于闐八大守護神=eight guardians protecting Khotan; 漢地天王造像=the son of Heaven statue in the Han areas; 西域服飾習俗=dressing style of the western regions; 末法=the decline of Buddhist doctrine; 漢化=Han-stylized
The 8 Buddhist guardians protecting Khotan on both sidewalls along the archway of the front cave remain what they used to appear over eight decades ago inside the Dunhuang cave in The Guiyijun(Uprising Army) period under the Zhang and Cao clans.They are individually depicted as the Kings of Heaven,Warriors and female gods.It has been found by a comparative research of them with the paintings of this kind from Chang’an,the western regions and other sources that both the Kings of Heaven with Vaisravana as their representative and those produced in Kaiyuan and Tianbao age share almost the same image,whereas a mixture of iconographic elements are reflected upon the warriors and the female gods as the result of multicultural factors for reference in creating them.The appearance of such images committed to the protection of the kingdom and Buddhism is linked to the worship of Khotan and the lack of description of Buddhist doctrine in Tibetan literature of Ri-Glang-ru lung-bstan-pa(Niu Jiao Shan Shou Ji) and Li-yul chos-kyi-lo-rgyul(Yutian Jiao Fa Shi),or somehow impacted by the social unrest across Khotan and the west regions before the ancient Tibet regime took it over.The Central Plains’ governance over Khotan in the early flourishing Tang dynasty may partly make the eight guardians protecting Khotan appear Hanstyled when the local people were increasingly aware of the Han culture and the Buddhism.
