Buddha King Patron: Nan Zhao King Statues Study

"Divine right of kings" is often used to describe the relationship between the ancient emperors and religion which is also reflected in the production of ancient art. In many Buddhist murals in grotto in the Tang and Song Dynasties, we can see ceremony-Buddhist image of emperors with believers, the emperors'image in the paintings of Buddhist Sutra, temple murals of Taoist, ancient emperors in the sculptures, and there was also a phenomenon that king and the emperor were considered as the protector in folk religion. Large number of facts and research concluded that the establishment of each dynasty was usually accompanied with religious activities. Together with some local religious, Buddhist was popular when many ancient minority regimes were established when the rulers had both divine right and political power.There were two minority regimes established in the history of Today's Dali Bai People Autonomous Prefecture, one is Nan Zhao, the following one is Dali. Nan Zhao and Dali Kingdom in the same era of the Tang and Song dynasties, so the first chapter briefly discussed the polices to the southwest's minority in Tang and Song and the situation of national artistic exchange, the tradition of emperor image production in Tang and Song Dynasties and the impact to emperor production from dynasty replacement, which can pave the way for the later discussion of Nan Zhao King statues.In ChapterⅡ, the author use the literature and iconography method to do artistic analysis about Nan Zhao King statues in Dali kingdom, and by studying the historical records, discussed reasons why the ruler made the emperors and its function and modeling features and analyzed the view of history reflected by the molding behavior.From Nan Zhao, Dali kingdom to Bai Autonomous Prefecture of Dali in the present, there were Yuan Dynasty, Ming and Qing Dynasty and the New China period, so the deficiency and weakness of this research are the damage of historical documents, but belief of Bai People, legends and craft has continued down. Besides studying existing images, anthropology and ethnology have a experience that is to use the fieldwork method to get clues from the current behavior and speaking of residents and artists. Therefore, the third chapter of this article will study how the king image of Nan Zhao become more and more magical, in fact, this process reflects the view of history in folk and provided a model text for the king image production in folk.There was no ruler after Dali regime was eliminated and absorbed into the central government map by Yuan Dynasty, after that the producing of king of Nan Zhao was mainly in folk. The fourth Chapter will use literature and fieldwork materials to study how the king image become simplified and classical in folk. Content includes an overview and current situation of Dali king beliefs in folk, the king statues and sacrifice, artists'sculpture, and the villagers'sacrifice activity.Through the discussion of first four chapters, the fifth chapter explained King image of Nan Zhao and its evolution in multi-context, and answer the questions in the article:first, by analyzing etymology of "King" combined with historical records, this article has discussed how secular regime participate in the religious art making; second, Nan Zhao King image has same relationship with the draw of Central king, they are all related with the Offerings of faith beliefs; third, Nan Zhao King image embodies the national identity and the aesthetic psychology; Fourth, the distinction and confluence of court's art and folk. Finally, the article reflect national art research methods through this studyingNan Zhao had 13 kings, but not everyone was recorded down in history as images, which apparently experienced historical selection and get magical, gradually and eventually formed a kind of classic style. By studying Nan Zhao King image and its changes, probing its historical background, we can clearly see the relationship between ancient Nan Zhao art, religion and politics. The important content is analyze the king image remodeled by following generations.