Displays of Devotion

Although Mogao Cave 17 near Dunhuang is renowned as a vast repository of manuscripts and paintings, it also contained a greater volume of printed materials than is commonly represented; and while enigmatic, these surviving artefacts provide windows onto print reception from close to the beginning of the era of mass printing in East Asia. Among the documents recovered from the library cave are thirtyodd illustrated Buddhist prints commissioned in 947 ce by the ruler of Dunhuang, Cao Yuanzhong, which were over fifty years old at the time the cave was sealed. Now scattered across a global network of museums, libraries, and private collections, the prints were transmitted as a consequence of their creative reuse as Buddhist votive objects: the prints, which began their lives as sponsored displays of power, prestige, and merit-generation, passed into new contexts as personalized (often anonymous) devotional objects, displayed and sometimes physically reconfigured using traditional techniques, including mounting, cropping, backing, colouring, and collaging. By considering the alterations made to the Cao corpus of paper prints alongside similar surviving woodblock illustrated prints and portable paintings from Dunhuang, this essay reflects on the forms and significance of the creative uses of the prints of 947 and helps to clarify the relationship between an emerging print culture, traditional technologies, and local Buddhist devotional practices in the tenth century.