Worshipping Myriad Gods for Longevity: Carved Lacquer Boxes with the Qianlong Emperor’s Religious Pantheons and Scripture Offerings

Current scholarship on religious art at the Qing court has focused on the branch of Tibetan Buddhism with a particular interest in the role that Buddhism played in the Qianlong emperor's (r. 1736-1795) strategies of political control over the Tibet and Mongol regions, as well as in the ruler's personal belief. As such emphasis tends to downplay the variety of religious practices at the time, the present study situates Qianlong's agency as an imperial patron in both Daoism and Buddhism as well as his role in shaping religious practices in eighteenth-century China. The focus of this paper is given to the material life of a group of carved lacquer boxes—currently dispersed in museums and private collections worldwide—decorated with images of the Daoist and Buddhist pantheons which were initiated by Qianlong. Encased with these boxes, religious scriptures handwritten by the emperor himself had been placed on altars in Daoist and Buddhist monasteries within the Forbidden City, including the Pavilion of Wisdom Luminary (Huiyao lou 慧曜樓) and the Treasure Hall of Heaven Dome (Tianqiong baodian 天穹寶殿). Based on visual analysis and archival sources, religious decorations in high-relief on the carved red boxes, which bear efficacy for blessing and protection to Qianlong, will be analyzed in juxtaposition with contemporaneous image-making and combinations of the enshrined deities. Embracing a transdisciplinary approach of art history, material culture and religious studies, this paper examines the artifacts focusing on their materiality, visuality, and mobility (circulation, display) within the Manchu Qing Empire.