Achirat Chaiyapotpanit
Silpakorn University (Thailand)
According to an historical account, Emperor Qianlong had the five pavilions on Jing Mountain, which was in the center of Beijing, built in order to enshrine the Buddha images of five cardinal directions. Considering the location of Jing Mountain and five Buddha images, the author thought that Emperor Qianlong possibly had a special purpose. Although there is no literary evidence indicating why the emperor chose this set of Buddha images and this place, studying the meaning of these five Buddha images in Mahayana belief, as well as contemporary related historical events, could help us reach the answer.
The set of Buddha images presenting the five cardinal directions is a concept of Vajra Mandala, a popular cosmological idea in Tibetan Mahayana Buddhism. Therefore, Emperor Qianlong had these images constructed on Jing Mountain, the center of the capital, possibly because he intended to raise his capital not only as the center of the kingdom, but also as that of the universe. As Qianlong had to rule the minorities in the western area, in which Tibetan Mahayana was more popular, he chose some concepts of this religious school to propagate among the minorities that the Qing court was an important patron of Tibetan Buddhism and that Beijing was the center in accordance with the religious belief of those minorities.
(Presented in the International Conference on Buddhist Studies: Buddha's Biography – Buddhist Legends, 18-19 July 2015, Le Meridien Bangkok Hotel, Bangkok, organized by Department of Thai, Faculty of Arts, The Pali and Sanskrit Section, Department of Eastern Languages, Faculty of Arts and Institute of Thai Studies, Chulalongkorn University)