Pictorial representations of the Suddhana Jâtaka describe Sakyamuni's former life as Prince Suddhana, a life of dedication to religious observances and self-sacrifice. Material preserved today suggests that the representation of the Suddhana Jâtaka in Chinese Buddhist art was most popular during the Northern Wei (386-534) period, at the time of the move of the capital to Lo-yang. Representations of this kind were most common in the geographical area of present-day Honan, a fact that is closely related to the flourishing of Buddhist culture around the new capital.While Buddhist sutra's such as the P'u-sa pen-yüan Sutra, the Liu-tu chi Sutra, and the T'ai-tzu Hsü-ta-nu Sutra all contain versions of the story of the Suddhana Jâtaka, and may therefore to a certain extent have served as a textual basis for Northern Wei narrative wall-paintings, pictorial traditions transmitted from India and Central Asia still were the main source of inspiration for early Chinese representations of the story. Chinese representations of the Suddhana Jâtaka reveal restricting influences from Confucian ethic...
