A Study In The Pictures Of The Ten Kings From Ningbo In The Collections Of Japan

The Pictures of the Ten Kings in this study, created in Chinese port-city Ningbo during the Song-Yuan period and transported to Japan and Korea,consist of twenty-three sets, more than one hundred and eighty individual paintings. Most of them are found in Buddhist temples, museums and galleries in Japan, and a few, in Western museums.With the development of the "meditation forests of five mountains," the belief in the Ten Kings in the Jiang-Zhe region became very popular in the Southern Song period. Under the influence of the Zhan (meditation) sect, the belief in the Ten Kings flourished as a part of the belief in the Pure Land and caused the large-scale production and popularity of the Pictures of the Ten Kings with local visual features in Ningbo. These distinguished Pictures of the Ten Kings spread to other East Asian countries as the international trade by sea expanded.Although it is rare to see any Pictures of the Ten Kings made in ancient Ningbo in China now, there are still many such paintings remaining in Japanese and Western museums. These Ningbo paintings of the Ten Kings are important evidence for us to study art history of the Song and Yuan dynasties. With a focus on the Pictures of the Ten Kings created by Ningbo artists Lu Xinzhong and Lu Zhongyuan, now in the collection of Nara Museum, this dissertation compares the Ningbo paintings with the silk paintings of the Pictures of the Ten Kings from Dunhuang, made in the Five Dynasties and Song, and the stone carvings of Dizang, the Ten Buddhas. the Ten Kings, and the Hell at Baodingshan in Dazu during the Chunxi and Chunyou eras of the Southern Song period and identifies the differences between the belief in the Ten Kings in Ningbo and what we see in Dunhuang and Sichuan.In terms of numbers in a set and composition, the Pictures of the Ten Kings at Dunhuang all use a single format composition to show the Ten Kings. Meanwhile, the images ol Yama King and the Wheel-Turning King of Five Paths distinguish themselves from the others. The depictions of the Ten Kings in Sichuan follow the old tradition established atDunhuang. Their visual features are in accordance with the relevant textual descriptions in the Sutra of YanluowangShouji. Although the Ten Kings shown in Dazu stone carvings continued the Dunhuang tradition, they added some local features popular in the Song dynasty such as "large sleeves through shoulder" and "floral crown" and local folklore content on costume.The Pictures of the Ten Kings from Ningbo are different from what we see at Dunhuang and Dazu. They follow the rules of "Even-odd pairs" and "individual representation of each king." Thecomposition, inscription, human figure, and patron in the Ningbo Pictures of the Ten Kings all have their own characteristics.Comparing the Pictures of the Ten Kings created in various regions, we see the connections and differences between the products from Ningbo, Dunhuang and Sichuan. In the Southern Song period, there were still communications between Dunhuang and Sichuan as evidenced in the similarities between the inscriptions in the Ten Kings carvings at Baodingshan, Dazu, and the Dunhuang version of the Sutra of the Ten Kings. It is possible that the traveling monks were active between Dunhuang and Sichuan in the period and the Buddhist temples of the two places might have exchanging relationships. The local belief in the Ten Kings at Ningbo emphasizes the "living seven pre-death practice" and "rescuing the dead soul." The Pictures of the Ten Kings from Ningbo pay a great attention to the explanation of the Pure Land from the perspective of the belief in the Ten Kings, which is similar to the composition of the Halls of the Ten Kings in the Shuanglin Monastery, Shanxi province. They both inherited the old "Zhao Mu" ancestral worship tradition and differ from the iconographic system of Sichuan and Dunhuang. The Ningbo composition of the Ten Kings paintings was perhaps designed to serve the Dharma space that required a higher level of ritual performance.By cross-examining the Pictures of the Ten Kings from Ningbo, Dunhuang and Sichuan, we see the unique visual features of the Ningbo pictures in their composition, arrangement, figure design, and detail depiction, as well as in their actual use in a ritual space. The changing process from the late Five Dynasties and the early Song to the late Song and early Yuan periods suggests the mixture of Daoist and Confucian thoughts with Buddhism after the shift of the Song court from the north to the south and reveals how the belief in the Ten Kings gained root in the ordinary people. It also explains why the belief in the Ten Kings continued to flourish in the social context of the great popularity of the Chen-Zhu theories of Li philosophical theories in the Song and how the influence of the Ten Kings belief spread to neighboring East Asian countries.