From sacred art to heritage politics: the social transformation of Maijishan Buddhist sculptures through cultural memory and symbolic power

The present research examines the transformation of the Maijishan Buddhist Grottoes from a sacred devotional site into a modern heritage object, national cultural symbol, and instrument of Silk Road diplomacy. It addresses a gap in scholarship where Buddhist art history, local historical memory, and critical heritage studies have often been treated separately. Utilising Bourdieu’s ideas of symbolic power and cultural capital, Assmann’s theory of cultural memory, and Smith’s criticism of Authorized Heritage Discourse, this paper frames the analysed transformation as one of heritage re-semantization. From a methodology perspective, the research involves the use of iconographic analysis, stylistic analysis, archival analysis of Chinese gazetteers and conservation documents, comparative photography, site observation, and discourse analysis of policy documents. This is shown to reveal that instead of diminishing the sacredness of the site, Maijishan’s sacredness has been reconstituted through the processes of conservation science, state-run heritage management, tourism, museology, UNESCO, and digital media. There have been five overlapping discourses that have legitimised and given meaning to Maijishan as a cultural site. According to the author, Maijishan offers an important case of non-destructive heritage transformation in which the interplay between sacredness, memory, technology, and political power can be studied in Asian Buddhist heritage governance.