Research On Donor Paintings In Bezeklik Grottoes During Uighur Period

Donors refer to the benefactors believing in Buddhism,excavating grottoes and painting murals.In order to express own devout heart and show merits and virtues,donors asked painters to paint or carve their appearances on the corners of artistic works in Buddhism grottoes.Originating from real life,donors' images,clothes and headlines reflect the characteristics of the times and nation.In murals of Bezeklik Grottoes in Turpan during Uighur Period,there are many donor paintings typically represented by royal families,secular followers,Sangha and Buddhist monks.This paper mainly researches the former two types.This paper firstly sorts out the researches on domestic and foreign literature involving donors,discusses the historical reasons why Uighur people migrated to Gaochang,the original Buddhist holy land.Uighur people fully believed in and carried forward Buddhism after westward migration,excavated new grottoes,expanded the original caves and painted the murals in Uighur style.Based on this,a field investigation of Bezeklik Grottoes was made including the shape,structure,size and specific location of grottoes and mural content;thirdly,after the field investigation,this paper objectively describes the paintings of secular donors including the specific location of these paintings in grottoes and characteristics of artistic images,classifies the clothing styles and crown types of Uighur males and females and explains the main crown types of petal-shaped crown,y-shaped crown and fan-shaped crown.Peach-shaped crowns and flower bud crowns of Uighur females originated from the crown styles during the period of believing in Manichean;fourthly,this paper interprets the paintings of Uighur people in historical documents from the perspective of archaeology and history by combining with the characteristics of specific donor paintings in murals,divides the times of building grottoes and painting murals into the initial stage of Uighur Westward Migration(from the middle of the 9th Century to the 10 th Century),the medium stage of Uighur WestwardMigration(from the 11 th Century to 12 th Century)and the last stage of Uighur Westward Migration(the 13 th Century).Meanwhile,this paper discusses the situation that donor paintings were repainted in the grottoes for satisfying belief demands despite the failure to excavate new grottoes due to weakened forces in the later period of Gaochang Uighur by taking the 9th and 18 th grottoes as examples and supplements the fact ignored by previous scholars that Uighur people repainted donor portraits during the period of Mongolia Yuan.According tothe situation that donors wore Mongolian clothing in paintings,the fact that Uighur people surrendered to Mongolia is explained;finally,this paper sets forth the local cultural factors influencing donor paintings and diverse cultural characteristics reflected by donor paintings.The application of lines and colors in donor paintings enlightens the creation of contemporary Xinjiang figure paintings.