Rethinking A Pan-Asian NonHuman: The 'Travelling Monk With Tiger' From Dunhuang Caves to the Bengal delta.

About the Speaker

Annu Jalais is Assistant Professor at the South Asian Studies Programme of the National University of Singapore. She is an anthropologist working on the human / animal interface, on migration and Bengali identity and on environmental questions focusing particularly on Bangladesh and India. She is the author of Forest of Tigers: People, Politics and Environment in the Sundarbans (Routledge, 2010) and the co-author of The Bengal Diaspora: Rethinking Muslim Migration (Routledge, 2015).

Abstract

The paintings of the ‘travelling monk with tiger’ found in the Dunhuang caves, China, believed to be from the Tang and Song dynasties raise questions as to the symbolism of the tiger and its supposed relation to the spread of Buddhism to that part of the world. Through a keen study of the image of the tiger in pre-Buddhist times and the symbolism of the tiger in ancient China, this presentation will suggest that Dunhuang paintings of ‘monk with tiger’ need to be understood in a more ‘cosmopolitan’ light. Blending scholarship in anthropology and religious studies focusing on nonhuman tigers with scholarship in history and art history, this presentation highlights how the trope of the ‘travelling monk with tiger’ might have just as much to do with the arrival of Islam in the Tang dynasty than with the spread of Buddhism. But beyond this, the paper will also look at how the image of the tiger has been deployed in political contexts all through Asia, both in pre-modern as well as in modern times.

Report

Annu Jalais is an anthropologist who works on the human-animal interface, migration and Bengali identity and on environmental questions encompassing those of Bangladesh and India.

Dr Annu Jalais’s paper focuses on the aspects of paintings and inscriptions of the ‘tiger’ in Dunhuang caves in China dating from the Tang and Song dynasties. It is a multi-vocal paper which tries to understand the nature of the human-animal relationship in different parts of the Asian continent and beyond; from the Dunhuang caves to the Bengal Delta and Syria. The paper focuses on multidisciplinary lenses of anthropology, sociology religious studies along with art history to uncover the spread of religion and the political ideologies with relation to the trope of the ‘travelling monk with tiger’.

Dr Jalais uses multiple images in her presentation and paper to illustrate the different kinds of relations associated with the tiger through centuries starting from Bengal to China. She begins her detailed analysis of the tiger charmers in Bengal and tries to understand how they viewed themselves and their identities with respect to the arrival of Islam. Tiger charmers were known to be cantankerous and arrogant just like the animal itself. The author’s work on tigers in Bengal and the rest of Asia and their human relations begins with looking at the lives of the Tiger Charmers. She moves on the more complex pictures of the Monks with tigers in various imagery in the Dunhuang caves of the 9th and 10th Century CE. The question of whether the Chinese had an understanding of the tigers and if it changed with the arrival of Buddhism and Islam is explored.

In South-East Asia, there were various understandings of the non-human. Among these, in China, tigers were regarded as the Lord of the Mountain beasts. During the Shang dynasty (1300-1500 BCE), tigers were routinely killed. Animal-like masks with eyes, used to depict tigers were discovered in China which belonged to the Shang dynasties. However, during the spread of Buddhism in China, there aren’t many associations in the texts about tigers except in one of the Jatakas. Even then, before the 9th century and after the 10th century there are no images of tigers in China. The crucial note here is that Dunhuang is 2800 km from Bengal and was occupied by the Uighurs. The paper tries to explore the history of religious exchanges around this region of the world through images and inscription about the tigers.

The focus of the paper lies on the idiosyncratic image of the Buddhist Monk with the tiger. However, most other images around this period have the Buddha on the upper left corner, tiger on a leash and a man dressed in Central Asian attire. However, the image in Dunhuang caves of the Buddhist monk is special as it has no Buddha, but a Buddhist Monk. This Arhat has a Central Asian tiger with him. After this time of the spread of Buddhism, there are no further images of the tiger or similar paintings after the 10th Century as Islam arrived around this time. Thus, through this paper, Dr. Jalais has tried to explore the silk road connection from Bengal to China, the religious connections of Buddhism and Islam on a macro level in relation to the painting of the Buddhist monk with a tiger.

Report by Nishtha Dani, Undergraduate Class of 2022