The Sui Dynasty’s Becoming Immortal Images Of Line Carved Sarcophagus In Tong-guan Mural Tomb

The mural tomb of Tong-guan in Shanxi Province is considered to be the best preserved and the highest level of Sui Dynasty tombs unearthed so far, but this important tomb hasn’t been fully studied. The delicately line carved sarcophagus from this tomb is in gigantic size and diverse colors and various image types of becoming immortal, such as, auspicious image, the four supernatural beings, guard image, celestial beings and so on. This mural tomb not only inherited the traditional structure forms and image systems of sarcophaguses in Wei-Jin Dynasty, but also add many new contents, which assembles the characteristics of almost all types of sarcophaguses before Sui Dynasty. After this sarcophagus, the line carved images on sarcophaguses start to focus more on realistic life other than the world after death. So the contents of Tong-guan sarcophagus works as an important role of this image change. This paper intends to analyse the contents of the becoming immortal images on this tomb, though which hope to understand former sarcophaguses of Wei-Jin Dynasty clearly. Meanwhile the paper also try to make a summary of sarcophaguses images before and during Wei-Jin Dynasty, and provide more possible explainations.