The Makara in Early Chinese Buddhist Sculpture

In the early Buddhist cave temples made in the latter half of the fifth century a.d., during the Northern Wei dynasty, at Yim-kang, in the Shansi Province of North China, can be found several carvings of a curious creature connected with the arches over a seated Buddha figure. It occurs at either end of the arch, the end merging into the hinder part of the creature, which is left with two legs, a long neck, and head. The body is turned away from the arch so that the two creatures are back to back, one at each end of the arch. Examples can be seen in Dr. Sirén's Chinese Sculpture from the Fifth to the Fourteenth Century , plates 51, 55, 57, 59, 60, and 61, in Tokiwa Daijo and Sikeno Tadaishi's Buddhist Monuments in China , vol. ii, plates 22 (2), 27, 30 (2), and 40, and in Chavannes' Mission archèologique dans la Chine septentrionale , plates 255, 256, 262–8, 272, and 277. Its representation was thus of common occurrence but nobody seems to have ventured to identify the creature. It is true that Dr. Sirén, with reference to plate 60 mentioned above, described the two arches being supported by two hydras and again wrote of the hydra and phœnix-like birds which support the foils of the arches, but he goes no further than this vague description

Ancient history · Arch · Archaeology · Art · Art history · Buddhism · China · Gautama Buddha · nobody · Sculpture · Chinese history and philosophy · History · Japanese History and Culture

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