Ruixiang: 'Auspicious Images' at Dunhuang

Prof. Roderick Whitfield (SOAS)

The murals at the Mogao caves near Dunhuang, and most of the paintings on silk discovered in cave 17, are largely based on narratives and the ever-growing body of Buddhist sutras. One category of image, however, seen in various murals and in one very large painting on silk, represents a series of single Buddhist images, captioned as being in various places in India and Central Asia. The silk painting, now split between the National Museum, New Delhi and the British Museum, is the sole survivor of what may well have been multiple copies made in the Tang capital on the basis of drawings made by an artist accompanying Wang Xuance, a Chinese envoy, on his second journey to India in the mid-seventh century. The painting thus has potential to provide evidence of the iconography of certain Buddhist images in India at this time, as well as serving as a model for the mural paintings at Mogao of auspicious images of somewhat later dates.