This picture shows the Hu people offering treasures and offerings to the arhats. Above the picture, ancient trees are knotted, clouds are swirling, and the five Venerables are sitting on a huge rock, with a relaxed attitude. A Han man dressed as a man under the tree stood holding a scroll, and the first Hu Shang in the lower left held a gold plate in his forehand, kneeling on his knees to ask the arhat for a Dharma offering. Treasures such as red coral and rhino horn are placed in the middle of the plate, and camels stand behind rocks on the side of the bearded man.
Red coral, rhino horn, and camels were all foreign goods in the Song Dynasty, when overseas trade was developed, and these were common things in foreign trade. The Song Dynasty often praised foreign things with "treasure goods" and "treasures".
Ningbo (ancient name Mingzhou), the birthplace of siming Buddhist paintings, was an important port city in the Song Dynasty and the beginning of the Maritime Silk Road, and the importance of its status and the prosperity of foreign trade can be seen in this Buddhist painting.
The Hu people asked the Law to make offerings
Siming Buddhist Painting Research Institute resumed drawing
The Hu people asked the Law to make offerings to the local area
Attached: General Speech of the Five Hundred Arhats
Arhat is the abbreviation of arhat, Sanskrit transliteration (Arhat). It contains the meanings of killing thieves, lifelessness, and offerings. To kill a thief is to kill a thief who has all his troubles, to be lifeless is to be liberated from birth and death from the afterlife, and to be offered is to be offered by heaven and earth. In Theravada Buddhism, it is the great Buddha's dharma disciples who attain the highest attainment of the highest attainment. At that time, the five hundred disciples who listened to the Dharma in front of the Buddha's throne all attained the holy fruit of the arhat, which is called the five hundred arhats. Zhejiang Tiantai Shiqiao Mountain cliffs towering, peaks and ridges cut the sky, ancient legend clouds: "There is a good house on the top, the Taoist dwells in it", although there are stone bridges across the stream, but the berry moss is slippery, the horizontal stone is broken, and there is no one who has been able to get it since ancient times. During the Eastern Jin Dynasty (363-365 AD), there were high monks from the Western Regions, Tan You, who lived here to sit and meditate, and suddenly one day "the horizontal stone cave was open, the beam road was flat", crossed the bridge, and went to a place where the temple was magnificent and the pagoda was magnificent, but the incense was fluttering, the sound of the law was clear, and five hundred Brahmin monks were sitting or lying down, or living or walking, and the game habit was fixed on the forest stone, changing rapidly, and the eyes were overwhelmed. There are monks who treat Tan You like an old acquaintance, and after lunch, they are sent back to the east of the bridge, and Tan You looks back, and the boulders are blocked as before. This is the origin of the five hundred arhats that first manifested in the shiliang waterfall. As recorded in the Book of the Western Regions: "The Buddha said that the Fangguang Temple on Tiantai Mountain was a temple where five hundred great arhats lived." ”
During the Southern Song Dynasty of China, Siming Buddha painting flourished, and Ningbo (that is, Mingzhou) was the center of famous Buddhist painting painting in the two Song Dynasties. At the time, Yi Shao, the abbot of The Hui'an Monastery in Dongqian Lake, persuaded him to build five hundred arhats and raised local clan funding, starting from the 5th year of Chunxi (1178 AD), written by the famous folk painters Lin Tingjue and Zhou Jichang, according to the saying that the five hundred arhats manifested in the stone bridge of Tiantai Mountain, the silk book was colored, three alum and nine dyes, after ten years, painted into the "Five Hundred Arhat Diagram". The production configuration, usually with a painting of five arhats, a total of 100 paintings, this grand painting combination was later applied to the Hui'an Temple of Dongqian Lake on the outskirts of Ningbo, Zhejiang Province. At that time, the Southern Song Dynasty and Japan's cultural trade exchanges were extremely close, And Mingzhou's geographical location was close to the Southern Song Dynasty capital Lin'an Province (now Hangzhou), so it became an important port for foreign exchanges during the Southern Song Dynasty. The Japanese monk's devotion to the Dharma moved Yoshishao, the abbot of The Mingzhou Hui'an Temple, who gave the painting to the Japanese monk, who brought the painting to Japan. According to historical records, these 100 "Five Hundred Arhats" were first preserved in Kamakura Shoufuku-ji Temple, then transferred to Hakone Soun-ji Temple, and then transferred to Kyoto Toyokuni-ji Temple in 1590, and then transferred to Kyoto Daitoku-ji Temple, 6 of which were lost on the way, and the Japanese monk Kimura Tokushi should have completed the works in 1638. In 1895, the Meiji government of Japan chartered Daitoku-ji Temple to renovate the temple, and transferred 10 of them to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, USA, and 2 to the Freer Museum of Art in Washington.
Ninghai Guangde Zen Temple's subordinate Siming Buddhist Painting Research Institute, the Luohan diagram drawn is based on the original paintings of the Southern Song Dynasty Lin Tingjue Zhou Jichang and the two Buddha paintings as a facsimile, imitating the ancient painting sages, applying heavy work and color, the works are magnificent, reproducing the lost skills of the Southern Song Dynasty, saving the endangerment of Mingzhou Buddhist paintings, and reproducing the beauty of Song Yun!
The Intangible Cultural Heritage Ningbo Siming Buddha Painting is a living fossil of the thousand-year-old Song Yun culture, a Chinese-style Song Dynasty Buddhism to the world, and has become a highly influential art carrier of religious art, and it is also an important witness of the thousand-year-old transmission of Buddhism from the west to the east and the exchange of religion, humanities and art.