The Dawn of Buddhist Art in China: Preliminary Thoughts on a New Approach to Early Buddhist Images

The question of Buddhist art’s propagation through Central Asia to China has not generated such a broad debate as did its parallel in the historical field, where conflicting views are held concerning the mode and paths of transmission. Instead, a long-established model has continued to influence the study of Chinese Buddhist art since the discourse’s inception, with implications that have never been properly explored. This master narrative, until recently unquestioned, considers images as items in travellers’ baggage that were passively copied and eventually altered only in terms of style. A more thoroughgoing iconological approach to the materials found in China seeks to overcome the idea that early Buddhist art consisted merely of faithful copies of imported models and shows that, as a sophisticated system of communication with their own coherent language, these first images, with their subtle but eloquent variations of the original models, are in fact a window into the cultural and historical context of which they are part and as such the repositories of a great deal of invaluable information.