Page 115 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

complished artist. Each incident is set off from its neighbours by
hills with overlapping tops called ch'iieh which have powerful
Taoist associations; half-a-dozen kinds of tree are distinguishable,
tossed by a great wind that sweeps through their branches, while
above the distant hills the clouds streak across the sky. The scene in
which the filial Shun escapes from the well into which his jealous
stepfather Yao cast him is astonishing in its animation, and only in
his failure to lead the eye back through a convincing middle dis-
tance to the horizon does the artist reveal the limitations of his
time. Though its subject is respectably Confucian, its treatment
exudes a joy in the face of living nature that is purely Taoist. It
serves also to remind us that in spite of the ever-growing demands
of Buddhism for art of an entirely different kind, there already ex-
isted at this time a purely native landscape tradition allied to callig-
raphy and based on the language of the brush.
Buddhist communities were already established in North China BUDDHISM
before the end of the Han Dynasty. Now, however, political and
social chaos, loss of faith in the traditional Confucian order, and
the desire to escape from the troubles of the times all contributed
to a wave of remarkable religious enthusiasm, and the new doc-
trine spread to every corner of the empire. Its acceptance, except
among the lower strata of society, was not due to blind and inno-
cent faith—for that is not a sentiment to which the educated
Chinese arc prone—but perhaps to the fact that it was new, that it
filled a big gap in men's spiritual lives, and that its speculative phi-
losophy and moraljustification of the renunciation of worldly ties
appealed to intellectuals, who were now often reluctant to take on
the perilous responsibilities of office. The new faith must have
proved an effective consolation, ifwe are tojudge by the vast sums
spent on the building of monasteries and temples and their adorn-
ment during these troubled years.
We must pause in our narrative for a moment to consider the life
and teachings of the Buddha, which form the subject matter of
Buddhist art. Gautama Sakyamuni, called the Buddha, or the En-
lightened One, was born about 567 B.C., the son of a prince of the
Sakya clan ruling on the border of Nepal. He grew up surrounded
by the luxuries of the palace, married, and had a son Rahula. His
father deliberately shielded him from all contact with the miseries
of life beyond the palace gates, but in spite of the care with which
his excursions were planned for him, Sakyamuni was finally con-
fronted with the reality of old age, sickness, and death, and he saw
a vision of an ascetic, pointing his future path. Deeply disturbed
by his experience, he resolved to renounce the world and search
for the cause of so much suffering. One night he stole out from the
palace, cut off his hair, bade farewell to his horse and groom, and
embarked upon his quest. For many years he wandered, seeking,
first with one teacher and then with another, the answer to the
mystery of existence and a way of release from the intolerable
cycle of endless rebirths to which all living things arc subject ac-
cording to karma, the inexorable law of cause and effect. Then one
day at Bodhgaya, seated under a pippala tree, he entered into a
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