Researches On Buddhist Relics Of Bohai State

In this paper,archaeological typology and cultural element analysis method are mainly employed to study the Buddhist buildings of Bohai State and Buddhist statues unearthed from the ruins of Bohai State,identify the published archaeological materials,and investigate the properties,ages and cultural elements of all kinds of remains.Besides,in combination with the historical documents,it reveals the overall condition of the Buddhist remains of Bohai State and restores the historical process of formation of the Buddhist material culture of Bohai State.This paper is divided into five parts.Chapter One serves as an introduction,which is composed of two sections:The first section clarifies the research object,purpose,method and significance of this paper.In the second section,the author comprehensively collected the relevant archaeological discovery and archaeological research results published in China,North Korea,South Korea,Russia and Japan.Firstly,an academic investigation was conducted on the discovery history of Buddhist remains in Bohai State,which can be classified into four periods.The features of each period are summarized.Then,the relevant researches by scholars of northeast Asian countries were studied,and the characteristics of the previous researches were summarized,and the problems were found out in the previous researches.Chapter Two contains three sections,with the Buddhist temple sites,pagoda sites and Sarira bury facilities as the main research objects.In the first section,the historical territory of Bohai State is divided into several regions according to its natural geographical location,and the archaeological discoveries of Buddhist architectural relics of Bohai State in each region are introduced.By interpreting the archaeological report and the unpublished internal materials obtained during the investigation,the writer arranged the archaeological information in the discoveries,identifies some sites with unclear age and properties.Furthermore,the writer discusses architectural structures and layouts of the remains on the basis of related research results.The second section first classifies the plane layout of Buddhist temples and types of Buddhist buildings in Bohai State,and then compares various types of relics with the forms of ancient architectures in the East Asia from the 4th century to the 10 th century.On this basis,a cultural element analysis is made.The third section summarizes the characteristics of the Buddhist buildings of Bohai State in terms of form,construction method and cultural elements.Chapter Three contains three sections,with the Buddhist statues unearthed in the ruins of Bohai State as the main research objects:The first section first makes a classification according to the statue material,and then classifies each category further.In the second section,firstly,the Buddhist statues unearthed in the ruins of Bohai State are classified into three groups by comparing them with statues in other regions of the East Asia from the late Northern Wei Dynasty to the Tang Dynasty,and based on this,the statue making ages are presumed.Secondly,through comparison,a cultural element analysis is made on the overall shape,local details and combination of statues.Based on the analysis results of the above two sections,the third section puts forward the point that there are two sources of Buddhist statues unearthed from the ruins of Bohai State: one source is statues of the previous dynasties,and the other source is the local statues made in the period of Bohai State.The characteristics of the statues are discussed from the aspects of shape,process and distribution of the statues.Chapter Four is Historical Background of Formation of the Buddhist Remains of Bohai State.Based on the research results of Chapter Two and Chapter Three,this chapter divides the Buddhist remains of Bohai State into two kinds of remains-remains “presenting distinctive cultural features of the Tang Dynasty” and remains “presenting features before Bohai State was established”.In accordance with the distribution of the two kinds of remains,this chapter puts forward the point that three central areas-Zhongjing Area,Shangjing Area and Dongjing Area ever appeared in the development process of Buddhist material culture of Bohai State.Then,in combination with the historical documents and relevant research results,this chapter discusses the historical process of the formation of Buddhist material culture of Bohai State from the perspective of the emergence and development of Buddhist material culture in the three central areas.Chapter Five is the concluding part.It summarizes the main academic understanding and academic breakthrough of this paper and also points up the limitations of this paper.