Overcoming Essentialism: A Transcultural Approach to Gandhāran Buddhist Material Culture

Abstract

This thesis aims to challenge the conventional essentialist approach and to suggest a more appropriate approach—the transcultural approach—to study Gandhāran Buddhist material culture in particular and religions or cultures in general. By answering the research questions that what deficiencies an essentialist approach possesses and what advantages the transcultural approach has, this thesis argues that taking a transcultural approach is more productive and heuristic than taking the conventional essentialist one. The essentialist approach has become prominent and even dominant in Gandhāran studies since the 19th century. The explanatory notes of Gandhāran Buddhist material culture in contemporary museums demonstrate that the essentialist view is still prevalent in the contemporary postcolonial era. However, the essentialist approach largely simplifies the complexity of cultural or religious processes in social-historical reality; it makes the mixed cultures lose their subjectivities and agencies; it is also more likely to make academic discussions vulnerable to be exploited by certain political agendas. Instead of following the essentialist approach, the author adopts a transcultural approach instead to re-examine Gandhāran Buddhist material culture. Taking the transcultural theoretical thinking as a first step, based on the case study of the visual representation of Gandhāran Vajrapāni, the author further attempts to re-construct a theory of cultural interactions and entanglements—the translocative framework. Based on the theorization of the translocative framework, the author argues that the transcultural approach can encourage us to attend to the complexity behind the interactive or integrative dynamics of religions and cultures; it is helpful to resume the subjectivity and agency of local cultures; it reflectively challenges the preceding politicalized discourses of cultural essentialism. Moreover, it can contribute to our understandings of religions and cultures as well as open up more space for further theoretical discussions.