On The Uighur Buddhist Art In The Dunhuang Grottoes

The Uighur Buddhist art in the Dunhuang Grottoes refers to the remains of Buddhist art produced by Uighurs who utilized the original walls to repaint,revise and retrace the grottoes on the basis of the Dunhuang Grottoes in the past dynasties.The main form of Uighur Buddhist art is grotto murals which can be found in the caves of Mogao Grottoes,the Western Thousand Buddhas Cave and Yulin Grotto.Based on the development of Dunhuang Buddhist art during the Tang and Song dynasties,the Uighur Buddhist art in the Dunhuang Grottoes developed alongside the Buddhist art during Cao's Guiyijun regime in the early period.Applying the grotto mode since the mid-Tang Dynasty,the subject and content,decorative patterns,and painting techniques formed in the Tang,Song and Yuan Dynasties were used in paintings.The key period in the development of Dunhuang Uighur Buddhist art was the middle period,during which the artistic characteristics were formed.On the one hand,the convergence of Confucianism,Buddhism and Taoism accelerated the process of the popularization of Dunhuang Buddhism,and new appearing subjects were closely connected with the localization of Dunhuang Buddhist art.On the other hand,the interaction between the Shazhou and Xizhou Uighurs brought new forms and content into the Dunhuang Buddhist art,forging an art form similar to the Xizhou Uighur art but with cultural characteristics of the Dunhuang region.The art form of Uighur Buddhism was influenced by the Liao Dynasty in its interaction.Due to the impact of Tibetan Buddhism,the art form contained elements of esotericism.Later on,the Uighur Buddhist art also came to shape the development of Buddhist art of the Xixia and Yuan dynasties.During the aforementioned periods,Dunhuang Uighur donors' portraits,many of which were contained in the Dunhuang Grottes,epitomized the characteristics of its time and ethnic heritage.Of the numerous portraits,the Ganzhou Uighur Princess portrait reflects Uighurs' borrowing from China Central Plain Culture,and the arrangement order,position and drawing style of figures are uniquely significant.The portraits of the Shazhou Uighur emperor and Qatun reflect different statuses and ways of offering,revealing the development of Uighur people's offerings to the grottoes.Judging from these donors' portraits,the development of Shazhou Uighur art was never completely separated from the influence of Dunhuang local culture and Xizhou Uighurs.The configuration of the frescoes in the Dunhuang Grottoes revised by the Uighurs embodies certain regularity and stylized features.The mouths of corridors were generally drawn with subject matters with connecting functions to open the way into the pure land space.The front and the main chambers were mainly painted with images of the sayings of the Pure Land,the sayings of the Three Meetings of Maitreya,the Initial Dissemination of the Dharma and so on.Among them,the statue of the Pharmacist Buddha and the scene that the Pharmacist Buddha paints scriptures into drawings were the main painting content,reflecting Uighurs' reliance on Buddhist belief based on their own requirements.They reconstructed the religious belief mode,forming a spatial layout of multiple pure land beliefs.The Dunhuang Uighur Pure Land art,with the Pure Land as its theme,was mostly expressed with images of Pure Land sayings in a simple composition.The portraits of the Maitreya's and Amitabha's sayings as the content interacted with each other,which was the common feature of most images.In addition,influenced by the Revival of Buddhism in the Northern Song Dynasty,there appeared images like the Maitreya holding a fan,the Rutong bunsen,a palmer seizing a tiger,Arhat,the Thousand-Armed and Thousand-Eyed Guanyin and the Guanin in white in the Uighur Buddhist art of the Dunhuang Grottoes.These images fully reflect that the Uighur belief went through a long-term internal accumulation and the learning and development of other Buddhist sects flourished in China's Central Plain,such as the Pure Land,Hua Yan,Fa Hua,the consciousness-only,Prajna,Zen,etc.Therefore,the artistic images produced in this process were logically arranged in a certain unity,as shown in the configuration of the entire grotto.In sum,the development of the Uighur Buddhist art in the Dunhuang Grottoes demonstrated that the Uighurs continuously absorbed and integrated different cultures with an open mind while maintaining consistently distinctive artistic characteristics of their own culture.The artistic style presented in them showed the integration of Han Chinese culture while highlighting an exotic feature;altogether it succeeded in infusing a new life into the development of Dunhuang grottoes art in the later period.