Interview with Robert Jacobsen
Curator of Asian Art
1. Who is depicted in this sculpture?
This is a beautiful and monumental example in carved black limestone of the Goddess of Compassion, Kuan-Yin (pronunciation: "GWAHN-yin"—one of the Bodhisattvas that the Chinese were especially enamored of. She's standing on a double lotus pedestal.(1) The lotus is a flower used throughout Buddhism as a symbol of spiritual purity.
2. What was going on in China when this sculpture was made?
The Six Dynasties period, like its name suggests, was one of relative turmoil in terms of the rule of China. Various entities ruled China from different parts of the country throughout this period. Artistically, ceramics develop greatly in terms of celadon, but the most important new innovation would be that of monumental stone sculpture. Up until this time we haven't really seen the Chinese carve large-scale sculpture in stone at all.
3. What caused the Chinese to start working on this scale?
The importation of Buddhism from India during the Han Dynasty and its gradual acceptance by the populace of China—and in fact its extreme popularity during the Six Dynasties period—prompted large scale temple architecture to evolve, as well as sculpture.
4. How does this figure relate to Indian Buddhist sculptures?
It's dressed in fine silks, with many scarves trailing down off the arms and off the shoulders. This refers back to the Bodhisattvas' and Buddha's origin in ancient India. This is how the Chinese saw the Indian princes—those that the earliest Buddhist images in India were based on—as having dressed.
The gold and silver jewelry that's indicated here, falling like a cascading waterfall from the shoulders and all the way down to below the knees, is likewise somewhat foreign.(2) The Chinese would have seen this as something vaguely Indian or Central Asian because of the imported nature of this new religion—or philosophy as we would tend to see it.
This is a fairly round face, it seems to me, with elongated eyes, a small mouth, and a small, rounded chin that is gradually evolving away from the Indian prototype that virtually all of the sculptures began with. So we have garments that are somewhat Indianized or Central Asian-like in form, but the face itself is becoming increasingly Chinese.(3)
5. What does the inscription say?
It bears in its plinth a lengthy inscription, which dates it clearly to 571 A.D., the Northern Chou Dynasty—one of the several eras that make up the so-called Six Dynasties period. Besides its date, there are references to the village elders who gathered the money and commissioned this piece for this local temple, which was then located just north of today's Hsi-An in Shan-Hsi province.(4)