To Famen and back - and still searching

This 9^th century Tang Dynasty reliquary, made to hold a fragment of bone from (allegedly) the Buddha himself, is one of my favourite pieces of Chinese Buddhist art, and I was very much hoping to see it on my recent trip to China. But as I trailed round the museum of the Famen Temple at Xian, where it was discovered in the 1980s, it remained stubbornly out of sight. There were all manner of reliquaries on display: originally there were four separate sets containing three decoys (or “shadow bones”) and one true fragment. But I just couldn’t track this one down.

It’s not like it would be easy to miss. Standing around 38cm (15 inches) in height, it is made of dazzling silver-gilt studded with pearls. The base is shaped as a lotus throne, each petal containing an image of the Buddha. The richly adorned figure at the top is a bodhisattva, a celestial being who has chosen to remain on earth to help poor mortal souls (the most well-known bodhisattva is probably Avalokitesvara, worshipped as Guan Yin in the Chinese canon). Down on one knee, he holds up an ornate tray which would have contained the bone fragment (or decoy).

The inscription indicates a date equivalent to 871AD and suggests an imperial commission by the then Emperor Yizong, of whom history has nothing good to say (“unstable, cruel, inexperienced and capricious”, says historian Ann Paludan). In commissioning this piece however, Yizong was simply following a longstanding belief of Chinese Buddhism, which was that great offerings brought great spiritual merit. It didn’t really work for him: he was dead within two years and the Tang dynasty collapsed some forty years later.

I can’t really say why I like this piece, with its eye-smacking degree of bling. I think it’s because under it all, the craftsman has given the bodhisattva (with its slight incline of the head) a genuine air of wanting to do good which isn’t eclipsed by the gaudy jewels or the ghastliness of the imperial patron. He’s going to kneel there and offer that bone (or decoy) because that’s what a bodhisattva does: he doesn't give up on the world.

The discovery of the reliquaries is quite a story in itself. The Famen Temple (built on the site of a much older place of worship) blossomed from the late 6^th century onwards as the Sui and Tang Dynasties, both devout Buddhists, came to power. In 1981, half of its famous pagoda collapsed in torrential rain (see below). When repair work began in 1987, an underground chamber was discovered containing a cache of precious religious artefacts, including the four sets of reliquaries.

Today the temple and pagoda have been sensitively restored and look like this.

In 2009 however, the regional government and the temple authorities decided to expand the neighbouring plot of land to create a modern annexe, capable of accommodating the thousands of visitors from China’s burgeoning local tourism trade. So they built this.

Which is so vast that you have to get around on one of these.

But whatever you may think about 21^st century bling, I really enjoyed my visit to the Famen, which is just as well as I may have to go back one day to see if I can find the bodhisattva.