Study On Stone Carvings Of Water-land Palace Of Jindeng Temple In Pingshun,Shanxi

The Water-Land Puja is a religious ritual that was widely practiced in China during the Yuan,Ming and Qing dynasties.The purpose of the ritual is to invite many spirits to the puja by invoking deities from all walks of life in order to redeem the souls of the dead stranded between water and land.The water and land paintings are the necessary props used in this ritual.The Hall of Water and Land in the Golden Lamp Temple in Pingshun County,Shanxi,is a specially designed and built space for holding water and land puja activities.The walls of the temple are covered with images of the gods and Buddhas in the form of stone relief carvings.They are all related to the subject matter of water-land paintings.Among the known remains of water-land paintings,only one example of using the art form of stone relief carving to produce water-land paintings has been found here.The study of the stone carving art of Water-land Palace can broaden the scope of existing research on water and land painting and improve the system of water and land painting.Through fieldwork and comparison with literature,this paper examines the content of the typical images of deities and figures in the Ming dynasty water-land relief carvings of the Golden Lamp Temple and analyzes the patterns and connotations of the images,concluding that the many deities and figures carved in the temple are basically consistent with the invocation procedures of the Northern Water-Land Ritual,The Water-Land Ritual of Heaven and Earth and the Underworld,and are consistent with the "three major systems" of the ritual’s invocation of the rightful deities,the three realms of deities,and the orphaned souls of human nature.The design aspect of the overall image pursues the aesthetic standard of the law of symmetry and unity.The style of the image is consistent with the extant water and land scroll painting,which is a stone carving expression of scrolling water and land.The cultural connotation of the image is influenced by the ideological trend of the unification of the three religions during the Ming Dynasty,and contains the figures of the three deities of Confucianism,Buddhism and Taoism,who meet together to celebrate the water-landing event.In addition,the relief images also reflect the religious beliefs of the people and the traditional concepts of society.The stone carvings on the upper part of the door and window of the south wall,such as the return of the Tang monk from the scriptures,can also be identified after analysis as relevant patterns created specifically for the Water Land Puja.Together with the rest of the stone carvings in the temple,they serve for the water-land puja and are a whole system of water-land images.Buddhist beliefs had penetrated into all aspects of society during the Ming Dynasty.The water-land puja was the most popular Buddhist ritual at that time and contained many cultural messages of Ming society.The study of the water and land stone images in the Temple of Water and Land provides a deeper understanding of the cultural connotations of religious life and the ideology of civil society in the Ming Dynasty.