Page 121 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

126 Interior ofCave VII. Yunking- Northern Wei Dynasty, about 470-4*0.
In 386 the Toba Turks established their ascendancy over North BUDDHIST
China as the Wei Dynasty, with their capital at Ta-t'ung. Their rul- SCULPTURE UNDER
ers had embraced Buddhism with enthusiasm, for, like the Ku- THE NORTHERN WEI:
THE FIRST PHASE
shans in India, they were excluded from the traditional social and
religious system of those they had conquered. 5 At the urging of
the overseer of monks, T'an-yao, they began, soon after 460, to
hew out of the cliffs at Yunkang a series of shrines and colossal fig-
ures which were to be a monument not only to Buddhism but also
to the splendour of the royal house itself. By the time the capital
was moved south to Loyang in 494, twenty large caves and some
minor ones had been excavated, while work was resumed under
the Sui, and again between gi6 and 112$. when Ta-t'ung became
the western capital of the Liao Dynasty. The earliest caves—those
numbered XVI to XX—were dedicated by the emperor to himself
and four earlier Wei rulers, possibly as a penance for the harsh
repression of the faith by his Taoist grandfather in 444. These five
caves contain huge seated or standing Buddhas cut in the living
rock, while the seated Buddha of Cave XX was originally pro-
tected by a timber facade of several storeys. This colossus, fifteen
101