or as distinctly exotic, even grotesque beings. Guanxiu,
a Chan priest and accomplished poet who was said to
have derived inspiration for his painting from prayer-
induced visions, was heralded by later historians as
having been the first to portray the arhats, in the words
of Huang Xiufu (late tenth/early eleventh century), as
foreign in appearance, “having bushy eyebrows and
huge eyes, slack-jawed and big-nosed,” and in a land-
scape setting, “leaning against a pine or a boulder.”
Such characteristics can be seen in a set of sixteen hang-
ing scrolls in the Imperial Household Agency, Tokyo,
that is generally thought to best preserve Guanxiu’s
powerful conception. Guanxiu’s radical vision was per-
petuated in sets of arhat paintings produced through-
out the medieval period in China and Japan.
By the latter half of the twelfth century the mode
of representing arhats in the guise of more familiar,
sinicized monks, albeit sometimes performing mirac-
ulous feats, included their placement in much more
elaborate landscape settings and the suggestion of nar-
rative implications far beyond the content of the
Record of the Abiding Law.Skilled at conjuring up such
dramatic renditions in ink and color on silk, profes-
sional Buddhist painters in cities like Ningbo in Zhe-
jiang province created large sets of hanging scrolls that
depicted what had now become the five hundred
arhats. One of the most significant sets to survive from
a Ningbo workshop is that produced in 1178 by Lin
Tinggui and Zhou Jichang.
Arhats, because of their ascetic devotion to the
dharma, became a favored subject of adherents to the
CHAN SCHOOL. Whereas resplendent sets of paintings,
like the one mentioned above, were hung in temple
halls for public worship, renderings in ink mono-
chrome and often with exceptionally delicate lineation,
known as baimiaoor plain line drawing, were enjoyed
by monks and lay worshippers in more intimate and
scholarly exchanges. From the twelfth century onward
in China, but especially at times when the Chan school
was revitalized by the presence and activity of promi-
nent clerics, depictions of arhats in this more scholarly
mode of painting reappeared with new vigor and sub-
tle invention.
As a complement to painted images, sculpted rep-
resentations of arhats occupied temple halls as well.
Few early examples survive, however. Offering a
glimpse of what must have been a vibrant tradition are
five magnificent ceramic sculptures of arhats, slightly
larger than lifesize and featuring a three-color glaze,
that were found in a cave in Hebei province early in
the twentieth century. From a presumed set of sixteen,
they are thought to date to the late eleventh or early
twelfth century. Sinicized portrayals, they reflect the
characterization of the arhats as familiar monks; never-
theless, because of the talent of the nameless artisans
who created them, they are imbued with a meditative
authority befitting the arhats’ mission to remain ever
steadfast in protecting the dharma.See also:Arhat; Chan Art; Daoism and BuddhismBibliography
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Catuh ́atakas (Four Hundred Verses), defends the MAD-
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