Page 144 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

BUDDHIST PAINTING: The Buddhist painting of this period must have contained as rich
FOREIGN INFLUENCES a mixture of native and foreign elements as did sculpture. During
the seventh century, the most popular subjects were those that il-
lustrated the teachings of the T'icn-t'ai sect based on the Lotus Su-
tra, an encyclopaedic text which in its combination of theology
and metaphysics, ethics, magic, and simple human appeal seemed
to satisfy all human needs; we already encountered some of its
themes on the sculptured steles of the Northern Wei. Even more
popular were the teachings of the Ching-t'u ("pure land") School,
which had cut its way through the growing forest of metaphysical
abstractions of the later Mahayana with the doctrine that through
simple faith one might be reborn in one of the Buddhist paradises
and so find release and eternal bliss. By the mid-seventh century,
however, new concepts were coming into Buddhism which were
eventually to bring about its decline. The later Mahayana in India
had become deeply coloured by a highly abstract and idealistic
metaphysics, on the one hand, and by the practices of the Tantric
sects of revived Hinduism, on the other. Tantrism held that by
sheer concentration of willpower, aided by magic spells {mantra)
and diagrams (mandala), a deity could be invoked and desirable
changes in the order of things thus brought about. This school
also believed in the Hindu concept of the Sakti, a female emana-
tion, or reflex, of a deity who would be doubly efficacious if pre-
sented clasping her in ecstatic union. At its finest, this new art has
a formidable power that is overwhelming, but it too easily degen-
1
erates into the soulless repetition of magical formulae. It found its
true home in the bleak wastes of Tibet, whence it reached out to
paralyse the art of Tunhuang during the Tibetan occupation, from
about 750 to 848. In course of time, the revolt of the Chinese spirit
against the sentimental, the over-intellectual, and the diabolical
aspects of these sects found expression in the Ch'an (Zen) School
of contemplative mysticism, but as this doctrine did not greatly
affect painting until the Sung Dynasty, we will defer discussion of
it to Chapter 8.
In 847, the scholar and connoisseur Chang Yen-yuan completed
his Li-tai ming-hua chi (Record of Famous Painters of Successive Dynas-
ties), the earliest known history of painting in the world. This im-
portant book, which has, happily, survived, includes a catalogue
of the frescoes in the temples of Ch'ang-an and Loyang and is as
full of the names of great painters and their works as Baedeker's
guide to Florence; but the persecution of 845, coupled with wars
and rebellions, fire and sheer neglect, destroyed them all. Accord-
ing to contemporary accounts, the work of the foreign painters
aroused much interest and had considerable influence on local art-
ists. During the Northern Ch'i there had been Ts'ao Chung-ta,
whose figures, according to Chang Yen-yuan, "were clad in gar-
ments which clung to the body; they looked as if they had been
drenched in water"—an apt description also of the sculpture at
T'ien-lung-shan. The Khotanese painter Yii-ch'ih (or Wei-ch'ih)
Po-chih-na had come to Ch'ang-an in the Sui Dynasty; he speci-
alised not only in Buddhist subjects but also in strange objects
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