Bifurcated Memory

A Cultural Biography of the Porcelain Pagoda of Nanjing

Abstract

The ways in which disparate meanings can be assigned to a place in different times is precisely illustrated in writings and drawings about the pagoda at the Da Bao’ensi (Great Monastery of Repaying Parental Kindness) in Nanjing (Jinling). Completed in 1428, the pagoda was once the tallest building in the city until it was destroyed during the Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864). The goal of this article is not to reconstruct the material details of the pagoda in history, but to inquire how it was remembered and imagined in various cultural contexts in the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1911) periods. This article will first examine how the cultural meanings of the pagoda were created in four contexts: imperial edicts implying the political agenda for its construction; monastery gazetteers presenting it as monastic property; works of literati featuring it as a landmark in the cityscape; and European travelogues and encyclopedias recontextualising it as an exotic spectacle in the conceptualised landscape. While the pagoda was referred to as the Liuli ta (glazed pottery pagoda) in late imperial China, it was commonly known as the “Porcelain Pagoda” in post-seventeenth century Europe. The last part of the article examines the differing cultural logic behind the naming in the early modern global context. Through the study of the multiple trajectories of images of the pagoda, this article explores how religious, political, cultural, and social discourses were embedded in the complex processes of place-making. Writings about and images of the pagoda contribute to making the pagoda into a place resembling a literary trope, a pictorial metaphor of power and belief, and a cultural icon; they also enrich our understanding of how a religious place was woven into the urban fabric and contributed to cultural exchange in late imperial China and beyond.

記憶的錯位：南京大報恩寺塔的文化生命

一個地方可以被賦予各種不同的意義，建於明代南京的大報恩寺琉璃塔就是最好的例證。這座佛塔於1428年完工，曾是城市最高的建築，後於太平天國運動中被毀壞。本文宗旨並不在於重現報恩寺塔的準確歷史，而是探討它在明清時期的各種文化背景中如何被記憶和想像的。本文首先通過四種不同的文本討論這座佛塔的文化含義，即隱含政治目的的詔書、作爲宗教建築及寺產的佛寺志、被標示為城市坐標的文人游記、將其作爲概念化景觀中奇異景象的歐人遊記及百科全書。明清時期，報恩寺塔被稱作“琉璃塔”；在十七世紀之後的歐洲，它卻常被稱作“瓷塔”。對早期全球現代化背景下這種一物多名的文化邏輯，文章最後部分將進行解讀。透過考察對報恩寺塔多重意象的生成，本文從多種視角度探討宗教、政治、文化和社會話語與地方建構交織在一起的複雜過程，並闡述有關報恩寺塔的文字和圖像如何豐富我們對宗教場所融入城市肌理以及明清時期起中國對外文化交流的理解。