Dunhuang

This essay evaluates how exhibitions of prehistoric sites and cave art engage a worldwide public to address the issue of animal compassion, consciousness, and pain. The essay also analyzes the significance of representing archaeological discoveries in the global context of human-caused endangerment and the mass extinction of animals, flora, and fauna, including the eventual prospect of the mass extinction of homo sapiens proper. Today, in the midst of what some scientists call a sixth mass extinction event, the daily loss of species has produced desperate efforts to conserve habitats and preserve relics of extinct animals for a posterity increasingly defined by the scarcity of creation, with the acceleration of the representation of absence the only sustainable growth. Originally found in the Jātaka tradition, the story of Jātaka Deer crystallized Buddhist compassion. However, through decades of national preservation and propagandistic utilization, it met the fate of destruction in the process. For whatever poiesis of earth ethics Jātaka Deer had intended to convey, it remains an aesthetic ruin in the twenty-first century. With the help of holographic virtual-reality and augmented-reality technology, the latest form is a 3D replica with worldwide currency. Such a rendering reeks of our human species' self-congratulatory sense of optimism and triumphalism about its civilization despite the coming mass extinction.

ТОЛЬКО ОЗНАКОМИТЕЛЬНЫЙ ФРАГМЕНТ, электронная версия не распространяется.

Сэм ван Шайк. Тибетский дзэн. Открывая утерянную традицию. Истории, рассказанные манускриптами Дуньхуана / Пер. с англ. А. Г. Ливанского, под общ. ред. Б. К. Двинянинова. — СПб. : Издательство «Академия исследований культуры», 2021. — 248 с. : ил. — (Серия «Измерения опыта»). ISBN 978-5-94396-226-4

Вплоть до начала XII в. практически не оставалось следов существования тибетской традиции китайского чань-буддизма или дзэн. После обнаружения запечатанной пещеры в Дуньхуане, наполненной манускриптами на различных языках, начиная с первого тысячелетия н. э., наше понимание раннего дзэн претерпело существенные изменения. В этой книге переведена часть наиболее ранних рукописей тибетского дзэн, сохранившихся в Дуньхуане. Переводы освещают различные аспекты традиции дзэн, включая краткие введения, в которых обсуждаются не только роли ритуала, диспута, линии преемственности и медитации в ранней традиции дзэн, но также разъясняют, каким образом эти тексты были включены в живую практику.

From the 1790s until World War I, Western museums filled their shelves with art and antiquities from around the world. These objects are now widely regarded as stolen from their countries of origin, and demands for their repatriation grow louder by the day. In The Compensations of Plunder, Justin M. Jacobs brings to light the historical context of the exodus of cultural treasures from northwestern China. Based on a close analysis of previously neglected archives in English, French, and Chinese, Jacobs finds that many local elites in China acquiesced to the removal of art and antiquities abroad, understanding their trade as currency for a cosmopolitan elite. In the decades after the 1911 Revolution, however, these antiquities went from being “diplomatic capital” to disputed icons of the emerging nation-state. A new generation of Chinese scholars began to criminalize the prior activities of archaeologists, erasing all memory of the pragmatic barter relationship that once existed in China. Recovering the voices of those local officials, scholars, and laborers who shaped the global trade in antiquities, The Compensations of Plunder brings historical grounding to a highly contentious topic in modern Chinese history and informs heated debates over cultural restitution throughout the world.

Pure-land Faith in China greatly grew in the Sui and Tang Dynasty. The research on the composition of Buddhist temples in the early Tang Dynasty influenced by Pure-land Faith, is important to the whole development of Chinese Buddhist architecture. The research object of this article is Mogao Cave 331 of Dunhuang. It uses related studies on the histories of Buddhism, culture and art for reference. And viewed from the standpoint of historical facts of architecture and corresponding explanation, it further argues graphic layout of Buddhist temples in the early Tang Dynasty based on integral analysis of Cave 331. Moreover, relative Buddhist sutras, ceremonies of religious service and repentance and historical documents are also considered during the research.

This essay reconsiders the iconography of the group of paintings from Dunhuang commonly referred to as "itinerant monk paintings." In an effort to acknowledge the paintings as a tradition unto themselves and highlight their visual language, this study focuses on the issues surrounding Baosheng Buddha and the unique feature of depicting the main icon in motion. The first matter is discussed in relation to the religious and artistic contexts of the inscriptions preserved in some paintings, and possible changes in the main figure's identity from a monk worshiping Baosheng Buddha to the incarnation itself. The main icon's mobile nature is examined in terms of its walking posture and cloud vehicle. Considering the tradition of xingdao seng or xing seng (walking monks) in monastery murals, this paper illuminates a growing interest in the Tang (618-907) period in portraying walking monks that underscores their position and role in the world of sentient beings. Furthermore, it demonstrates that the cloud vehicle played a critical role in underlining the main icon's extensive and rapid travel to facilitate his encounter with and saving of sentient beings.

Концепт вэнь является одной из наиболее специфичных категорий китайской эстетической мысли, центральным понятием всей китайской культуры. В статье делается попытка определения его роли в пластической системе китайского изобразительного искусства. Широкий диапазон значений, составляющих семантическое поле вэнь, позволяет рассматривать его как принцип, во многом определивший художественную идентичность памятников китайского искусства.

Through the four years of investigations, I could find out 43 Brāhmī Inscriptions from the Mogao and Yulin Caves. Among them, 41 are written in Sanskrit and 2 in Old Uyghur.
These inscriptions could be written by Buddhist pilgrims from the Uyghur kingdom.

К предложенным мной вариантам перевода названия Могао-ку необходимо, конечно, добавить очевидный "Пещеры, выше которых нет ничего".

I must say, that one obvious variant of translation is to be added for Mogao-ku "Caves which highness cannot be exceeded by anything"

What do dice and gods have in common? What is the relationship between dice divination and dice gambling? This interdisciplinary collaboration situates the tenth-century Chinese Buddhist "Divination of Maheśvara" within a deep Chinese backstory of divination with dice and numbers going back to at least the 4th century BCE. Simultaneously, the authors track this specific method of dice divination across the Silk Road and into ancient India through a detailed study of the material culture, poetics, and ritual processes of dice divination in Chinese, Tibetan, and Indian contexts. The result is an extended meditation on the unpredictable movements of gods, dice, divination books, and divination users across the various languages, cultures, and religions of the Silk Road.
Link: https://brill.com/view/title/59960

In this lecture, art historian Shih-shan Susan Huang will consider major texts and images in Mahayana Buddhism that were popular in pre-modern China.  Highlighting two of the most important Buddhist scriptures, the Diamond Sutra 金剛經 and the Lotus Sutra 妙法蓮華經, she will also discuss imagery associated with two of the most popular Buddhist deities—Guanyin 觀音 (or Avalokiteśvara) Bodhisattva, and Amida 阿彌陀 (or Amitābha) Buddha. The presentation will draw on medieval manuscripts, paintings, and prints from the Dunhuang “library cave”.  Going beyond Dunhuang, she will also discuss relevant later visual materials including Xi Xia 西夏 (1038-1227) paintings excavated in Khara Khoto, Inner Mongolia, and illustrated books printed in Song-Yuan 宋元 (960-1368) Hangzhou and Ming 明 (1368- 1644) Beijing.

Many modern narratives of the period of Tibetan rule in Dunhuang (ca. 786–848) emphasize ethnic tensions between the Tibetans and Chinese, with clothing styles as their most visible manifestation. The Xin Tangshu claims that the Dunhuang Chinese were forced to wear Tibetan-style clothing except on New Year’s Day, when they were allowed to dress in the Tang style to perform ancestral rites, wailing bitterly as they did so. The Dunhuang manuscript P.3451 claims, however, that the Dunhuang Chinese persisted in wearing Tang-style clothes throughout the Tibetan occupation. A contradiction therefore exists in the sources regarding what kind of clothing the Dunhuang Chinese usually wore, even as these sources agree in interpreting Tang-style clothing as a symbol of ethnocultural identity and Tang loyalism. Yet murals from ninth-century Dunhuang suggest that Tang and Tibetan clothing styles coexisted and even blended together under Tibetan rule. By reassessing the textual and visual sources more critically, I argue that the most plausible interpretation is that there was no forced Tibetanization of clothing in Dunhuang at any time during the period of Tibetan rule. Instead, the people of Dunhuang were free to dress as they wished, but many members of the Chinese (and quite likely Sogdian) elite families adopted Tibetan dress or elements of Tibetan fashion voluntarily as symbols of prestige and loyalty to the Tibetan empire. The elite families of Dunhuang accommodated themselves to Tibetan rule and adopted bicultural identities until the breakdown of Tibetan administration put their interests in jeopardy, upon which they drove the Tibetans out and sought to cover up their past collaboration by inventing a new tradition of “stubbornly Chinese” Tang loyalism.
[For maps to go with this article, see the "History maps" section below]

Dunhuang Manuscript Culture explores the world of Chinese manuscripts from ninth-tenth century Dunhuang, an oasis city along the network of medieval routes known today collectively as the Silk Roads. The manuscripts have been discovered in 1900 in a sealed-off side-chamber of a Buddhist cave temple, where they had lain undisturbed for almost nine hundred years. Their number is in the tens of thousands, and they are written in over twenty different languages and scripts, including Chinese, Tibetan, Old Uighur, Khotanese, Sogdian and Sanskrit. This study centres around four groups of manuscripts from the mid-ninth to the late tenth centuries, when the region existed as an independent kingdom ruled by local families. The central argument is that the manuscripts attest to the unique cultural meakeup of the region during this period, exhibiting—alongside obvious Chinese elements—a heavy influence of Central Asian cultures. As a result, it was much less ‘Chinese’ than commonly imagined in modern scholarship. The book makes contributions to the study of cultural and linguistic interaction along the Silk Roads.

In Tibetan Buddhist literature, Chán Buddhism came to be identified with Chinese Buddhism, represented by a single Chinese teacher, known as Héshàng Móhéyán, and a single event, an eighth-century debate. The narrative of the debate became so influential in Tibet that all discussion of Chán took place within its parameters. What is more surprising, perhaps, is that modern scholarly analysis of the Tibetan traditions of Chán, though drawing on a much wider range of material, has largely also remained within the framework of the debate.

Sogdian artists constantly adopted external religious iconographies from Mesopotamia, Greece, and India to represent local deities without major problems. Apparently, they did the same in their colonies abroad and especially in Buddhist Dunhuang where the main cultural milieu was Chinese. Two deities represented on a paper fragment from Dunhuang have been puzzling scholars since the 1990s. They present very strong Sogdian religious elements that, however, should be studied within the framework of Sino–Uighur art and culture of the Western Regions and Dunhuang. Many scholars considered the two deities both to be women. This article discusses the possibility that they actually represent a couple despite their aspect. Only one of them is a woman who can be identified with Nana. The other deity is probably Tish who was Nana’s husband and corresponded to the Avestan rain god Tishtrya and, in the Mesopotamian cultural sphere, to Nabu. Nana and Nabu formed a divine couple in Mesopotamian religion. Nabu was in origin the patron of scribes and corresponded to Greek Hermes and Egyptian Thoth. He was also connected to the planet Mercury that Chinese artists represented as a woman. Nana and Tish formed a powerful icon that Sogdians reproduced on inexpensive material that could be easily transported and possibly invoked as protectors of the family.

In the propagation and spread of Buddhism throughout Asia, jātaka
and avadāna narratives played a decisive role, both in the form of texts and
iconographical representations. In this paper I will focus on another set of narratives
which enjoyed great popularity in the Dūnhuáng area during the later Tang and
Five Dynasties period, dealing with historical projections concerning the origin and
transmission of Buddhism. In this stories, “Auspicious Statues” (ruìxiàng 瑞像) play a
key role. These “living” statues were thought to have moved from Indian monasteries
to Khotan and other regions, serving as agents of the transmission of the Dharma in
these areas. Besides reflecting religious key concern during that period, the historical
narratives on the spread of Buddhism also give witness to the close diplomatic and
family relations between Dunhuang and the Kingdom of Khotan during that period.

The uploaded version is the final version.

This study examines the planetary icons found in East Asian art, arguing that they should be divided into three sets: Indian, zoomorphic and Iranian-Mesopotamian. It is demonstrated that the Indian icons are earlier representations of the navagraha directly from India. The latter two are identified as coming from an Iranian source. The Iranian-Mesopotamian icons are further discussed in relation to parallels found in the Picatrix, the Latin translation of an Arabic manual of astral magic. The roles of these icons within the magical traditions of Buddhism and Daoism are identified. It is proven that such astral magic was also imported from Near Eastern sources.

2008, Cathy Cantwell and Robert Mayer.  "The Dunhuang Phur pa Corpus: A Survey", in Almogi, Orna, ed. Contributions to Tibetan Buddhist Literature. PIATS 2006: Tibetan Studies: Proceedings of the Eleventh Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, Königswinter 2006. Beiträge zur Zentralasienforschung 14. Halle: International Institute for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies (pp. 248-276)

This philological study presents a collation of Old Tibetan Dunhuang fragments of the Avaivartikacakrasūtra compared against a text-critical edition of Tibetan Kanjurs. The Avaivartikacakrasūtra is a Mahāyāna Buddhist discourse that describes how bodhisattvas become irreversible (avaivartika) from perfect Buddhahood and how they achieve irreversible bodhisattva status, a prestigious attainment among Mahāyāna Buddhist movements in South, Central, and East Asia. Although previously unstudied, this prominent scripture is one of the most influential of Mahāyāna sūtras in Buddhist culture, preserved and transmitted in South, Central, and East Asia over many centuries. Analysis of the Old Tibetan Dunhuang Avaivartikacakrasūtra provides a number of valuable contributions to the study of the formations of Mahāyāna Buddhism, to the understanding of Old Tibetan language, and to the systematic study of Tibetan Kanjurs. Enhancing the scholarly knowledge of the transmission history of the Tibetan collected teachings of the Buddha (Kanjur), this monograph contributes to the philological study of Tibetan Buddhist canonical texts and traces the genealogical development of the Tibetan language in translating Indian Buddhist canonical texts.

The following article provides a diplomatic edition and analysis of a Dunhuang Tibetan version of the Vīradattaparipṛcchā, the oldest extant Tibetan version of the discourse. The diplomatic edition of the Dunhuang Tibetan version is based on one complete Dunhuang manuscript as well as two small Dunhuang fragments that restores a Tibetan version of the sūtra that existed around the time of the imperially decreed (bkas bcad) language reforms that were finalized in 814 CE.

Although the contemplative approach of Dzogchen (Tib. rdzogs chen) occupies a prominent position in the Nyingma (Tib. rNying ma) (and indeed Bon) tradition, where it is considered to be the pinnacle of vehicles leading to enlightenment, its origins are not quite clearly understood. Several scholars have suggested that it may have emerged from the tantric matrix of Mahāyoga ritual, before gradually developing into an independent contemplative approach characterised, especially in its early phases, by the absence of tantric ritual. Some of the manuscripts recovered at Dunhuang (敦煌) reflect this tension. This paper will examine and compare three thematic groups of Dunhuang manuscripts: (a) IOL Tib J 437 and a text comprising Pelliot tibétain 353 and IOL Tib J 507, which use the term rdzogs chen within the context of Mahāyoga ritual practice; (b) IOL Tib J 454 (= Madhusādhu’s instructions) and IOL Tib J 470 (= the rDo rje sems dpa’i zhus lan), which do not make prominent use of the term rdzogs chen itself, yet provide a contemplative framework for Mahāyoga that rhetorically challenges some of the more ritualistic concerns of this approach; and (c) IOL Tib J 594 (= the sBas pa’i rgum chung) and IOL Tib J 647 (= the Rig pa’i khu byug), which present Dzogchen very much in line with the early 'mind orientation' (Tib. sems phyogs). Reference will also be made to several unstudied Dzogchen commentaries by Nupchen Sangyé Yéshé (ca. 844 to mid-10th c., Tib. gNubs chen Sangs rgyas ye shes), a highly significant figure in the formation of the Nyingma school, for by reflecting on (near-)contemporaneous developments in other parts of the Tibetan cultural world, we can observe that these Dunhuang manuscripts bear witness to a wider process of negotiating the absence of ritual as a means to demarcate a doxographical space. Since an important subject of the article is the difference articulated between Mahāyoga and Dzogchen, the transcendence-immanence distinction will be used as a relational axis against which such varying paradigms of Tantric Buddhist praxis can be analysed.

This research analyses the images from Mogao and Yulin caves, which have been traditionally ascribed to Tibetan influence and believed to represent the early Tibetan style. Contrary to this common opinion, the author shows that these images are in fact influenced by Southern Indian art and in particular by the art of the Pallava kingdom in Tamil Nadu and closely affiliated with teachings introduced to China by Vajrabodhi (金刚智, 671-741), a renowned Buddhist master from the Pallava Kingdom, in the first half of the 8th century and specifically propagated in Hexi by Amoghavajra (不空 Bukong, 705-774) in the mid 8th century. He argues that these images belong to a distinctive artistic tradition, which was established by Vajrabodhi who was also known in China as a great painter. The presence of these images in artwork from the Tibetan period merely signifies the continuation of the artistic and religious trends that existed in Hexi before the Tibetan conquest. Furthermore, the article argues that the Tibetan conquest of the Hexi corridor enabled the Tibetan appropriation of Chinese religious and artistic trends, which were popular in the region. This conclusion well supports Christopher Beckwith's theory according to which the Tibetan adoption of Buddhism as a state religion was inspired by the Chinese model of state-protective Buddhism established by Amoghavajra.

Nearly two dozen excavated Tibetan manuscripts from Dunhuang, Turfan, and Mazār Tāgh bear witness to the prevalence of a specific tradition of dice divination in Tibet. Largely dating to the ninth century, these manuscripts constitute a crucial part of the material culture of dice divination; another important part is the dice that are characteristic of this tradition. Known in Sanskrit as pāśaka-s, they are rectangular four-sided dice, and they have been found at archeological sites ranging in time and space from Mohenjo-Daro to Khotan to Egypt.
From the first studies of early Tibetan divination texts inaugurated by A.H. Francke, scholars have emphasized the comparative and cross-cultural analysis of this method of divination. Such comparisons initially drew on the Runic Turkic Irk Bitiq, the Sanskrit Pāśakakevalī and the Bower Manuscript, and in more recent times have explored possible connections with Islamic traditions preserved in books known in Arabic as Kitāb al-Fāl and in Persian as Fāl-namāh and with Chinese traditions preserved among the Dunhuang manuscripts.
The present contribution approaches this method of dice divination not through the mutable elements of poetics, and ideas of fate, luck, and fortune, which are open to adaptation to the social, aesthetic, and religious norms of various divining communities. Rather, it approaches this method of divination through a series of numbers that constitute its “bones,” or defining elements. These include the four faces of a die; the symbols on each face; the number of omens one should receive (often three); the number of divination omens in a divination book (sixty-four); and the numerical probability of receiving a good, bad, or mixed divination. In the process of examining these numbers and comparing them across traditions, the analysis clarifies the relationship between certain traditions and offers some tentative remarks about transmission.

Colonization and becoming an effective government on the world's politic system are two titles of the Modern Age description. With these aims, some countries, like Russia and England, pursued their actions in Central Asia and South Asia. Especially the effect of England over India and the position of Russia in West Turkistan are particular subjects at the history of these districts. The area, surrounding the Taklamakan Desert and named as Innermost Asia, is one of these districts, the colonization competition focused on. Expedition groups which were formed sometimes specialists from military or scholars, travelled through the Central Asia. These expeditions took months or years according to situations and their results weren't only for the military aims. During expeditions, important data was recorded, about topographical and meteorological knowledge of the region, anthropological features of peoples living on these districts and the sites, significant archaeologically. The reports of them were prepared at the end of the expeditions and they contributed to lots of sciences. Sir Marc Aurel Stein made a lot of expeditions to the Central Asia and Asia Minor with the support of United Kingdom and he was qualified as archaeologist, scholar, explorer and writer. Even though his expeditions and their results served to UK for colonization and being an effective government during Stein day, his books, photographs, letters and archaeological finds, like a library on their own, keep their value for the academicians who will work on the region, will be able to be named as Stein's geography. These resources presented information with the photographs about the cities placed on the expedition route, the sites and antiques, dig out during expeditions and we can trace on these photos either historical side or their conditions at Stein's day. Sir Marc Aurel Stein is a scholar and researcher and loved his position very much so he always developed himself at this way. Albeit he applied the colonization aim of the Britain to get the support of it to their researches, spending the last days of his life, eighty one years, for the expedition in Afghanistan exemplify that he was a scholar. Key Words: Sir Marc Aurel Stein, Expedition, Asia, Central Asia, Innermost Asia, Asia Minor, Colonization.
Yakınçağ Tarihinin tanımını yaparken, sömürge arayışı ve dünya siyasetine yön veren etkin devlet olma yarışı karşımıza çıkan başlıklardan sadece iki tanesidir. Bu doğrultuda başta Rusya, İngiltere, Fransa olmak üzere benzer devletler, Orta Asya ve Güney Asya'da faaliyetlerini sürdürmüşlerdir. Özellikle İngiltere'nin Hindistan üzerindeki etkisi ve Rusya'nın Batı Türkistan'daki konumu, bu bölgelerin tarihinin yazılışında kendilerine ait bölümleri oluşturacak şekilde gerçekleşmiştir. İç Asya olarak isimlendirebileceğimiz Taklamakan Çölü'nü çevreleyen bölge, bu yarışın sürdürüldüğü bölgelerden biridir. Bazen asker kökenli uzmanların, bazen bilim adamlarının önderliğinde oluşturulmuş sefer grupları, İç Asya'ya keşif seferleri düzenlemişlerdir. Koşullara bağlı olarak aylarla veya birkaç yılla sınırlandırılan bu seyahatlerin sonuçları sadece askeri olmamış, bölgenin topografyası, meteorolojik verileri, bölge halklarının antropolojik özellikleri, arkeolojik öneme sahip konumlar gibi veriler düzenli olarak kaydedilerek, sefer sonrasında birçok bilim alanına hizmet eden raporlar hazırlanmıştır. Sir Marc Aurel Stein, İngiltere desteğiyle İç Asya'ya ve Ön Asya'ya çok sayıda keşif seferi düzenlemiş arkeolog, bilim adamı, kâşif ve yazar olarak değerlendirilen bir kişidir. Seferleri ve elde ettiği sonuçlar, kendi döneminde, İngiltere'nin sömürge ve etkin devlet olma yarışına hizmet etmiş olsa da ortaya çıkardığı, başlı başına bir kütüphane niteliğini taşıyan kitapları, fotoğrafları, mektupları ve arkeolojik buluntu envanterleri, sosyal bilimler alanında Stein Coğrafyası olarak adlandırabileceğimiz bölgede çalışacak olan akademisyenler için çok kıymetli kaynak eser olma özelliğini korumaktadır. Bu eserler, sefer güzergâhlarında yer alan şehirler, ören yerleri ve elde edilen buluntuların hem geçmişi hem de Stein dönemine ait durumu hakkında fotoğraflarla örneklendirilen bilgiler sunmaktadır. Sir Marc Aurel Stein, bilim ve araştırma aşığı olan ve kendini bu doğrultuda sürekli geliştirmiş bir insandır. Araştırmalarına destek sağlamak amacıyla İngiliz yöneticilerin sömürge gayretini kullanmış olsa da 81 yıllık ömrünün son günlerini dahi keşif gezisi amacıyla geçirmesi, onun bilim insanı olduğuna örnek teşkil etmektedir. Anahtar Sözcükler: Sir Marc Aurel Stein, Keşif Seferi, Asya, Orta Asya, İçAsya, Ön Asya, Sömürge.

Edition of the Old Uigur wall inscriptions in the 楡林 Yulin caves, Gansu Province, PRC, to display the mobility of the Old Uigur Buddhist pilgrims of the 13-14. cc.
It is a part of the result of my preliminary research conducted in 2006, though now I am preparing further revision.

Chán Buddhism in Dūnhuáng and Beyond: A Study of Manuscripts, Texts, and Contexts in Memory of John R. McRae is dedicated to the memory of the eminent Chán scholar John McRae and investigates the spread of early Chán in a historical, multi-lingual, and interreligious context. Combining the expertise of scholars of Chinese, Tibetan, Uighur, and Tangut Buddhism, the edited volume is based on a thorough study of manuscripts from Dūnhuáng, Turfan, and Karakhoto, tracing the particular features of Chán in the Northwestern and Northern regions of late medieval China.

ISSN 0169-8834
ISBN 978-90-04-43191-1 (hardback)
ISBN 978-90-04-43924-5 (e-book)

The standard pictorial formula of Fuxi and Nüwa, a pair of indigenous Chinese deities, started to absorb new motifs from Buddhist art during the early medieval period when Buddhism became more prominent in China. In this paper, I focus on the juxtaposition of Fuxi-Nüwa and cintamani, a magic Buddhist jewel, depicted on the ceiling of the corridor in the tomb of Lady Poduoluo, Pingcheng, Shanxi (435 CE). Through a detailed visual analysis, I explain the multiple meanings embedded in the combination of the Chinese mythological figures with the Buddhist symbol in the funerary space, thus challenging the previous studies that understand cintamani only as a substitute for the sun and moon. This paper furthers the discussion on the hybrid image by investigating the mural painting on the ceiling of Mogao Cave 285 in Dunhuang. Despite their different spatial and temporal contexts, both the tomb of Lady Poduoluo and Mogao Cave 285 present a similar pictorial formula, featuring the hybridization of cintamani and the Fuxi-Nuwa pair. This phenomenon invites us to explore the transmission of such motifs. I, therefore, situate the production of the syncretic scheme of Fuxi-Nüwa with cintamani within a broader historical context and examine the artistic exchange between Pingcheng and Dunhuang by tracing the movements of images, artisans, and patrons in early medieval China.