastery dedicated to the Puzhao Buddha in Sizhou, a region located at nodal points of waterway transportation. Diverse dimensions of the Sengqie cult have received considerable scholarly attention both in Western and East Asian academia since the 1950s. On one hand, the Sengqie cult has been treated largely as the epitome of the Song Buddhist rubrics of “popular cult” and/or “localization,” an area pioneered by Makita Tairyō and expanded upon by other scholars. The shared scholarly narrative highlights how in the cult of Sengqie the focus shifts from the veneration of Sengqie’s conduct and teachings to devotion to his mummy, and, thus, how a foreign charismatic monk became domesticated and metamorphosed into a divine protagonist of immediate salvific efficacy. On the other hand, images of Sengqie have been subject to intense art historical analyses that aim to establish iconographic convention in artistic representations of Sengqie, to identify statues showing similar visual traits but lacking inscriptional evidence as representations of the monk, and to classify extant images into several formal types. This study shifts the focus from the iconographic consistency and clarity shown in extant Sengqie images to the reason why these images look the way they do by shedding new light on the fundamental aspect of the Sengqie cult and imagery. It suggests that Sengqie's body-turned-icon enshrined inside his pagoda at Sizhou functioned as the model of his representations and as such, it signals the ‘iconization of death,' a cultural phenomenon that emerged from the eighth century in Chinese religious visual culture. By incorporating Sengqie's lacquered body and apparitions into art historical analysis, this study illuminates hitherto neglected but fundamentally significant aspects of the Sengqie imagery. It further demonstrates that contextual and functional analysis complement purely iconographic study.

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