end of a kalpa, fire and terror engulf the human world,
while his pure land remains intact, where halls, pavil-
ions, gardens, and groves are “adorned with gems,”
and “jeweled trees abound in flowers and fruit, and liv-
ing beings enjoy themselves at ease.” The composition
is thus divided into two contrasting parts: below,
scenes of calamities; above, the pure land. Human fig-
ures appear in the lotus pond, a scene of rebirth asso-
ciated with a pure land. The carving is often hailed as
a precursor to later representations of the Western
Pure Land. The composition also anticipates pictures
of the “White Path to Paradise,” which are typically di-
vided into two realms: Below is the impure mundane
world of the east, teeming with suffering beings from
the six REALMS OF EXISTENCE; above is the Western Pure
Land. In between is a symmetrically divided river. To
the left and south is the pool of fire of anger and vio-
lence; to the right and north is the river of greed and
desire. Flanked by these two engulfing rivers is a thin
white path that leads to the Western Paradise. S ́akya-
muni, on one side of the river, urges the devotee to
cross, while Amitabha and his retinue beckon on the
other shore. Shandao’s commentary on the Guan Wu-
liangshou jing(Contemplation of the Buddha of Limit-
less Life Sutra) presents a matching textual account.
However, pictures of this kind are found only in sur-
viving Japanese hanging scrolls of the Kamakura pe-
riod (1185–1333).
Another notable early painting of a pure land, exe-
cuted around the early seventh century, appears in cave
420 at DUNHUANG. Based in part on the Lotus Sutra,
the mural shows Vulture Peak on the right and S ́akya-
muni passing into nirvana in the middle. Issuing from
the foot of Vulture Peak is a winding river dotted with
lotuses, with a boat and numerous ducks crossing to
the other shore. Flanking the river are an array of nine
buddhas and various buddha-lands. The scene draws
on the “Life Span” chapter of the NIRVANASUTRA,
translated by Dharmaksema in 423 C.E., which de-
scribes an “Eastern world named Joy and Beautiful
Sound,” a pure land. Both the Wangfosi carving and
the Dunhuang mural demonstrate the tenuous rela-
tionship between early pictures of pure lands and the
Amitabha sutras. The pictures arose out of a topo-
graphic imagination that was driven by soteriological
interest and cued by scriptures.
As the cult of the Amitabha Pure Land gained cur-
rency during the second half of the sixth century, its
pictorial representation took more definitive shape.
Two compositional prototypes emerged during the
Northern Qi period (550–577). The first is the
“Amitabha with Fifty Bodhisattvas,” a picture allegedly
acquired by the five bodhisattvas of the Kukkutarama
Monastery from the Western Paradise, and dubiously
claimed to have been transmitted by the Indian monk
Kas ́yapa-matanga (d. 73 C.E.) to China. Cao Zhongda
of the Northern Qi is said to have specialized in pic-
tures of this type, which continued to appear into the
seventh century. A painting on the east wall of cave
332 at Dunhuang shows a gigantic tree dominated by
the Amitabha triad. Fifty reborn souls appear as bo-
dhisattvas perched on various tree branches; two other
figures are each wrapped in a lotus bud.
The second compositional prototype represents the
more popular model. It is exemplified by a large spread
of relief sculpture from cave 2 of South Xiangtangshan,
now at the Freer Gallery in Washington, D.C. The
composition contains all the key elements of subse-
quent Western Paradise tableaux. Three haloed
deities—Amitabha in the middle, with Avalokites ́vara
and Mahasthamaprapta on each side—constitute the
Western triad. In front of them are three ponds. In the
middle pond, four human figures emerge respectively
from a lotus—the extent to which they break out of
the lotus bud indicates the ranking order of their
classes in the merit-based three-tiered hierarchy of re-
birth, as described in the Larger SUKHAVATIVYUHA-
SUTRA. Each of the two side ponds shows a figure—
either a bodhisattva or a Buddha disciple—bathing in
the “jeweled ponds” to cleanse the impurities of the
world of transmigration before entering the Land of
Bliss. The pond motif has since become a distinctive
feature of Amitabha’s Pure Land. This design grew into
a major compositional form in the seventh century, as
exemplified by the Amitabha tableau in cave 220 at
Dunhuang, dated 642 C.E., and in the Golden Hall of
Horyuji in Japan.
Western Pure Land pictures developed new forms
in the seventh and eighth centuries. The threefold gra-
dation of rebirths in the pure land based on the Larger
Sukhavatlvyuha-sutraevolved into a ninefold scheme
—three grades, each subdivided into three degrees—
as pure land tableaux incorporated the Guan Wu-
liangshou jing.An early example is a seventh-century
wall painting in cave 431 at Dunhuang, which contains
vignettes of the descent of Amitabha or his delegates
to fetch the dying person to the Western Paradise. In
its early phase, the composition took the form of a hor-
izontal band measuring 1 by 15.4 meters, a form ap-
parently adapted from the hand scroll format, and it
emphasizes narrative actions rather than pure land
scenes. In the early eighth century, a triptych form tookPURELANDART