Rhie, Marylin M. Early Buddhist Art of China and Central Asia.
Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, Vol. 1: 1999; Vol. 2: 2002.
Sekino, Tei. Ryokin jidai no kenchiku to sono butsuzo(Architec-
ture of the Liao and Jin Dynasties and Their Buddhist Images),
3 vols. Tokyo: Toho bunka gakuin Tokyo kenkyujo,
1934–1944.
Siren, Osvald. Chinese Sculpture from the Fifth to the Fourteen
Century,4 vols. London: Ernest Benn, 1925.
Soper, Alexander C. Literary Evidence for Early Buddhist Art in
China.Ascona, Italy: Artibus Asiae, 1959.
Soper, Alexander C. “South Chinese Influence on the Buddhist
Art of the Six Dynasties Period.” Bulletin of the Museum of
Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm32 (1960): 47–112.
Soper, Alexander C. “Imperial Cave-Chapels of the Northern
Dynasties: Donors, Beneficiaries, Dates.” Artibus Asiae 208
(1966): 241–270.
Steinhardt, Nancy Shatzman. Liao Architecture.Honolulu: Uni-
versity of Hawaii Press, 1997.
Su Bai. Zhongguo shiku si yanjiu(Research on Chinese Stone Cave
Temples). Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 1996.
Tokiwa, Daij, and Sekino, Tadashi. Shina bunka shiseki,12 vols.
Tokyo: Hozokan, 1940.
Wang, Eugene. “What Do Trigrams Have to Do with Buddhas?
The Northern Liang Stupas as a Hybrid Spatial Model.” Jour-
nal of Anthropology and Aesthetics35 (Spring 1999): 70–91.
Weidner, Marsha, ed. Latter Days of the Law: Images of Chinese
Buddhism, 850–1850.Lawrence, KS: Spencer Museum of Art,
1994.
Whitfield, Roderick. Dunhuang, Caves of the Singing Sands: Bud-
dhist Art from the Silk Road,2 vols. London: Textile and Art
Publications, 1995.
Wong, Dorothy C. “Four Sichuan Buddhist Steles and the Be-
ginnings of Pure Land Imagery in China.” Archives of Asian
Art51 (1998–1999): 56–79.
Wu Hung. “Buddhist Elements in Early Chinese Art (2nd and
3rd centuries A.D.).” Artibus Asiae47, nos. 3–4 (1986):
263–352.
Zhongquo meishu juanji(Collection of Chinese Art), 60 vols.
Shanghai, China: Renmin meishu chubanshe and Shanghai
renmin meishu chubanshe, 1987–1989.
MARYLINMARTINRHIECHINESE, BUDDHIST INFLUENCES
ON VERNACULAR LITERATURE IN
Until the progressive May Fourth Movement of 1919,
the preferred medium for writing in China for the pre-
vious three millennia had always been one or another
form of Literary Sinitic, also called Classical Chinese.
From at least the Han period (206 B.C.E.–220 C.E.), and
perhaps from its very inception, Literary Sinitic was an
artificial language separated from everyday speech by
an enormous gulf. Consequently, command of the
highly allusive literary language was possible only for
a small proportion of the population, roughly 2 per-
cent, who could afford to devote years of study to it.
With the advent of Buddhism in China during the
last century of the Han dynasty, a demotic style of writ-
ing that was closer to speech—here referred to as Ver-
nacular Sinitic—gradually began to emerge. The same
characters were used to write both Literary and Ver-
nacular Sinitic, but the morphemes, and especially the
words, grammar, and syntax differed radically between
these two kinds of Sinitic writing.Buddhism and language
The question of exactly how a foreign religion like Bud-
dhism could have had such an enormous impact on
linguistic usage in China is extraordinarily complex.
Some of the factors involved are: (1) a conscious de-
sire on the part of Buddhist teachers and missionaries
(starting with the Buddha himself) to speak directly to
the common people in their own language; (2) the
maintenance of relatively egalitarian social values
among Buddhists in contrast to a strongly hierarchal
Confucian order; (3) an emphasis on hymnody, story-
telling, drama, lecture, and other types of oral presen-
tation; and (4) the perpetuation of sophisticated Indian
scholarship on linguistics, which highlighted the im-
portance of grammar and phonology as reflected in ac-
tual speech, in contrast to Chinese language studies,
which focused almost exclusively on the characters as
the perfect vehicle for the essentially mute book lan-
guage. Probably of overriding importance, however,
was the nature of the process of translating texts writ-
ten in Sanskrit and other Indian and Central Asian lan-
guages into Chinese. This usually involved teams of
Chinese and foreign monks who knew each other’s lan-
guage only imperfectly. Their discussions on various
renderings, conducted orally, resulted in bits of ver-
nacular seeping into what was otherwise a basically Lit-
erary Sinitic medium. This vernacular coloration,
coupled with the massive borrowing of Indic words (it
is estimated that approximately thirty-five thousand
new names and terms entered Chinese through the
agency of Buddhism) and even grammatical usages and
syntactic structures, led to the creation of a peculiar
written style that may be referred to as Buddhist Hy-
brid Sinitic or Buddhist Hybrid Chinese.CHINESE, BUDDHISTINFLUENCES ONVERNACULARLITERATURE IN