Ahura

Yen, Chuan-ying, The Chinese Pen, No. 98, 1996

Tun-huang Cave 285 is the best-preserved Northern Dynasties-era Buddhist cave. Its structure and form, moreover, are most unusual, and the content of its wall paintings is extremely rich. Its main chamber is 4 meters long, 6.4 meters wide, and approximately 4 meters high. The ceiling rises from four walls toward the small square in the center. The cave entrance faces east, and in the north and south walls are four niches each about one square meter. These niches were used by monks for their meditation. This kind of meditation chamber or vihara are often seen in ancient India, but there are few Chinese examples. In the main west wall three niches with an image of painted stucco in each. The main image in the center is a seated Buddha, and the two on the sides the two sculpted images of monks seated in meditation, are many similar painted images. Most worthy of attention, along the base of the sloping ceiling on all four sides, are 34 monks shown meditating in the midst of mountains, Therefore not only the structure but also image of sculptures, and wall paintings in this cave all tend to emphasize meditation practice.

Another important feature about Cave 285 is that contains the earliest inscriptions among the caves at Tun-huang Mo-kao-k’u, and the only once dating to the Northern Dynasties, These are located in the top part of the vihara in the past and the Buddha of wall painting of the seven Buddhas of the past and the Buddha of Infinite Life (Amitabha), between the worshippers, and they are dated to the fourth and fifth years in the Western Wei (538 and 539). According to the earliest historical record from Tun-huang, the Li-chün Mo-kao-k’u fo-k’an pei dating to 698, Yüan Jung 元榮 , a member of the imperial house of the Northern Wei (386-534), was sent around this time (525-542) from the capital, Lo-yang, to Tun-huang to serve as the Regional Inspectector (tz’u-shih) of Kua-chou (Tun-huang), and in 529 he was enfeoffed as Prince of Tung-yang. Yüan Jung was sent to Tun-huang hust as the warfare end of the dynasty was beginning: the Northern Wei was to split into the Eastern Wei (534-550) and Western Wei (535-556), whose capital were at Yeh in Honan and Hsi-an in Shenhsi respectively. Yüan Jung was a devout Buddhist who hoped that proclaiming the dharma would still people’s hearts in an age of war. He prayed for the Northern Wei’s revival and a quick return to his home in Lo-yang. He also made many copies of Buddhist scriptures, which are now scattered among the Tun-huang manuscripts in museums around the world. According to the 698 Tang record, he also had a large cave made. Because Cave 285 is the largest cave dating to this period, scholars nowadays surmise that this was his cave, or at least that it was strongly influenced by his clan. After Yüan Jung died, his son Yüan K’ang and son-in-law succeeded him as Regional Inspector of Kua-chou, until around the eleventh year of Ta-t’ung (545). According to the most recent statistics compiled by the Research Academy of Tun-huang at the site, only ten caves at Tun-huang Mo-kao-k’u date from the last half of the fourth century to 525, i.e., before Yüan Jung’s arrival, but in the ensuing 25 years, from the time Yüan Jung started governing Tun-huang to the end of the western Wei (551), more than ten caves were created. Thus, this early period marked a time of great artistic development.

Since Cave 285 is a cave whose primary theme is meditation, many stories concerning monks meditating or observing prohibitions are depicted among the illustrations on the south wall. For instance, the illustration occupying most of the top portion of the south wall, the 500 thieves who become Buddhas, is derived from fascicles 16 and 19 of the Mahāparinirvāna Sūtra 大般涅盤經 (from the “Section on Pure Action”), which was translated into Chinese by Dharmakṣema in 421. Proceeding from the left, the 500 bandits plunder property, battle with imperial troops, and are finally defeated. When they are punished, they are stripped of their clothes, their eyes are gouged out, and they chased into the mountains. In their suffering the thieves call on Buddha’s name for salvation, and the Buddha immediately restores their vision and preaches the dharma to them. The wall paintings add a scene in which they shave their heads and don monks’ robes to hear the sermon, as well as scenes of them meditating in the mountains, which serve to emphasize the main theme of meditation. Furthermore, a detail from the south wall showing a bamboo forest in the mountains does not depict anything in Tun-huang’s surrounding landscape – a desert – so it could be an influence from Southern China. The apsaras among them are also rendered with mostly fine lines that accentuate their light, slender, willowy figures. This shows that there was a strong southern influence on late Northern Wei Lo-yang painting styles.

The story of the 500 bandits is told by he Buddha to the evil King Ajttasatru 阿闍世王 , who was guilty of injuring and imprisoning his parents and of usurping the throne. It is used to explain that Buddha’s boundless mercy can save all evil persons, and that the Buddha has limitless power to heal all ailments. Evil persons who hear the Buddhist dharma develop the bodhi mind and definitely will begin practicing the way of the bodhisattvas. The Mahāparinirvāna Sūtra emphasizes that all sentient beings have the Buddha nature, and even those guilty of the greatest sins can start the way to the Buddhahood if they only make their vows. To Buddhists living in the chaos at the end of the Northern Wei dynasty, the idea of abolishing worldly evil and returning to pure Buddha nature must have had a strong appreal. Passages from the Mahāparinirvāna Sūtra were for the same reason carved into the walls of the Hsiao-nan-hai Caves in An-yang, Honan, and the inscriptions there included the stanza:

“All fear knives and cudgels,
There are none who do not love life.
From self-forbearance, one can make the analogy [with others]:
Don’t kill, and don’t wield the cudgel.”

The stanza could be described as an often-used admonishment of the world during this era, and it may be one of the origins of the sentence, popular in later times, “Set down the butcher’s knife and immediately become a Buddha.”

In the west end of the south wall, below the painted images of the two Buddhas sitting together, is an illustration of “The Sacrifice for the Dharma” story, which also comes from the Mahāparinirvāna Sūtra; the same story appears among the relief carvings of the Hsiao-nan-hai caves. Unlike the Hsiao-nan-hai caves, however, the Cave 285 paintings have no captions, and they are sparing in plot detail. In the bottom right of the painting, facing a pond and a herd of deer and sitting in a round arch-shaped temle surrounded by mountains is a young Brahman practicing the way of the bodhisattvas. He reappears on the left side, asking Rakasana for a gatha instructing him in the dharma. From this point, the plot continues to the center of the upper part of the wall painting, which depicts the young Brahman hearing the wondrous dharma of nirvana and seeming to dance with joy. When he reappears, he has already stripped down to his shorts and is climbing a tall tree. Then, with hands pressed together he leaps from the top of the tree, thereby fulfilling his vow to sacrifice himself in response to Rakasana’s instruction. In the painting here Rakasana does not appear, though he may be seated in the thicket of plants – it is difficult to tell. This differs from the illustration in the Hsiao-nan-hai cave, in which Rakasana appears three times and the Brahman is shown inscribing the gatha on rocks. Cave 285 rather emphasizes the Brahman’s pleasure at hearing the dharma and his elegant, dramatic posture as he leaps from the tree.

Geographically, Tun-huang and An-yang are separated by a great distance, and Cave 285, if it were carved no later than 539, also predates the middle Hsiao-nan-hai cave, which was completed 550-555, by approximately eleven to sixteen years. However, many similarities between the caves deserve notice. Both caves, in terms of images and inscriptions, were influenced by the Mahāparinirvāna Sūtra. The Hsiao-nan-hai caves were completed by Monk Ch’ou 僧稠 (480-560), the Preceptor of State of the Northern Ch’i (550-577), who was devoted to meditation. He was inspired by the meditation manual of the “Section on Sagely Action” in the Mahāparinirvāna Sūtra, so the basic spirit of his emphasis on meditation is very similar to that of Cave 285. Many of the relief carvings of monks in the Hsiao-nan-hai caves are especially eye-catching, and they include one portrait of Monk Ch’ou himself, but they always appear in the capacity of worshippers. The monks of Cave 285 are mostly seated in meditation and wear turbans; the light that radiates behind their heads emphasizes the advanced state of their meditation. In the south corner of the west wall of Cave 285 appears an ascetic with long hair, the Vasa Immortal, holding a bird in one hand. This is an image that appears often from the end of the Northern Wei to the Northern Ch’i, and he also appears in the middle cave at Hsiao-nan-hai. His appearance indicates the boundless nature of the Buddhist dharma: living beings from all directions return to the Buddha.

The relief carvings of Hsiao-nan-hai that have been discussed most by scholars are the Pure Land illustrations; similarly in Cave 285 at least two illustrations of Amitabha’s Western Prardise appear. One is located on the top east corner of the vihara in the north wall, together with the seven Buddhas of the past, whose identities we can tell from the inscriptions. The seated Buddhas make a preaching mudra, and flanking each are two bodhisattvas. The other takes up most of the wall space to the south of the entrance in the east wall; the corresponding painting on the north of the entrance has a similar composition, but the captions are unreadable, so the precise identity of this scene is uncertain. The seated Buddha preaching the dharma occupies center place, and on each side are four bodhisattvas and four accompanying disciples. There are captions by each of their heads: Wu-liang-shou-fo 無量壽佛 (Amitabha), Wu-chin-i-p’u-sa 無盡意菩薩 (Aksayamati), Wen-shu-shih-li-p’u-sa 文殊師利菩薩 (Manjusri), Kuan-shih-yin-p’u-sa 觀世音菩薩 (Avalokitesvara), Ta-shih-chih-p’u-sa 大勢至菩薩 (Samatabhadra), and A-nan 阿難 (Ananda), Chia-yeh 迦葉 (Kasyapa), She-li-fu 舍利弗 (Sariputra), and Mu-lien 目連 (Maudalyayana). Because the Buddha’s preaching of the dharma is the core concept of the Pure Land, scholars who have studied the Tun-huang images have also suggested that images of the Buddha preaching below a tree are antecedents of the Pure Land illustration. In sum, the two Amitabha Pure Land illustrations in Cave 285 show that Pure Landthought was popular in the Western Wei and was linked with meditational representations. This tendency also appears in the Honan sculptures of the Eastern Wei and Northern Ch’i, and the Pure Land illustrations in the Hsiao-nan-hai caves concretely demonstrate their mature development.

Scholars who study Buddhist iconography have pointed out long ago that another distinguished feature of Cave 285 is its similarities on one hand with proto-esoteric iconography appearing around the same time in India and Central Asia and with traditional Central Plain-style illustrations of celestial spirits and wonders on the other. This is an indication of Cave 285’s rich diversity and its assimilation of many artistic strains. The area around the main Buddha in the west wall shows many images that had been passed from India and Central Asia. We have discussed the Vasa Immortal, but there are icons rarely seen in Tun-huang and other areas in China, as well as the predominant Indian gods such as Siva, Visnu, and Ganesa. As they surround the main Buddha on the role of protectors in this fantastic Buddhist pantheon of Cave 285.

The traditional Central Plain-style illustrations of celestial gods and wonders appear on the four sloping sides of the seiling. The individual images are rather small and include frequently-seen figures from the Han dynasty and afterwards such as the Thunder God and Lightning God – all these often appear on tomb stelae in the area around Lo-yang in the Northern Wei. Like the Suriya and Chandra from India, these Chinese traditional celestral beings come also to join the Buddhist cosmopolitan of Tun-huang.