纪录片《大英博物馆世界简史》 054度母雕像(6)（在线收听）

We don't know who paid for Tara to be made. It could have been the ruler of any one of several kingdoms that squabbled and fought over territory in Sri Lanka around 800 AD. Whoever it was clearly wanted her help on the path to salvation. But in Sri Lanka, as anywhere else, gifts to religious institutions were also an important part of political strategies of rulers, a means of asserting their privileged links to the divine.

我们并不知道这位背后金主是谁。也许是公元八百年前后某位在斯里兰卡为了领土征战不休的国王，一个想要得到她拯救的人。斯里兰卡的统治者和其他任何地方的一样，将送礼物给宗教机构作为重要的政治策略，是他们对自己与神祇之间特权关系的公开展示。

One of the things that I find fascinating about this sculpture is that, at the time it was made, Tara was a relatively recent convert to Buddhism. She had originally been a Hindu mother goddess, and was only later adopted by Buddhists-a typical but particularly beautiful example of the constant dialogue and exchange between Buddhism and Hinduism that went on for centuries, and which can be seen today in statues and buildings all over south-east Asia. Tara shows that Buddhism and Hinduism are not tightly defined codes of belief, but ways of being and acting that can, in different contexts, absorb aspects of other faiths. Tara is, in modern parlance, a strikingly inclusive image made for a Buddhist, Sinhala-speaking, court in Sri Lanka, but stylistically part of the wider world that embraced the Tamil speaking, Hindu courts of southern India. Indeed Sri Lanka was shared, then as now, between Sinhala and Tamil, Hindu and Buddhist, and there were close links and many exchanges through diplomacy, marriage and, frequently, war.

有一点很有意思，这座雕像完工之时，度母刚刚为佛教所接纳。她本是印度教的母亲神，后来才开始被佛教徒信奉。佛教与印度教之间源 源不断的交流与影响持续了数个世纪，至今仍能在东南亚各地的建筑与雕像中看出两者交融的痕迹。度母便是其中典型又独具魅力的例子。它表明，虽然佛教与印度教并不同宗同源，却以各种形式汲取了对方的智慧。用现代的表述来说，度母就是一个令人惊叹的兼容并包的形象：它由讲僧伽罗语的斯里兰卡宫廷中的佛教徒制作，但风格上更广泛地融合了南印度讲泰米尔语、信奉印度教的宫廷特色。直至今日，泰米尔语和僧伽罗语、印度教与佛教，仍共同占据着斯里兰卡，它们通过外交、通婚，同时也通过频繁的战争，彼此紧密联系，广泛交流。