A Study On The Images Of The Original Stories In The Early Dunhuang Grottoe

Original karma story images are a collective term for narrative artworks,including the themes of Jataka,Buddha’s biography and stories of Buddha and his disciples in Buddhist culture,etc.This paper presents a systematic study of early Dunhuang original karma story images,focusing on the relationship between the images and the Buddhist scriptures,the characteristics and origins of the thematic images,and local originality factors,as well as new naming and interpretations of some images,additional examination of some controversial and important images.Original karma story images in the North Liang Dynasty Grottoes at Dunhuang are concentrated in Cave 275,in the image analysis of the Jataka story painting on the north wall,some new contents were identified,several previous misjudgments were clarified,and some of the damaged images were stitched together and restored with the help of archival images.The images of the Northern Wei Dynasty Original karma story are distributed in Caves 257,254,263 and 260 of the Mogao Grottoes.After identification,the original painting "Karma Story of an Evil Dog" in Cave 257 should be the image of "the story of Devadatta disrupting the Sangha".In Cave 254,the original painting on the south wall of "Karma Story of Nanda’s Initiation into Buddhism" can be interpreted as an image of the Buddha’s biography of "The Dharma of the Emperor’s Cave";The story of “vanquishing demons” on south wall has a strong paradigmatic significance,which influenced caves 263 and 260.The late Northern Wei Dynasty to Western Wei Dynasty images of original karma story are concentrated in Caves 431 and 285.The image of Buddha’s biography in Cave 431 has relevance to the “Sutra of the Twelve Journeys of Buddha”.In cave 285,the image at the east end of the south wall should be the beginning of Karma Story Painting of “a Sāma?era Committing Suicide for Abstinence”,and the new figures are identified in the picture of“Brahmin lay down his life to hear the Dharma”,making the picture more complete.35 images of original karma story from the Northern Zhou Dynasty are located in 11 caves,and this article re-labels the plots of 10 images;makes additional investigations of the key images of 19 paintings;names four new images;and completely interprets the Buddha’s biography painting of Cave 294 for the first time.Finally,this artcle discusses some problem,including the changing and fading of murals,the newly discovered color scheme marks for early murals,the internal transmission of model images,and the sectarian source of original karma story images,etc,in order to further deepen the study of Dunhuang’s original karma story images.