A Study Of The Wall Paintings In Cave 29 Of Yulin Grottoes

Yulin cave No.29 is located on the north side of the eastern cliff of Tashi river,the location of this cave is relatively secluded,and was called secret temple(???).The sponsor of this cave is Zhao-mayu and his family who was the high level official of the military department of shazhou in western xia dynasty.This cave was constructed in the year of 24 of qianyou(??)period under rule of the emperor renxiao(??),and is the only one which has specific time of its era among the numerous caves of western xia dynasty.So,this cave has means with information of its age,wall paintings and styles.The nation of western xia believed in Buddhism,and the rayal of western xia support the development of Buddhism through ways of translate the Buddhist sutra and construct temples.The Western xia not only continued the old tradition of the caves of five dynasty and Song dynasty,it also learned the culture of Chinese,accepted the style of TibetanBuddhist art with pleasure,and finally formed their own Buddhist art of unique style.The paintings of this cave contains both traditional themes of dunhuang grottoes such as the illustration of Manjusri,Samantabhadra and pureland,and the themes from Esoteric Buddhism,such as Vajrapani and Acalanatha,there also appears the Moon and Water Avalokitesvara which is the popular theme in western xia.Through these paintings,we can learn that the feature of western xia Buddhism,that is both traditional themes and esoteric Buddhism theme are accepted by western xia,and both of the are very popular in western xia society.The style of the mountains in the sutra illustrations of this cave is different with those styles from traditional Chinese paintings.They shows us some relations with the wall paintings of eastern thousand Buddha caves and those paintings from Khara-Khoto,and implies the path of the Buddhist art communication and the ways the influenced each other.On the south wall of this cave,there painted the three generations of Zhao-mayu's family,contained 25 persons.Monks,nuns,man and women attendants,contained 21 persons.Among these people,there are state teacher,monks,nuns and military officer,nobles,noblewomen,children and attendants,contains the different roles of people in upper class of western xia society.There are abundant materials about costume style of western xia.Several people of the Zhao family is high level military officers,we can learn the condition of western xia controlled the west area of hexi corridor from the inscriptions of these donors.The figures of these donors reflect characteristic of tangut nation,the costume of the donors of different social states is totally different,shows the unique weatern xia style,all of these images is very important with its extremely value of historical and pictorial.The weatern xia dynasty founded the system of rayal preceptor,monks has sky-high status in western xia society.the image of the state teacher "xianbeizhihai" appeared in this cave,implied that the construction of this cave has unusual background and has special meanings in all of the western xia caves.