Orientations | Volume 55 Number 2 | MARCH/APRIL 2024
the word kashaya was transliterated to jiasha. By the Tang dynasty (618–907), other terms emerged, including shuitianyi (‘rice-paddy clothing’) and bainayi (‘hundred-patches clothing’). Murals in the Mogao Buddhist temple caves in Dunhuang present a plurality of visual evidence that the patchwork robes played a role in Chinese Buddhism. One of the earliest images of a jiasha in China is a multicoloured patchwork mantle wrapped around an early 6th century, painted clay sculpture of an almost lifesize seated monk within a niche on the west wall of Cave 285 (fig. 4). According to an inscription on the wall, the cave was created between 538 and 539 CECE, during the Western Wei dynasty (535–56). The red, brown, and blue-and-green rectangles of the
5 Patchwork textile China, Gansu province, Dunhuang, Mogao caves; Tang dynasty (618–907), 8th–9th century Silk; 108 x 147 cm Photo courtesy of The Trustees of the British Museum
The Dunhuang site additionally preserved several examples of actual patchworked jiasha. Acquired in Dunhuang by Sir Marc Aurel Stein, during his journey there from 1906 to 1908, is a glorious Tangperiod patchworked cloth found in Cave 17, now at the British Museum (fig. 5). The textile demonstrates the Chinese departure from the Vinaya-proscribed brown-coloured rags. Measuring 108 by 147 centimetres, the textile is composed of over forty luxurious and variously decorated silk fabrics, some resist-dyed, some brocaded, and some embroidered. Stein and the scholars Roderick Whitfield and Alan Kennedy have all done careful and thorough analysis of this extraordinary textile (Stein, 1921, pp. 1069–70; Kennedy, 1983, pp. 67–80; Whitfield, 1985, p. 3).
4 Sculpture of monk wearing patchworked kashaya China, Gansu province, Dunhuang, Mogao cave 285; Western Wei dynasty (535–56), 6th century CECE Painted clay; dimensions unknown Photo: Lois Conner; © 1995 J. Paul Getty Trust (After Whitfield et al., 2000)
6 Kashaya China; Qing dynasty (1644–1911), late 18th–19th century Silk embroidery, satin, and damask; 114.3 x 209.6 cm Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Patricia Pei, 2021 Photo courtesy of Metropolitan Museum of Art mantle are laid out in the orderly stripped pattern first described a millennium earlier by the Gautama Buddha. This meditating monk is only one of many examples among the sculptures and murals from many different time periods at Dunhuang depicting buddhas, bodhisattvas, and monks wearing multicoloured jiasha.
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