Heaven, Yellow Springs and Buddhism: Axis Mundi Jars in the Wu Kingdom (222-280CE) and Western Jin Dynasty (266-316CE)

Funerary jars called hunping (“soul urns”) were only produced within a short timeframe (250s-320s C.E.) in one specific locale (southeastern China). Hunping feature a significant number of the earliest Buddhist images in China. These mass-produced, crude-looking “Buddha” figures existing as decor on burial objects are enigmatic. The function of hunping, the reason for their sudden emergence, and the nature of those Buddha-like figures have been heatedly debated. By analyzing the vessel form of hunping and its pictorial programs, I argue that this material object embodies a binary structure comprising “Heaven atop the axis mundi of Mount Kunlun” and the “underworld at the Yellow Springs.” In the third century, beliefs about “binary souls” changed. People in the south started to believe that the spiritual soul of the deceased (hun), traditionally worshiped at a family shrine¬, could now be buried in a tomb. Moreover, they feared wandering ghosts turned from the bodily soul (po) unleashed from corrupted corpses. I argue that hunping were vessels created to send binary souls each to their own place, either Heaven or the underworld. To better proselytize for the teachings of Buddhism, early clerics adapted the theme of “Heaven atop axis mundi” by identifying Mount Kunlun with Mount Sumeru and the Chinese Heaven with Trāyastrimsa (the particular Buddhist heaven atop Mount Sumeru). They peopled Mount Sumeru with Buddhist arhats, to replace the Chinese immortals in Mount Kunlun, as some early clerics borrowed the image of immortals to introduce arhats. Most Buddha-like images on hunping depict these arhats.