Religious Images in Chinese Ceramic Sculpture

Dr. Heena Youn (SOAS, University of London)
Vortrag in englischer Sprache

Modern scholarship has focused almost entirely on the study of ceramic figures produced for burial, primarily in early imperial China from the Qin dynasty (221-206 BCE) through to the Tang dynasty (618-907 CE). Although ceramic figures of human images largely dominated the production of ceramic sculptures in earlier periods, during the Han dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE) a new type of image appeared with the arrival of Buddhism in China. These religious images evolved slowly to become a distinctive genre represented in ceramic sculptures. Few examples of ceramic religious sculpture prior to the tenth century have survived. However, a substantial corpus of extant examples suggests that the production of ceramic religious figures across China flourished from the Song period onwards. For the past millennium, ceramic religious figures were used in a variety of contexts from temples to tombs throughout the country and even exported to East Asia, Southeast Asia and Europe. Their subjects vary from Buddhas, bodhisattvas and deified monks to Daoist deities, immortals and popular gods, providing substantial material evidence of the development of popular devotion and religious visual imagery in pre-modern China. This talk will explore a long, rich tradition of Chinese ceramic religious sculpture and offer a new understanding of the cultural and religious significance of this important but overlooked category of artifacts.
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