善財童子五十三參=Sudhanakumāra’s pilgrimage; 明清版畫=Engraving illustrations of Ming and Qing Dynasties; 嬰戲圖=Ancient Chinese paintings of children playing; 高士圖=playing, paintings of lofty scholars; 經變畫=Buddhist sutra illustrations
Sudhanakumāra’s visits to fifty-three great teachers is the core part in the Chapter on Entry into the realm of reality of the Avatamsaka Sūtra. With Sudhanakumāra becoming a representative example for later spiritual seekers, people gradually from Tang Dynasty began to illustrate the sutra in different ways to propagate the importance of spiritual pilgrimage. During the Song Dynasty, independent and complete illustrations on Sudhanakumāra’s visits to the fifty-three great teachers were developed, stimulating scholars’ interest in their iconographical analysis.However, previous studies emphasized more on decoding the content or the composition in the mural painting. Few studies were done based on the original draft, which is a very important reference for completing a mural painting. This paper focuses its study on the illustrations made by Ming-Qing lay Buddhist GuYun in the book Illustration and Verse on Sudhanakumāra’s Visits toFifty-three Great Teachers. Various characteristics of Chinese painting, engraving arts as well as Buddhist art style are considered in the five categories of the mages, which are the engraving illustrations from Ming and Qing Dynasties, children playing in ancient Chinese paintings, paintings of lofty scholars, sutra and panorama illustrations as well as Chinese boundary painting. Other compositional techniques are integrated into the styles mentioned above. The interpretative study of the illustrations is based on the understanding of sutra and compositional analysis used in the book. In addition, Erwin Panofsky’s iconological method of analysis is used to nterpret the meaning of the artwork from the point of view of art style, social and cultural background in consideration of the content in the sutra. It is found that the illustrator remodeled the sacredness of Buddhist teachings .The inconceivable state of non-obstruction in the the Avatamsaka Sūtra is presented by drawings combining the traditional art schema with the trend of that era.
