A Research On The Stele With Religious Images Of Northern Dynasties In The Guan Zhong Area

The stele with religious images was erected widely in NorthernChina in the 5th and 6th century as a special form of religion worship. During the pastcenturies, scholars have made considerable efforts studying the interaction of the steleand Buddhist art while to the relations between the stele, a kind of unique religious artin China, and the traditional religious art, which will be the focus of this paper, werein fact paid very little attention.The paper roughly consists of four parts. In the first part, by observing the steleserected in Guan Zhong during the period of Northern Dynasties, the writer points outthat these steles shared some similarities with Shi Que (a kind of Chinese traditionalreligious architecture) in terms of form and function. Both of them were molded bypeople according to their imagination and longing for the heaven where they prayedto go with those loved after the death. In particular, the stone carvings on these stelesshowing distinct imitation and adoption of the stone painting perished in Han Dynastycorresponds wonderfully to Chinese traditional thinking about religion, such as,immortality and ancestral worship ect.In the second part of the paper, a careful research and interpretation of sometypical pictures carved on the Buddhist and Taoist steles in the Guan Zhong areacontributes a lot to the writer's belief that it is the earlier mythical legends from whichthe Buddhist and Taoist drew inspirations to create a large number of stone carvingsembodied with the immortal and celestial ideas. Thus, there is no doubt that from thevery beginning, the stele art was influenced strongly by Chinese traditional religiousart and such influence further promoted to form the general style of steles in GuanZhong which was featured by worldliness and Chinese tradition.Several paragraphs of part three are written to illustrate the carvings describingHell on the steles erected by Lei family and compare these carvings with those on the early steles. By doing so, the writer presents that the art of religious stele, intertwinedwith folk belief and religious ideas, should be regarded as a certain kind of folk artdue to its obvious worldliness.Guided by the cultural exchange and mixing of China and the Western Regions,in the last part, the writer focuses his attention on the comparisons among sometypical stone carvings in the steles. As the result of combining the local art and foreignBuddhist art, Chinese stele art was bound to show a marked mixture of Chineseculture and the Western Regions. Consequently, the writer argues that becauseBuddhist art was introduced together with its culture into China from the Mid-Asiaand Western Regions, the stele with Buddhist images must become the representationof diversified cultures.