The visual configurations of Buddha images are more than mere results of aesthetic decisions or inter-regional exchanges. As icons of worship, Buddha images must have also encapsualated and embodied people’s conceptions of the Buddha in the visual form. This article re-evaluates the development of the Buddhist artistic style from the fifth to the seventh century and reflects on the traditional narrative structure that locates the evolution of Chinese Buddhist art in the interaction and competition between two opposing influences: the Western and the Sinicizing influences. This paper argues that this traditional bi-polar model is inadequate for a full picture of the complex development of Chinese Buddhist artistic development and proposes to examine the emergence of the early Tang style from a conceptual perspective instead. It re-examines the early Tang statues in Chang’an and Luoyang, and clarifies the timeline of the early Tang style’s emergence and popularization. Analyzing in conjunction with developments in donative inscriptions, tales of miraculous images and relic worship, this paper argues that a significant conceptual change surrounding the notion of Buddha images had taken place in the last quarter of the seventh century. From being perceived as the manifestation of the dharma body in the Northern and Southern Dynasties, Buddha images began to be seen as possessing increasingly corporeal bodies. It was accompanying this conceptual change that the fleshy corporeal style of the Early Tang Buddhist art finally emerged triumphant.
