January 2009

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The 6th century was a transformational period in Chinese history and the history of Buddhism in China. The official sponsorship of Buddhism that included the building of monasteries and places of worship, the support of sutra translation and the hiring of Buddhist teachers as royal preceptors had raised the understanding of this foreign religion to an unprecedented level. It was a time of widespread growth of popular faith and proliferation of image- making. In the 1st and 2nd centuries ad after Buddhism was first introduced to China, it appears to have been practised largely by foreigners and to have spread slowly. More rapid growth began after the fall of the Han empire in 220, a time of great political and social instability and foreign incursions.

In the 4th century, non-Chinese north-Asian people known as the Xianbei seized control of northern China, establishing the Northern Wei dynasty (386-534) and promoting Buddhism as their official religion. Official support of Buddhism continued with the collapse of the Northern Wei, and its division into eastern and western regimes. The powerful regent Gao Huan spearheaded the move of the court from Luoyang northeastward to Ye in southern Hebei province and the establish-ment of the Eastern Wei dynasty. In 550, Gao Yang, second son of Gao Huan, overthrew the Eastern Wei puppet emperor and declared himself first emperor of the Northern Qi. The Xiangtangshan caves were created in the vicinity of the capital.

There is no dated contemporary record of the work on the North Cave, and therefore its exact dates are uncertain. A stele at the Changle si, ‘Monastery of Constant Joy’, at the foot of the mountain, recorded in 1159 that three caves on the mountainside were begun after the establishment of the Northern Qi dynasty.2 The North Cave is the earliest stylistically and largest of the three principal caves at the site and also believed possibly to be a royal tomb. Its grand scale, rich content, and coherent design can be best understood as a statement of a new imperial era and the ambitions of the Northern Qi ruling house, in particular Gao Yang’s own religious and political aspirations. Gao Yang, known as the Emperor Wenxuan (r. 550-59), is recorded to have been a devout Buddhist who sought out eminent monks as teachers. The cave is a masterwork whose design suggests the participation of one or more of these learned monks.

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