Dunhuang Art has preserved a precious part of the religious art exchange between the east and the west, as the ideals and the aesthetics did not merely manifest the religious doctrines, as well as depict all types of the content of the Buddhist Scriptures; however, more importantly, it utilized tangible motifs and forms to relay the original imagery to articulate history itself while most of the Buddhist holy statues seen in Dunhuang since Tang Dynasty have been manifested in the female forms which have grown to gradually overwhelm the imagery of other male-form Buddhist sacred figures. Such spiritual transcendence has given rise to various aesthetic standards and beauty ideals as time evolves through clear forms and expressive styles, culminating in a unique Chinese aesthetic that encompasses a sensible reflection of the universe and life itself. The stylistic art initially unsuitable for expressing purely abstract idealogy seemed only to leverage the same abstract “motif” imagery of Buddhist art to manifest the Buddhist doctrine. As this agenda spans over artistic styles and numerous aesthetics issues, this thesis attempts at analyzing the Dunhuang Cave murals of the Sui and Tang Dynasties, articulating the then artists’ stylistic impressions of thirty-three sacred figures of Guanyin and their lasting influences on the future generations, and seeks to study the reason how these timeless artistic expressions may perennially represent the concept of origin and transcendence in the Buddhism and the philosophical analysis? Through the analysis of aesthetics discourse and the contrasts amongst the different streams of the art in the representational forms of Avalokitesvara, this research seeks to study the imbued sacred imagery aesthetics and the agenda research on the aesthetics meanings they encompass, with a contrasting articulation of the aesthetics styles of the Sui and Tang Dynasties with the premise of understanding such an enormous Buddhist spiritual framework, in terms of its complexity and depth. The research theme of each chapter is outlined as follows: Chapter One, Introduction, is to outline research motivations, research methods, and scope definitions. The research method is an analysis of equal weighting of literature information and image analysis, based on the perspectives of various Buddhist Scripture systems and philology, complemented by the relevant history of the murals, and the artists’ styles, in carrying out an integral iconological study while exploring the phenomenal commentary of the artwork styles. Chapter Two, The Research of the Chinese religious culture, as seen from the tales of Paint the Buddhist classics in the frescoes, Buddhist idealogy has long been influenced by traditional Chinese culture and social environment, and to study the contexts of the generational changes of Buddhism in the Chinese social structure and the ideological background; hence, this chapter consists of “The Study of the Chinese Society” and “The Study of the personal background of Guanyin” which
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封面內頁 簽名頁 中文摘要 iii 英文摘要 v 誌謝…. viii 目錄…. ix 圖目錄 xi 表目錄 xxiv
