Buddhism and Early Narrative Illustration in China

Author(s): Julia K. Murray

Source: Archives of Asian Art, Vol. 48 (1995), pp. 17-31
Published by: University of Hawai'i Press for the Asia Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20111252
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Buddhism and Early Narrative Illustration in China
Julia K. Murray
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Xvecent research on early Buddhist art in India and China
has focused attention on the importance of studying the
iconography of representational imagery in relation to reli
gious doctrines and practices, as well as social customs.1
Pictorial storytelling in the decorative programs of sites
such as the Great St?pa at Sa?chi and the Mogao caves at
Dunhuanga has been demonstrated to be integral to the re
ligious activities performed there. In similar fashion, inno
vative studies have demonstrated how pictorial imagery in
early Chinese tombs and shrines functioned to fulfil the rit
ual and social requirements of the funerary setting.2 Much
of this recent scholarship has implications for our under
standing of Buddhism's impact on Chinese culture and,
conversely, the sinicization of the imported religion. In
light of these larger issues, the purpose of the present arti
cle is to examine the early development of Chinese narra
tive illustration, focusing particularly on the structural
forms in which it was presented.
The problem of defining what is meant by (or should be
meant by) the term "narrative illustration" has never been
squarely addressed in modern scholarship on Chinese art,3
with the result that the term has been applied to a very
broad range of works.4 Implicit definitions that are cur
rently in use have been derived from Western art history;
there is no traditional Chinese term for "narrative" per se,
whether in regard to painting or literature.5 For this reason,
we should be cautious in adopting the insights of recent
Western literary scholarship on narrative.6 Although a cul
turally neutral concept of narrative illustration does not ex
ist, justifications can be found for grouping certain works
together in order to analyze common elements of compo
sitional structure. For the purposes of the present discus
sion, my working definition of narrative illustration will be:
the pictorial representation of or reference to one or more
"events" that occur in a sequence of time and that bring
about a change in the condition of at least one character.
Scholars of Chinese painting generally subscribe to a
number of tacit assumptions concerning the origins and de
velopment of Chinese narrative illustration. One supposi
tion is that an illustration that depicts a story by means of a
single epitomizing composition probably came from a set
(or "cycle") of pictures that delineated several events in the
plot. Here I will argue that in early Chinese illustration, a
narrative subject was more likely to expand into a multi
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scene cycle from a monoscene, rather than the reverse.
Another assumption with which I will take issue is that the
Chinese handscroll format significantly influenced the
compositional structure of paintings that depicted Indian
Buddhist narratives. In recent years, this view has been as
serted with increasing stridency,7 yet even scholars who
have no personal investment in cultural priorities have gen
erally failed to notice that the assumption is at odds with
both visual and documentary evidence.8 Moreover, the be
lief that the Chinese handscroll shaped the representation
of Buddhist narratives is based on yet another supposition
for which there is little supporting evidence, namely, that
the handscroll was a standard format for Chinese painting
in the period before Buddhism interacted significantly with
Chinese art and culture. However, handscrolls were rarely
used for painting before the late Han.9 Accordingly, I wish
to examine the possibility that the development of the
handscroll as a format for painting was stimulated by the ar
rival of Buddhism and a new need to illustrate unfamiliar
stories in detail.
MODES OF NARRATIVE REPRESENTATION IN
ANCIENT CHINA
In his well-known book on the evolution of narrative il
lustration in the European tradition, Kurt Weitzmann ad
vanced the hypothesis that single-scene epitomizing illus
trations had come into being as excerpts from larger and
fuller pictorial cycles.10 Although no complete cycles sur
vived from ancient times, he postulated that they had ex
isted in the Hellenistic period, because he found an assort
ment of objects whose decoration preserved different
scenes from the same story. Weitzmann's paradigm was
generally accepted by historians of Western art and has
been extended indiscriminately to the art of other re
gions.11 In Chinese art, however, narrative cycles do not
appear before single-scene epitomes.12 Instead, early
Chinese illustration seems to have been largely mono
scenic, and a single representation might symbolize a com
plex historical, biographical, or mythological narrative. A
very few illustrations could arguably be called "conflated"
narratives, because they appear to refer to more than one
moment in the plot, by showing the main characters mak
ing gestures that signify separate events or by including ob
jects that appear at different points in the story.13 Pao-chen
17

Fig. 2. Confucius Views a Mural in the Zhou mingtang, Sheng-chi Vu
(Pictures of the Sage's Traces), p. 16b. Qing period, woodblock-printed il
lustrated book, published as an appendix to Gu Yuan (1826), Shengmiao
sidian tukao (Pictorial Investigation of the Sacrificial System of the Sage's
Temple). Kyoto, Jimbun Kagaku Kenky?jo.
Chen has argued that at the Wu Family Shrines, illustra
tions of Jing Ke'sb attempt to assassinate Qin Shihuangdic
depict five stages in the story (Fig. i).14 However, the com
position is more easily read as a unified picture of the mo
ment that Jing Ke's attempt to kill the tyrant has decisively
18
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Fig. i.Jing Ke Attempts to Assassinate the
King of Qin, Eastern Han period, second
century, incised stone slab from the Wu
Family Shrines, Jiaxiang, Shandong. After
Edouard Chavannes, Mission Arch?ologique
dans la Chine Septentrionale (Paris: E.
Leroux, 1913), vol. 2, pi. LX, no. 123.
Pi
failed. Chen also presents the mural Two Peaches Kill Three
Warriors in Han tomb 61 at Luoyang as a "continuous" nar
rative in which three successive scenes are portrayed, a
novel reading of the composition.15 In any event, these ex
amples are still a long way from the kind of large and de
tailed narrative cycles that emerged in China during the
Period of Disunion (a.D. 222-589).
Both the literary evidence concerning long-lost early
Chinese paintings and the extant examples of early narra
tive depictions in durable media suggest that early Chinese
pictorial representations were created to invoke the associ
ations of edifying stories for suasive or symbolic purposes.16
Confucius himself (ca. 551-479 b.c.) was said to have been
inspired to think about the lessons of the past when he vis
ited the Zhou dynasty ancestral temple, the mingtangd
("Hall of Light"), and saw wall paintings portraying good
and evil men and women of ancient times (Fig. 2).17 His
followers understood this anecdote to signify the impor
tance of representational images for encouraging the devel
opment of moral values. In the early Han period (206
B.c.-A.D. 220), in the very region where Confucius had
lived and taught three centuries earlier, the prince of Lue
decorated the reception hall of his palace with exemplary
images to inspire moral reflection by all who entered.
According to the Eastern Han poet Wang Yanshou'sf de
scription in the Lingguangdian fu?> (Rhapsody on the Hall of
Numinous Light), the murals portrayed all manner of beings
from cosmic deities to recent historical figures, both good
and evil. Other sources describe wall paintings of exem
plary officials in palace halls and official buildings in the two
Han capitals.18
During the Han period, freestanding screens also were
used as surfaces on which to represent the historical figures
whose lives and deeds were taken to exemplify good or
evil. These screens were displayed in the palace as pictorial
admonitions to the emperor and his ladies. The Han em
peror Wudih (r. 141-87 b.c.) had a screen depicting the last
Shang ruler, King Zhou1 (ca. 1100 b.c.) and his consort
Daji,J as a reminder that debauchery would destroy the
Fig. 3. The Virtuous Aunt of Liang, Eastern Han period, second century, incised
stone slab from the Wu Liang shrine, Jiaxiang, Shandong. After Han Dynasty
Stone Reliefs (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1991), p. 33.
throne.19 In similar fashion, there were screens on which
women of more recent times were portrayed. Selected
from among the biographical anecdotes recorded by Liu
Xiangk (77-6 b.c.) in Lienil zhuan1 (Biographies of Exemplary
Women), some of the women were renowned for their
feminine virtues while others were notorious for their
vices.20 Although the Han screens have not survived, their
character may be imagined from late Han incised-stone
tablets, such as those at the Wu Family Shrines, in which
cultural heroes and instructive stories about virtuous men
and women are represented.21 A post-Han lacquer screen
excavated from the tomb of Sima Jinlongm (d. 484) near
Datongn is also useful for visualizing the lost Han screens
because it is decorated, as they were, with annotated illus
trations of anecdotes about exemplary women from Liu
Xiang's anthology.22
In order for such paintings to achieve didactic purposes,
the viewer had to be able to identify their subjects and re
call the stories associated with them. Although intended to
make people think about the moral issues, such illustrations
nonetheless were pictorially not very explanatory. A mon
oscenic illustration rarely was sufficiently detailed to serve
as a visual surrogate for the story. Typically, the exemplar
was portrayed alone or with a few other figures, and per
haps the scene also included some object that figured in the
biographical anecdote. Nonetheless, the stories represented
were widely known and familiar to their intended viewers,
who probably could indeed identify them from a mono
scenic illustration that contained well-chosen figures and
characterizing motifs.
Furthermore, the early association of Chinese writing
with pictorial images was another important element that
enabled a single-scene epitomizing illustration to be ade
quate for didactic purposes. What might otherwise be a
generic portrait of a single figure or a conventional repre
sentation of figures interacting could be made specific by
providing labels. Once viewers recognized the story, they
could be expected to remember what it was about.
Alternatively, a short text could be written next to the pic
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'\*48l
torial image to ensure comprehension, as in Figure 3,
where a note explains how the suicide of the Virtuous
Aunt of Liang0 demonstrated her righteousness.23 Because
writing has held high prestige in China from ancient times
onward, the juxtaposition of the written word was not
considered a distraction from the pictorial image. In fact,
the presence of writing would have elevated the merely
pictorial by bringing it firmly into alignment with the high
cultural tradition.
It may also be argued that early Chinese narrative scenes
were not necessarily intended to be "read" in a literal sense.
Instead, they may sometimes have served the symbolic pur
pose of affirming the fundamental values of the moral or
der that governed the cosmic and human realms. Images
depicted on tombs and offering shrines in particular seem
likely to have functioned as embodiments of cosmic prin
ciples, deployed to create a congenial environment for the
spirits that dwelled there or that came when sacrifices were
offered.24 Although offering shrines were seen by the many
people who came to the cemetery on ritual occasions, dec
orations inside the structures would have been difficult to
decipher. However, they would have posed no problems
for their primary audience, the spirits of the deceased.
To summarize, the various purposes of narrative illustra
tion in pre-Buddhist China were adequately served by
compositions that symbolized or epitomized the stories
rather than representing them in a sequential mode.
BUDDHISM AND NARRATIVE ILLUSTRATION
IN THE POST-HAN PERIOD
A need and stimulus to illustrate stories in more detail arose
in the post-Han period, when a great and complex mass of
unfamiliar narratives came to China with Buddhism, an
evangelical religion. Indian Buddhism was rich in stories
that embodied religious principles or contained themes that
were appropriate for proselytizing or instruction. There
were over 500 legends concerning the previous lives of the
Buddha, a detailed biography of his last earthly life, innu
merable parables embodying a variety of doctrinal princi
19

pies, and stories about other Buddhist beings, some of
whom were folk gods converted into members of the
Buddhist pantheon. In addition, many sutras incorporated
stories that helped to explain religious teachings. Accord
ingly, the entry of Buddhism into China introduced a large
number of new stories to a new audience. Few Chinese
were literate at that time, and pictures may have provided
an effective means of instructing or appealing to potential
converts. Because the stories were unfamiliar, it would
have been easier for the viewer to comprehend the illustra
tions if the story were divided into a sequence of individ
ual events that were represented one at a time.
The use of pictorial narration, a progressive series of
scenes that portray an unfolding plot, is a fundamentally
different way of illustrating a story from simply depicting its
most characteristic attributes in a single epitomizing com
position. Before the arrival of Buddhism in China, there
seems to have been no tradition of representing narratives
in sequential pictures, as I have suggested above. There
fore, it seems likely that techniques of pictorial narration ei
ther entered China along with the Buddhist stories them
selves or developed as a means to facilitate teaching the
doctrines and attracting converts.25
MODES OF EXTENDED NARRATIVE ILLUSTRATION
IN ANCIENT INDIA
Earlier than in China, there is abundant evidence for pic
torial narrative cycles in Indian art, including depictions of
stories about the Buddha's previous incarnations (j?taka
tales) and legends concerning the events of his last earthly
life. These themes appear in some of the bas-relief panels
20
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Fig. 4. The Myth of Uttara-kuru, sec
ond century B.c., Bharhut, interior
face of a railing coping stone. After
Alexander Cunningham, The Stupa
ofBharhut (London: W. H. Allen
and Co., 1879), pi. XL.
Fig. 5. The Great Departure, first
century B.c., central section of the
middle architrave on the front side
of the East Gate of the Great St?pa
at Sa?chi, carved stone. Figures 5, 7
after Sir John Marshall and Alfred
Foucher, The Monuments ofSanchi
(London: Probsthain, 1940), Figure
5, vol. 2, pi. 40.
that survive from the st?pa railings and gates at Bh?rhut in
the second century b.c. (Fig. 4), and also appear on the
richly ornamented gates of the Great St?pa at S?nchi in the
first century b.c. (Fig. 5). In addition, the st?pa mound it
self might have narrative panels inset on its surface, where
they could be viewed in sequence by circumambulating
monks and pilgrims, an arrangement that is actually de
picted on second or third century panels from a st?pa at
Amar?vat? (Fig. 6).26 Such narrative scenes would inspire
and edify the worshipers who came to offer devotions and
accumulate religious merit at the st?pa. Moreover, the
good karma built up sequentially through the former and
present lives of the Buddha would be activated for each pil
grim and help him or her eventually achieve the Theravada
goal of enlightenment. Illustrations of events from the life
of the Buddha on portable shrines also served these pur
poses.27
As surviving examples of early Indian Buddhist art
demonstrate, various strategies were used in ancient India
to create multi-scene narrative illustrations. One approach
was to devise a sequence of separate, single-event scenes, a
technique that I will refer to as "segmented" narrative, in
preference to Weitzmann's "cyclical" narrative.28 An alter
native was to create a single, continuous composition, in
which successive events were portrayed by repeating
figures and other motifs as needed, a technique usually
termed "continuous" narrative. Segmented scenes seem
particularly to have been associated with representations of
the life of the Buddha, especially after the introduction of
anthropomorphic images of the Buddha during the Kush?n
dynasty. Sometimes just the most important events in his
Ufe were represented in a segmented narrative, with sepa
rate scenes to depict his Birth, Enlightenment, First Ser
mon, Death, and so forth. Each scene clearly occupied its
own space and was sometimes enclosed in a frame, yet the
compositions also formed a visually consistent sequence
that transcended their divisions.
Single episodes in the life of the Buddha, which might
comprise several sequential stages, were sometimes illus
trated in continuous compositions. A well-known example
is the event known as the Great Departure, which is carved
in stone on the middle architrave of the East Gate of the
Great St?pa at S?nchi (Fig. 5).29 The stages of Prince
Siddh?rtha's departure from the palace are portrayed in se
quence from left to right, although the anthropomorphic
representation of the Prince is avoided. First, the Prince's
horse and groom, accompanied by devas, are shown leav
ing the royal city of Kapilav?stu, and the unseen Sid
dhartha's presence is suggested by the royal parasol held
over the horse. The group is repeated three times to indi
cate the progress of the journey, and finally the horse and
groom turn back toward the city, away from the parasol
and a pair of giant footprints, which symbolize the Buddha.
The riderless horse appears five times in the composition.
An even longer continuous narrative illustration is
carved on the lowest architrave of the North Gate, starting
in the middle of the front side and proceeding across the
entire rear surface, from right to left (Fig. 7). It depicts the
Vessantaraj?taka, the story of the penultimate incarnation of
the Buddha-to-be as an extremely generous prince. Ban
ished from his kingdom for giving away a precious rain
making elephant, he proceeded to part with the rest of his
possessions, even his wife and children. These episodes are
presented in sequence, with rich detail and many repeti
tions of the dramatis personae.
Some scholars believe that storytellers in ancient India
used rolls of pictures to illustrate their recitations.30 Ancient Fig. 6. Drum slab showing a st?pa with inset narrative panels, second
literature alludes to the practice, and rolls illustrating the or third century, AmaravatT, carved stone, British Museum. After
previous lives of the Buddha may likewise have been used Robert Knox, Amaravati (London: Trustees of the British Museum,
as visual aids. It is often suggested that the decoration on 1992), p. 69.
the gates at S?nchi evokes the appearance of such illustrated
rolls.31 The pictorial scenes in each architrave are framed by
spiraling flourishes at the ends, as if imitating a picture be long after Buddhism became established in China. In addi
ing unrolled. Because little evidence has been brought tion to murals at Dunhuang, these examples include a
forth in support of the argument, however, it remains just painted lacquer coffin of about 470, excavated at Guyuan,P
a tantalizing possibility.32 Ningxia,^ which is decorated with illustrations of stories of
filial sons (Fig. 8).33 Each story is illustrated as a segmented
POST-HAN MODES OF NARRATIVE ILLUSTRATION
nararative, with the main events of the plot laid out one af
In China, both the surviving visual evidence and docu ter another in several scenes, some of which are labeled
mentary records suggest that the techniques of segmented with inscriptions. The section reproduced here depicts the
narrative illustration (a series of linked single-scene com story of Guo Ju,r who was renowned for filially serving his
positions) and continuous narrative illustration (an undi mother. Afraid that he would be unable to support his
vided composition that presents a sequence of events) came mother after the birth of his child, he asked his wife to take
into use after the Han period. The earliest extant examples, the baby and bury it alive. When they started to dig the
including those in media closely allied to painting, belong hole, a pot of gold miraculously appeared, giving Guo Ju
to the later part of the Northern Wei dynasty (386-535), enough money to support both his mother and his child.
21

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 Fig. 7. General view of the upper part
of the back side of the North Gate of
the Great St?pa at S?nchi, first century
B.c., carved stone. The continuation of
the Vessantaraj?taka appears on the
lowest architrave. After Sir John
Marshall and Alfred Foucher, The
Monuments ofSanchi, vol. 2, pi. 28.

Fig. 8. Filial GuoJu, Northern Wei period, ca. 470, fragments of a painted lacquer coffin excavated at Guyuan, Ningxia. After Orientations 27(7)
(July 1990)124.

These episodes are separated visually by ornately decorated
triangles that extend between them.
Several fifth- and sixth-century caves at Dunhuang con
tain murals illustrating narratives that had come from India
and Central Asia, primarily drawn from the legends of the
Buddha's Mcj?taka tales, and stories about the good or bad
acts of other beings (avadar?as).34 These illustrations exhibit
a variety of treatments of the narrative subject matter, rang
ing from the representation of a single aspect in one com
position, to a series of consecutive scenes. Moreover, the
single compositions are not necessarily epitomizing mono
22
scenes. For example, a large mural in the antechamber of
cave 254 portrays the Attack of Mara, an episode from the
Ufe of the Buddha (Fig. 9), in which the Buddha demon
strated his readiness for enlightenment.35 The profusion of
vignettes in the composition suggest that it is a "conflated"
narrative, in which figures or props referring to several
moments are combined into a single composition.36 More
over, the painting also combines elements of a timeless icon
with those of time-bound narrative depiction.37 The earth
touching Buddha is presented as a seated frontal figure, far
larger than any others, and he is further set off by his mul

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 Fig. 9. The Attack of Mara, Dunhuang cave 254, south wall of antechamber, Northern Wei period, late fifth century. Figures
9-14 after Tonkd Bakukd kutsu (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1980), Figure 9, vol. 1, pi. 33.

tiple haloes and mandorla. To either side, frenetic demons
and warriors pursue the onslaught, and those who have al
ready been vanquished either lie on the ground or make
gestures of supplication. In the lower right, M?ra's beauti
ful daughters gesture seductively, but at the lower left, they
appear to have become bodhisattvas.
The Mah?sattva (or Tiger) j?taka in the same cave (Fig.
10) depicts an earlier incarnation of the Buddha in a "syn
optic" narrative illustration, in which the separate moments
of the story are portrayed in a single large composition, us
ing multiple representations of figures and motifs as neces
sary.38 Unlike continuous narrative, which it otherwise re
sembles, synoptic narrative does not present sequential
events in a simple linear progression. Instead, the narrative
path may proceed in a circle, jump back and forth, or oth
erwise take a direction that is hard to follow unless the
viewer is very familiar with the story. The Mah?sattva il
lustration in cave 254 contains seven scenes, which begin in
the upper center with a representation of the three princes,
and move roughly clockwise over the surface as they en
counter the starving tigress and Mah?sattva sacrifices him
self, ending in the upper left with the pagoda built in his
memory. As Hsio-yen Shih has pointed out, the reading of
this panel is clarified by its placement opposite the repre
sentation of the ?ibi j?taka, in which the being who
sacrifices himself is shown much larger than the other
figures and already has attributes of a bodhisattva.39
The well-known mural depicting the avadar?a of the
Conversion of 500 Robbers, on the south wall of cave 285,
offers an example of continuous narrative (Fig. 11). Suc
cessive events in the story are depicted within minimally
defined pockets of space and proceed from left to right in
chronological sequence. However, the individual scenes
appear at variable heights on the wall, rather than main
taining a consistent baseline. At the left, a few representa
tive bandits are first portrayed in fierce combat with the
soldiers sent to subdue them. Then they are defeated,
bound as captives, disrobed, and blinded. In their distress,
they call upon the Buddha, who causes the mountain peaks
to emit a healing perfume that restores their eyesight. The
bandits dash about joyfully waving their arms, then kneel
before the Buddha to repent their former ways. Finally,
they take the tonsure to become Buddhist monks and are
last seen meditating in a bamboo grove at right.
Pictorial narratives that portray a number of episodes in
a series of more or less separate scenes along a common base
line, in the manner of a frieze, also appear in early caves at
Dunhuang. The linear sequence may run in a single, con
tinuous strip or be divided between two or more, as in the
case of the Mah?sattva j?taka in cave 428 (Fig. 12), which is
presented in three horizontal registers, one on top of another.
The successive episodes in the story are laid out scene by
scene, repeating the cast of characters and significant ele
ments of the setting as often as necessary. Each scene de
picts a single event in an irregularly shaped pocket of space,
which is partially separated from adjacent scenes by angled
rows of colored triangles. Thus, the configuration is some
where between a segmented and a continuous narrative,
because the triangles serve to isolate and frame the scenes.
Most scholars explain the arrangement of scenes into
long horizontal friezes as the result of the influence of the
Chinese handscroll format. For example, Jin Weinuo states
that multiple, linked scenes organized into horizontal reg
isters obviously show the influence of Chinese handscroll
23

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 >**&
i V. A

*"/!

Fig. io. Mah?sattva (or Tiger) j?taka, Dunhuang cave 254, south wall, main chamber, Northern Wei period, late fifth century.
After Tonk?Bakuk? kutsu, vol. 1, pi. 36.

Fig. 11. Avad?na of the Conversion of 500 Robbers, Dunhuang cave 285, south wall, Western Wei period, mid-sixth century.
After Tonkd Bakukd kutsu, vol. 1, pis. 131-132.

painting and are a sign of the sinicization of Buddhist art.40
This explanation assumes both that the presentation of suc
cessive scenes in a linear sequence is an innately Chinese
preference,41 and that the early caves at Dunhuang are ap
propriately characterized as "Chinese." However, let us
look more closely at the Mah?sattva j?taka in cave 428. The
sequence of scenes goes from right to left along the top reg
ister, from left to right in the middle register, and once
more from right to left on the bottom. This reversal of di
rection is natural and convenient for viewing multiple hor
izontal registers arranged in a vertical stack, because it al
lows the viewer's eyes to move easily from the last scene in
one register to the first in the register below. However, if
24
the handscroll format influenced the creation of this illus
tration (and its counterpart, the Sudh?na j?taka on the other
side of the cave door),42 there should be no reversal of di
rection. This is because the surface of a handscroll is con
tinuous, and dividing it into shorter segments for stacking
would not affect the direction of the flow of scenes. In
other words, if the conventions of the handscroll format
were instrumental in creating the composition, then we
would expect the scenes in each register to proceed in the
same direction.
The illustration of the Deer King (Rum) j?taka in cave 257
(Fig. 13) provides an example of an extended narrative
whose compositional structure suggests a logic different

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 Fig. 12. Mah?sattva j?taka, Dunhuang cave 428, east wall, Northern Zhou period, mid-late sixth century. After Tonkd
Bakukd kutsu, vol. 1, pi. 168.

Fig. 13. Deer King j?taka, Dunhuang cave 257, west wall, Northern Wei period, late fifth century. After Tonkd Bakukd kutsu,
vol. 1, pi. 44.

from that of a handscroll. The episodes of the story are de
picted in a single register on the western wall, but they do
not proceed in simple linear sequence. The first scene, in
which the deer rescues a man from drowning, appears at
the southern (left) end of the wall, and the adjacent scene
shows the man kneeling in gratitude before the creature.
The direction of development in these two scenes is to
ward the center of the wall. However, the third and fourth
events, which take place in the palace, are illustrated at the
other end of the strip and also develop toward the center.
The queen dreams of the marvelous deer and tells the king,
who posts a reward for the deer. The rescued man then di
vulges the deer's whereabouts and leads the way, but his
body is suddenly covered in scabs as heavenly punishment
for his betrayal. The story ends near the middle of the strip,
where the king learns how the deer saved the man and or
ders it to be protected. In other words, some scenes move
from left to right and others from right to left, and the end
ing appears near the center of the composition.43 This bidi
rectionality would be awkward and unnatural in a hand
scroll, making it unlikely that the handscroll format
determined the structure of this composition. Instead, the
arrangement creates a contrast, both geographical and
moral, between events that take place out in the wilderness
(at left) and those in the worldly context of the palace (at
right).44 Accordingly, even though the pictorial narratives
of caves 428 and 257 occupy horizontal strips whose gen
eral appearance resembles handscrolls, the compositions are
not governed by handscroll conventions.
Another point to consider is that the early caves at
Dunhuang exhibit a mixture of Indian, Central Asian, and
Chinese painting styles. This mixture can be demonstrated
even in a single cave. For example, the paintings on the
western wall of cave 285 appear to be purely Central Asian
(Fig. 14), in contrast to the Chinese style of those elsewhere
in the cave, including the previously discussed Conversion of
300 Robbers (see Fig. 11).45 During the fourth through sixth
centuries, the residents and sojourners at Dunhuang were
ethnically diverse,46 and the religious art made at the oasis
during this period reflects this diversity. Therefore, not all
paintings in the early caves at Dunhuang should be consid
ered purely "Chinese,"47 nor are these paintings necessarily
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similar to ones made in the Chinese metropolitan centers
far to the east. It is well to be cautious in using early
Dunhuang paintings to shed light on early Chinese paint
ing, because some elements may have come from other tra
ditions.
Since a variety of modes for narrative illustration are
found in the Buddhist and cosmopolitan context of Dun
huang and not in pre-Buddhist Chinese illustration, it
seems possible that techniques of pictorial narration were
part of the cultural equipage of Buddhism, partly explained
there by the emphasis on accumulating good karma
through events that take place in the sequential experience
of numerous life-cycles. An alternative possibility is that the
more detailed modes of depicting narrative evolved as the
religion was propagated to new audiences. In any event, by
the fifth century, Buddhist temples in south China were
commissioning painters to illustrate Buddhist stories in long
handscrolls, probably using the techniques of extended pic
torial narration that are seen in slightly later examples
carved in stone.48 However, even after the introduction of
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Fig. 14. Vishnu and guardians, Dunhuang cave 285, west wall,
Western Wei period, mid-sixth century. After Tonkd Bakukd
kutsu, vol. 1, pi. 118.
new techniques of narrative illustration, the pre-Buddhist
monoscenic mode did not disappear but always continued
to be an option.49
I would also propose that it was the need to illustrate
Buddhist narratives that stimulated painters more thor
oughly to explore the handscroll's inherent advantages for
depicting subjects that embodied temporal and/or spatial
progression. The handscroll's ability to accommodate hor
izontal extension made it well suited for portraying a series
of events in a clear linear sequence. Although handscrolls
existed in pre-Buddhist China, they were used mostly for
written texts, having come into use by the early Han pe
riod as a costlier and more elegant replacement for rolls of
bamboo or wooden strips. By contrast, paintings ofthat pe
riod were mostly executed on walls or screens; and the
documentary sources that record Han paintings almost
never use the word juans (handscroll) to describe them, but
rather tu* (picture) or pingfengu (screen). The earliest
recorded paintings in handscroll form were pictures that
accompanied texts, specifically works on military arts.50
Fig. 15. Biographies of Exemplary Women, from the chapter "Benevolent and Wise" (Lie n? Renzhi tu), detail of a handscroll, ink and color on silk,
Beijing Palace Museum. Figures 15, 16 after Zhongguo lidai huihua (Beijing: Wenwu Press, 1978), Figure 15, vol. 1, p. 21.

Fig. 16. Goddess of the Luo River, traditionally attributed to Gu Kaizhi, Sung period, twelfth century, detail of a handscroll, ink and colors on silk, Palace
Museum, Beijing. After Zhongguo lidai huihua, vol. 1, p. 3.

'?#?~.

Fig. 17. Entertainers and an Excursion, Eastern Han, first century, incised stone slab, Nanyang, Henan. After Nanyang Liang Han huaxiang shi (Beijing:
Wenwu Press, 1990), pis. 123-124.

According to Zhang Yanyuan'sv ninth-century account, a
set of 50 handscrolls was made at the command of the
Eastern Han emperor Mingdiw (r. 57-75). They contained
eulogies and pictures based on themes that were selected
from the classics and histories by court scholars and were il
lustrated by court artists.51 The text-and-picture mode was
also used in many later handscrolls, such as the well-known
Admonitions of the Instructress to the Palace Ladies (N?shi zhen
tux) and the illustration of the "Benevolent and Wise"
chapter from the Biographies of Exemplary Women (Lien?
Renzhi tuY) (Fig. 15), attributed to Gu Kaizhi2 (ca. 344-ca.
405); and probably in many of the now-lost works Usted by
Zhang Yanyuan.52
However, the text-and-picture format did not fully ex
ploit the handscroll's potential for representing progres
sions in time and space, the kind of treatment we see, for
example, in the illustrations of the great secular theme,
Rhapsody on the Goddess of the Luo River (Luoshenfu^)(Fig.
16).53 In this masterly work, the successive scenes in the
story of the poet's ill-fated romance with the lovely god
dess unfold within a long and continuous landscape, and
the images of the two lovers and their attendants appear
again and again. In order for the handscroll to become this
fully developed as a format for painting, it first had to stop
being identified primarily as a surface for writing. Artists
had to break free of the restrictions implied by the presence
of text in order to discover the potential for extended pic
torial representation. This step was taken in the post-Han
period, when paintings were more frequently done in
handscrolls and their subjects were often illustrations of
Buddhist themes.
One pre-Buddhist element that may have contributed to
Chinese artists' readiness to recognize the handscroll's pos
sibilities for pictorial narration was the Han practice of dec
orating the walls of tombs, sarcophagi, and offering shrines
with processions and hunting scenes arranged in horizontal
registers (Fig. 17). As previously noted, such representa
tions were intended to provide for the needs of the soul in
its afterlife and to affirm the cosmic order in the context of
memorial sacrifices.54 Although the content of such scenes
is not explicitly narrative because nothing "happens," the
compositions provide a precedent for laying out pictures in
long strips. Regardless of its content, a long striplike picture
suggests the passage of time and movement in space. The
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 combination of this artistic legacy with the stimulus of
Buddhism's need for detailed narrative representations was
highly propitious for the handscroll to mature as a format
for both religious and secular painting. When Buddhism
required pictorial art to do more than just symbolize or de
note certain well-known values, there were forms at hand
that could be adapted to accommodate more extended pic
torial storytelling.
In conclusion, rather than assume that the existence of
the handscroll in China induced Buddhist narrative subjects
to be illustrated in a sequential presentation, I am propos
ing that the development of the handscroll as a format for
painting in China was stimulated by the advent of Bud
dhism. The demand for illustrating new stories in detail led
artists to explore the handscroll's potential, and the possi
bilities that opened up were soon applied to secular illus
trations of indigenous Chinese subjects as well.
Representation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); Hayden V.
White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Repre
Notes
Preliminary versions of this research were presented at the 1992 College
Art Association annual meeting in Chicago, and at the 1994 Interna
tional Conference on Dunhuang Studies in Dunhuang, China. I am
grateful to the following for their thoughtful comments on earlier drafts:
Thomas Lawton, Anne Clapp, Maggie Bickford, Bob Bagley, Gene
Phillips, Andy Reschovsky, and the University of Wisconsin graduate
students in my 1993 seminar on narrative painting. I also wish to thank
the anonymous referees for many trenchant observations and useful sug
gestions.
1. For India see Susan L. Huntington, "Early Buddhist Art and the
Theory of Aniconism," Art Journal 49(4) (Winter 1990)1401-408; idem,
"Aniconism and the Multivalence of Emblems: Another Look," Ars
Orientalis 22(1992):! 11-156; and Vidya Dehejia, "On the Modes of
Visual Narration in Early Buddhist Art," The Art Bulletin 72(3)
(September i99o):373?392. For China see Stanley K. Abe, "Art and
Practice in a Fifth-Century Chinese Buddhist Cave Temple," Ars
Orientalis 20(1990):!?31; Hsio-yen Shih, "Readings and Re-Readings of
Narrative in Dunhuang Murals," Artibus Asiae 53(i993):59~88; and
Dorothy C. Wong, "The Flourishing of Chinese Buddhist Steles in the
Early Sixth Century," paper delivered at the Association for Asian
Studies Annual Meeting (Washington, D.C., April 1995).
2. Wu Hung, The Wu Liang Shrine: The Ideology of Early Chinese
Pictorial Art (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989); idem, "Art in a
Ritual Context: Rethinking Mawangdui," Early China 17(1992):! 11-144;
idem, "From Temple to Tomb: Ancient Chinese Art and Religion in
Transition," Early China I3(i988):78-ii5; idem, "Beyond the 'Great
Boundary': Funerary Narrative in the Cangshan Tomb," in John Hay
(ed.), Boundaries in China (London: Reaktion Books, 1994), pp. 81-104;
Martin J. Powers, Art and Political Expression in Early China (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1991); Lydia Thompson, "Cosmology, Ritual, and
the Creation of Sacred Space in the Yinan Tomb," CAS VA seminar
(Washington, D.C., November 1994); and Terre Fisher, "Ritual
Aesthetics and Representation in an Eastern Han Offering Shrine" [at
Honglou, near Xuzhou, Jiangsu], Midwest Early China seminar (Chi
cago, May 1995).
3. The one article that raises the question is John Hay, "Along the River
During Winter's First Snow: A Tenth-Century Handscroll and Early
Chinese Narrative," Burlington Magazine 114(830) (May I972):292~303.
28
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Hay proposed three categories of narrative illustration?moral, literary,
and genre narrative?but they are characterized by inconsistent criteria
involving both content and form, rather than being defined by a uni
form standard.
4. Among the examples of narrative representation given in a recent
publication are the following: bronze vessels with hunting scenes, tomb
tiles with repeated stamped designs, a painting of a horse whose name is
inscribed, paintings of the activities of anonymous palace women and
children, an idealized group portrait of Tang scholars in a garden, a cav
alcade of figures traveling through the mountains, a mounted warrior
shooting a stag, bust portraits of men identified in accompanying in
scriptions, and a scroll containing a painting and transcription for each
chapter of the Classic of Filial Piety, see Wen Fong, Beyond Representation:
Chinese Painting and Calligraphy, 8th-i4th Centuries (New York: Metro
politan Museum of Art, 1992), chap. 1.
5. See Sheldon Hsiao-peng Lu, From Historicity to Fictionality: The
Chinese Poetics of Narrative (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994),
especially chap. 1. Also useful are several essays in Andrew Plaks (ed.),
Chinese Narrative: Critical and Theoretical Essays (Princeton: Princeton Uni
versity Press, 1977).
6. Particularly useful among many important publications are W. J. T.
Mitchell (ed.), On Narrative (Chicago and London: University of Chi
cago Press, 1981); idem, Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual
sentation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987); and Robert
Scholes and Robert Kellogg (eds.), The Nature of Narrative (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1966).
7. For example, Jin Weinuo, "Fo bensheng tu xingshi de yanbian"
("The Evolution of the Form ofJ?taka Illustrations"), in idem, Zhongguo
meishu shi lunji (Collected Essays on the History of Chinese Art) (Taibei:
Mingwen shuju, 1984), pp. 389-396; and Yu Xi,a? "Cong 'Weimojie
jing bian' kan Dunhuang yishu di yuantou" ("Looking at the Source of
Dunhuang's Art from Transformations of the Vimalakfrti Sutra"),
Duoyun 27(4) (October 19905:72?76. I discovered just how deeply en
trenched this view is when my abstract for the 1994 Dunhuang confer
ence was translated into Chinese: a sentence in which I expressed doubt
that the Chinese handscroll had influenced Dunhuang paintings was
transformed into an assertion that it had.
8. Not all scholars have overlooked this evidence, though. Michael
Sullivan has written, "This device [the technique of continuous, linear
narration] appears to have come from India with the introduction of
Buddhism, for there is no evidence of it in Han art." The Arts of China,
3rd ed. (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1984), p.
91.
9. Numerous handscrolls (Juan) that contained some kind of un
specified illustrative matter (tu: charts, diagrams, tables, or pictures) are
listed in the treatise on arts and letters in Ban Gu,ac Han shu*?- (Book of
Han), Beijing University annotated edition (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju,
1962), juan 30, yiwenzhiae 10. However, such scrolls appear only in the
sections that itemize works on military strategy, weaponry, battle array,
martial arts, and yinyanga* techniques. To the extent that a given scroll
contained pictures, as opposed to diagrams or charts, it is likely that these
were pictorial inventories of implements and techniques and resembled
catalogue illustrations.
10. Kurt Weitzmann, Illustrations in Roll and Codex, Studies in Manu
script Illumination 2 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970),
chap. 1.
11. Even for ancient European art, however, Weitzmann's model
does not necessarily work. Warren Moon vividly demonstrates its inad
equacy in "Nudity and Narrative: Observations on the Synagogue
Paintings from Dura Europos," in Warren C. Moon (ed.), Polykleitos, the
Doryphoros, and Tradition (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press,
1995), pp. 283-316.
12. Wu Hung has proposed that four Late Eastern Han stone reliefs
that depict different scenes of an ape tale were selected from a larger cy
ele of narrative illustrations; see "Pictorial Representations of Ape
Tales," T'oung Pao, ser. 2, vol. 73(1-3X1987), pp. 90-91. The story con
cerns an ape that abducted and cohabited with human females, until it
was hunted down and killed by aggrieved men. Several episodes could
be taken as climactic or characteristic of the tale, and it is possible that
the four pictures represent different conceptions of the story, rather than
excerpts from a larger set of illustrations.
13. Here I follow Dehejia's terminology (as in note 1), esp. pp.
384-385. Weitzmann (as in note 10) includes scenes of this type in his
"simultaneous" narrative category, reserving the term "conflated" nar
rative to mean the combination of several scenes from a larger cycle into
one picture; see Illustrations in Roll and Codex, pp. 13-14 and 24-25.
Since writing the present article, I have read Wu Hung's important
study of the Lady Dai banner found at Mawangdui (see note 2). Wu
contends that the banner should not be interpreted as representing the
soul's journey to heaven, because that identification assumes "a concept
of sequential narrative representation that is absent in early Han pictor
ial art" (p. 126), a view that concurs with mine.
14. Pao-chen Chen, The Goddess of the Lo River: A Study of Early
Chinese Narrative Handscrolls, Ph.D. dissertation (Princeton, 1987), pp.
113-117.
15. See Chen (as in note 14), pp. 120-122; references to other schol
ars' interpretations are given in her footnote 124. For further discussion
of continuous narrative, see the section "Modes of Extended Narrative
Illustration" in this article.
16. Pre-Buddhist illustration is preserved in paintings and incised or
impressed slabs from tombs, and in incised-stone pictures from offering
shrines; for some representative examples, see Alexander C. Soper, "All
the World's a Stage: A Note," Artibus Asiae 3o(i968):25i-253. A few
documentary sources also mention specific paintings. The largest num
ber of relevant titles appear in two Tang compendia: Pei Xiaoyuan,a8
Zhenguan gong si hua 5/zP1 (A History of Public and Private Painting in the
Zhenguan Era), in Yu Anlan (ed.), Huapin congshu (Compendium of Books
on Painting) (Shanghai: Renmin meishu chuban she, 1982), pp. 29-43;
and Zhang Yanyuan, Lidai ming hua jin (Record of Famous Paintings of
Various Dynasties), completed in 847, reprinted in Yu Anlan (ed.), Huashi
congshu (Compendium of Books on the History of Painting) (Shanghai:
Renmin meishu chubanshe, 1963), v. 1, juan 3, pp. 53?57.
17. Wang Su (comp.), Kongzi jia yu (Family Sayings of Confucius)
(reprint edition, Taibei: Shijie shuju, 1962), juan 3, p. 25. Confucius's
belief that visual images were morally inspiring is also to be discerned in
his late-life lament that he no longer dreamed of his hero, the Duke of
ZhouaJ (1 ith century b.c.), the sagely regent for the son of the Zhou dy
nastic founder.
18. The Lingguangdian fu is partially translated and discussed by Wu
Hung, The Wu Liang Shrine, pp. 73?74; see pp. 192?193 for discussion
of and references to other sources.
19. Ban Gu, Han shu, pp. 4200-4201; cited in Wu Hung, The Wu
Liang Shrine, p. 172.
20. Ban Gu, Han shu, pp. 1957-1958; Wu Hung, The Wu Liang
Shrine, p. 173. It is worth noting that although Liu Xiang's accounts are
often termed biographical, in fact they were highly constructed; the nar
ratives of the women's lives were molded to fit iconographical expecta
tions of the category to which Liu had assigned them. Men's biographies
were subject to similar construction, particularly in the dynastic histories,
where biographical data were selected and shaped to fit the category that
the historians judged most suitable.
21. Wu Hung, The Wu Liang Shrine, provides a exhaustive recent
study of these and related tablets. It should be kept in mind that narra
tive representations on the walls of a funerary shrine served somewhat
different purposes than did pictures encountered in daily life.
22. The five-panel screen is most fully reproduced and discussed in
the excavation report; see "Shanxi Datong Shijiazhai Bei Wei Sima
Jinlong mu" ("The Tomb of Sima Jinlong of the Northern Wei at
Shijiazhai, Datong, Shanxi"), Wenwu 1972(3) (March i972):20~33, 64.
For a partial reproduction and useful information in English, see Jan
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Fontein and T'ung Wu, Unearthing China's Past (Boston: Museum of
Fine Arts, 1973), pp. 217-218.
23. Wu Hung, The Wu Liang Shrine, pp. 262?264.
24. The purposes of funerary art are extensively discussed in the schol
arship cited in note 2. It was generally believed in the Han period that
the soul of the deceased separated into a poa* and a hunam at death, and
the po remained in the tomb and the hun ascended into heaven. The
tomb was meant to provide an agreeable dwelling-place for the po, and
the offering shrine served as the temporary lodging for the hun when it
descended to accept sacrifices. Although recent research by both
Thompson and Fisher (see note 2) indicates that these beliefs were sub
ject to variation, the concept of creating congenial environments re
mains valid.
25. Victor Mair has argued more extensively that such relationships
between pictorial and oral narration have Indian origins, as does the
prose-and-verse form of the bianwenan (transformation texts) that were
ancestral to later Chinese fiction and drama; see Painting and Performance
(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1988).
26. Madeleine Hallade, Gandharan Art of Northern India (New York:
Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1968), pp. 103-107. Several slabs surviving from
a st?pa complex at Amar?vat? depict st?pas with inset narrative panels;
see Robert Knox, Amaravati: Buddhist Sculpture from the Great Stupa
(London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1992), esp. pis. 68?78.
27. Only a few such portable shrines seem to have survived, and
which, though undated, are usually assigned to the fifth through eighth
centuries; for example, see Martin Lerner, The Flame and the Lotus (New
York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1984), cat. no. 10. Similar objects
probably were used by earlier generations.
28. Dehejia (see note 1) has also grappled with this problem of termi
nology, but I find her term, "linear narrative," insufficiently precise to
distinguish the category from modes of illustration in which successive
scenes are not separated from one another.
29. See also the discussion by Dehejia (as in note 1), p. 385.
30. Mair, Painting and Performance, chap. 1; also Dehejia (as in note 1),
PP- 377-378.
31. Naseem Ahmed Banerji, "Representations of Hand-scrolls in the
Buddhist Art of India from the Pre- and Post-Christian Eras and the
Didactic Role They Played in the Religious and Social Life of the Bud
dhist Monastic and Lay Communities," paper presented to the Midwest
Conference of the Association for Asian Studies (East Lansing, Mich.,
October 1989). The connection between the spiraling flourishes and
picture scrolls was also made by Benjamin Rowland, The Art and
Architecture of India, 3rd rev. ed. (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd.,
1967), P. 59
32. It would also be possible to argue that the end flourishes derive
from formal traditions of ornament and do not in themselves signify any
thing. This interpretation is favored by the fact that spirals flank each ar
chitrave, whether or not it depicts a continuous narrative.
33. Patricia Eichenbaum Karetzky and Alexander Soper, "A
Northern Wei Painted Coffin," Artibus Asiae 51 (i99i):5-28; also Luo
Feng, "Lacquer Painting on a Northern Wei Coffin," Orientations 27(7)
(July 1990): 18-29.
34. Provocative recent studies of the decoration of these caves include
the following: Hsio-yen Shih (as in note 1); Donohashi Akiho,ao
"Dunhuang bihua de bensheng tu ji qi kaizhan" ("Narrative
Development in Dunhuang J?taka Painting"), I-shu hsueh [sic] (Study of
the Arts), 12 (1994): 131-171; and Pao-chen Chen (as in note 14), chap.
3. Also of interest is D. Neil Schmid, "Dunhuang Buddhist Narratives
and Their Performative Contexts," Transactions of the International
Conference of Orientalists in Japan 38(1993):! 13-124, esp. pp. 115-116.
35. The Attack of Mara is reproduced and discussed in Dunhuang Re
search Institute (comp.), Ch?goku sekkutsu: Tonkd Bakukd kutsu (Stone
Cave Temples of China: The Mogao Caves at Dunhuang) (Tokyo:
Heibonsha, 1980-1982), vol. 1, pis. 33, 35; also Hsio-yen Shih (as in
note 1), pp. 61?63. Abe (as in note 1) offers a useful in-depth study of
cave 254.
29
 36. For conflated narrative, see section above, "Modes of Narrative
Representation in Ancient China" in this article, and also note I.
Dehejia's discussion makes it clear that the figure of the protagonist ap
pears just once, but auxiliary figures may be repeated within the com
position.
37. Shih in note 1 interprets The Attack of Mara as the culminating nar
rative in the cave, whose program she characterizes as instructing the
monastic community on spiritual cultivation and discipline.
38. Dehejia, "Modes of Visual Narrative," pp. 382-384. Weitzmann
does not discuss illustrations of this type.
39. For details of the story and discussion of the mural as the begin
ning of the program of spiritual cultivation, see Hsio-yen Shih (as in
note 1), pp. 62-63; a somewhat different analysis is given by Pao-chen
Chen (as in note 14), pp. 132-135.
40. See Jin Weinuo (as in note 7), p. 393.
41. This argument is made by Pao-chen Chen (see note 14), pp.
139-140.
42. The Sudh?na j?taka is reproduced in Ch?goku sekkutsu: Tonkd
Bakukd kutsu, vol. 1, pi. 168. The direction of reading is also opposite
from that of the Mah?sattva j?taka: from left to right across the top reg
ister, from right to left across the middle, and left to right along the bot
tom. The two j?takas of altruistic self-sacrifice are thus perfectly com
plementary, visually as well as conceptually.
43. In her discussion of the illustration of the Deer King j?taka in cave
257, Pao-chen Chen (as in note 14, pp. 137-140) links the side-side
middle compositional layout with India; as a case in point, she notes that
in cave 10 at Ajant?, scenes illustrating the Sy?ma j?taka are arranged 2
3-1. Hsio-yen Shih (as in note 1, p. 63) suggests that the composition is
structured to stress the distinction between good and evil karma.
44. Here I am inspired by Wu Hung's insights into the organizational
logic of large Tang and Five Dynasties murals on the theme of the con
test of powers between Raudraks? and S?riputra; see "What is Bian
xiang?: On the Relationship between Dunhuang Art and Dunhuang
Literature," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 52(1) (June I992):in-I92,
esp. pp. 146-153.
45. For reproductions of the entire cave, see Ch?goku sekkutsu: Tonkd
Bakukd kutsu, vol. 1, pis. 114-148.
46. Wolfram Eberhard, "The Origin of Commoners in Ancient Tun
huang," Sinol?gica 4(1956): 141?154; also Xinru Liu, Ancient India and
Ancient China: Trade and Religious Exchanges A.D. 1-600 (Delhi: Oxford
30
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University Press, 1988); and E. Z?rcher, The Buddhist Conquest of China
(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1959), pp. 59, 68. Another useful general discussion
is Du Jiwen, "The Multi-Ethnic Character of Chinese Buddhism and
the Characteristics of Its Various Schools," translated by Chen
Guansheng, Social Sciences in China 15(1) (Spring I994):i47~i7i.
47. Recent critiques of essentialist thinking make it all the more ur
gent to be cautious about what "Chinese" means. Some relevant dis
cussion is given in Dru C. Gladney, "The Making of a Muslim Minority
Nationality in China: Dialogue and Contestation," Etudes Orientales
13-14 (i994):i 13-142; and idem, "Representing Nationality in China:
Refiguring Majority/Minority Identities," Journal of Asian Studies
53(i)(February I994):92-I23.
48. Nagahiro Toshio, The Representational Art of the Six Dynasties Period
(Tokyo: Bijutsu shuppansha, 1969), English summary, p. x. As evidence,
he cites Zhang Yanyuan's biography of the Liu Song painter Yuan
QianaP; see Lidai ming huaji (as in note 16), juan 6, p. 81.
49. Hironobu Kohara has argued that the Chinese maintained a pref
erence for monoscenic illustration in later times, which he contrasts with
a Japanese preference for more discursive pictorial narration; see
"Narrative Illustration in the Handscroll Format," in Alfreda Murck and
Wen C. Fong (eds.), Words and Images: Chinese Poetry, Calligraphy, and
Painting (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1991), pp. 247-266.
50. For a discussion of the earliest handscroll paintings, see note 9.
51. Zhang Yanyuan, Lidai ming huaji (as in note 16), juan 3, p. 56. The
relevant entry is translated by A. C. Soper, "All the World's a Stage" (as
in note 16), pp. 251-252.
52. See Zhang Yanyuan (as in note 16), juan 3, pp. 53-57.
5 3. In her extensive analysis of the lost prototype reflected in numer
ous extant copies of the Luoshen tu,^ Pao-chen Chen proposes a mid
to late sixth-century date for the creation of the original scroll and re
futes the Song attribution to Gu Kaizhi. More specifically, she suggests
that the master version was created between 557 and 589 in Nanking,
the capital of the southern kingdom of Chen. Her argument is based on
an examination of the compositional structures and narrative techniques,
which she finds comparable to several fifth- and sixth-century caves at
Dunhuang. See Chen (as in note 14), chap. 3.
54. See Wu Hung, "Art in Ritual Context" and "Beyond the 'Great
Boundary.'" In the latter study Wu argues that such tomb decoration
does convey a narrative.
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