Tanka shoubutsu　丹霞焼仏

KEY WORD :　art history / paintings

Ch: Danxia shaofo. A painting subject which captures the Zen 禅 parable of the monk Danxia (Jp:Tanka 丹霞) burning a wooden statue of the Buddha during the Tang dynasty. According to the 11c text Zutangji 祖堂集 (Jp: SODOUSHUU）, Danxia, while spending a cold night at Huilinsi 恵林寺 decided to burn a wooden statue of the Buddha to keep warm. The priest of the temple scolded Danxia for his sacrilege only to receive Danxia's reply that he was burning the image to obtain its sarira (Jp: *shari 舎利), the indestructible relic, sometimes a bone or a pebble representing a Buddhist saint. The priest asked, "How can you get sarira from a piece of wood?" Danxia replied, "If it's only a piece of wood, then there's no blame in burning it." The painting of this subject by Yintuoluo (Jp: Indara 因陀羅, late 14c; segment of the scroll of Zenki-zu 禅機図, in Bridgestone ブリヂストン Museum of Art, Tokyo) is well known, and the subject was popular in ink painting, beginning in the Muromachi period. The painter Sengai 仙崖 (1750-1837) was particularly fond of the theme.

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