Beneficial to behold: Buddhist vision and efficacy in the Qing Empire

The Qing Qianlong emperor (1711–1799) is portrayed as a Tibetan monastic teacher and an emanation of Manjushri-Cakravartin in a group of thangkas and multimedia shrine panels from the 18th century Qing court.

While this image of Qianlong has served as an icon of Qing religious and cultural pluralism, little is known about how the thangkas and shrine panels were made and received in their own time.

This lecture offers a new reading of the images by situating them within the visual and material world of eighteenth-century Tibetan Buddhist devotional practices. Professor Chou shows that the transformative power of a host of important ritual practices was creatively harnessed to assert an unprecedented notion of kingship to a particular audience. The inventive nature of the images sheds new light on the collaboration between the emperor and his Buddhist teachers as well as the central role images played in mediating relations between Qing and Tibet.

About the speaker

Wen-shing Chou specialises in art of China and Inner Asia. Chou holds a BA in Art History from the University of Chicago, and a MA and PhD in History of Art from the University of California, Berkeley. Her 2018 book Mount Wutai: Visions of a Sacred Buddhist Mountain (Princeton University Press) won Honorable Mention for the Joseph Levenson Prize (China Pre-1900) from the Association for Asian Studies. 

Chou’s research has been supported by the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation Scholar Grant, the Mellon fellowship and membership of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the Ittleson Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, and the Metropolitan Center for Far Eastern Art Studies, Kyoto. Her articles have appeared in The Art Bulletin, the Journal of Asian Studies, the Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, and the Archives of Asian Art.

Attending the event

This event is free and open to all. 

• Organiser: Centre of Buddhist Studies
• The Buddhist Forum series is kindly sponsored by Khyentse Foundation

Captions for Image:  Detail, Thangka of the Qianlong as Mañjughoṣa-cakravartin, c. 1757, Potala Palace, Lhasa.