Academic literature on the topic 'Cave monasteries Buddhist cave temples Art, Buddhist'

Abstract Kucha was one of the major political powers and cultural centers along the ancient Silk Road, home to a great number of Buddhist cave temples that have survived from the time of their creation sometime between the third century and the eighth. Although they are not as well-known as their counterparts in Dunhuang, the complexes at Kizil and Kumutra, among others, have preserved equally invaluable material evidence of the vibrant interchange of goods, ideas, and cultural practices that took place across the entire region in the first millennium. These sites represent the crucial link with the artistic traditions of Gandhara, India, and Persia in explicating the Chinese adaptation of a complex, foreign visual culture through the introduction of Buddhism. This essay reviews a number of significant publications on the art and archaeology of Kucha that have appeared in the past decade. Marking one of the notable trends in Asian studies today, the remarkable growth in Kucha scholarship has been facilitated in one way or another by the opening of China's Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region to the outside world. The review focuses on the compilations of source materials, reception and collection histories, and interpretative studies of source materials, examining each of these three areas within their proper historical and historiographical contexts. An extensive review of Archaeological and Visual Sources of Meditation in the Ancient Monasteries of Kuča (2015) by Angela F. Howard and Giuseppe Vignato appears in the last section of the essay.

The thirty rock cut cave temples of Ajanta located near a village named “Ajistha” in Aurangabad district of Maharashtra state. The caves are carved in a half crescent shape overlooking the Waghora river. The caves are located at a picturesque location having beautiful natural surroundings. Because of this peace and godly environment Buddhist monks might have chosen this place for their artistic endeavour. The caves possess well carved sculptures, pillars, entrances and walls are embellished with beautiful paintings. The art of Ajanta flourished from 1st century BC to 7th century AD. The Ajanta art is considered as the classical age of Indian painting. The artists of Ajanta did not follow the law of perspective and represented the figures in its entirety rather than appeared through a normal eye. Ajanta artists tried to depict the whole view through horizontal bands. In the paintings at Ajanta, the background was painted at the topmost band, the middle part of the painting below it and the foreground below the middle ground.

The curtain rose. The howling of desert wind filled the performance hall in the Shanghai Grand Theatre. Into the center stage, where a scenic construction of a mountain cliff and a desert landscape was dimly lit, entered the character of the Daoist priest Wang Yuanlu (1849–1931), performed by Chen Yizong. Dressed in a worn and dusty outfit of dark blue cotton, characteristic of Daoist priests, Wang began to sweep the floor. After a few moments, he discovered a hidden chambre sealed inside one of the rock sanctuaries carved into the cliff.Signaled by the quick, crystalline, stirring wave of sound from the chimes, a melodious Chinese ocarina solo joined in slowly from the background. Astonished by thousands of Buddhist sūtra scrolls, wall paintings, and sculptures he had just accidentally discovered in the caves, Priest Wang set his broom aside and began to examine these treasures. Dawn had not yet arrived, and the desert sky was pitch-black. Priest Wang held his oil lamp high, strode rhythmically in excitement, sat crossed-legged in a meditative pose, and unfolded a scroll. The sound of the ocarina became fuller and richer and the texture of the music more complex, as several other instruments joined in.Below is the opening scene of the award-winning, theatrical dance-drama Dunhuang, My Dreamland, created by China’s state-sponsored Lanzhou Song and Dance Theatre in 2000. Figure 1a: Poster Side A of Dunhuang, My Dreamland Figure 1b: Poster Side B of Dunhuang, My DreamlandThe scene locates the dance-drama in the rock sanctuaries that today are known as the Dunhuang Mogao Caves, housing Buddhist art accumulated over a period of a thousand years, one of the best well-known UNESCO heritages on the Silk Road. Historically a frontier metropolis, Dunhuang was a strategic site along the Silk Road in northwestern China, a crossroads of trade, and a locus for religious, cultural, and intellectual influences since the Han dynasty (206 B.C.E.–220 C.E.). Travellers, especially Buddhist monks from India and central Asia, passing through Dunhuang on their way to Chang’an (present day Xi’an), China’s ancient capital, would stop to meditate in the Mogao Caves and consult manuscripts in the monastery's library. At the same time, Chinese pilgrims would travel by foot from China through central Asia to Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, playing a key role in the exchanges between ancient China and the outside world. Travellers from China would stop to acquire provisions at Dunhuang before crossing the Gobi Desert to continue on their long journey abroad. Figure 2: Dunhuang Mogao CavesThis article approaches the idea of “abroad” by examining the present-day imagination of journeys along the Silk Road—specifically, staged performances of the various Silk Road journey-themed dance-dramas sponsored by the Chinese state for enhancing its cultural and foreign policies since the 1970s (Kuang).As ethnomusicologists have demonstrated, musicians, choreographers, and playwrights often utilise historical materials in their performances to construct connections between the past and the present (Bohlman; Herzfeld; Lam; Rees; Shelemay; Tuohy; Wade; Yung: Rawski; Watson). The ancient Silk Road, which linked the Mediterranean coast with central China and beyond, via oasis towns such as Samarkand, has long been associated with the concept of “journeying abroad.” Journeys to distant, foreign lands and encounters of unknown, mysterious cultures along the Silk Road have been documented in historical records, such as A Record of Buddhist Kingdoms (Faxian) and The Great Tang Records on the Western Regions (Xuanzang), and illustrated in classical literature, such as The Travels of Marco Polo (Polo) and the 16th century Chinese novel Journey to the West (Wu). These journeys—coming and going from multiple directions and to different destinations—have inspired contemporary staged performance for audiences around the globe.Home and Abroad: Dunhuang and the Silk RoadDunhuang, My Dreamland (2000), the contemporary dance-drama, staged the journey of a young pilgrim painter travelling from Chang’an to a land of the unfamiliar and beyond borders, in search for the arts that have inspired him. Figure 3: A scene from Dunhuang, My Dreamland showing the young pilgrim painter in the Gobi Desert on the ancient Silk RoadFar from his home, he ended his journey in Dunhuang, historically considered the northwestern periphery of China, well beyond Yangguan and Yumenguan, the bordering passes that separate China and foreign lands. Later scenes in Dunhuang, My Dreamland, portrayed through multiethnic music and dances, the dynamic interactions among merchants, cultural and religious envoys, warriors, and politicians that were making their own journey from abroad to China. The theatrical dance-drama presents a historically inspired, re-imagined vision of both “home” and “abroad” to its audiences as they watch the young painter travel along the Silk Road, across the Gobi Desert, arriving at his own ideal, artistic “homeland”, the Dunhuang Mogao Caves. Since his journey is ultimately a spiritual one, the conceptualisation of travelling “abroad” could also be perceived as “a journey home.”Staged more than four hundred times since it premiered in Beijing in April 2000, Dunhuang, My Dreamland is one of the top ten titles in China’s National Stage Project and one of the most successful theatrical dance-dramas ever produced in China. With revenue of more than thirty million renminbi (RMB), it ranks as the most profitable theatrical dance-drama ever produced in China, with a preproduction cost of six million RMB. The production team receives financial support from China’s Ministry of Culture for its “distinctive ethnic features,” and its “aim to promote traditional Chinese culture,” according to Xu Rong, an official in the Cultural Industry Department of the Ministry. Labeled an outstanding dance-drama of the Chinese nation, it aims to present domestic and international audiences with a vision of China as a historically multifaceted and cosmopolitan nation that has been in close contact with the outside world through the ancient Silk Road. Its production company has been on tour in selected cities throughout China and in countries abroad, including Austria, Spain, and France, literarily making the young pilgrim painter’s “journey along the Silk Road” a new journey abroad, off stage and in reality.Dunhuang, My Dreamland was not the first, nor is it the last, staged performances that portrays the Chinese re-imagination of “journeying abroad” along the ancient Silk Road. It was created as one of many versions of Dunhuang bihua yuewu, a genre of music, dance, and dramatic performances created in the early twentieth century and based primarily on artifacts excavated from the Mogao Caves (Kuang). “The Mogao Caves are the greatest repository of early Chinese art,” states Mimi Gates, who works to increase public awareness of the UNESCO site and raise funds toward its conservation. “Located on the Chinese end of the Silk Road, it also is the place where many cultures of the world intersected with one another, so you have Greek and Roman, Persian and Middle Eastern, Indian and Chinese cultures, all interacting. Given the nature of our world today, it is all very relevant” (Pollack). As an expressive art form, this genre has been thriving since the late 1970s contributing to the global imagination of China’s “Silk Road journeys abroad” long before Dunhuang, My Dreamland achieved its domestic and international fame. For instance, in 2004, The Thousand-Handed and Thousand-Eyed Avalokiteśvara—one of the most representative (and well-known) Dunhuang bihua yuewu programs—was staged as a part of the cultural program during the Paralympic Games in Athens, Greece. This performance, as well as other Dunhuang bihua yuewu dance programs was the perfect embodiment of a foreign religion that arrived in China from abroad and became Sinicized (Kuang). Figure 4: Mural from Dunhuang Mogao Cave No. 45A Brief History of Staging the Silk Road JourneysThe staging of the Silk Road journeys abroad began in the late 1970s. Historically, the Silk Road signifies a multiethnic, cosmopolitan frontier, which underwent incessant conflicts between Chinese sovereigns and nomadic peoples (as well as between other groups), but was strongly imbued with the customs and institutions of central China (Duan, Mair, Shi, Sima). In the twentieth century, when China was no longer an empire, but had become what the early 20th-century reformer Liang Qichao (1873–1929) called “a nation among nations,” the long history of the Silk Road and the colourful, legendary journeys abroad became instrumental in the formation of a modern Chinese nation of unified diversity rooted in an ancient cosmopolitan past. The staged Silk Road theme dance-dramas thus participate in this formation of the Chinese imagination of “nation” and “abroad,” as they aestheticise Chinese history and geography. History and geography—aspects commonly considered constituents of a nation as well as our conceptualisations of “abroad”—are “invariably aestheticized to a certain degree” (Bakhtin 208). Diverse historical and cultural elements from along the Silk Road come together in this performance genre, which can be considered the most representative of various possible stagings of the history and culture of the Silk Road journeys.In 1979, the Chinese state officials in Gansu Province commissioned the benchmark dance-drama Rain of Flowers along the Silk Road, a spectacular theatrical dance-drama praising the pure and noble friendship which existed between the peoples of China and other countries in the Tang dynasty (618-907 C.E.). While its plot also revolves around the Dunhuang Caves and the life of a painter, staged at one of the most critical turning points in modern Chinese history, the work as a whole aims to present the state’s intention of re-establishing diplomatic ties with the outside world after the Cultural Revolution. Unlike Dunhuang, My Dreamland, it presents a nation’s journey abroad and home. To accomplish this goal, Rain of Flowers along the Silk Road introduces the fictional character Yunus, a wealthy Persian merchant who provides the audiences a vision of the historical figure of Peroz III, the last Sassanian prince, who after the Arab conquest of Iran in 651 C.E., found refuge in China. By incorporating scenes of ethnic and folk dances, the drama then stages the journey of painter Zhang’s daughter Yingniang to Persia (present-day Iran) and later, Yunus’s journey abroad to the Tang dynasty imperial court as the Persian Empire’s envoy.Rain of Flowers along the Silk Road, since its debut at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People on the first of October 1979 and shortly after at the Theatre La Scala in Milan, has been staged in more than twenty countries and districts, including France, Italy, Japan, Thailand, Russia, Latvia, Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, and recently, in 2013, at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York.“The Road”: Staging the Journey TodayWithin the contemporary context of global interdependencies, performing arts have been used as strategic devices for social mobilisation and as a means to represent and perform modern national histories and foreign policies (Davis, Rees, Tian, Tuohy, Wong, David Y. H. Wu). The Silk Road has been chosen as the basis for these state-sponsored, extravagantly produced, and internationally staged contemporary dance programs. In 2008, the welcoming ceremony and artistic presentation at the Olympic Games in Beijing featured twenty apsara dancers and a Dunhuang bihua yuewu dancer with long ribbons, whose body was suspended in mid-air on a rectangular LED extension held by hundreds of performers; on the giant LED screen was a depiction of the ancient Silk Road.In March 2013, Chinese president Xi Jinping introduced the initiatives “Silk Road Economic Belt” and “21st Century Maritime Silk Road” during his journeys abroad in Kazakhstan and Indonesia. These initiatives are now referred to as “One Belt, One Road.” The State Council lists in details the policies and implementation plans for this initiative on its official web page, www.gov.cn. In April 2013, the China Institute in New York launched a yearlong celebration, starting with "Dunhuang: Buddhist Art and the Gateway of the Silk Road" with a re-creation of one of the caves and a selection of artifacts from the site. In March 2015, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China’s top economic planning agency, released a new action plan outlining key details of the “One Belt, One Road” initiative. Xi Jinping has made the program a centrepiece of both his foreign and domestic economic policies. One of the central economic strategies is to promote cultural industry that could enhance trades along the Silk Road.Encouraged by the “One Belt, One Road” policies, in March 2016, The Silk Princess premiered in Xi’an and was staged at the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing the following July. While Dunhuang, My Dreamland and Rain of Flowers along the Silk Road were inspired by the Buddhist art found in Dunhuang, The Silk Princess, based on a story about a princess bringing silk and silkworm-breeding skills to the western regions of China in the Tang Dynasty (618-907) has a different historical origin. The princess's story was portrayed in a woodblock from the Tang Dynasty discovered by Sir Marc Aurel Stein, a British archaeologist during his expedition to Xinjiang (now Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region) in the early 19th century, and in a temple mural discovered during a 2002 Chinese-Japanese expedition in the Dandanwulike region. Figure 5: Poster of The Silk PrincessIn January 2016, the Shannxi Provincial Song and Dance Troupe staged The Silk Road, a new theatrical dance-drama. Unlike Dunhuang, My Dreamland, the newly staged dance-drama “centers around the ‘road’ and the deepening relationship merchants and travellers developed with it as they traveled along its course,” said Director Yang Wei during an interview with the author. According to her, the show uses seven archetypes—a traveler, a guard, a messenger, and so on—to present the stories that took place along this historic route. Unbounded by specific space or time, each of these archetypes embodies the foreign-travel experience of a different group of individuals, in a manner that may well be related to the social actors of globalised culture and of transnationalism today. Figure 6: Poster of The Silk RoadConclusionAs seen in Rain of Flowers along the Silk Road and Dunhuang, My Dreamland, staging the processes of Silk Road journeys has become a way of connecting the Chinese imagination of “home” with the Chinese imagination of “abroad.” Staging a nation’s heritage abroad on contemporary stages invites a new imagination of homeland, borders, and transnationalism. Once aestheticised through staged performances, such as that of the Dunhuang bihua yuewu, the historical and topological landscape of Dunhuang becomes a performed narrative, embodying the national heritage.The staging of Silk Road journeys continues, and is being developed into various forms, from theatrical dance-drama to digital exhibitions such as the Smithsonian’s Pure Land: Inside the Mogao Grottes at Dunhuang (Stromberg) and the Getty’s Cave Temples of Dunhuang: Buddhist Art on China's Silk Road (Sivak and Hood). 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AbstractIn 2016, remains of a ground-level Buddhist temple complex were found in the middle of the west zone of the Tuyoq caves in Shanshan (Piqan) County, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. This Buddhist temple complex consisted of the Buddha hall, dorms for monks, and storage facilities. In the Buddha hall, many murals of bodhisattvas, devas, and donors were found, and artifacts such as household utensils made of clay, wooden architectural components, textiles, and manuscript fragments were unearthed. The date of this Buddhist temple complex was the Qocho Uyghurs kingdom from the latter half of the tenth century to the latter half of the fourteenth century; the excavation is very important for understanding the distribution of the construction centers and the iconographical composition of the Buddhist cave temples and monasteries in the Qocho Uyghurs kingdom period.

As early as the fifth century C.E., the thousand buddha motif had become a prevalent feature in the art of many cave-temples in Gansu, China. Past scholarship concentrated on tracing the textual sources of the motif and with relating it to the practices associated with the devotion to the three thousand buddhas of the three ages. Past research has not considered how the thousand buddhas may have been a reflection of a wider range of religious practices and popular beliefs nor has it explored the motif's artistic origin.
By demonstrating that the earliest examples of the two-dimensional painted form of the thousand buddhas came from Gansu and that the motif was related to an iconographic and architectural design that existed between several Gansu cave-temple sites, this study proposes that the thousand buddha motif was a Gansu cave-temple art innovation that influenced cave-temple decor in areas west of Gansu. In addition, possible reasons for the prevalence of the motif are suggested by considering that it may have reflected the relationship between the thousand buddhas and meditative practices as well as the acts of chanting and circumambulation.

Abstract The Yungang Cave Complex in Shanxi province is one of the largest Buddhist sculpture repositories produced during the Northern and Southern Dynasties. This thesis argues that the iconographic evolution of the Yungang caves underwent three developing phases which can be summarized as the five Tan Yao Caves phase, the transitional period, and the sinicized third-phase under the reigns of five Northern Wei (386-534) emperors Wencheng 文成 (452-465), Xianwen 獻文 (466-471), Xiaowen 孝文(471-499), Xuanwu 宣武 (500-515) and Xiaoming 孝明 (516-528). This dissertation studies the Yungang third-phase caves, namely those caves executed after the capital was moved from Pingcheng 平城 to Luoyang 洛陽in the year 494. It focuses primarily on what we call the western-end caves, which are composed of all the caves from cave 21 to cave 45, and as cave 5-10 and cave 5-11 are typical representations of the third-phase and even today are well preserved, they are also included in this study. Using typology method, as well as primary literary sources, this study places the western-end caves in their historical, social and religious context while focusing on four perspectives: architectural lay-out, iconographic composition, subject matter and style of representation. It deals with such questions as: what these images represent, what is their connection with Buddhist literature, what is the origin of the style of the western-end caves, what is the relationship between sculpture and painting, what is the relationship between the monastic life and Buddhist art, what was the status of Yungang after the transfer of the capital to the south, and who were the patrons. This study sheds new light on the changes in the iconographic motifs over the time from the first-phase to the third-phase and constructs a timeline for the sequence of construction of the western-end caves. The study also investigates the iconographical inter-relationship between the Yungang third-phase caves and those in the Longmen and to a lesser extent, the Gongxian complexes, as well as some relatively small caves in Shanxi province in order to trace the spread of the “Yungang Style.” This will map out the evolution in Buddhist iconographical style throughout the Central Plain of China. Although the caves of the first two phases have been studied extensively, this study is the first comprehensive examination of the Yungang third-phase caves. It is also the first investigation of the interrelationship between the Yungang style and that of other sites such as Longmen and Gongxian, as well as individual caves in the Shanxi area. This work is based on a broad consultation of primary text material and, most importantly, on first hand site observations by the researcher, which are documented by an extensive photographic record.