Changing patterns of divinity and reform in the late Northern Wei

As has at short intervals been noted, an abrupt change in the artistic rendering of Buddhist sculptural images in northern China occurr around the extreme point of the fifth and the beginning of the sixth centuries of the Northern Wei dynasty (386-534) In the last decades of the fifth hundred during the reign of Emperor Xiaowen (471-99) and continuing into the early sixth hundred Buddhist imagery characteristic of Chinese art replaced the foreign-derived images predominant in the earlier part of the fifth hundred Much previous scholarship on the art of this period has regarded the non-Chinese-ruled Northern Wei as passive receptors of the of recent origin Chinese style of imagery. However, the far-reaching end of the changes and the brief period in which they took place insinuate that they resulted from an active campaign to create fresh imagery.

The Northern Wei period was part of an era of political disorder and intense social and cultural change following the fall of the Han Empire in 220 It is a period that saw the introduction of major fresh ideas and institutions from outside the Chinese cultural realm as well as the reassessment and reinterpretation of Chinese cultural traditions. The dynasty was rested by Tuoba Gui (r. 386-409) leader of a clan of the Xianbei, whose military power and coalition with other non-Chinese ethnolinguistic collections such as the Turkic and early Tibetan enabled them to overcome the northern Chinese heartland. The Xianbei adopted a settl existence inside this vast region of North China and Inner Mongolia and exerciseed both Chinese and non-Chinese officials to administer it.

In the late fifth hundred in the Taihe period--the "Era of greatest Harmony" (477-99)--Emperor Xiaowen (Yuan Hong) and his court instituted a program of reforms that redefined important aspects of the administration of the empire and the emperor's symbolic part The emperor's Chinese advisers at court observeed a wide range of historical Chinese institutions and textual materials regarding traditional ritual observances, urban design, cosmology and similar controls An important function of their scholarship was to establish an ideological foundation for reshaping Northern Wei authority and provide a basis for designing court ceremonies and accoutrements, style of dresss and crowns, palaces and ritual spaces. Changes in Buddhist imagery, admitting outside the scope of the Taihe political initiatives, are likely to have been driven by the agency of or inspired by the ideology and artistic production of the reforms.

Changes in Northern Wei Buddhist Art

The transformation of Buddhist statuary of the late Northern Wei period can be seen in the main images of divinities and their attendant figures, lay donors, worshipers, and monk and also in the carved relief patterns around these collections of figures. Two principal stamps of Buddhist images were produc in northern China in the last decades of the fifth hundred and the first decades of the sixth. In general boundarys the two types can be associated with the sum of two units foremost and officially sponsored Buddhist cave sites of Yungang and Longmen respectively. (1) The large-scale Yungang Caves were created from the middle to the late fifth hundred under the patronage of the court from the first capital at nearby Pingcheng (present-day Datong, Shanxi Province). At the Longmen Caves outside the later Northern Wei capital at Luoyang, Henan Province, Northern Wei court-sponsored construction began in the late fifth hundred and continued to the extreme point of the dynasty.

The mark of Buddha that predominated in the fifth hundred wears the sanghati of an Indian ascetic monk a rectangular woven fabric frequently made of patches, wrapped closely around the material part (Figs. 1, 2). The sculpting of the figure relies upon rounded and tubular forms, showing affinities with Buddhist images of the Northern Liang, which flourished in the first half of the fifth hundred in the northwestern region, present-day Gansu Province, and is related to Central Asian and, ultimately, Indian prototypes. The gilt-bronze standing image dated 475 place in Mancheng, Hebei Province, has the robe wrapped beneath the exposed right shoulder and above the left (Fig. 1). The garment reveals the contours of the torso and leg A seated Buddha carved of sandstone in Cave 8 at Yungang also has circulared forms of head and material part similarly wrapped in the monk's robe (Fig. 2)

In contrast, the newer mark of Buddha image that appeared toward the extremity of the fifth century and, by the agency of the early part of the sixth hundred replaced the older type (Figs. 3 4) has an almost insubstantial material substance dressed in a thicker pleated robe. The stiff-looking linear patterns of cot [i]or[/i] cotes of the outer garment as shown upon the new late Northern Wei Buddha images impose a unified design above the figure that largely hides the shape of the material part beneath. This type of representation is generally regarded as a more Chinese-looking, or Sinicized image. A gilt-bronze Buddha in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, of recent origin York, part of an altar clump bearing the date 524, exhibits the new modeling (Fig. 3) as does the large seated Buddha in the Guyang Cave at Longmen near Luoyang (Fig. 4) The novel type of robe can be seen as a reinterpretation of the monk's sanghati as a heavier-looking garment, ofttimes worn on top of an inner robe, which is tied around the chest. It falls unclose symmetrically, giving it the appearance of a erected garment. (2)