Asian Art and Architecture: Art & Design 382/582

Six Dynasties, Sui, and Tang China

Lee 156-163, 171-88; R&J 181-198

A Our march through Southeast Asia completed we are not moving to the much more diverse and quite different arts of East Asia. Last time we saw a sample of the art of Central Asia, through which Buddhist culture and ideology passed to China and then Korea and Japan. Today we look at the entry and establishment of Buddhist art into China.

B As you can tell from Robinson and Johnson’s treatment, Buddhism in China had a long and quite vigorously developed career, during which this Indian-originated ideology and culture was transformed into a Chinese ideology and culture. The major point to notice is that it was transformed, not merely translated. Though it may seem to common wisdom that one merely changes words when moving from one language to another, the way one may change type faces in a word processor, the fact is one changes thought. And so it was the major themes of Buddhism’s career were caught in the dialectical mediation of attempts to grasp the significance of the Indian messages they were receiving while at the same time expressing them within a highly developed Chinese context with distinct conceptual interests, never considered by Indians, that had to be addressed.

C In the visual arts there was a somewhat different problem. On one hand the Indian and Central Asian Buddhist imagery, and sometimes even artists, received were not only transformed into Chinese styles but also into expressions of Chinese Buddhism that did not simply match the Buddhism of those images coming from the west..

Six Dynasties 220 - 589

Sui 581 - 618

Tang 618 - 907

Five Dynasties 907- 960

199 Porch of Cave 7 Yungang, cave 7 Six Dynasties later 5th c

202 Preaching Buddha Longmen, cave 13 Six Dynasties 527

208 Amitabha Altar Sui 593

222 Eleven-headed Guanyin Tang 8th c

227 Vairochana Buddha Longmen, cave 19 Tang 675

238 Western Paradise Dunhuang Tang later 8th c

384 Patriarch Amoghavajra Li Zhen Tang c. 780-804

385 Luohan Guan-Xiu Five Dynasties c. 910

Buddhism arrived in China by the 1st century (before 65 CE) of the common era, during the Han Dynasty (206 BCE - 220 CE) the first extended period of a unified, all China rule. On its entry, it was seen as a foreign and, therefore, negative phenomena, and to a certain extent Buddhism’s entire career in China was one of gradual lessening of this essential stigma. For the first millennium this was indeed a serious charge to overcome. Buddhism came with a set of concepts and issues, such as karma, reincarnation, and rock-cut sculpture, that were totally foreign and so new to China.

On the other hand, Buddhism was early on recognized as having a number of common associations with the indigenous tradition of Daoism (WG: Taoism), a fact that was convenient in some ways but seriously ambiguous in many others. Some aspects of this confusion lasted up to the 13th century. Daoists had their own systems of meditation, for instance. More significant in the long run, the Daoists had developed a model sage, unfettered by social conventions whose ideal of spontaneity became significantly incorporated in the later Chinese Buddhism of the Chan sect. With Confucianism the relationship was quite different. Here the contrasts were far more significant, with the unwillingness of the Sangha to bow to the emperor and the vow of celibacy’s frustration of the demand for filial piety only the most obvious sort of issue. With both of these traditions there was clear competition for intellectual space and material support. One result was a number of widespread and significant persecutions, in 446-52, in 574, the last major one at the end of the Tang dynasty in 845-7.

R&J suggest four stages of assimilation:

1-3rd c a period in which Buddhism was largely seen as an extension of Daoism.

4-5th c Buddhist ideas recognized as distinct and some absorbed by the elite

e 5th - 6th c deeper look at the philosophical doctrines

6-9th c (Tang) Chinese systematization of Buddhist doctrines

In the beginning all manner of text came in various states of completion or fragment. Though the first entry was by Sravakayana monks, most doctrine and entering monks were Mahayana by the third century. With the end of Han China was largely split into a northern and a southern realm. The north was dominated by "barbarians" of non-Han origin and it was there that Buddhism first flourished with elite patronage and popular appeal. In the south Buddhist ideas were spreading among the traditional Han elite. The fourth century saw wide scale popular conversion. The fifth century saw the initiation of Nun’s lineages from Sri Lanka that lasted down to today.

The early conflation of Buddhist and Daoist doctrines resulted in such confusions as translating bodhi, yoga, dharma, and nirvana by the term "dao". This lasted until the major revision of translations under Kumarajiva in the 5th century. Chinese Buddhism saw a third main division, aside from the village monastery and forest hermitage there was the great elite-patronized monastery. The great philosophizing went on in the elite institutions. The village monasteries were the least literate. The forest "hermitage" monasteries had less interest in the vinaya more Daoist mysticism and meditation. In general, quite to the consternation of the Confucianists, there was an undermining of the class distinctions within the Sangha. Buddhists opened up the role of the sage to all men and women, not just the elite.

Buddhist Metaphysics fit well with ongoing Daoist metaphysics. The 3-4th century discussion by the Masters of Arcane Learning of the distinction between basic, underlying principles (li) and there expression ( ) fit Buddhist paradigms, as did the sudden versus gradual expressions distinctions fit discussions of Awakening. The Daoist distinction between being, the realm of the differentiated and namable phenomena, and nonbeing, the realm of undifferentiated and unnamable, from which it derived nonbeing was the essence, and being its function. (8.4.1)

Buddhism thrived in the Six Dynasties period, that marked the chaos and disunity of the period between the fall of the unified Han in 220 and the reunification of the land under the Sui in 618. Yungang was begun in 460, in expiation for the 446-452 persecutions. It was also true that the Northern Wei Dynasty had a direct patronage link to the Sangha and its Emperor was being identified by the Sangha as the Tathagata!

401 Kumarajiva arrived in Chang-an as booty to begin the refined translation of texts. Xuan-Zang in the early 7th began the next and much improved refinement, though some of Kumarajiva’s work is still retained by masses for its literary quality, e.g., his Lotus Sutra

Art As with ideological speculation, China already had a highly developed set of esthetic traditions before the arrival of Buddhism. The first Buddha image recorded is in the first century, included in a Daoist ritual for blessing the emperor. There were Buddhist monasteries by the second century, where washing of the Buddha’s image took place. The first translation of texts into Chinese came at Loyang in 148. Buddha images were used in China as objects of devotion and meditation focuses. Shakyamuni (Ch: ), Maitreya (Ch: ),, Amitabha (Ch: ),, and Avalokitesvara (Ch: Guanyin) were the most popular figures.

Buddhist culture, including its visual arts came into China from the northwest and were strongest there and in the area of the North which was more accessible to the "barbarians" who ruled North during the Six Dynasties, and sponsored Buddhism. In particular the Northern Wei Dynasty, established by the Toba Tartars (386-535) embraced Buddhism as it was foreign, like them and gave them a direct bond with the common people who embraced Buddhism.

Lee divides Pre-Tang Buddhist art into three style periods:

Bronze 33.3 cm (private collection, Japan)

The comparison of this foot-and-a-quarter bronze in a private Japanese collection with the three-and-a-half foot stone image from Gandhara, we have looked at already, offers us a striking picture of how Buddhist imagery has travelled through Asia. The two are, with the exception of the damaged portions of the bronzes face and the preservation of its hands, more or less products of the same cultural tradition. both show a princely figure in an elaborate dhoti, with its decorative pleats running off to the left, while an extended palu circles around its neck, covering the left shoulder, looping down in front and then up over its right arm. both wear decorative torks in a square across the chest. both have hair tied up in a bow above cascades falling to either side. Both stand four square in sandals. Both are bare above the waste.

Only the small bronze preserves the abhaya right hand and left holding a water bottle. And the fact is all of the details I have listed are different, if one looks more closely. Neither is simply a copy the other. But as clearly, they both derive from the same Gandharan tradition. What smaller metal image demonstrates is how the Mahayana Buddhist imagery of the upper Indus region traveled across Central Asia to the East. Was this image made in Gandhara or Central Asia? When was it brought? We don’t know. What we do know is that such images could and did travel through commercial traders and monks passing across the Tarim Basin between Bamiyan and Dunhuang and eventually as far as the Pacific Coast along with the pilgrims, monks and lay merchants, just as did the written texts. It was the transportation of all three that brought Buddhism from India to Central and Eastern Asia: Buddhist texts and Buddhist images, Buddhist monks and Buddhist laity.

The first Buddhist imagery in China was undoubtedly imported work, like the bronze Bodhisattva we saw at the end of the last lecture. Small portable altars and figures in ivory, bronze, or clay or painted on paper or palmleaf, that could travel. Though soon enough the Chinese were themselves scribing images in ink and paint and sculpting them in clay, metal and stone.

This is the earliest known, dated Buddha image. It is a seated, meditating Shakyamuni. It could be Sravakayana or Mahayana. It has the ushnisha, elongated ears, robe over both shoulders and posture and gesture of meditation. The iconography may be Indian, but the features are Chinese or Central Asian. The hair is in the Gandharan mode of combed tresses rather than snail-curled, shorn ones. Typical of Chinese culture and unlike what one would expect in India, the image bears an exact date.

Avery Brundage’s collection, now in the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, was so impressive and so illegally obtained that the Chinese refused to compete in the International Olympics as long as Brundage remained the chair of the International Olympic Committee.

The largest image at Yungang, the 45’ Buddha of cave 20, is a fine example of the Archaic style. Its fabrication out of the living rock of the hillside seems clearly to be an importation along with its subject from India by way of Central Asia. Its sharp, linear detail seems much the result of the later Gandharan style traveling through drawing and miniature figures. Though Buddhist was clearly in China earlier, this was the entrance of monumental sized imagery and it seems to come fresh at this moment. Lee traces these sharp linearities to Bamiyan’s rope-built string-folds. But there is clearly a sharp edged stylization here that has other explanations. And one is the sharp elegance of the drawing books that may have brought the concept here.

The Imagery of the "cave" is of a seated Buddha between a pair of monks or other, lesser Buddhas. It is unquestionably a Mahayana image with its flaming halo and mandorla. surrounded by repeated images of other meditating Buddhas. The Buddha depicted here has all the familiar marks of ushnisha, elongated ears, yoga posture and gesture, plus a robe over one shoulder. A bit of extra cloth comes around the other shoulder showing something not known elsewhere. Angular, geometric, linear: the work is clearly Chinese whether we look at the ethnic type of the features or at the formal style. Merely turn your book back to the earlier examples of Chinese plastic art and you will see, whether it is in the ritual bronzes of the Shang and Zhou (say figs. 37 & 46) or later figure sculpture in clay and stone (say figs. 72 & 85) and you will find the same system of bold mass articulated with sharply delineated relief on a raised level. A massive ground articulated in sharply delineated figures. The Buddha at the side is of a much smaller scale but the same style. We can see from the great holes in the wall that these gigantic reliefs were once completed as halls by structural additions.

The porch of cave 7 is a fragment that shows the degree to which a covering of Buddha images and other decorative and iconic imagery could fill the walls of a worship shrine. The numbers of Buddhas make clear the Mahayana nature of the imagery as the angularity of the style and the profusion are typical of the site and time. These images seem to be piled one over the other less in a specific iconographic program than in an effort to depict as many Buddhas as possible. One of the things that black and white pictures lack is the bright colors used. Lee calls the bright greens, blues, reds and whites vulgar, others might call them exuberant. According to him the artists were largely Central Asians brought east for the job of reproducing the paintings of Central Asia in stone. This would not seem so, since these works look little like anything in Central Asia. He does see the flying figures of the ceiling as Chinese.

The Avalokitesvara in the Metropolitan Museum is a work from this period in this country typical of the period and of the treasure hunting iconoclasm of 19th century and early 20th century Western collectors. It was broken out of a wall in Yungang leaving a whole not yet repaired. Both the cross legged pose and the crown and earrings are indications that this is a Bodhisattva. What is left of the hands indicate a good deal of feeling possible even in this archaic style.

Jumping to Longmen we see similar iconography of the myriad Buddhas and monks flocking to hear the preaching of one great one in the Elongated style at its best known site. Half-a-century later than the work we have just seen at the Wei’s earlier capital, the style has progressed from its angular beginning to a more subtly plastic and, as its designation suggests, elongated formula. For Lee the difference is strong enough to consider these works Chinese rather than Central Asian. There is increased linear emphasis and fluidity here in the curling froth of the drapery. There is rhythmical repetition in the figures and folds. These more slender figures and faces look less Central Asian to him. His full discussion of the style encompasses other images in the book I am not discussing here. And on most of the images he shows, including this one, under the central seated figure, one finds long inscriptions explaining who their patron was, what his rank was and what sort of merit form himself and his family he expected.

The bronze altar piece of Shakyamuni and Prabhutaratna represents the only iconographic example of two Buddhas sharing the same throne. It represents the moment of the Buddha’s preaching of the Lotus Sutra. For each Mahayana sutra’s preaching the many Buddhas of the different worlds appear, but for this one a stupa appeared the air and in it was seen Prabhutaratna a Buddha of the distant past, come to hear Shakyamuni preach the Lotus of the True Law (Saddharma-pundarika Sutra). And so Shakyamuni rose in the air and seated himself next to his predecessor before he began to preach.

(Though my own specialty is the art of India, my professor at UCLA, where I did my advanced degrees, was LeRoy Davidson a specialist in Chinese Buddhist art. His dissertation, The Lotus Sutra in Chinese Art, is a detailed analysis of the first Chinese Buddhist imagery.)

We see the two Buddhas side by side, nearly mirror images, their elongated figures and linear drapery a type example of the style. The subtlety of the linear drawing in the halos and mandorlas is the calligraphy we associate with the Chinese writing brush, the similar subtlety of the modeling as it builds to full round and falls again to low relief is quite handsome. Sharp features, elongated faces, waterfall and sawtooth drapery.

Sui and Tang Buddhist art are Chinese Buddhism’s classical style, the model for most later Buddhist art in China, the style most significantly exported to Korea and Japan, and what they are best known for abroad. Lee compares it to Gupta, the first international Buddhist style that came out of India. After the short lived Sui dynasty reunited all of China under one rule, the Tang came to rule an empire stretching from the Caspian to the Pacific for three prosperous and relatively stable centuries. This was a China that included central Asia. It spread from Manchuria in the north to Vietnam in the south. At a time when the Roman Empire was shrinking, Tang China was the most extensive and powerful single country in the world. Literature and the arts flourished widely. It was during this time and on the basis of this economic power that Chinese Buddhism worked out its major syntheses of the various Mahayana streams advancing toward it, with a bit of Sravakayana and Vajrayana to leaven the mixture.

Lee sees Tang Buddhist style coming from three sources, Gupta India, Central Asia (now part of China) and her own past Buddhist styles. Styles of course are the patterns within which artists work and patrons prescribe. So they begin with current continuing style. And then artists can add ideas that come in the shape of other images. At this time of vast national size that reaches across Central Asia and up to the doors of India, it is easy to see many more alternatives than at a time of relative isolation like Six Dynasties. During the Tang Buddhist traders came from all over the Buddhist world and India was prestigious as the land from which the Buddha came.

bronze 30 1/8"

The Columnar style is a later 5th century development, that Lee feels may trace to the international Gupta style. Linearity is abandoned for more continuous plasticity and an emphasis on roundness. Though it is only a miniature piece, with figures of less than a foot tall, the Amitabha altar in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts is a good example of the style. Its image is Amitabha (Ch: Amitofo, Amita=Amida, Fo=Buddha) , the Buddha of the Western Paradise, preaching. Amitabha is seen seated cross legged on a lotus throne. His body is plastically round. The drapery winds around the masses rather than scribing elegant linear patterns on one or another discrete surface. The mudras are the standard Mahayana set, the abhya of preaching in the right, the varada offering gifts in the left. The expression on its face is a sweet contrast to the archaic mask of previous Chinese imagery. The image is backed by a relatively plastic halo and oversailed by a jeweled tree.

On either side stands a smaller scaled Bodhisattva. Each of these is a miniature "column," a compact figure on a lotus. Mahasthamaprapta, hands together in anjali of respect for Amitabha, head slightly tilted to the side and bearing a similarly angled peepul-tree-leaf shaped halo stands on the Buddha’s left. On its right is Avalokitesvara holding a medicine bottle. Behind these on the same platform stand four deciples, Bhikshus of a distinguishably smaller scale. In front on the altar base are lions and even smaller scaled guardian figures. In the middle is a miniature incense burner.

The image is strictly symmetrical formally and strictly hierarchical symbolically. There are humanoid figures at four different scales. And each is further distinguished by its clothing, facial expression and demeanor. The Buddha smiles sweetly but passively, the Bodhisattvas bend slightly and hold more compassionate expressions. The monks look solemn The guardians are a bit demonic. The set reveals the presence of beings at different stages of enlightenment.

If the Sui altar shows us the most advanced indigenous Chinese Buddhist style, this altar from Dunhuang show us the next step in that direction, a somewhat more naturalistic version of the same combination of figures. We see a painted sculpture in a niche in a fully painted cave. Like Ajanta there is flat painting next to sculpt figure painted in the same colors and style.

The Buddha here is Shakyamuni or Amitabha. His flesh is golden. (It is not always possible to say.) Flanking to either side in the back are Louhan (Ch. for Bhikshu) deciples with shaven heads, flesh colored faces and the black monastic robes of the Chinese Sangha. Seated on pedestals to either side are Bodhisattva with white flesh. The Buddha is preaching and the Bodhisattvas responding. Beside them, squatting on lower lotus platforms are another pair of figures. The one on the proper left is missing.

The massive sculptures have their halos and mandorlas painted on the walls behind them Behind the sculptures of the deciples are a two more sets of deciples painted flat on the wall. Above their heads is a depiction of the same scene. Elements like the cloth over the Buddhas platform are particularly naturalistic. There is clearly an attempt to create a scene which one can lose one’s self in.

Sandstone 51"

The Eleven-headed Guanyin (Skt. Avalokitesvara) from Shaanxi Province is a type model of Tang. Full-faced, fully rounded, taught but smooth skin contrasted by richly patterned jewelry, relatively thick proportions. It is a Chinese equivalent of the Indian Gupta, a richly sensuous ideal. Not naturalistic, but clearly sensuous. The Eleven-headed Guanyin is a savior deity. The different heads each express different aspects of the deity. This is unquestionably a Vajrayana imagery and a popular one in the Far East.

How can you have a deity with multiple heads? Why the sophisticated worshiper would respond would you think that deity should look like you?...At all? That is what makes you think that deity has arms at all, or gender? Deity is personified to make it comprehensible. In analogy. In this case multiple heads represents multiple aspects of a particular form of Avalokitesvara.

At Kanheri, a rock-cut Buddhist monastery of over a hundred separate excavations, just outside of modern Mumbai, on the west Indian coast is the only eleven headed Buddhist figure known to survive from India. (Some have survived in Nepal and Kashmir.) This is an Eleven-headed Avalokitesvara found in cave 41 there. It stands to the right of a Buddha. It is the only example of this Tantric imagery known from India. It is a reminder that what existed in China didn’t depend upon what went on in India. In this case the forms are quite different; in other cases there is no equivalent source at all.

223 "Pagoda" base Tang 271/4" early 8th c

When you look at the mass of figures dexorating the so-called "pagoda" base in the Nelson Atkins Museum in Kansas City (there is a similarly proportioned one in the Metropolitan Museum in New York) it is easy to be put off by the profusion of elements. What Lee calls the piece’s "technical mastry" has filled each plane to overflowing and the unaccustomed mind may tend to reel. But if we pause to readwe see things we are already familiar with.

First we should step back and realize what a "pagoda" base is. "Pagoda" is a corrupt Portuguese term applied by the English to any multi-storied tower in the "east." That is, anywhere east of the Mediterranean: Hindu temple towers were one example. The more familiar one is the rising set of stories that mark the various versions of the stupa in its East Asian incarnation. Though what we see here is not the characteristic series of rising roofs, but the "base" from which they rise. So, what we are looking at is the outer form of room in which a Buddhist reliquary was placed.

We see one of four equivalent sides, with a doorway flanked by several sets of dragons and loins in symmetrical pairs. The most interesting figures here are the guardian generals just outside the arch surrounding the opening, the storm god standing on the pinical of the arch, and the massive swirling lung (traditional Chinese dragons) in relief to either side and spiriling off into three-quarters free sculpture on the edges. The similar piece in the Metropolitan has a square inner stupa mass with niches for figures on each side.

44’ with the pedistal

The largest remaining Tang rock-cut monument is found in cave 19, the Fengxian grotto, at Longmen. It is a 44’ Vairochana, surrounded by deciples, Bodhisattvas, and guardian generals. The work was commissioned by the emperor Gao Zong and contributed to by the famous Empress Wu. The fact that it took three years to complete is an indication of the large numbers of skilled sculptors available and the zeal with which patrons vied to produce such merit gaining work. The pock marking of the hillside on all sides is an indication of the great numbers of those producing these stone prayers. Originally such images were not intended to stand exposed as they are today, but to be finished by enclosing wooden structures. Longmen is only a few miles south of the Tang capital city of Louyang.

It has long been thought, both in China and in Western scholarship on China, that this was indeed a portrait of the Empress, who had herself declared an incarnation of the Buddha by contemporary Sangha. And many have described this image as having a feminine face. Recent scholarship has pointed out that for an image to be a declared a personification it is not necessary to have any particular portrait likeness. But more important, there is no evidence at all to support this notion, which is a local folk one. Indeed, despite her great power, this was not the Empress’ image but the more important Gao Zong’s.

Two rarely surviving Tang monastic structures from Wutai Shan monastery reveal more of the Chinese Buddhist model. The first built before and the second after the great (royal) persecution of Buddhist monks, the proscription of 842-845, during which 4,600 temples and 40,000 shrines were destroyed. We see a three-bayed wood framed structure on a stone basement, with wood and plaster walls. and a tile roof. Squat in proportions, it maintains a striking dignity and solidity.

Looking on the interior of an image hall from just after the proscription one sees an elaborate joinery architecture and an altar crowded with Buddhas, Bodhisattva, monks and lesser beings.

Buddhist painting in China was a continuation of previous traditions, where at sites like Dunhuang artists must have worked on from generation to generation. The Western Paradise from a wall there shows how different things in China grew from what we know of Indian art. The Chinese were much more interested in painting as an art than were most other cultures and ultimately produced a tradition quite as varied, interesting, and developed as that we are familiar with in Europe. The wall paintings were a set to themselves. Unlike the portable works on silk and paper they were done by craft workers who are now anonymous. Though in their own day they were certainly known by many and, if modern India is any example, known far and wide.

Here we see the paradise of Amitabha, the god sitting in the center flanked by symmetrically ranked Bodhisattva and lesser deciples. Above the major deities sit beneath canopies on a wide dais, as they would be seen in a temple. Below a celestial dancer performs for their perpetual entertainment. All situated in the vast Sukhavati lake. Once again to understand the image one must read through it carefully. And in this case your book gives you the benefit of the sort of textual passage that it illustrates and that explains how such imagery can be used to work toward enlightenment.

We can see here the interest of artists of the time in developing perspective, through devices like overlaps and receding diagonals. It isn’t a one point perspective that we see, but a relatively equivalent effect.

ink and color on silk 6’11"

Li Zhen’s portrait of the Patriarch Amoghavajra is reckoned, by the signature on it and the records at Japan’s To-ji, in Kyoto, to be a painting by the known master brought to Japan as a record of the Shingon sect’s patriarch line. The Chen Yen (J: Shingon) or True Word school is a Vajrayana and the precise individual personality of its patriarchal succession was of paramount importance.

The patriarch sits on a low dais, like an emperor, his slippers below. His hands are in anjali, as in India, his robe is black, as in China. But much more peculiarly Chinese, the face in the portrait is a clear example of highly specific realism. This is a careful and effective individual likeness, something never practiced in Indian Buddhist art of Indian ritual art of any sort before the modern period. Beside the portrait float in large characters his name, in Chinese characters on our left and Sanskrit (Siddhamatrika) on our right.

Why does Lee call Li Zhen a "minor master" ? It is because that is how Li is recorded in the esthetic histories of the day. China had a great literature of art theory and criticism that has left us with names and descriptions of thousands of artists. And it has left us with precise opinions of the official quality of each.

The more standard monk portrait in China was a more stereotypical caricatural image of the sort seen in Guan-Xiu’s Louhan (Chinese for Arhat or enlightened monk). Guan-Xiu was famous for his grotesque images of Arahats as they were usually conceived, ancient, idiosyncratic hermits. These grotesque exteriors were intended to emphasize particularly sophisticated interiors. Is this actually an original painting by Guan-Xiu? That is not clear. With the extensive records of famous artists and detailed discussions of their work went great value placed upon them. This example comes from the Japanese Imperial collections. There were Chinese Imperial collections. Thus the value of such things was great and son the temptation to see originals great. And this, in a culture where the heart of artistic training was for most of history a matter of carefully copying the works of the past, has led to a situation where most old paintings are attributed to some known artist and few are actually authenticatable. Not that we have any comparable information on specific artists of the 10th century in any other culture.

ink & color on silk 31 3/5"

This is a hanging scroll "discovered" in Cave 17 at Dunhuang, in 1907. It had been stored there for eleven centuries, before the British secret service agent, Sir Aurel Stein took it. It is now, along with most of Dunhouang’s portable treasures that were not taken earlier by the French "explorer" Paul Pelliot. Rather than put another term than "discovered" upon the acts involved here, we would probably do better to reconsider the significance of the acts we describe by it, in the period of Europe’s imperialist conquest of Asia.

It’s title is written in the box on the upper right. It is Bodhi[sattva {?}] guide of Souls. The Bodhisattva is shown holding a censer in its right hand for worshiping the Buddha. It its other hand it holds a lotus and a white temple banner. It is guiding a soul upon a stylized cloud, toward the palaces of the Western Paradise, which can be seen at the upper left. The soul is depicted as a women in the elite costume of the day. The rain of blossoms indicates the realm of sanctity through which the two figures are moving. It is a representation of the promise of the popular Amida sect that the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara will convey the soul of Amida worshipers to a rebirth in its paradise, where they will remain until they are enlightened and enter nirvana.

The painting is in bright colors applied within strict outlines. It is largely a linear project, with much of the work in red and green, as well as black lines. Typical of Chinese style, there is little or no shading, but what little mass we feel is created through the roundness of contours or by the fact of the subject matter. The style is more or less the one we see on the sites murals, with the major exception of the heightened qualities of precision, detail and elegance, either more easily achieved on silk or at least shown by the artist in this case.

The end of Tang

The end of Tang saw a descent into chaos later referred to as Five Dynasties, for the number of fragments ruling between the Tang and the rise of the unified Song. Most significant for the Buddhist world in China was the great persecution of 842-45, which resulted in a recorded destruction of 4,600 temples and some 40,000 shrines, plus the more devastating unfrocking and disbursement of hundreds of thousands of monastics (260,500). Most devastating, however was the destruction of libraries and books that made a continuation of the elaborate scholastic Buddhism of the elite sects almost impossible. It brought them to a halt, until texts now existing in Korea could be brought back to reopen the dialogues that were at its heart. But that took many years and in the intervening time the vast intellectual momentum of the day was lost.