From North India to Buryatia : The ‘Sandalwood Buddha’ from the Mongols’ perspective

International audienceThe Sandalwood Buddha, also known as the Udayana Buddha in Western literature, was one of the most famous icons of Qing dynasty Beijing. This statue was a 'living image' reputed to be a lifelike portrait of Buddha Shākyamuni, carved in red sandalwood on the order of King Udayana; it arrived miraculously in Central Asia and then China. The historians and art historians have studied its story up to the 13 th century; I will focus my paper on the Qing dynasty and on the Manchu and Mongolian perspective. I will first present the significance of this holy statue for the emperors who ruled China and particularly for Qing emperors. Through a short biography of this statue from ancient India to modern Beijing up to its disappearance in 1900 and a description of the last Beijing temple that enshrined it, I will discuss the construction of Beijing as a site of pilgrimage for Tibetan Buddhists from the Yuan to the Qing dynasty. The second part of my paper investigates the development of the significance of the Sandalwood Buddha for Mongols. This famous statue had become a major site of pilgrimage for Mongols visiting the capital in the 18 th and 19 th century. The popularity of the statue of the 'Sandalwood Buddha' is a good example of the Mongols' consciousness of the long history o