Room 737, 54 boulevard Rasapil 75006 Paris

As part of the CEIAS Research group Aesthetics and the Vernacular: Cultural Products and New Elites in the Indus Valley and Beyond

The Dunhuang paintings of ‘monk with tiger’ offer a window into the tremendous historical exchanges between China and the Indian subcontinent in the 9th and 10th centuries. It was an epoch of great transformation, often called Buddhism’s Golden Age. It was during this ‘cosmopolitan’ time that the Buddha became known and celebrated in both Europe and Africa. In this era of tremendous shared cultural capital, there existed a fabulous Buddhist monastic complex, the most famous of which are the Mogao caves in Dunhuang. This is where the ‘monk with tiger’ paintings were found. But even though these paintings are historically situated towards the latter half of the Buddhist ‘Golden Age’, and even though these caves might be considered ‘Buddhist’, Dunhuang is actually along a very important trade route spanning the entirety of Asia, stretching from Jerusalem and Baghdad in the west to Xi’an in the East. With the routes going north and south of the Taklamakan desert meeting at Dunhuang, a site populated by Zoroastrians, Nestorians, and Arab and Persian merchants who established communities along its highways, it was a place where travellers met, ideas were exchanged, religious doctrine furthered, and tigers tamed. In this epicentre of ancient Asia, how did the various travellers share ideas about nonhumans in general and tigers in particular? Also, I argue that it is in this multicultural and inter-religious context offered by Dunhuang’s location, that these specific paintings of ‘monk with tiger’ need to be understood. For example, could the Dunhuang paintings of ‘monk with tiger’, even though depicted as ‘Buddhist’ by scholars on China, be really, ‘Islamic’ ? The trope of the Sufi saint accompanied by a tiger is one which exists all through South Asia, South East Asia as well as Mongolia and northern China. How does one uncover the long history of circulations and mobilities that have stretched beyond the confines of either India or China via the painted figures of monks with tigers?