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莫高窟428窟萨垂那太子舍身饲虎图
According to Buddhist sutras, three princes of the King of India went hunting together in the mountains one day. They saw a hurted, hungry mother tiger with several cubs. Seeing this, the third prince 萨垂那 managed to sent away his elder brothers. While he himself lies in front of the mother tiger, trying to feed the tiger with his own flesh and blood. Still, the hungry tiger was already too weak to eat. 萨垂那 then climbs up the hill, stabs his body with the wood, and jumps off the cliff to let the mother tiger drink his blood. The mother tiger regains her strength with his blood, and then shares 萨垂那’s meat together with her cubs. When his elder brothers hurried back with their father, they only find the bones of 萨垂那. The prince who is willing to sacrifice his life to save lives of tigers is the previous life of 释迦牟尼.
莫高窟220窟阿弥陀经变
莫高窟220窟初唐壁画药师七佛经变
敦煌莫高窟23窟南壁 盛唐 法华经变见宝塔品虚空会
敦煌335窟初唐维摩经变
敦煌335窟初唐维摩经变
Some divide the picture into three columns, left, middle and right, with the middle representing the grand scene of the Buddhist world. The stories in the sutras were then divided and placed into two other columns, which is often the case in the 《东方药师经变》:
Some use the upper part of the middle to depict the World of Buddhism and intersperse Buddhist stories to all the other sections; the work《法华经变》 belongs to this kind of composition:
Artwork like《维摩诘经变》 has its special composition. The left and right parts of the picture are composed for two individual characters. These two parts then got interweaved and various other related plots were created:
Despite the differences in the structure and composition of these paintings, they all show the luxurious, joyful, pure, and peaceful scenes in the Buddhist world. Things are depicted as exactly the paradise people would yearn for. This is also the concept preached by the Sui and Tang dynasties: the concept of the perfect world as the afterlife waiting for people with “good behaviors” in this life.
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