An Exploration On Reasons Of Stone Sculptures’ Prevalence In Northen Dynasty

In Chinese history, the Southen and Northen Dynasties were aturbulent period in which states were often at war with each other,emperors were changed frequently and people suffered more misery.But it was a time for the booming of art at that period. The mostremarkable was stone sculptures in Northen Dynasty. Because of thelongest history of Northen Wei, it was also called stone sculptures inWei which was a general term for stone sculptures at that time. InNorthen Dynasty, stone sculptures had become a common practice.Generally, it can be divided into four types: sculptures on monument,epigraph, inscriptions and Moya Cliff carving.It prevailed in 439 BC when the emperor Xiao in Norten Dynastyremoved the capital to Luoyang and promoted some“Chinesize”policy. The most inportant in his revolution was advocating to writeChinese characters. He was addicted to handwriting, establishedstone sculptures widely and suggested people to note importantthings with stone sculptures, which resulted in some handwritingworks of sculptures left in people. From above explaination, we canknow that there was wide handwriting basis. Regardless ofhandwriters in people or imperical palace, they all admitted theposition of handwriting. In Northen Dynasty, emperors paidattention to be buried with most valuable things so more stone sculptures were established. Buddism was also popular at that timeand the emperor Xiao showed more encouragement to establishingstone sculptures. Therefore, the buddist temples can be seeneverywhere and epigraph were numorous. Meanwhile, it promotedthe upsurge of inscription and Moya Cliff carving. The tendency ofstone sculpture was becoming increasingly fierce. The types ofstone sculptures existed are various. Only in Longmen Gottoes,there are thousands of inscriptures while in north the number isless.Most works on stone sculptures in Northen Dynasy consistedthe huge system of stone scriptures. Undoutedly, it was anenormous treasure house in the history of handwriting. However, itsartistic value were not emphasized until Qing Dynasty. Theadvocation of“cards in south and sculptures in north”by Ruan Yuanaroused widely concern and echoed by other scholars such as BaoShicheng, Kang Youwei, etc.In China, the current researches on handwriting in NorthenDynastymainly focused on the artistic styles, and less attention waspaid to the reasons for its prevaling, which contributed lessabundant knoweledgement on the formation of the style. This paperset the reasons on the prevaling of stone sculptures in NorthenDynasty, further explored numerous works of stone sculptures andanalysized its formational reasons as well as evolution from manyfactors such as political policy, social environment, handwritingbasis, influences of religion, etc. Based on the researches abovementioned, the paper aimed at recognizing the formation of itshandwriting styles and making people further know the art of stone sculptures in Northen Dynasty, in order to arise new concerns on itand fully recognize its values.