beloved landmark overlooking the city. Activity at the
Longmen caves dominated the latter part of the sev-
enth century with the most spectacular work being
cave 19 (672–675) with its colossal image of Vairocana,
the mystical/cosmic buddha of the HUAYAN SCHOOL,
the branch of Buddhism in China founded on the
study of the HUAYAN JING(Avatamsaka-sutra) and
brilliantly expounded by Huayan masters, such as
Zhiyan (602–668) and FAZANG(643–712), in the sev-
enth century. Cave 19 may have been a conscious re-
flection of the grandeur of the Tang empire, which
reached a new dimension with its conquests through-
out the century into Central Asia.
PURELANDBUDDHISMflowered in the seventh cen-
tury under Shandao and found expression in depic-
tions of AMITABHA’s Pure Land, Sukhavat, many of
which survive in wall paintings at Dunhuang, begin-
ning with the earliest complete representation in cave
220, dated 642, and evolving throughout the Tang into
masterworks of huge scale and detailed imagery. These
paintings particularly followed the Guan Wuliangshou
jing(Sutra on the Meditation of Amitayus) that incor-
porates the sixteen meditations of Queen Vaideh, as
seen in the early eighth-century wall painting in cave
217 at Dunhuang. By the time of cave 148, dated to
around 775, a vast panoramic vision is presented in the
bonelesstechnique of using planes of color without line.
These color washes create a fluid, shimmering, ethe-
real effect on the broad, tilted plane that conjures vast
space, reflecting developments in Chinese landscape
painting that evolved during the Tang period.
During the mid-seventh to early eighth centuries,
elements of esoteric Buddhism appeared in, for exam-
ple, figures of the eleven-headed Guanyin, but it would
not be until the second half of the eighth century, with
the teaching of the Indian monk Amoghavajra, that the
full panoply of tantric MANDALAimagery would be-
come well established. A group of marble images dat-
ing from around 775 from the site of the Anguosi in
Chang’an offers the best surviving early examples of
these esoteric teachings, which became especially in-
fluential at Wutaishan and later in Shingon Buddhism
(of the yoga tantra type), which was introduced by
KUKAI(774–835) to Japan following his study in China
from 804 to 806.
Sculpture from the first half of the eighth century
reached a high degree of naturalism, tempered by ab-
stract patterning. The Tang caves at Tianlongshan,
such as caves 21, 14, 6, 18, and 17 (in chronological
sequence), have the most splendid array of stone sculp-
tures from the first half of the eighth century. The
seated buddha from cave 21 (possibly the cave of the
707 stele describing the donation made by General Xun
[of Korean descent] and his wife) is a marvel of pow-
erful muscular body, with subtly defined limbs and
torso. The body is draped with a robe whose rib folds
form patterns of lines that help to clarify the articulate
parts of the body in an independent yet complemen-
tary manner. The moon-shaped face is tense and the
features carved into strongly modeled eyes and a dra-
matically curled mouth. The styles of the Tianlongshan
imagery of this time derive from artistic modes of con-
temporary art of Kashmir, Afghanistan, and Central
Asia, probably stimulated by renewed contact over the
Silk Road during the seventh century and first half of
the eighth century.
By the late eighth to ninth centuries the style of
sculpture became more mannered and consciously
antinatural while still retaining naturalistic elements
that had evolved since the early Tang. Images became
otherworldly in defiance of weight and normality of
proportioning. At Dunhuang this development ap-
pears in the images of cave 159 and in central China
in the stucco sculptures of the main shrine hall of the
Foguangsi Monastery at Wutaishan, where the images
reach a height of manneristic naturalism, combining
naturalistic qualities with mannered distortions. The
Foguangsi shrine hall was built in 857 after the third
and most devastating of the Buddhist persecutions in
China from around 845 to 847. It remains today as the
oldest large wooden temple structure in China. The
main hall of the nearby Nanchansi was built earlier,
before 782, but it is only a three-bay hall, whereas the
Foguangsi hall is a seven-bay structure. Foguangsi’s
monumental Tang style timber construction has
strong simple bracketing, bold powerful lines in the
façade, and a rare early method of construction. In the
words of Liang Sicheng, an early pioneer of architec-
tural studies in China, the structural parts “give the
building an overwhelming dignity that is not found in
later structures.”
As the Tang empire declined during the late ninth
century, Buddhist art diminished in general, except for
areas such as Sichuan and Dunhuang, both of which
saw major productions at this time. Dunhuang, which
had been under Tibetan occupation from the 780s to
840s, flourished under the local control of the Zhang
and then the Cao family well into the tenth century.
Many of the silk paintings found by Aurel Stein in the
“library” room of cave 17 and taken to the British Mu-
seum date to this period. The earliest Chan paintingsCHINA, BUDDHISTART IN