The humanistic world in the murals of the Northern Song Dynasty at Gaoping Kaihua Temple
Shanxi Archives, No. 03, 2012, Pi Qingsheng
Abstract: The Song Dynasty murals of Gaoping Kaihua Temple in Shanxi Province are the largest remains of Tang and Song dynasty murals in the Central Plains, with high artistic, historical and cultural relics value. On the basis of summarizing the research of predecessors, this paper discusses the creation process, layout conception and connotation of the Song Dynasty murals of Kaihua Temple. This article believes that the murals of the temple were completed in two stages, and the creation of the west wall and the west side of the north wall in the later period was restricted by the Huayan warp transformation map of the east wall, and the symmetrical structure and the characteristics of the distinction between primary and secondary were very prominent. Compared with the previous murals, the murals of Kaihua Temple highlight the status of people and emphasize the sense of secular identity when dealing with human images and scenes, reflecting the humanistic style of Song Dynasty society.
Kaihua Temple is located in Gaoping City, Shanxi Province, 17 kilometers northeast of the city of Sheli Mountainside, the temple in the Northern Song Dynasty Daxiong Treasure Hall, murals, painted paintings are precious cultural relics, is the largest Tang and Song Dynasty murals in the Central Plains. According to the inscription, the temple was presided over by the high monk Dayu Zen Master during the Tang Zhaozong period (889-904), named Qingliang Temple, which was changed to Kaihua Temple in the eighth year of the Northern Song Dynasty (1030), and the murals painted in the Daxiong Treasure Hall were built around the sixth year of Xi Ning (1073), which is also a precious cultural relic. Since the 1970s, the academic community has paid more attention to the Song Dynasty architecture, murals and paintings of Kaihua Temple, and there have been some more solid research results, this paper intends to make a slight evaluation of the main content and research status of the murals of Kaihua Temple on the basis of prior research, and discuss the creation time, process and layout of the murals in combination with inscriptions and inscriptions, and then analyze the social life and humanistic style of the Northern Song Dynasty reflected in the changes in the murals.
1. Kaihua Temple murals and their research overview
The total area of the murals of Kaihua Temple is 88.68 square meters, except for the painted paintings on the surfaces of the arches, bucket arches, beams and columns of the Daxiong Treasure Hall, which are mainly distributed on the east, west and north walls of the main hall. According to the inscription, the content of the mural is "The eastern preamble is Known as Huayan, the Wall is known as Shangsheng, the Western Preamble is known as Reward, and the □ Wall is known as Guanyin." Mr. Chai Zejun combined the Buddha statues, characters, and storylines in the picture to examine the four Huayan Sutra transformation maps painted by the East Wall, and from the south onwards, the "Seven Places and Nine Meetings" of the Tushi TiangongHui (the Fifth Meeting), the Puguang Dharma Hall (the second meeting), the Re-meeting Puguang Dharma Hall (the Seventh Hui), and the Triple Puguang Fa Hall (the Eighth Hui). The murals on the existing east wall have become unclear, and some of them may have been repaid by later generations. The murals on the west side of the west wall and the north wall are a coherent whole, both belonging to the disguised form of the Bao'en Sutra and are the essence of the murals of Kaihua Temple. On the east side of the north wall are depicted Guanyin, guanyin bodhisattva festival and the thirty-nine bodies of men and women, and on the west side are Dharma diagrams, deer girl karma and Devadatta karma. The wall is the screen behind the altar in the center of the main hall, and the mural painted "Shangsheng" as a way to educate the world to love and care for sentient beings no longer exists.
In the 1970s, scholars have noticed the artistic and cultural relics value of the murals of Kaihua Temple, and the famous painter Pan Huzi once guided the "Shanxi Province Mural Copying Work Group to Japan" to study some of the murals at Kaihua Temple, and later he and American scholar Ding Mingyi selected eleven pictures in the murals and compiled them into the book "Kaihua Temple Song Dynasty Murals" (Cultural Relics Publishing House, 1983), and made a brief introduction to the content and artistic style of the murals. Subsequently, Jin Weinuo ("Shanxi Gaoping Kaihua Temple Mural", Hebei Fine Arts Publishing House, 2001), Pinfeng ("Gaoping Kaihua Temple Mural", Chongqing Publishing House, 2001) also selected and compiled some of the content to publish, although the printing is not very clear, but the number is more than Pan, Ding Ben, popularization and promotion is indispensable. Zhao Kuiyuan and Chang Silong edited the "Gaoping Kaihua Temple" (China Federation of Literature and Literature Publishing House, 2010) is a compilation of materials, after a brief introduction to the history, architecture, and mural characteristics of the Kaihua Temple, including the temple's related inscriptions, poems, as well as some research papers, mural stories, but the illustrations in the book are not clear enough, and the inscriptions have more typos, affecting its use value.
Liang Jihai, who made an earlier academic study of the murals of Kaihua Temple, put forward some preliminary views on the style and artistic achievements of the murals of Kaihua Temple, believing that the murals of Kaihua Temple, like the murals of temples in other parts of Shanxi, inherited and developed the tradition of murals in the Central Plains of the Tang and early Song Dynasties, and became their own style, which has been very different from the murals of the same period in Dunhuang, and has achieved diverse and unified success in the conception and composition of murals. He also combined the story of the Xibi Bao'en Jingjing with the society of the Song Dynasty, and believed that the murals made a more realistic description and reflection of some aspects of social life at that time (such as filial piety). [1] Through field investigation, Chai Zejun provided first-hand information on the preservation of the murals of Kaihua Temple, and made a systematic study of the painting, era, content, style and artistic achievements of the murals in combination with inscriptions, inscriptions and Buddhist scriptures, laying a solid foundation for later research. [2] He believes that "inheriting the fine tradition of the Tang and five dynasties of mural painting in the Central Plains, it has been creatively developed into a self-style, with obvious style and artistic characteristics of the times." On the basis of comprehensively combing the Song, Liao, Jin, and Yuan murals stored in Shanxi, he emphasized "the context and relationship between the development of the Tang, Song, Liao, Jin, and Yuan temple murals", which is slightly different from the Liang family. Xia Chun's "Looking at the Social Customs of the Song Dynasty from the Murals of Kaihua Temple" (New Visual Arts, No. 3, 2009), Zhang Yajie and Zhang Kangning's "Song Dynasty Murals of Kaihua Temple, Gaoping Temple, Shanxi" (Cultural Relics World, No. 2, 2011) are mainly a synthesis of the research results of Liang, Chai and others, Xia Chunshang intends to analyze the unique artistic style of Kaihua Temple in combination with the popular Buddhist thought of the Song Dynasty, and the works of Erzhang are mainly introductory.
Gu Dongfang's article "Interpretation of the Content of the Murals of the Northern Song Dynasty of Gaoping Kaihua Temple," (Journal of the Palace Museum, No. 2, 2009), on the basis of many field investigations, draws a large number of line maps, applies iconographic methods, explains in detail the content of the changing pictures of the West Wall and the West Side of the North Wall, and analyzes the ideological connotations and artistic styles contained in them. The greatest contribution of this article is that it examines the content of all the pictures of the Bao'en Jingchang, laying a solid foundation for further analysis of the layout of the murals and the characteristics of the times. The author believes that the choice of mural themes is related to the folk advocating filial piety in the late Northern Song Dynasty, and its artistic style has obvious regionality. Almost at the same time, Li Luke ("A Preliminary Study of Song-style Color Paintings in the Great Hall of Kaihua Temple in Gaoping, Shanxi", "Ancient Garden Technology", No. 3, 2008), Yang Hong ("Kaihua Temple Paintings", "Forbidden City", No. 11, 2008) respectively investigated and analyzed the color paintings in the arch eye wall and bucket arch of the Daxiong Baodian Hall of Kaihua Temple, and compared them with the records of "Building the French Style", Li Luke believed that the color paintings of the Kaihua Temple were generally consistent with those contained in the "Construction of the French Style" in terms of composition, color, and pattern. However, the color and pattern change too much, and there is a lack of order and a sense of wholeness. Yang Hong believes that "the matching of the large wooden paints of the Kaihua Temple is low, and the matching of the arch eye wall and the bucket arch paintings is high, which is exactly the opposite of what is described in the "Construction of the French Style". From the perspective of science and technology (structure and shape, functional characteristics, and mechanical principles), Xu Yanhong discusses the loom in the "Guan Weaving Map" of the Kaihua Temple mural, and the ancient ship in the "Chart of Entering the Sea and Seeking Pearls" (see Xu's book "Technical Achievements in the Shanxi Temple Mural in the Song and Yuan Dynasties", China Financial and Economic Publishing House, 2009), and believes that the ancient ship in the mural is a sea vessel of the Northern Song Dynasty, "its shape is pointed, square tail, pointed bottom, and single mast, which seems to be a lucky ship." ”
In general, the number of research results on the murals of Kaihua Temple is not much, which is more consistent with the current overall situation of the academic community's research on image data, and may also be related to the lack of data publication. Through field research and literature reading, scholars have combined the content of murals, artistic styles and social trends to analyze, forming some effective methods and solving some basic problems. However, when analyzing the connotation and artistic style of murals in combination with the society of the Song Dynasty, there is a suspicion of labeling, such as everyone found that the Bao'en Jing changed to promote filial piety, citing the phenomenon of self-harm and liver cutting in the historical materials of the Song Dynasty to argue the reasons or influences of its existence, in fact, such phenomena also existed in the Tang Dynasty, which could not explain the uniqueness of the Song Dynasty. Scholars have also paid attention to the inclusion of Kaihua Temple murals in the context of the evolution of murals, but most of them are generalized art styles and other analysis, and there is a lack of detailed comparison of specific scenes. In addition, there is room for further discussion on the creation process, conception and layout of murals.
Second, the painting and structure of the mural
In the study of Buddhist murals, the knowledge, concepts, and methods in the fields of art, Buddhism, and history are quite important, which is already the consensus of the academic community. Among them, the time of creation and the situation of the creator are the keys to understanding the mural, and both can be encountered and not sought. Fortunately, the Song Dynasty murals of Kaihua Temple not only have the inscriptions of painters, but also the inscriptions written by people at the time, which provides favorable conditions for us to determine the process of mural creation and the creator, which is very important for us to understand the content and layout structure of the murals.
Regarding the time of the painting of the murals, Chai Zejun believes that the main hall of Kaihua Temple was built in the sixth year of the Northern Song Dynasty (1073), the civil engineering project was completed in the seventh year of the Yuan Dynasty (1092), and "the frescoes in the hall of the third year (1096) of the Northern Song Dynasty were completed" [2] (p19). This is a general view of the time when the Mural paintings of the Song Dynasty of Kaihua Temple were painted, and scholars have adopted this theory. However, we can also combine the inscriptions, mural inscriptions, and the theme styles of each part to make a more detailed distinction between the time of mural painting, which is also conducive to our more in-depth understanding of the overall layout of the murals of Kaihua Temple.
The basis for the foregoing statement is mainly a stele that exists in Kaihua Temple, "Records of The Cultivation merits of Kaihua Temple in Zezhou Sheli Mountain" written by Danshui Jinshi Yonghuang in the fourth year of Daguan (1110), "With the first auspiciousness of the first lunar month of YuanYounshen (seven years, 1092), painting the merits of the Buddhist temple." Up to Shao Shengbingzi (三年, 1096), he weighed nine and achieved brilliant success. [3] (p28) However, there are also two inscriptions in the ink book of the Western Pillar of the Ming Dynasty in the back eaves of the Daxiong Treasure Hall: "On the fifteenth day of June, the painter Guo Faji and illuminated the wall", "The fifteenth day of the winter of the First Month of the Chengzi made a valley (lonely) Standing Guanyin, and by the beginning of November, the sixth day of the month, the spring color, the painter Guo Faji. These two materials were only used to prove that the author of the mural, Guo Fa, was actually revealed that the Guanyin statue on the east side of the ninth north wall in the beginning of September of the third year of Shaosheng had not yet begun, and the completion was at least the following spring. In addition, most of the titles of the mural are not written, obviously there is no "brilliant achievement", and it is likely that there was an unexpected situation in the final stage of the mural painting, so what was left was an unfinished mural. We also noticed that when explaining the contents of the murals in the inscription in Yonghuangzhong, it is said, "The Eastern Order is Known as Huayan, the Eastern Preamble is known as Shangsheng, the Western Preamble is known as Repaying Grace, and the □ Is known as Guanyin." Although the murals painted on the screen behind the altar do not exist, if understood from the perspective of spatial layout, the "East Order - Shubi - West Order - □ Wall" seems to be somewhat chaotic, and Yonghuangzhong should say that the order in which the various parts of the murals are painted: the original painters in the temple painted the Huayan Jingchang of the east wall and the Shangsheng of the wall, and later the painter Guo Fa presided over the murals of the west wall, the west and east parts of the north wall. This speculation can also be confirmed by the content and style of the murals, the East Wall Huayan Sutra is slightly weaker, the story is not strong, and its style is quite different from other existing murals. The four characters inscribed by the painter Guo Fa "Gu (Lonely) Standing Guanyin" are also intriguing, and the appearance of an "isolated Guanyin" in the eastern part of the north wall can also show that the murals of Kaihua Temple lack a general conception and layout, and the work between the two stages lacks coherence.
Of course, we divide the painting of the Song Dynasty murals of Kaihua Temple into two sections, not that there is no correlation between the various parts of the murals. The Huayan Warp and Shangsheng of the Early East Wall are likely to have similarities in theme and style, and the paintings on the West Wall and the North Wall in the later period, in addition to the "Isolated Guanyin", are elaborately drawn, coherent and orderly structures. Gu Dongfang once wrote a long article examining the four paintings painted on the west wall of The Kaihua Temple and the west side of the north wall, as well as the eight Bunsen and Karma Story Maps interspersed, which were all considered to belong to the Great Convenience Buddha's Retribution sutra, and analyzed the content of his thoughts and artistic style. However, if we consider that the contents of the two periods before and after the Kaihua Temple mural are integrated, we will find that there is still room for further discussion on the relationship between the various parts of the Bao'en Sutra. For example, through the study of Gu Dongfang, we have been able to accurately locate the distribution of the stories of the Retribution, but what is the relationship between the positions of each story and each piece of the story?
According to the schematic diagram of the west wall and the western part of the north wall (Figure 1), picture 1 is the prologue, 2-9 is the prince Bunsen of Su Ranti, 10-11 is the prince bunsen of forbearance, 12-18 is the cause of the Huase bhikshuni, 19-22 is the reincarnation of the holy king Bunsen, 23-44 is the prince bunsheng of the good friend, 45-46 is the bunsen of the Great Light King, 47-56 is the cause of the deer girl, and 57-61 is the cause of Devadatta. Each set of images is difficult to say is represented chronologically, so it is inappropriate for some researchers to call it a comic strip. As mentioned earlier, the Kaihua Temple mural should be an unfinished work, a large number of blanks, how to make the audience understand the content of the mural, this should be a problem for the painter to consider. Judging from the situation of the Murals of Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes, even if there is a list title, the audience may not be a picture and text, after all, the ordinary people are still a minority who can read and hyphenate. A group of murals is composed of so many stories, many of the pictures are very jumpy, if the people entering the temple can not understand the story told by the murals, the murals become simple ornaments, which is probably not the monk, it should not be what the painter expected. Then, in addition to the obligatory explanations of monks who are familiar with the scriptures, to help ordinary people understand the stories painted by the murals and their significance, the layout of the painter's plot should also be fully considered. However, if we think of the Kaihua Temple murals as two-stage works, the overall conception is relatively easy to understand.
The content of the east wall murals lacks storytelling and the meaning is more abstract, which may be the reason why the work of the first painters was suspended. The second phase of works consists of the west wall and the north wall. Among them, the Guanyin Fa Tu in the east of the north wall is also not story-like, and the painter Guo Fa's treatment is intended to be consistent with the east wall's claim map, and also leaves enough space for depicting the 39 providers. Guo Fa's focus is on the murals on the west wall and the eastern part of the north wall, and the stories depicted are involved
The richest story of the good friend Prince Bunsen, the first scene of this story is in the middle of this central axis space. The picture depicts the king polonais who had a son and asked the xiangshi to name him, and the king sat in the hall in front of him, wearing a crown of heaven and a red robe with wide sleeves, and the palace steps were divided into guards and civil and military officials. It should be noted that the king's position in the center of this picture is facing the altar in the middle of the Daxiong Treasure Hall, and the divine power and the secular kingship echo each other, which is actually the focus of the entire mural.
In addition to the good friend Prince Bunsen, the distribution of other stories also has a certain pattern. The first images of each story are painted in more prominent positions, such as 2 (Prince Bunsen), 19 (Reincarnation King Bunsen), 45 (Great Light King Bunsen), 47 (Deer Girl Karma), 57 (Devadatta Karma) are located on the lower sides of the chart, which should be the most suitable position to see. The protagonist of the story generally appears in the first picture, and the other plots are near it, and the audience can find the main picture of each set of stories and understand its connotation by virtue of the character image, costumes, scenes and other elements. However, 10 (Ninjutsu Prince Bunsen) and 12 (Huase Bhikshuni Karma) are located on the upper side of the middle of the first and second bunk charts, and unlike the previous stories, the ninja prince Bunsen is also close to the first bunk map, and the Huase bhikshuni karma is located in the highest layer in the middle of the first and second shops, which is very inconspicuous and may be related to the origin of the protagonist, Hua Se Bhikshuni. In terms of birth experience, huase bhikshunis are the most humble of the eight of the nine articles of the Sutra of Retribution (see Table 1) of all the protagonists of the story, but there is an internal logic between the seemingly scattered images, so that the monks and laymen can see the painting after entering the temple. This logic is visual, spatial, not story-based, or sequential. Obviously, Guo Fa has a global conception of the entire mural, rather than passively transforming narrative variations into spatial expression forms. The key to this conception is the symmetrical space supported by the four-shop map, not only the map is symmetrical, but the two sides and upper parts of each map also constitute five relatively independent spaces that are more symmetrical, of which the space between the second and third maps is the central axis of the entire mural. Here, Guo Fa makes full use of the space to depict the plot of the Retribution Sutra, and it is likely that the painter thinks that there is no need to put her in a prominent position like the prince and the king.
If the above speculation is true, then the Kaihua Temple mural is not only "arranged in a scattered row according to the right order of worship, and the picture is a comic book layout"[4], but we should also further explore from the perspective of symmetry and other angles to re-understand the conception and layout of the mural, which may help to interpret the meaning of the mural in more depth.
Third, the humanities in the painting
With the transformation of the entire society from aristocratic society to civilian society, the trend of secularization and popularization of religion in the Song Dynasty was more obvious, and the same was true of temple murals.[5] If the previous temple murals reflected a kind of sacred beauty, the statues and murals of the Song Dynasty were more secular beauty, the sense of sacredness was weakened, the secular interest was becoming more and more intense, and it was more closely related to the real life of society. On the basis of the popularity of folk lectures and literary variations in the central plains of the middle and late Tang Dynasties, the secularity of the temple murals of the Song Dynasty was strengthened, and they became more and more entertaining, and the storyline was more tortuous and moving, and the religious indoctrination was organically combined with literature, secularity and entertainment, and the murals of Kaihua Temple were a good example.
Scholars have noticed that many of the scenes in the murals should be projections of the real life of the society in the Song Dynasty, similar to "real people and real events". "The depictions of emperors, concubines, officials, merchants, scholars, monks, commoners, fishermen, sailors, peasant wives, thugs, and thieves are undoubtedly vivid portrayals of various figures in society at that time." Among them, kings, eunuchs, literati and gentlemen were dignified in form, elegant in manners, and dressed in crowns and dressed more nationally and secularly. [2] (p20-21) In the "Ananda Song Filial Piety" at the bottom right of the first shop, the upper layer of the picture depicts a shop full of cloth and other miscellaneous goods, two people in the store, hanging banners, and the book: "Wang Shekou Cheng Daikou Flower Shop", which is not found in the scriptures, should be a reproduction of social life in the Song Dynasty. The picture of the execution of huase bhikshuni (fig. 2) is often considered to be a realistic work of executing prisoners at that time, but in fact, the five punishments of the Song Dynasty did not have the term "raw burial". Even if executed, it was not allowed to be buried on the spot, according to Yuanfeng's order, the official executed prisoners in the city, "sending other officials to be in the same prison as the prison officer, measuring the poor people for protection, still giving wine and food first, listening to relatives' words, showing the crime, not covering their mouths, and making people rush to the public." And before the decision was made, the paralysis was reaped by Su Nai xu" [6 (vol. 376, p9118-9119)]. However, the two chief officers in the execution procession in the painting (the green-robed horseman should be a local official, and the person holding the paperwork is the prison officer), a number of soldiers, and a large number of onlookers are in line with the scene of the execution of prisoners in the Song Dynasty contained in the literature. Prince Shanyou Bunsheng's travel to guan tu tu tu (figure 3), similar to the butcher shop depicted in the "Qingming Upper River Map", according to the "Mengliang Record" volume 16 "Butcher Shop" cloud: "Every day each hangs into a side pig, no less than ten sides. In the event of two festivals in winter (winter solstice and New Year), each shop sells dozens of sides on a daily basis. There were five or seven people who handled the knife before the case, and the patron summoned the cut from the stool. "The situation of butcher shops in the Southern and Northern Song Dynasties is basically the same.
The secularization and realistic style of the murals of Kaihua Temple are not only reflected in the scenes, character images, costumes and other elements, but also reflected in some characteristics of the Song Dynasty scholar culture revealed in the paintings, which are more obvious if they are slightly compared with the Dunhuang murals.
The story of Prince Bunsen of Shanyou is an important part of the murals of Kaihua Temple, and there are more than ten cases of Dunhuang murals. The prince traveled, watching the cultivation, weaving, slaughtering, and fishing, and realized that "all beings in the world have created all kinds of evil roots, and the suffering of all people is endless." The prince's clothing, the horses he rode, and the number of his retinue were all different. In Cave 296 of the Mogao Caves of the Northern Zhou Dynasty (Figure 4), there are only two retinues, the prince is the same as their crown, and the mounts in the picture are even more prominent than people. The ratio of humans to animals in Cave 4 of the Five Generations of Mogao Caves (Figure 5) is also seriously imbalanced, and the prince's entourage is only one person. In the Guan Geng (Figure 6) and Guan Tu of Kaihua Temple, the prince's entourage is fixed to 6 people, only the prince rides on a horse, someone is responsible for zhang umbrella, the prince and the entourage are quite different in clothing, and the horses and other animals are no longer so conspicuous, but harmoniously hidden in the crowd.
On the way back to China, the prince was blinded by his brother's evil friend with a stinger, and then he got the help of the Cow King and licked out the stinger, which is the famous "Cow King Licking Thorn" in the Retribution. In the murals of the Tang and Wu Dynasties, the prince was lying on his back when he was licked by the Cow King, and the Cow King stood on it, as was the case in Caves 148 (Figure 7), 98, 108, 85, and 238 of the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang. At The Kaihua Temple, the gap between the prince and the bull king narrowed, and most importantly, the prince sat on the ground and looked peaceful, while the cow king gently stood in front of the prince and licked the thorns for him, and the master and slave were clear (Figure 8).
Let's take a look at the picture of the prince and the lishiba king playing the piano under the tree.
After prince Shanyou was blind, he played the piano and begged for food, and was hired by the garden guard to guard the garden, so he met the queen's daughter, and the fourth volume of the Book of Rewards and Grace, "Evil Friends", yun: "The good friend protects the birds and finches, and also plays the kite again to entertain himself." Shi Lishi's daughter sent all the attendants into the garden to watch, and saw this blind man ,...... The heart is full of love, and cannot be abandoned." In the Northern Zhou murals (Figure 9), the prince's instrument is not a piano, but a musical instrument similar to a pipa, which was changed to a guqin in the Tang Dynasty (Figure 10). However, the most notable of the Kaihua Temple's Taizi Qintu is the honor guard of the queen daughter (Figure 11). Previously, the queen daughter only brought one retinue, and even met with the prince alone to listen to the piano, and the king daughter of the Kaihua Temple mural had four handmaidens, or holding fans, or holding objects, each with her own duties, and the scene was formal and solemn.
Undoubtedly, the murals of Kaihua Temple are more meticulous and more realistic than the previous murals when dealing with characters and scenes, which is quite the style of the Northern Song Dynasty painting school, and sometimes more in line with the original meaning of the "Book of Rewards". The "Reward grace sutra" preaches the power of the Dharma and karma, the so-called "reward of grace", that is, the report of the three treasures, the middle of the king's kindness, the next reward of the grace of sentient beings, the integration of filial piety and the Buddha's way, which is the core idea of all the stories of the "Reward of Grace Sutra", and it is also the painter who reads it when he creates it. However, when dealing with the characters and scenes in the murals, the painter must refer to the classics and real-life models, as well as the influence of the overall social atmosphere and his own concepts. What they paint may be people in real society or their imaginations. The examples mentioned earlier reflect the concept of people and scholars by painters such as Guo Fa, that is, the respected status of people in all things in heaven and earth, the sense of worldly identity, and the emphasis on imperial power and the status of scholars. Because of this, the king of Prince Bunsen 23 of The Good Friend is arranged in the center of the entire long scroll of the Sutra of Grace, facing the Buddha statue in the center of the main hall; the characters in each story, regardless of their nobility or low, are the center of the picture, and the animals are only their supporting roles; the image of the scholar is also more abundant, which is not only reflected in the clothing and clothing, but also has an equal difference in its honor guards, which are the new trends in the Song Dynasty murals of Kaihua Temple, which deserve further study. To put it simply, the social changes of the Tang and Song dynasties may be a useful perspective from understanding the "Song Dynasty style" of the murals of Kaihua Temple. Japanese scholars regard the Song Dynasty as a period parallel to Renaissance Europe, when the people were liberated from the hands of the nobility,[7] and Qian Mu also referred to the Song Dynasty society as a "commoner society",[8] although later scholars revised these views, but the status of ordinary people in the Song Dynasty was greatly improved, and in such a social environment, the imbalance in the relationship between man and animal in the murals of the Tang and Five Dynasties was particularly striking. The problem of the image of the scholar-doctor may be related to the reconstruction of the ceremonial system since the early Song Dynasty and the heavy literary policy of the imperial court, at that time, there was a saying that "Zhu Zigui of the Manchu Dynasty was full of readers", and the emperor "ruled the world with the scholar-doctor",[9] on the basis of realism, it is also reasonable that the painter paid more attention to the difference in clothing, clothing, and honor guards in the murals.