A Preliminary Study On The Regional Characteristic And The Intrinsic Reasons About The Chinese Early Buddhist Images

Buddhism came into being circa the 6 century B.C. in India, which was widespread in the 3 century middles B.C. , and spread to our country from Eastern Han Dynasty. The Buddhist images developed around the centuries of A.D., which were accepted and absorded nearly in China to the 2 centuries. The Chinese early Buddhist images have the extremely special successional variation, as well as displayed certain localization. This article first carries on the brief review to the early researches, and elaborates the production and insufficiencies on the researches of these images. Then this article introduces the distribution and the manifestation of the Chinese early Buddhist images briefly, and explicates the discovery on the different regions. Several kinds of utensils ornamented with the Buddhist images have observed by archaeology method, and have analyzed similarities and differences to the early Buddhist images on the different type of utensils. In this foundation, we have induced the specialties of the early Buddhist images on different area. According to the specialties, we have divided them into four areas: the northern area, the southwestern area, the middle area and the lower reaches of the Yangtze River. Finally we try to explain why the [e1] regional specialties was produced on the early images of Buddha and discuss the influence on social structure, ideology, religious belief and etc. Through the study of this article we can understand that the early Buddhist images spreaded to inland of China with Buddhism spreading. Buddhism disseminated gradually in four ranges. The early Buddhist images in these four ranges had the commonness, as well as the regional characteristics mainly represented on the difference of the utensils and form of Buddha.The reasons of inducing regional characteristic on the Chinese early Buddhist images were various. From the way accepted, the cult, the route and the movement of Buddhism we realized that the early Buddhism had been expanding own influence unceasingly from the Eastern Han Dynasty to the Western Jin Dynasty, and had been extricating gradually from attaching to the traditional culture. Then Buddhism appeared the pure land thought to the Western Jin Dynasty, the Buddhist images had the significance of apotheosis primarily.