Kizil Central Pillar Cave Image Composition,

Most systematic mural paintings of Kizil caves were drew in those Central-pillar caves. And in these caves, same paintings were always collocated in same place changelessly in according to their attribute. So we believe that the Central-pillar cave is representative when it comes to Buddhism art in Kizil. Lot's of researchers believe that those paintings and the structure, which was made by those paintings in the Central-pillar cave, reflected that the monks of the Sarvastivadins apotheosized Buddha Sakyamuni and Bodhisattva Maitreya. However in this paper, the Sarvastivadins's opinion of the worship of Maitreya was discussed firstly. By searching and analyzing those paragraphs located with Maitreya in the Sarvastivadins's sutra, we found that this Buddhism school stood in an opponent point of the worship of Maitreya. The finding made us to consider two different aspect of tradition viewpoint again. They were the attribute of the Buddhism school in Kizil and the iconography of Bodhisattva Maitreya in Kizil.When we researched the attribute of religion there,we emphasized the analysis of the reliability and the validity of those information beside collecting them. As a result, we affirmed still that Hinayana was popular in this area for a long time. In the other hand, we researched the icon of so-called Bodhisattva Maitreya in Kizil Central-pillar caves, which brought problems. I believed that the Bodhisattva is not Maitreya, but Sakyamuni. We found the precedent of his icon and we also provided evidence to say that this kind of icon was painted in Kizil caves. Hereby, we discussed newly the relationship between those paintings in Kizil Central-pillar caves and the symbolic meaning of them. And then, we found a new program to appreciate these mural paintings. After entering the Kizil Central-pillar cave, the audience firstly saluted Buddha statue in the niche in the frontispiece of the Central-pillar, and then appreciated the stories of Buddha Sakyamuni which started from the story of Bodhisattva Sakyamuni actually. Between the Buddha statue and the painting of Bodhisattva Sakyamuni, there were the top of the cave where the sky, the chain of mountains and the Jataka were painted. It seems that there was the same experience between reading a Sarvastivadin's Dirghagama-sutra and appreciating those paintings in Kizil Central-pillar caves. One cave was structured by a main room and a back room include two channels beside it. The theme of those mural paintings in back room was Nirvana, always. Some researchers believe that these pictures belong to the middle part of the whole appreciation program. But through our study of Sarvastivadin's philosophy, I thought that it was actually the end of the program. The relationship of those paintings in main room and them in back room showed us an idea of the Sarvastivadins that all things and existence in the world could be classed to Samskrta and Asamskrta. At last, we found that the designer of some caves showed that they are the adorers of Sakra-devanam-indra. It presented the monks's praise and the expectation for the support of their King.