Page 156 - China, 5000 years : innovation and transformation in the arts

placement. In relief representations, for example
(cats. 150, 161), they range from the central figure of for dedicatory inscriptions. Portable miniature altars
the Buddha, on his supreme level of transcendence,
who stands out against the background and is
carved almost completely in the round, to the
worldly donors, who occupy subordinate positions
at the bottom and the edges and are rendered in
low relief or simple line engraving.
Artists in the service of Buddhism sought to
represent their religious figures with stylized beauty
and sumptuous splendor, using a complex system of
idealization beyond human forms. It was their aim
to visualize the sacred essence of the faith through
majestic manifestation of the deities, through their
serene nobility, and through their lavish
—adornment an aesthetic quality called alamkara in
Sanskrit (C: zhuangyan) .The fine linear engraving
on a horizontal panel depicting the Buddha
surrounded by bodhisatrvas and disciples suggests a
convincing vision of the reward awaiting pious
believers in paradise (cat. 152). Highlighted by a
large mandorla and seated beneath a precious
canopy, the central figure can probably be identified
as "Sakyamuni Preaching the Law." Subsidiary
figures, "varied in pose and expression, are
hierarchically grouped in front of luxuriant trees.
This hierarchical symmetry and concern with three-
dimensional form extends to the entire
composition, inviting comparison with wall
paintings of Buddhist paradise scenes in cave-
temples. The fluent draftsmanship creates
an exquisite pictorial effect that must have been
considerably heightened by the now-vanished
Onpolychromy. both sides the figures are flanked
by a long dedicatory inscription dated in
accordance with 524, making this Northern Wei
panel from Jingming Temple in Luoyang one of the
most valuable early monuments in China's history
of religious figure painting. To suggest these
visionary conceptions of paradises and the
suprahuman character ot their sacred figures, artists
rendered their icons ageless, passionless, and
flawless, wearing an introspective, compassionate
expression (cats. 163, 164, 166, 174, 176). Only
figures of lesser sanctity were represented with a
degree of pictorial realism.
The materials Chinese artists used for Buddhist
images varied greatly over region and time. Besides
bronze, clay, and lacquer, various kinds of stone and
wood were very popular. We find sculptures made
of sandstone, limestone, schist, and marble as well as
statues carved in sandalwood, camphor, and pine.
As a rule, they received a polychrome finish over
preparatory coatings (cats. 161, 170-73). The
technique for casting bronze icons employed
traditional molds as well as the lost-wax method
(cats. 160, 169). Overall fire gilding was favored.
Additional engraving may be seen occasionally; in
TRANSFIGURING DIVINITIES: BUDDHIST SCULPTURE IN CHINA
ancient times this technique was mainly reserved
and small icons for private worship stood more
chance of preservation than did the monumental
temple bronze statuary, almost all of which was
destroyed in the course of infrequent but ferocious
persecutions of Buddhism or in other disasters, such
as revolts, wars, earthquakes, fires, or floods.
CATEGORIES OF CHINESE BUDDHIST
SCULPTURE
The spread of Buddhism and its art can to some
extent be traced through the chronological
sequence of the establishment of cave-temples. The
architecture of the earliest Chinese cave-temples
follows Central Asian models and clearly reveals its
Indian origins. Textual evidence suggests that the
first was built in 366 at Dunhuang in the extreme
northwest, a junction of the great trade routes and a
gateway to Western influence. Soon afterward,
extensive work was carried out in the southeast and
east. The construction of the Bingling cave-temple
at Mount Xiaojishi in northwestern Yongjing
county, Gansu Province, seems to have begun early
in the fifth century; in 1963 a votive inscription in
ink bearing a Western Qin date corresponding to
420 was discovered in Cave 169. The cave-temple at
Maijishan, east ot the ancient Buddhist center of
Liangzhou in Tianshui county, Gansu Province, may
have been founded at about the same time. In his
biographical account Gaoseng zhuan ("Lives of
Eminent Monks"), Huijiao (497—554) records that
the monkTanhong from Chang' an, who was living
as a hermit at Maijishan in the early 420s, was
joined there by another monk, Xuangao. 20 At that
time, a congregation of more than a hundred
monks is said to have resided at Maijishan.
The first series of cave-chapels atYungang, near
Datong in Shanxi Province, was begun at the
instigation of the monk Tanyao in 460 under the
patronage of the Northern Wei sovereigns. Far into
the sixth century caves with sculptural ensembles
continued to be carved into the rock. In 493 the
Tuoba ruler Xiaowen (r. 471—499) abandoned the
flourishing and populous center of Datong and
transferred the Wei court to Luoyang in Henan
Province. This move into the heartland of Chinese
civilization was a significant historical event and a
profoundly political statement. Soon afterward, the
laborious chiseling of cave-temples with extensive
sculptural programs began afresh on a long cliff of
dark gray limestone at Longmen, seven miles south
of the new capital. At Gongxian, approximately
forty miles downstream from Longmen, caves with
superb sculptures were carved in a colossal cliffside
overlooking the Luo River. A votive inscription
dated in accordance with 531 has been discovered
under niche 227 outside Cave 5.