Page 135 - China, 5000 years : innovation and transformation in the arts

Fig. l. Buddha Amitabha. Dated to 420. Rock carving. Fig. 2. Buddha Amitabha. Ca. 420. Cave painting.
Bingling Temple, Cave i6g:6, Liujiaxia city, Gansu Bingling Temple, Cave i6g:i2, Liujiaxia city, Gansu

Province. Province.

and copy the native institutions of southern
China. Hence, the origins of these changes must
be traced back to the southern dynasties of Eastern
Jin (317-420), Liu Song (420-479), and Liang

(502-557).

I. Fig. 3. Seated Buddha. Dated to 460. Rock carving.
Cave 20, Yungang, Shauxi Province.
In April 1963 a work team from the Gansu
Provincial Bureau of Relics discovered a grotto Although it retains vestiges of the features
containing a sculpture of Buddha Amitabha mentioned above, it also shows changes in the
(numbered 169:6 in the archaeologists' report) in direction of simpler and stronger lines. This
Cave 169 of the Bingling Temple inYongjing transformation may have occurred during the
(present-day Liujiaxia city, about fifty miles
southwest of Lanzhou) (fig. i).This bore an period when the dowager empress Peng, widow
inscription dated to the year 420, making it the of Emperor Wencheng. exerted great influence
earliest known cave sculpture in China with an
explicit date. The grotto contains a configuration at court.
consisting of a Buddha sitting in meditation and
attendant bodhisattvas; to the lower left of the II.
grotto is a group of murals of similar date and
subject matter (169:12; fig. 2). Both groups of According to the History of the Northern Dynasties.
Buddha images are characterized by broad in 47(1 the dowager empress I eng "s.it in Court and
shoulders, large torsos, and a sense of geometric held all power."' During her ascendancy the
solidity and weightiness.The same features recur in
Tanyao's Caves 16-20 at Yungang in Datong, Sh.iuxi
Province. These were carved at the urging of
Tanyao, overseer of monks under the Northern Wei

dynasty, in 460. Among these images, the large

seated Buddha in Cave 20 is the most typical
(fig. 3). In 1949 a Buddha seated cross-legged in
meditation was unearthed in Xingping county,
Shaanxi Province, which dates from 471 (cat. 147).

ORIGINS AND TRENDS IN THE DEPICTION OF HUMAN FIGURES 133