The Style Of The Northern Wei Dynasty To The Sui Dynasty Guanzhong Region Monuments, Statues And S

Stone Steles is a special religious artistic works carved with images, closely related with painting, sculpture, architecture, calligraphy. The content of steles is conveyed primarily through inscriptions, which are also valued as literary and calligraphic works. Buddhist steles stood as emblems of the communities’religious, social, cultural, and territorial identities. Steles were popularly used in the north to express the fervent religious faith embraced by different social and ethnic groups. In other words , the Chinese steles became the monument of people during the last century.The dissertation is a multi-disciplines research of archaeology, iconology and iconography. It mainly focus on the periods and the undated steles from the Northern Wei to Sui Dynasty.In Guanzhong Plain in Shaanxi Province have preserved more than three hundred steles which dated to the Northern Wei and Tang Dynasties(ca.386-618A.D.)Chapter 2 investigated the stone steles In Guanzhong Plain in Shaanxi Province. By a close examination of their inscriptions and images, the dissertation explain and interpret the dated works which discovered in Xi’an, Fu Ping,Changwu , Yaoxian.The third chapter aims to discussed the period of the steles. All those steles can be divided into three periods: the periods of the initial (c. 386-511),named Yungang period(Yungang style); the second periods(c.512-556), named Longmen period(Longmen style); and followed the third periods (c.557-618), named Bentu period(Shaanxi style). Each periods also divided into two or five phases, and concluded the features of art style.On the basis of that, Chapter 4 discussed the age of some undated works which have no inscriptions on it.