Chinese Buddhism

And
Buddhist Art

What is Buddhism?
Buddhism is a very ancient religion, appearing around 520 BCE in Northast India. It is centered
on, the Buddha. A bodhisattva is someone who is on their way to pure spiritual enlightenment,
the path to becoming a Buddha. Found mainly in China, Japan, Korea and Southeast Asia,
Buddhism is the fourth largest religion in the world. Buddhism is split into three major divisions,
Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana. Where there are similarities in the beliefs and followings
of some of the fundamental aspects of the religion, there are differences to match. A couple
differences being, the location of the Theravada in the South of Asia and the location of the

Mahayana in the North of Asia. Another difference being the scriptures used by the Theravada
and the Mahayana, Pali Canon and Books of the Theravada Tripitaka plus many other sutras,
respectively.
Several centuries into Buddhism, the religion began to leave India, where most of its teachings and
practices were continued in China, Japan and Korea.

Chinese Buddhist Art

Most of the art that this religion did was about the physical embodiment of Buddha, whether it
was paintings, drawings, wallpaper or .sculptures. Some sculptures show the Buddha as just a
man with a Bindi in meditation posture, others portray him the same position but with many
arms.

Chinese Buddhist sculptures and architecture of the Liao dynasty (907-1125) are of particular
importance in todays portrayal of Buddhism in Europe and the Western hemisphere. One such
sculpture as well as piece of architecture is the pagoda, which was intended to be a house of
worship and still is to this day.

Chinese pagoda

Pagodas came to be, around the first century. These temples started rising at the same time that
Buddhism reached China. Like Buddhism, pagodas can be linked back to India, where they were,
according to Buddhist literature, intended to house the remains of the founder of Buddhism,

Sakyamuni. Before the pagoda was brought to China, they had initially been used as tombs in
India, which were located in temples, where people could give offerings to their ancestors.
The pagodas in China took after the Chinese architecture and so they were the Chineses
interpretation of them.
An example of painting in ancient China are frescoes, which are rapid water colour paintings
done on wet plaster on a wall. This style of painting causes the paint to dry into the plaster,
which allowed for great preservation. They were usually very colourful and busy paintings of
Buddhist events and people and sometimes showed the subject matter in a locomotive state.

Frescoes

A lot of the art that best represents Buddhism was found in the Dunhuang caves. There were 492 of these
caves, with 45,000 square metres of frescoes and 2,415 stucco statues, stucco being a substance

with properties likened to plaster of paris (wet to dry, dense and hard). The Dunhuang caves
were well maintained for centuries. From the seventh to the ninth century, Chinese art began to
flourish as China reunified and the influence of other cultures, via trading, along with their own,
took place. However after 2 centuries of such prosperity, the dynasty ruling had fallen and the
increased development of Chinese art dropped back to normal.

http://buddhism.about.com/od/basicbuddhistteachings/a/basicshub.htm
http://www.csuchico.edu/~cheinz/syllabi/asst001/fall97/7merc.htm
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ht/
http://www.religionfacts.com/buddhism
http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/history/b_fbodi.htm
http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/43498.htm