Introduction of murals in Mogao grottoes

The early caves and murals in Mogao Grottoes can explain the influence of foreign religious art on traditional paintings that directly depict life.

The earliest existing caves in the Mogao Grottoes are 267 caves in the Sixteen Kingdoms and the Northern Wei Dynasty -27 1, 272, 275, 25 1, 254, 257 and 259.

Caves 272, 275 and 267-27 1 deserve special attention. 267-27 1 Cave is dominated by Cave 268, and other caves are Picoro-style (or monk's room, where monks study hard) caves with attached rooms. Among them, the murals of sixteen countries have been covered by murals of Sui Dynasty. The architectural shapes of this group of caves, the cave shapes and murals of caves 272 and 275, and their relationship are unique. They are considered as one of the earliest known caves.

The frescoes in Cave 272 and Cave 275 during the Sixteen Kingdoms period have a special style: scattered flowers are covered on the earth-red background, the characters are half naked, and there are extremely exaggerated movements. The human body uses the halo dyeing method to express the sense of body mass and the color tone of skin (but due to the age, the pigment changes color, and we only see some thick black lines. According to some mural fragments that have preserved the original appearance, we can know that this black is originally a bright flesh red). This style of Buddha statue in Cave 272 and Bunsen King story painting in Cave 275 are both representative works.

Bodhisattva statue, weighing on his right foot, is calm and charming, which shows that the new way to deal with Buddha statues in this period is to choose a posture that is considered beautiful according to real life. This bodhisattva, like other bodhisattvas, is a beautiful image absorbed and refined from life.

In the picture of "The Story of the Dead King Benson", the corpse Wang Chui sits with only one leg, and someone cuts the meat on his leg with a knife. Others hold scales and put a quiet pigeon at one end of the scales. Although this also explains part of the story, it generally cannot explain all the plots behind. In order to save the pigeon's life from the eagle's mouth, the predecessor of the Buddha, Pi Wang, was willing to redeem it with a piece of his own meat with the same weight as the pigeon. But after cutting off two strands, two arms, two sides and the whole body, it was still lighter than the pigeon, and finally I decided to stand on the scale. As a result, the world shook and the bodies were completely calm, more than before. The Body of Wang Bensheng is one of many Bensheng stories circulated in Buddhist murals and some reliefs in the Northern Wei Dynasty. These Bunsen stories are all about how the Buddha sacrificed himself to save others in his previous life in order to promote Buddhism.

The general form of cave dwellings in the Northern Wei Dynasty consists of two parts: the front room and the main room. The front room is a horizontal rectangle, the roof is tilted back and forth, and there are rows of gold and silver patterns in the rafters (called "herringbone grooves"). The main room is square with a central square column in the middle. There are shrines and statues on the central column. There are murals on all sides. The ceiling of the cave is painted with flat shading and divided into squares. For example, caves 254 and 257 are all in this form. This form is the most popular form of "cave-making at the bottom" in the late Northern Dynasties ("cave-making at the bottom" is an Indian name, that is, the temple of worship, which is another important grotto form besides the Brahma style). Some caves don't have a central column, so there are niches and statues on the back wall, and the top of the cave uses "four algae wells" (a square with gradually shrinking diagonal lines).

Caves 254 and 257 are rich in murals. Among them, the Bunsen story of the dead king in Cave 254, the Bunsen story of Prince Sajana and the Bunsen story of the deer king in Cave 257 are famous masterpieces of the Northern Wei Dynasty.

Prince Sakana Benson is another story, telling people to give up their lives and save others. In ancient times, three princes of a king went hunting in the middle reaches of a mountain forest. They were hungry for seven days when they saw that the mother tiger had given birth to seven cubs. The youngest prince, Sakhan, the predecessor of the Buddha, was merciful and advised his two brothers to leave, so he took off his clothes and jumped down the mountain, intending to sacrifice his body to help the hungry tiger. But the hungry tiger has no strength to get close to him. He climbed to the top of the mountain again, stabbed his neck with a dry bamboo and bled, then jumped down, and the hungry tiger licked his blood and vomited his flesh. His two brothers came back to see him, cleaned his bones sadly, told his parents and built a tower for him. There are many different ways to deal with this theme in murals of caves near Mogao Grottoes and Kuqa, reliefs of Binyang Cave in Longmen, Luoyang, and statues. The Bunsen of Prince Sachana in Cave 254 is to arrange the main plots in a composition continuously. Because of the age, the color tone has changed from dark brown to invariable turquoise, but it has a gloomy and harsh atmosphere.

The story of the deer king in Cave 257 is a continuous story with a long banner: in ancient times, there was a beautiful nine-color deer king (also known as the predecessor of Buddha) who saved a drowning man while playing by the river. The rescued drowning man kowtowed and thanked him for being the slave of the deer king. The deer king refused and told him, "When someone tries to arrest me in the future, don't say that you have seen me." There happened to be a king. He is kind and upright, but his queen is greedy. The queen dreamed of the deer king, with nine colors of hair and horns better than rhinoceros horns. When she woke up, she asked the king for deerskin for clothes and antlers for earrings, and said that if she didn't get it, she would die. So the king offered a reward for catching deer. The rescued drowning man was greedy for gold, silver and land, so he went to report him. But his ungrateful behavior immediately paid off: his body was raw and his mouth stinks. When the king took people to catch deer, the king of deer was sleeping and was awakened by his good friend crow. The deer king told the story of saving the drowning man in front of the king and deeply touched the king. The king gave up his plan to capture him, and even ordered the whole country to allow the deer king to walk around at will and not to capture him. When the queen heard that the deer king was released, she died of grief. Although this story attributes fairness to the integrity of the king, the content of the story reflects the condemnation of negativity and greed (Figure 102).

These two Bunsen paintings, especially the figures, have the same strong and unique style as the murals in Cave 272 and Cave 275. But it also obviously inherited the tradition of painting in Han Dynasty. Such as the horizontal composition of trees, animals (tigers, deer), forests, buildings (towers, pagodas, pavilions) and The Legend of the King of the Deer, as well as the caption attached to each paragraph (which is now chaotic), all illustrate the important role of traditional painting in the newly formed Buddhist art. The story of bunsen burner in Buddhism is based on endless self-sacrifice and absolute generosity. These stories are all based on the oral legends of the people. Therefore, the description of literature is not only full of real emotions and fragments, but also reflects people's judgment of good and evil and their fantasies and demands for a painful life to a certain extent. Therefore, it may be explained by the people themselves and even become the slogan of mobilizing the uprising under certain conditions. Many peasant riots in the Northern Wei Dynasty began under the slogan of "Maitreya" and the establishment of a new social order. Therefore, the strong sympathy and imagination of Prince Sassana and others, and the promotion of the virtue of self-sacrifice and saving others, on the one hand, oppose the selfish behavior shared by any exploiting class; However, since the exaggeration is irrational, the main aspect is to use the good psychology of working people to play the role of anesthesia and deception and endure exploitation and pain. The ideological content of Bunsen's story is complicated, so it can play different roles on different occasions. The murals in caves in the Northern Wei Dynasty show these stories of bunsen burner, which are generally very simple. In addition to twists and turns reflecting people's lives, it is the image of some traditional paintings (especially animals and horses). ), and some newly created characters are very realistic. In composition, the ability to fully develop the plot is not high, but the picture has a certain content connection. Not a simple arrangement. Third, the murals of Cave 285 in the Western Wei Dynasty and Cave in the Sui Dynasty in the Mogao Grottoes.

Cave 285 is one of the most important caves in Mogao Grottoes.

The inscription of Cave 285 is accurate, which shows the further development of traditional style and the connection between Mogao Grottoes and Central Plains grottoes.

Cave 285 has inscriptions on the four and five years of Great Unity (AD 537 and 538), when the Northern Wei Dynasty was divided into the Eastern Wei Dynasty and the Western Wei Dynasty. During the Western Wei Dynasty, the secretariat of Guazhou (Dunhuang) in Rong Yuan, Dongyang Wang strongly advocated Buddhism and Buddhist statues. Rong Yuan once organized people to copy Buddhist scriptures and spread several batches of 100-volume Buddhist scriptures, which played a certain role in the development of the Mogao Grottoes. In the center of the top of Cave 285, there is a "four algae well bucket". Around the slope, there are paintings of Sun Tian (Fuxi), Moon Field (female snail), Thor, Fei Lian, Tian Fei and rows of ascetic monks in caves. Outside the cave of the ascetic monk, there are all kinds of animals resting by the river under the forest. The animals at the top of these caves are described in a real, natural and emotional way. The walls of the cave are mostly a group of one Buddha and two dangerous bodhisattvas. But at the top of the cave wall, there are often figures dancing with the wind, and at the bottom, there are brave and strong lux. In the middle of the south wall is a story map of 500 robbers.

This part of the mural in Cave 285 has a common style with the Buddhist art popular in the Central Plains in the late Northern Wei Dynasty, that is, in the middle of the sixth century. For example, the thin faces of bodhisattvas and diners, the thick and wrinkled robes of the Han nationality, and the clothes and flowers fluttering in the air. The building is in an inclined state, and the trees, as Zhang Yanyuan said in the Tang Dynasty, "brush the veins and carve leaves, and perch on the willows". Cave 285 can be compared with caves and statues in other places at the same time.

At the same time, the painting styles of the Buddha statues at the back wall of Cave 285 are quite different, including the worship of tantric gods, which is undoubtedly the last relic of the painting method of Cave 272. In addition to this part, the murals in Cave 285 can represent a new religious art form developed on the basis of tradition.

Some people completely inherited the painting style of the Han Dynasty in the Mogao Grottoes in the late Northern Dynasties, such as the hunting map at the top of Cave 249. This hunting map not only depicts vivid images of galloping animals, horses and riding and shooting trees in the mountains, but also includes animals such as Qinglong, White Tiger and Twelve Dragons, as well as Dong and Empress Dowager in non-Buddhist mythology. In Cave 428, the Bunsen Story Map of Prince Sagarna and the Bunsen Story Map of Prince Sultan both depict a large number of scenes of mountains and rivers and horseback riding, which shows that folk painters try to use their familiar and traditional images and expressions as the basis for obtaining new forms when dealing with new stories and themes.

Bunsen, the Prince of Sudan, is also a widely circulated Bunsen story: a king has a six-toothed white elephant, strong and good at fighting. When the enemy attacks, they often win because of elephants. Knowing that the king's son Sudana was charitable and responsive, the kings of the enemy sent eight Brahmins to ask him for an elephant, and Sudana really took it out and gave it to them. Eight of them rode away happily, and after that, the king and ministers of this country were very surprised. So the king deported Sultana, his wife and children. Sudana walked along the road, still giving alms. After giving up all the treasures, he continued to give up his carriage and clothes. Finally, tie up the child and sell it to others as a handmaiden, but give up his wife and himself. At the end of the story, after the child was sold, it was discovered and redeemed by grandpa, and then Sultana was taken back.

The rule of the Sui Dynasty was not long, but a large number of grottoes were built. When the emperor was in power, he sent people to Dunhuang. Among the 96 caves with murals of the Sui Dynasty, Cave 302 (AD 584, Emperor's 4th year), Cave 305 (AD 585, Emperor's 5th year), Cave 420, Cave 276 and Cave 4 19 are all important. It is not easy to distinguish the boundary between the Sui Dynasty and the late Northern Dynasty.

The architectural shapes and mural themes of these caves are similar to those of the Northern Wei Dynasty. Cave-shaped caves were popular then. In the arrangement of murals, story paintings mostly live at the top of the cave, and the walls are often painted with sages robbing thousands of buddhas or saying pictures. However, Buddhist story paintings are rich in content, and there are many specific life scenes, such as fighting, corner arrival, archery, ox cart, carriage, riding a team, drinking camels, drawing water, boating, repairing towers, fishing, farming, cremation and so on. , both simple and realistic. Composition is also more complex and diverse. It can be said that the murals in Sui Dynasty are the further maturity of Buddhist art..