Green Qi Regional Buddhist Art Of The Late Northern Dynasties

Buddhism spread to the Qingqi Region before the fourth century AD, but it was only during the late Northern dynasties (500-577 AD) that it became the area's mainstream belief and culture, and entered the daily life of the people from all social backgrounds. This big transformation is reflected by the rich and diversified Buddhist cultural relics in the area, which shows the subtle relationship between the outer expression of Buddhist thought through cultural relics, and the inner development of Buddhist thinking and culture. It involves research on objects, historical documents and their background, each of which has its own path of development, and between which there exist complementary and intercrossing relationships.First, triads with the boat-shaped mandorla from the late Northern Wei to the Eastern Wei periods (500-550) represent the worship of Maitreya and Sakyamuni in Saddharma Pundarika. Based on the inscriptions on the objects, the author discusses how Buddhism acquired a stable position in the area with strong support from the various classes, led by the local intellectual class. Second, this research discusses the "Cao Style" (Cao Jia Yang) and explicates the relationship between it and the "Qingzhou Style" (Qingzhou Yangshi), as well as that between the Qingqi regional culture and the Ye Capital culture. Third, the third and fourth chapters start with the styles of the sculptures of the "thin robe" Buddha, to discuss the flowering of the Vairocana worship, supported by the local intellectual class and higher monks and nuns, which was characterized by theoretical knowledge. During this process one can observe the competition, adjustment and interaction between orthodox Buddhism and the various traditional local thought systems—folk beliefs, Confucianism and Taoism, as well as the relationships between religion and ethics, and religious belief and its function as a spiritual symbol of kinship unity.Finally, centering on the above-mentioned three questions, the discussion weaves a relevant "net" from the objects of various media and functions to contribute to a broad knowledge of Buddhist doctrine, worship and images of the Qingqi region during the late Northern Dynasty period. It further researches the role that the "elite" culture of the local literati class played in the process of the spread of Buddhism from South to North during the late Southern and Northern dynasties, and it serves as an aperture through which we can analyze the cultural transformation between the Han (202 BC—220 AD) and Tang (618—907 AD) dynasties.