From Niya, A Wood Carving Board To See The Cultural Exchange Between China And The West

Two pictures respectively called "man leading elephant" and "divine monster with wings" were found on one sculputre on a wooden doorleaf in Niya ruins, these contain abundant information on intercultural communicate. However, few academic attentions was paid on the topics of sacrificing elephant and divine monster with wings, not mention the research from the view of art, so this thesis will try to make this field up and give the topics a classification and discussion.The first part tries to place Niya into the civilization of south Xinjiang oasis, and presents both nature and humanity environment of Niya in Wei Jin period. Based on these backgrounds, the judgment on the style of Gandhara will be given by analysis of art traits of wood carving.By the classification of the relative materials, the second part shows the governing preference on "sacrificing elephant", and its religious symbol connotation and influence. Two classes will be given to "elephent" in the thesis: the actual "elephant" and the symbolic "elephant". Correspondingly, besides the actual geography route of send elephant as sacrifice, the image of elephant was a kind of religion symbol in the Buddhism and was accepted by people who were greatly influenced by the Buddhism, and they made it symbolized and sanctified, which also made an ideological route, and this route was almost the same with the route of the introduction of Buddhism to China.The third part focuses on the topic of "divine monster with wings", and makes a searching on "divine monster with wings" in our Country. Based on these discussions, we can define the picture of divine monster found in that wooden doorleaf on its name and traits, and discuss the communication between east and west on its reflections.As the conclusion part of this thesis, part four explains and reads two pictures by unifying them, which could show us the combination of reality and imagination, and the dependence of art and life of the whole piece, expresses the ancient Niya people's understanding and ability of creating the beauty, and also their containing attitude toward the cultures with heterogeneity.