The four major events in Śākyamuni’s life—his birth, attaining enlightenment, preaching of the dharma, and nirvana (death), also called the “four aspects of the Buddha’s life” (sixiang chengdao 四相成道), are frequent subjects in Indian and Central Asian Buddhist images. However, in China during the Northern Wei dynasty, depictions of Buddha’s life more often took as their main subjects his birth, with all its auspicious signs; the relative absence of nirvana images is obvious. Although most of the nirvana images in cave art are paired with preaching images, they still rarely appear. For example, in the Dunhuang caves the earliest nirvana image dates back only to the Northern Zhou dynasty, even though the discourse on the Buddha’s attainment of nirvana as described in the sutras was having a deep, lasting effect on Buddhist doctrine throughout the Northern Dynasties period, and the relevant ideas frequently appear in the inscriptions on these images. How can we explain this phenomenon? Next, this article will consider the structural issues of Buddhist images. The nirvana images became separate from the Buddha’s biography and appear together with images of Maitreya and tales of Buddha’s life. Later on, they are more frequently connected with images of the contemplating bodhisattva and of meditation, sometimes in combination with Śākyamuni and Prabhūtaratna, the two Buddhas of The Lotus Sutra (Fahua jing 法華經)—a phenomenon that is worth investigating in greater depth.
