A Comparative Study Of China And South Korea Land And Water Painting

It was in early Eastern Han Dynasty when Buddhism was introduced to China (after25A.D.). To get their missionary jobs done,monks and priests melted the ideas of Emperor Huang and Lao Tzu, also the black magic tricks of Daoism together with the forbidden curse from Brahman or other religions right into Buddhism. People bought it after all, taking Buddhism as blessing or a shield to all evils. Buddhism walked with local ideas hand in hand. Little by little,around the late Eastern Han (before220A.D.), Buddhism became to influence people of all ranks.During the Northern and Southern Dynasties(420-589A.D.), the Emperor held the first-ever Shui-lu Rites(Public Initiations of both land and water).The Buddhist paintings for those rites are called Shui-Lu painting, Normally found placed in Dharmsala when a rite was held, or as wall paintings in the amphibious temple. In Korea, they called those Buddhist paintings as "Nectar Ritual". Nowadays, most of these Chinese Buddhist paintings exist in scrolls, wall paintings,and wood prints. Supported by government,also as a mainstream that time, Buddhism became so popular. Financially aided by both officials and civilians, Buddhist rites were held frequently,in fact, so frequently that people even built halls to apply those paintings with certain themes on the wall. That’s how they could make it till today. Nectar Ritual stepped on stage around the middle of the Korean AGE, mainly used during the rites consoling the deaths, like:the Rites of Forty-nine Days, the festival of Hungry Ghosts, the Water and Land Assembly, and the Spirit Vulture Peak Rite, they were the Buddhist paintings of a ceremony. A tipical korean temple structure for the rites consists three parts:the upward, the middle and the downward, or as the front, left and right. The Nectar Ritual are placed mostly at the downward part. Differed from ordinary buddhist paintings, Nectar Ritual describes the everyday lives of the civilians that a Buddhist rite would console. The composition of the Nectar Ritual always applys in three layers:Buddhas at the top, rites for taras by monks in the middle,and lives in six divisions of Karma at the bottom. The rites paintings from China and Korea shares the same origin, in spite of the introduction finds its way back to China, Korean Nectar Ritual took influences of local politics, social hehaviors, cultural differences,national customs and financial situations, which make Korean one has differences and connections as well in structures, patterns, contents and styles.