Na Bo Liao Dynasty Tombs In The Art Of Cultural Studies

Among the nomadic nationalities living in the ancient northern China, the culture of the Qidan Nationality acts as a bridge to succeed the past, which is characterized with prairie nomadic culture called 'nowbo'. It is a 'melt entity' of ethnic and vernacular cultures with nationality, vernacularity, nomadism and variability as its basic features. Since nowbo culture has a quite distinct nomadism, and it is typical of its absorption into and interaction with those contemporary other cultural elements, this study will take it as main object of research.Xiramuren River and Laohingaal River in Inner Mongolia area are the mother rivers of gestating Qidan nationality, the development of Qidan's vernacular culture was based upon these two rivers. There are a quite number of the mural tombs of Qidan nobles in Liao Dynasty in this area, this dissertation, therefore, focuses on such mural tombs discussing the expressive modalities of Qidan vernacular culture in the entombment art and how Qidan combined its customs and conventions with those of Han nationality after it accepted the influence of Han nationality, and how to keep its original nowbo culture. As the previous studies show, though the thesis focuses on the mural tombs, the actual study will not be limited to those single murals, but will be enlarged to the funerary objects and other related artistic relics of Liao Dynasty. Through the concrete analysis of the formation structures of Liao Dynasty noble entombment, the tomb mural and its artistic relics, the dissertation will reveal that Liao Dynasty is a regime which has been excluded outside of the so-called 'central orthodox ruling' for a long time, and try to demonstrate the characteristic entombment culture of Qidan nationality, i.e. how Qidan as a nationality being ignored for a long time maintained its immanent nowbo culture during absorbing the Central China's entombment.Therefore, this dissertation will observe the painting of the northern nomadic nationalities and broaden the vision of cultural research in terms of many common characteristics, to summarize and discover the inner relationship of the ancient Chinese northern prairie nationalities in the development of the prairie art history, to look for its commonness and connotation for widening the research space and horizon of art history of China's prairie nationality.