A Study On The Sravasti Miracles In China And India

As one of the ten things that the Buddha had to accomplish in his life,the Sravasti Miracles shows the Buddha’s extraordinary power.The story of the Sravasti Miracles are diverse and popular,endow Buddhism with mythological flavour,and becoming one of the most popular themes that Buddhist believers like to show in images,so the Sravasti Miracles images gradually appeared at ancient India to Central Asia and South Asia.This thesis focuses on the text and images of the story,and discusses the changes of various elements in such images.Also,this thesis tries to clarify the reasons behind the changes of the theme from ancient India to China by comparing the relevant research results at home and abroad.First of all,there are many Buddhist text recorded the story of the Sravasti Miracles,and it could be initially divided into three categories.The first category appears in the scriptures of Northern Buddhism,which mainly describes the fire and water miracle and the multiplication miracle of Buddha.The second category appears in the scriptures of Southern Buddhism,mainly describing the Buddha’s mango tree miracle,transforming flowers into a pavilion miracle and other supernatural miracles;the third category mainly describes the God of Great Light.Secondly,this thesis discusses in detail the image of the Sravasti Miracles,which shows the symbols of this theme in the period without Buddha image in ancient India,as well as in the period of Kushan Empire,Gupta Dynasty,Pala Empire and so on.In the period without Buddha images,the sculptures of the Sravasti Miracles mainly appear in the Sanchi Stupa,Bharhut Stupa and other early grotto temple carvings.After the Buddha’s humanoid appearance,this thesis mainly collect the images of the Sravasti Miracles in Gandhāra art,Amaravati art,Sarnath art and some other caves.The themes of these images include the twin miracle,Mango tree miracle,Sakyamuni’s Eight Great Events and so on.Finally,compared with similar images in Xinjiang,Dunhuang,Sichuan and other regions in China,we could found the changes in Buddhist thought through the different in images.The images of the Sravasti Miracles in India also deeply influenced the other image themes in China,such as the images of Kegon,the West Pure Land Illustration,and Thousand-Buddha.By the way,the changes of lotus and Naga in China also show the influence of traditional Chinese thoughts on Buddhist images.Anyway,with the development in the Sravasti Miracles images,the Buddha’s identity in images are not only Sakyamuni,but the Dharmakaya Buddha,which means Buddha of the Universe.