| This paper mainly studies geographical features of the tomb wall paintings of northeast China between the 2nd and the 6th centuries A. D., their cultural characteristics and their relations with the central-plain culture. It explores the tomb wall paintings'own cultural features of various regions and their inter-relations, and constitutes a comprehensive research of three regions'tomb wall paintings on the basis of the above.The period between the 2nd and the 6th centuries A. D. was an important historical period in the Chinese history. During the historical period, as long as four centuries, there appeared many new historical and cultural phenomena, which were closely related to various factors such as centralization, unity to disintegration and back to unity, ethnic fusion, large-scale population migration, etc. These complicated historical phenomena were reflected in tomb wall paintings as well.The paper is composed of six chapters.Chapter One, the preface, defines the time and spatial scopes of the research, reviews the overall situations of the past researches, main contents of the research in the paper, research methods and expected results.Chapter Two makes typological analyses from the three aspects of tomb forms, funerary objects and tomb wall paintings of the unearthed wall paintings in the Liaodong region, and it renames some of the potteries with different names. On the basis of the typological analyses, it divides 31 wall paintings into five periods from the middle of the East Han Dynasty to the East Jin Dynasty, and probes into the wall paintings'features, their cultural characteristics and their historical backgrounds from one period to another. It points out that the varied distributions of the tomb wall paintings are closely related to the tomb form changes. It has a rather clear understanding of the ups and downs of the tomb wall paintings in the Liaodong region. With the central-plain dynasty's control over Liaodong decreasing, the Xianbei Murong Family in the Liaoxi region rising, and the complete decline of the Liaoyang region, the political, economic and cultural center started to shift toward the Liaoxi region. Correspondingly, we see the number of tomb wall paintings in Liaodong dwindle.Chapter Three reveals that there are comparatively fewer tomb wall paintings in the Three-Yan region in Liaoxi, but the contents and themes of the tomb wall paintings are still rich. The temporal relations to the tomb wall paintings in varied dynasties are rather simple. The tomb wall paintings in the Three Yans were the heritages of the Xianbei people and the Han people under the influence of the Xianbei culture. There are distinct integration features of multiple cultural factors in the tomb forms, funerary objects and tomb wall paintings. In terms of tomb forms, they show both the local traditions and the characteristics of the closeness of tombs in Liaoyang in the Wei and the Jin periods, obviously inheriting the traditions of the tomb wall paintings in Liaoyang in the Han, the Wei and the Jin dynasties. Among the funerary objects, there are typical articles used by northern nationalities and fairly advanced articles with marked Han culture. The wall paintings'themes have distinct features of their own, reflecting the livelihood of the nomads in the north, but, in the contents of the major wall paintings, we can still see that they had inherited the characteristics of the tomb wall paintings in the Han Dynasty, which reflected the slow reception of the Han culture by ethnic people in the frontiers. The close relationship to the tomb wall paintings in the Liaodong region in the Han, the Wei and the Jin dynasties demonstrates the link and fusion of the Han culture and the Xianbei culture. The Murong Xianbei migrated to Liaoxi in the 3rd century A. D., and lived there till 436 A. D., when the Beiyan Dynasty was wiped out by the Beiwei Dynasty. During the period of over 200 years, the Liaoxi region and the Yellow River Valley witnesses the coming and going of the five régimes of Qianyan, Houyan, Xiyan, Nanyan and Beiyan. Their jurisdictions covered the entire north and had significant influences in history. So, Liaoxi has large quantities of historical remains and relics of the"Three Yans", that is, Qianyan, Houyan and Beiyan. The tomb wall paintings from the above Three-Yan were created just in the historical period when China's northern regimes were busy replacing one another, coupled with intensifying cultural exchanges and national fusions.Chapter Four conducts researches phase by phase of the Koguryo tome wall paintings in terms of tome forms and structures, wall paintings'contents and patterns. The wall paintings'contents and patterns varied from one historical period to another. The contents of phase 1 wall paintings mainly focused on the tomb owners'real life with extensive themes and vivid pictures, including their household life, travel, hunting, etc. Meanwhile, there appeared on the caisson wells decorations of the sun, the moon and stars, together with female music performers and artists. Phase 2 mainly concentrated still on the tomb owners'real life, coupled with decorative picture patterns, but the decorative picture patterns were spreading into larger areas. Many pictures related to military such as knights on armored horses, seizing cities, etc. appeared at this time, reflecting the constant warfare of the Koguryo then. The right-hand wall paintings of the Changchuan No. 1 Tomb in phase 3 expressed various activities of the tomb owners before they died, with rich contents and diversified themes, richened by detailed carvings. In addition to a lot of lotuses, flying in heaven and lotus metaplasia, Buddha worshiping scenes and Bodhisattvas on both sides appeared for the first time, revealing the prevalence of Koguryo Buddhism. In this period, the images of the four gods became more and more prominent. Phase 4 witnessed the disappearance of the real life scenes found in the previous phases and the weakening of the decorative patterns. The wall paintings were mainly about the images of the four gods, in all the four surrounding walls. This chapter also discusses the development and evolution of the Koguryo tomb wall paintings, and the historical backgrounds for other cultural factors to come into being in the Koguryo tomb wall paintings.Chapter Five explores the relations between the northeastern region and the central-plain region and their surrounding areas in light of the tomb wall paintings between the 2nd and the 6th centuries. On one hand, it surveys the origins of the northeastern region's tomb wall paintings; on the other, it reviews the development trend of this region's tomb wall paintings. Because the wall-painting tombs, the picture stone tombs and image brick tombs in the Han Dynasty share similarities in contents and in artistic expressions, when we probe into the origins and development trends of the tomb wall paintings in the Liaodong region in the Han, the Wei and the Jin periods, we refer both to the wall paintings tombs in the central plain and its surrounding areas and to the picture stone tombs and image brick tombs in the Han Dynasty. Liaodong, as one of the Han culture distribution areas, had particularly close relations with the central plain. The tomb wall paintings'changes were linked to the political and economic changes of the central-plain region. The themes of the tomb wall paintings had inherited the characteristics of the tomb wall paintings in the Han Dynasty in Hebei, Henan, Shandong, etc. in the late Eastern Han period. However, the funerary objects excavated from the wall-painting tombs in the Liaodong region do not indicate any synchronized changes with those of the central plain.The tomb wall paintings in Liaodong in the Han, the Wei and the Jin dynasties lasted about 200 years in the region, and they exerted certain impact upon its surrounding areas. There are three impact-spreading directions during the course: the Three-Yan wall-painting tombs in Liaoxi, the wall-painting tombs in Koguryo, and the tomb wall paintings in the central plain in the Bei Dynasty.The tomb wall paintings'themes in Liaoxi and those in Liaodong shared many similarities, and they reflected their inheritance and development on the basis of the tomb wall paintings in Liaodong in the Han, the Wei and the Jin periods. Some of the themes originated from the tomb wall paintings in the central-plain region, from the picture stone tombs in the Han Dynasty and from the tomb wall paintings from the Hexi Corridor. So, the themes of the Three-Yan tomb wall paintings in Liaoxi showed the features of fusions of multiple cultural factors, in addition to the cultural elements found in the tomb wall paintings in Liaoyang in the Han, the Wei and the Jin periods. Besides, it can be confirmed that the features of the Three-Yan tomb wall paintings were very obvious themselves.During the development of the Three-Yan tomb wall paintings, they exerted certain amount of influence on the tomb wall paintings in their surrounding areas, and the most obvious ones were pictures about hunting.The Koguryo tomb wall paintings rose in the middle of and the late 4th century and maintained their flourishing development ever since till the middle of the 6th century. Most of the themes of the Koguryo tomb wall paintings had appeared in the tomb wall paintings in the central-plain region, Liaodong, Liaoxi, etc., while the themes of seizing cities, wrestling, dancing, and the wearing apparels and postures of human figures in the pictures demonstrated their ethnic features and the diversification of the Koguryo culture.The conclusion part summarizes the main ideas of the paper briefly.
|
PDF Full Text Request