Meghan White

October 6, 2004

Chin 398 a

Professor Ye

Buddhist Influence on Chinese Calligraphy

   The origins of Buddhism throughout Asia can be traced back to India.  Its source in China can be found in the middle of the first century A.D, when it was introduced through trade routes, including the ‘Silk Road’.[1] It wasn’t until the beginning of the sixth century that the ideas and art that Buddhism brought increased in popularity.[2]  Buddhism brought new traditions in art, and it also brought new ideas that blended well with their circumstances and their own ideas in China.

Followers of Buddhism were taught to forget all of the misery and suffering of their world and to free themselves of all desire.  They were taught that at the point of death they, as individuals, would cease to exist in a great collective void, Nirvana, or would be reborn.[3]  It would only seem natural that this teaching would become widespread in a time of misery and turmoil.

   The fall of the Han Empire brought a period of chaos and disunity, and the teachings of Confucianism were not as relevant in the lives of the people of China at this time.  Individuals sought out other teachings to try to make sense and find balance in these tumultuous times, and it was during this period of political chaos that Buddhism became popular.  In the North, non-Chinese invaders, from the fourth century A.D. and on, often accepted Buddhism because it came from outside the Chinese culture and because Buddhist priests could be allies in making the masses more docile. The upper class Chinese who fled to the South found Buddhism as a partial answer for explanation and solace for their present situation.[4]  

   Up until the sixth century, the specific teaching of Buddhism available in China was a blend of Mahayana and Theravada Buddhism.[5]  The term ‘Mahayana’ means ‘greater vehicle,’ and it generally had a better reception due to its ability to absorb other ideas and beliefs, such as Taoism.  In Mahayana Buddhism, the Enlightened One, Buddha Sakyamuni, was a god, but he was only one of a long line of Buddhas.[6]  ‘Theravada,’ meaning ‘lesser vehicle,’ wasn’t as inclusive as Mahayana.  In this teaching, the Enlightened One was only a great sage who preached and then had become a Buddha.[7]

   After the sixth century, Buddhism went through a period of sinification.[8]  Mahayana Buddhism had succeeded in going through a series of changes to become Ch’an Buddhism.  The word ‘Ch’an’ was a Chinese translation of the Sanskrit word ‘Dhyana.  The teachings of Ch’an Buddhism include the concept that …”there is no Buddha save the Buddha that is in one’s own nature.  To seek Buddha outside oneself is useless.  Nothing can be gained by worship or ritual…by reading sacred texts, through monastic life dedicated to devotion. 

Only by meditation and thus coming to know one’s own nature can enlightenment be attained”.[9]   This newfound interest in Buddhism led to a strong influence in sculpture and painting and an indirect one through calligraphy, and Buddhism brought unknown ideas and styles to China.

   India’s own sculptural tradition was shaped by Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman influences; indirectly, China was influenced from these sources as well.[10]  Buddhism was originally imported with Indian icons of Buddha. These icons shaped the historical tradition of sculpture in China.  The period dating from 460 to 494 A.D. mark the early archaic phase of Chinese Buddhist sculpture.[11]  The sculptural tradition eventually unified into a single approach late in the sixth century.[12]  Early examples of Buddhist sculpture in China can be found in the cave temples near Yünkang.  This fifth-century site contains over twenty large caves that contain giant Buddhas.  The concept of temple-caves was also an Indian concept.[13]  It has been stated that the introduction of Buddhist sculpture became the foundation on which China began to develop its sculptural tradition.[14]

   Smaller caves dating back to the sixth century contain Buddhist frescoes and statues.[15]  In earlier caves, the representations of the Buddha in stone as well as in painting revealed a painfully flat and angular representation.  In later caves, however, the contours softened; the figures evolved from its bulky predecessors into slim and sloping figures.  The painting style had evolved into something more closely associated with the Chinese.[16]

   Up until the period of interest in Buddhism, the art of China was, in essence, narrative or symbolic.  After the introduction of Buddhist art, there came a demand for more spiritual art.  Therefore, paintings began to express deep and personal religious and spiritual feelings.[17] 

The period of influence of Buddhist painting is from the third to the sixth centuries.  The color black was usually emphasized within the work.  The strokes used were extremely simple in form but were an expression of the spirit of the work.[18]

Buddhism also brought with it the intense desire to feel a connection with nature, and Buddhist art also reflected that desire by focusing on nature for inspiration as well as subject matter in art.  To catch the ‘fleeting visions of identity and unity’ with nature, the painting has to be created in the shortest amount of time possible, and paintings of the Ch’an school were considered expressionistic.  There was an ‘instantaneous and intuitive perception’ within the rapid brushstrokes of these works.[19]

During the sixth century, there was widespread practice of writing Buddhist texts on cliff faces in the mountainous regions of the Northern Provinces.[20]  Most engravings consisted of two to four characters in huge proportion carved into the rock of the mountain.  Sometimes, lines of an appropriate poem regarding the viewer’s surroundings were carved as well.  These works were usually created by Buddhist monks in reference to the individual’s experience in nature at that specific place.  These rock carvings have weathered well and can still be seen by hikers.  Some Buddhist monasteries have a special book prepared for visitors who have seen the inscriptions and are expected to write about that experience. [21]

Monks brought Buddhist sacred texts and images back from India, and it was the duty of the monks to translate these texts from Sanskrit to Chinese.[22]  Professional calligraphers, though anonymous, were usually the ones who actually transcribed the texts.[23]  The Mahaparinirvana Sutra, also known as The Buddhist Sutra of the Great Demise, was created during the Sui Dynasty (581-618).  It was anonymously written on paper in handscroll format.  The scroll has been said to be the last words of the dying Buddha Sakyamuni, and it was translated into Chinese in the fourth century.  It is a perfect example of religious texts of the period because so few have survived the years, and this one is in surprisingly good condition because of a chemical treatment it endured in the past.[24] 

Another example of a Buddhist text is Epitaph for the Layman Wang.  It was an engraving created in 658 for the brick pagoda at Wang Kung’s burial site (584-656).  The epitaph was created by Shang-kuan Ling-chih but signed as Ching K’o, and he was thought to be the son of Shang-kuan.  The stone has been re-created several times, changing the style of the calligraphy, but the original stone’s rubbings show use of the Kai style.  The style of the calligrapher has been said to look incredibly similar to a previous calligrapher named Ch’u Sui-liang who is thought to have died the year the epitaph was created.[25]

The calligraphy is in the standard Kai style, preferred for religious texts because it was formal, legible, and precise.[26]  Kai style emerged around the third century A.D, and its use was in full height during the T’ang Dynasty.  There was an unyielding emphasis of copying traditional texts as models, and this inevitably left deep-seated influences of the great masters of the past in each generation of calligraphers.  There was even more emphasis put on the individual calligrapher to combine the early styles and traditions with their own personal interpretation, so there was variation in mature calligraphers’ works.  All in all, styles were preserved through the centuries with very little lasting variation.[27]

   Around 220 B.C, China’s first Emperor unified China and many of its systems, including a standardized written language, which at this time was the style of Lesser Chuan.[28]  By the third century A.D, the calligraphy style, in a more modern sense, was just beginning to fully develop and come into its own.  Many pieces of calligraphy and artwork have deteriorated, been lost, or have been deliberately destroyed as styles changed.  Therefore, very little can be seen of the style of earlier periods.

   Buddhism had been introduced and was thoroughly involved in art in a period when the walking and running styles of calligraphy were being developed.  It has been stated that the fundamental inspiration of calligraphy, as of all art in china, is nature.[29]  Buddhism’s strong emphasis on nature lends itself to the assumption that there was an amount of Buddhist ideological influence, along with other ideas, in the creation of these styles.  There were even instances when Buddhist monks used them.  The wandering monk Huai-su, who lived from the relative dates 735 to 799, worked in a style called “mad-cursive,” and he would display his works to elite audiences; he was celebrated by contemporary artists like Tu Fu and Li Po.[30]

   Buddhism’s popularity had reached its peak under the first emperors or the T’ang Dynasty, but by 845, there was a mass persecution of Buddhism that paralleled a rise in the interest in Confucianism.  Thousands of temples and monasteries were destroyed all over China.  A majority of the great paintings and sculptural monuments were also decimated.[31]  The influence of Ch’an Buddhism was not lost with the destruction, due to its reliance on the individual, not the organization. 

   The Buddhist tradition of religion, philosophy, and art of China were fundamental to the spread of Buddhism and Buddhist art to the countries surrounding China.  This is especially evident in the art of Korea and Japan, each owing its Buddhist artistic traditions mainly from China.[32]

   Buddhism has long become an integral part of Chinese culture, intertwined deeply at the heart of China itself, and it has, alongside with Taoism and Confucianism, been an idea that cannot be dissected cleanly from the culture.  The influence of these three sets of ideas cannot be evaluated easily because they are all so much a part of the culture in whole.  These ideas balance each other and complement each other, as can be seen in any given piece of artwork.  They have all existed together at any given time throughout much of Chinese history and will continue to influence future generations of philosophers, artists, and calligraphers.