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| Silk Banner Paintings from the Library Cave of Dunhuang: Artistic Interactions Between the Tibetan Empire, Khotan, and Kashmir |
| Wang Ruilei |
| School of Art and Archaeology, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310028, China |
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Abstract Buddhist artifacts excavated in the Library Cave of Dunhuang constitute the best exemplars of the cultural diversity cultivated along the Silk Road. 10 surviving silk banner paintings from Dunhuang were taken away by Stein, now in preservation at the British Museum and the National Museum of India. These Dunhuang banners in Stein’s collection indicate a sharp contrast to other Dunhuang silk banners commissioned during the mid- to late-Tang Period, which received significant influence from traditional Chinese painting style. This stylistic contrast raises questions to the dynamic of artistic interactions between the Tibetan Empire, Khotan, Kashmir, and Swat region, as well as their integration and assimilation at Dunhuang.The British archaeologist Marc Aurel Stein was the first to examine this group of banners. He discovered stylistic similarity between the bodhisattva images in these banner paintings and illustrations in Nepalese manuscripts that are preserved at the University of Cambridge, attributing this style with an origin in the Eighth- to Ninth-Century eastern India. In the following decades, German scholar Gerd Gropp, Roderick Whitfield from SOAS, University of London, Italian Tibetologist Roberto Vitali, and Chinese scholar Xie Jisheng, have examined individual banners from the group, supporting the argument of Khotan and Tibetan influences. Later, Linda Lojda and Deborah Klimburg-Salter compared one of the banner paintings with the relief sculptures of the Tibetan Empire from western Himalaya, especially the main statue of 996 in the main hall of the Tabo Monastery, which is located in the valley of Spiti (historically the so-called “mNga’ ris skor gsum” region), present-day Himachal Pradesh, India. Their studies considered the banner to be the earliest representative of the Tibet-Himalayan artistic style, which had probably received influence from the Central Asian tradition. Scholars further dated this style to the Ninth Century.Previous scholarship deepened our understanding of the iconography, style, and chronology of this group of banner paintings. Yet rarely any discussions examined their significance in embodying the cultural interaction and diffusion taken place in the area in over two centuries from the westward expansion of the Tibetan Empire in 662, to the empire’s reign in the western regions over 200 years and its occupation of Dunhuang for almost 60 years. The present research reexamined the style and inscriptions found on this group of banners in view of the artistic influence exerted by Kashmir and Swat on Tibet and Khotan, as well as their continuous development in Dunhuang.A stylistic analysis reveals that silk banners in Stein’s collection date to the 9th Century, when cultural exchanges greatly developed during the Tibetan occupation of Dunhuang and the greater Central Asia. Tibetan artists migrated to Dunhuang assimilated Pala art of East India, which gained particular popularity in bronze statue making at Kashmir and Swat, into the local Dunhuang tradition.
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Received: 27 April 2022
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2023, Vol. 53 
