Wei and Jin Southern and Northern Dynasties: Chen Yinke believed that the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Forest lived without bamboo, and the great god in Du Fu's heart did not paint bamboo

He Nian Gu Hutou, full of murals Cangzhou. Akahi stone forest qi, Qingtian River currents. Xi Fei is often close to the crane, and the cup ferry does not frighten the gulls. It seems to have Lushan Road, and it is really a long trip with Hui.

- This inscription poem "Titled Xuanwu Zen Master's House Wall" was written by the fifty-one-year-old Du Fu in the first year of Baoying, that is, in 762 AD.

After experiencing the Anshi Rebellion, Du Fu wandered in Sichuan, and during his stay in Zizhou, which is now Santai County, Mianyang, Sichuan, he visited a Xuanwu Zen Temple, and Du Fu borrowed two great gods in his poems to praise this Zen temple, an imposing mural.

The Gu Hutou mentioned in the first sentence is Gu Kaizhi of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, who is called Changkang and small characters Tiger Head, so he is called Gu Hutou. Gu Kaizhi, who was born more than 400 years before Du Fu, probably never visited this Xuanwu Zen Temple in Santai County. However, when Lao Du was young, he had seen Gu Kaizhi's true handwriting in the Wa Coffin Temple in Nanjing, and this time he was only rubbing gu Kaizhi's heat to praise the unknown painter.

In the last sentence, Lao Du said: "It seems to have Lushan Road, and it is really a long journey with Hui." Among them, Hui Yuan, that is, the Pure Land Sect master Hui Yuan, who was introduced to everyone in the previous program, he and his disciple Zong Bing, and others, opened up the aesthetic concept of "landscape" in Chinese painting, laying a theoretical foundation for the great development of Chinese landscape painting.

In the last episode, we mentioned that from the Wei and Jin dynasties to the Southern and Northern Dynasties, some of the great gods in the history of Chinese art, including Wang Xizhi, Hui Yuan, Lu Tanwei, Gu Jingxiu, Sheikh and others, did not give special aesthetic care to bamboo in the works of art and creation theory they left behind.

According to the records of Zhang Yanyuan in the late Tang Dynasty, Lu Tanwei made a "Bamboo Forest Portrait of Xiao Wugong Chen", and Gu Jingxiu made "Wang Xianzhi Bamboo Diagram" and "Tree Mixed Bamboo Huaixiang Map", all of which have no relevant images to examine. There is no way to associate the image and creation technique of bamboo in the painting.

However, Gu Hutou, who was a generation earlier than their activity time, also has some paintings copied by later generations that can be referenced.

Gu Kaizhi's position in the history of Chinese art is not exaggerated no matter how he writes. He had a witty personality and was well versed in poetry.

In his time, he had already received high praise, and people called him "brilliant, absolutely brilliant, and obsessed." Xie An, who was famous for directing the Battle of Shuishui, was also versatile, good deeds, and musician, and was known as the "Jiangzuo Wind and Current Prime Minister", Xie An was very conceited, but he valued Gu Kaizhi very much, thinking that his paintings: "I thought that there was no cangsheng since he was born." ”

Based on Gu Kaizhi's original work, the Song people made a facsimile of the "Luoshen Futu", and there are four surviving works today. They are in the collections of the Palace Museum in Beijing, the Liaoning Provincial Museum and the Freer Museum of Art in the United States, of which the Forbidden City in Beijing has two volumes. The characters in these two volumes are basically similar, and the scenery is divided into complexity and simplicity. In addition, the images available for our reference include the Tang Dynasty facsimile of the "Female History Proverbs" now in the collection of the British Museum.

In these several volumes of later facsimiles, the characters and mountains and rivers overlap in different time and space, and various scenes such as strange flowers and stones, monster treasure ships and other scenery are staggered and dense, and the whole presents a mysterious and breathtaking spatial beauty.

Unfortunately, in these facsimiles of posterity, there are pine trees, cypresses, willow trees and other plants appearing, and there is no image of bamboo.

Gu Kaizhi also made great achievements in painting theory, such as "On Painting", "Wei Jinshengliu Painting Praise", "Painting Yuntai Mountain", etc., and only one sentence in his records mentions how to draw bamboo:

"Bamboo, wood, and soil can make the ink color light, and the pine bamboo leaves are also pickled."

It can be seen that Gu Kaizhi has paid attention to how to paint bamboo, attributed it to the background treatment of scenery such as wood and earth, and concluded that when painting bamboo poles, the ink color should be light, and the color of bamboo leaves should be strong. However, compared with the above traces, there is almost no corresponding image of this technique.

However, you may think that before these painters, during the first years of the Three Kingdoms and Wei Zheng, there was not the "Seven Sages of the Bamboo Forest" as we know it? It is said that they drank wine and sang under the bamboo forest in Shanyang County at that time, and in the images handed down for them by later painters, can they see bamboo?

Yes.

Among later generations of painters, at least since the Ming and Qing dynasties, the images of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Forest drinking and singing in the bamboo forest have been enduring for a long time, and the works of Qiu Ying, Chen Hongshou and others in the Ming Dynasty, until the "Seven Sages of the Bamboo Forest" made by modern and modern painters Leng Ming, Ren Bonian, Zhang Daqian, Fu Baoshi, etc., are placed between the Maolin Xiuzhu.

Inscription Ren Bonian's "Seven Sages of the Bamboo Forest" was composed in 1881

However, bamboo is not seen in the images left by Southern Dynasty artists closest to the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Forest era.

In April 1960, in the tomb of the Southern Dynasty nobles in the northern foothills of Nanjing Xishanqiao Gongshan Mountain, a group of mosaic brick seal murals were excavated, and since then, five Brick Paintings of the Southern Dynasty Tombs have been found in Nanjing and Danyang, and the characters, compositions and styles of these brick paintings are basically the same, with the highest artistic standard of brick paintings excavated from Nanjing Xishan Bridge, which is the earliest existing "Bamboo Forest Seven Sages Character Group Map" in the mainland.

The original murals excavated from Xishan Bridge, distributed in the north and south walls of the tomb, are each made of nearly 300 bricks, all of which are 2.4 meters long and 0.88 meters high, which is the largest, most abundant and best preserved piece of brick painting of its kind.

This group of mosaic brick paintings is named: "Seven Sages of the Bamboo Forest and RongQi Period", and its stencitrated brick paintings are composed of more than 200 bricks, divided into two paintings, one of which is: Ji Kang, Ruan Yuan, Shantao, Wang Rong, and the other is Xiang Xiu, Liu Ling, Ruan Xian and the Rong Qi Period of the Spring and Autumn Period.

Southern Dynasty Brick Painting "Seven Sages of the Bamboo Forest and the Rongqi Period"

The clothing lines of the eight figures in the painting are dense and tight, comparing the expression techniques of the characters and trees, some experts believe that the figure is close to the style of "Roselle Futu", so it is inferred that the powder copy of this group of brick paintings comes from Gu Kaizhi;

However, at the same time, some experts believe that according to the "Southern History of Qi Benji, Abolition of the Emperor Dong Xiahou", there are murals of the "Seven Sages" in the Southern Qi court, and the "Seven Sages" murals in the mausoleum are the diversion of the "Seven Sages" murals of the palace, and considering the great influence of Lu Tanwei in Southern Qi at that time, this group of powder copies of the "Seven Sages of the Bamboo Forest and the Rongqi Period Map" may come from Lu Tanwei.

Whether it is Gu Kaizhi or Lu Tanwei's version, the eight figures in the painting are sitting under trees, including ginkgo biloba, pine, locust, and weeping willow, but there is no bamboo.

Among the plants that separate the characters, some people think that one of them, located between Rong Qi and Nguyen Ham, has a tall branch and may be a "broad-leaved bamboo", but this statement seems far-fetched.

In fact, some experts have examined the so-called "bamboo forest" seven sages, not active under the bamboo forest, bamboo forest should be a place name.

Modern scholar Chen Yinke believes that the "Seven Sages" theory originates from the Analects of the Constitution. In the 37th verse of the Constitution, it is written that "the sage avoids the world, followed by the earth, secondly from the color, and secondly from speech." Zi Yue: "The author is seven people."

Confucius believed that the highest state of a virtuous person is to avoid the world, followed by escape to another place, again to escape from the ugly faces of others, and the most important is to avoid the ugly evaluations of others. Later, Confucius said that there were already seven people who did this, including Bo Yi, Shu Qi, Yu Zhong, Yi Yi, Zhu Zhang, Liu Xia hui, and Shao Lian.

Chen Yinke proposed in the section "Lectures on the History of the Southern and Northern Dynasties of wei and Jin - Qing Talk about the Wrong Country" that there should be "seven sages" first and then "bamboo forests". The name "Seven Sages" comes from the reference to "seven authors" in the Analects.

Mr. Chen believes that in the last years of the Western Jin Dynasty, the custom of "geyi" was popular among monks, "ge" means comparison or measurement, and "righteousness" refers to the name, project or concept of a certain thing. The so-called "meaning" means to use comparative and analogous methods to explain, illustrate and understand some concepts in cross-cultural contexts.

In the narrow sense of "Geyi", especially in the period of the last years of the Western Jin Dynasty and the beginning of the Eastern Jin Dynasty mentioned by Mr. Chen, after the introduction of Indian Buddhism to the mainland, people used native Confucian and Taoist ideas to explain the meaning of Buddhism.

The "Seven Sages of the Bamboo Forest" is also the inherent saying of the "Seven Sages" in traditional Chinese culture, plus the name of "Bamboo Forest" in Tianzhu, so there is a Chinese more acceptable statement of "Seven Sages of the Bamboo Forest".

The bamboo forest comes from the Buddhist bamboo forest house. According to Buddhist legend, when Shakyamuni first preached the Dharma, there was no fixed place, but later there was a bamboo forest retreat, which gradually developed into the predecessor of this later Buddhist monastery. When Buddhism spread to China, some Taoist buildings were also named "Bamboo Forest Jingshe".

According to Mr. Chen Yinke's point of view, the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Forest live without bamboo, or do not emphasize their seclusion and "bamboo forest", which is also corroborated from the above-mentioned set of brick portraits of the Southern Dynasty.

The "bamboo" that was not popular with the people of the Wei and Jin dynasties and the Southern and Northern Dynasties, would the Tang Dynasty get rid of its long-term dragon running set? And I'll share it with you next time.

This article is a series of audio programs on the history of Chinese art jointly produced by "Taste in the Afternoon" and "Captain Reading Paintings", welcome to listen.

appendix:

1, the text mentions that Du Fu had witnessed Gu Kaizhi's paintings in Nanjing when he was a young man, see Du Fu's "Sending Xu Bashi's Relics back to Jiangning Province, Fu Used to Taste Guests Traveling to This County, at Xu Sheng's Place, Begwa Coffin Temple Wei Mo Tu, Zhi Zhu End":

The edict was forbidden, and Ci Yan went to the North Hall. Holy Pilgrimage New Filial Piety, Zu Xi Double Glow.

The inner veil is heavier, and the palace clothes are more fragrant. Huaiyin Qingye Yi, Jingkou river crossing.

Spring between chickens daytime, autumn swallows cool. Give the book to praise the father and the elder, and the shoujiu le chenghuang.

Looking at the paintings, I was hungry and thirsty, and I tracked down the hatred. The golden shadow of the tiger's head is unforgettable.

2, In the late Tang Dynasty, Zhang Yanyuan recounted the development process of Chinese landscape painting for us, and summarized the paintings of Gu Kaizhi and others, which mentioned:

Wei jin descended, and those whose names were in the human world were all seen. His paintings of landscapes are the momentum of the peaks, and if they are decorated with rhinoceros. Or the water is not allowed to flood, or the people are greater than the mountains, and the rate is attached to the trees and stones, reflecting the land. If you are planted, if you extend your arms and fingers. The meaning of the ancients is to show their strengths, not to abide by the mundane changes also... The change from the landscape began in Wu and cheng in Erli. The shape of the tree and stone is better than Wei Que and poorer than Zhang Tong.