The Research On The Paintings Of Buddhist Gantong In The Dunhuang

In the wall-paintings in Dunhuang Grottoes, some contents are magical icons called "paintings of Buddhist historical events" by some scholars, but the name is inaccurate, the original names in Buddhism such as "Gantong"should be used.The paintings of buddhist Gantong in the Dunhuang of more than 100 kinds of subjects, composed of plenty of tales and images such as auspicious images, buddhist historic remains, magical monks, historical tales, etc. in ancient India, Khotan, Hexi, central and south parts of China.From Tibetan reign period to the period of the Return to Allegiance Army, various subjects of the paintings of buddhist Gantong often appear in groups in the caves. With times going, the groups’ position in the caves is different.Based on analyzing various subjects, we can divide into some grottos, some changes on form or composition of subjects sometimes also have certain political, religious or social significance. The paintings of Gantong stories in the late period of the Zhang’ Return to Allegiance Army serve as a link between past and future. Some pictures of auspicious images have the same figure, these general forms come from ancient Indian buddhist statues1.The words on the paintings of buddhist Gantong on the some manuscripts from the Hidden Library in Dunhuang should be transcribed from some caves, but on the same paper not only belong to one cave. These manuscripts may be study notes.Some subjects in the paintings of buddhist Gantong related to monks or envoies with traveling from China to western, such as Xuanzhuang and Wan Xuance. All kinds of Gantong stories were concentrated on works of Chinese ancient monks such as Daoxuan or "the Western Countries" written by the government of tang dynasty, it was a foundation that plenty of paintings were popular. The groups on paintings of Gantong stories in Cave No.231 of late Tibetan reign period is initial. The famous images about Khotan demonstrate the relatingship between Dunhuang and Khotan. Auspicious image in Liangzhou and the faith on Liu Sahe show locativity in Dunhuang in the period of the Return to Allegiance Army.