The Dunhuang Grottoes in northwest China’s Gansu Province are turning out to be a real cultural gold mine. When Chinese scholars went to investigate the murals at Dunhuang they found a large number of paintings of bamboo. As many of these actually predate the Tang Dynasty (618-907) they are causing Chinese art historians to push back the previously accepted dates for the origins of the genre.
Bamboo has been a much-loved theme of Chinese painting for over 1,000 years. It had been thought it was first taken as a subject for painting in the Tang Dynasty. Studies of ancient Chinese literature had closely connected the artist Wu Daozi, the poet Wang Wei and the Emperor Xuanzong of Tang to the earliest paintings of bamboo.
In the 1970s, during excavations at the tomb of Tang crown prince Zhang Huai, Chinese archaeologists found a fresco of a “Servant Girl and Bamboo.” This took its place in art history as the earliest known painting of bamboo. But now much earlier beginnings have been revealed. In the Dunhuang murals, scholars have found bamboo paintings of the Sui (581-618), the Western Wei (535-556) and even the Northern Wei (386-534) periods.
In Chinese culture, bamboo is a potent and evocative symbol of noble character and sterling integrity. It is much loved in literary and artistic circles where bamboo is planted, enjoyed, admired and painted and where emotions are frequently expressed through reference to bamboo.
Su Dongpo, a famous poet of the Song Dynasty (960-1279) wrote some fine lines that might be inadequately rendered in English as:
A meal with no meat might be no bad thing
But a house without bamboo can do us harm
Without our meat we just get thin
Denied bamboo we lose our charm
According to Professor Yang Xiong, who has long been engaged in research at Dunhuang, the murals have paintings of bamboo not only from the Yuan (1279-1368), Song, Five Dynasties (907-960) and Tang, but also from the Sui and Northern Dynasties (386-589). These paintings push the history of Chinese bamboo painting back hundreds of years.
The very earliest painting of bamboo is to be found in the Jataka Story of Prince Mahasattva in Cave 254. The style of the cave and the mural itself allow it to be dated to the Northern Wei Dynasty. This is some 300 to 400 years earlier than any previously known example.
In Caves 285 and 428, bamboo paintings of the Western Wei and Northern Zhou (557-581) periods were found. Caves 302, 420 and 419 also have bamboo paintings of the Sui Dynasty.
Yang Xiong describes the Dunhuang paintings of bamboo as the most ancient and best preserved of their kind. He considers them to be of great value to research into the cultural heritage of the nation. These are rare documents in the study of the evolution of ancient Chinese styles of painting.
(China.org.cn by Feng Yikun February 10, 2003)
