After the 4th century AD, Buddhism in China gradually became independent from the traditional Taoism in China. In order to meet the needs of belief and worship, the trend of believers investing in statues is also booming, and the inscriptions subordinate to statues are also produced. However, as seen in the above-mentioned "Sitting in Buddha with Zhao Jin", the early statues were all carved on the pedestal in a small area, and only the age of the statues was recorded. During this period, some people only remember the theme of the statue, such as Bingling Temple 16.
The mural of CaveNo. 1 1 on the north wall of Cave No.9 only writes the title of the statue in ink. At the latest, at the end of the 5th century, for example, the statue tablet of Shi Xuansong unearthed in Maoxian County, Sichuan Province, dating back to 483 years ago, added the identity of the sculptor and the object of wishing. But in any case, the overall impression of the statues in this period is that they are attached to the overall design of the niche.
During the Southern and Northern Dynasties, the development of Buddhism in China reached its peak. Especially in the Northern Dynasties, under the influence of the Buddha's thought of being king and Zen practice, cave-opening statues prevailed and a large number of statues appeared. Take the scholar's visit to Longmen as an example. There are only 200 shops with age statues. In the second half of the Northern Wei Dynasty, about 500 years ago, the statues in the form of traditional Han steles began to appear in Guyang Cave in Longmen, such as the aforementioned statue of Yang Dayan and the statue of Wei Chi in 495. The contents of these statues mostly describe time, theme, motivation, oath and so on in the form of prose. Because the number of words has reached more than 100, plus the enlargement of fonts, the expansion of lettering area, the decoration of dragon patterns and inscriptions, the status of statues in the overall design of grottoes and niches has become more and more prominent, which is not the same as the situation of simply attaching to the base or back of niches in the early days.
Following the legacy of the Northern Dynasties, the design of sculpture records reached the Sui and Tang Dynasties, and independent monument-shaped sculpture records were developed, such as Sima Zhen's statue monument in the 12th year of Sui Dynasty (592), and a que Buddhist shrine monument in the 15th year of Tang Zhenguan in Longmen Grottoes (64 1). Sima Yi Statue Monument carves only one Buddha statue in a position similar to the monument, and the area occupied by the statue does not exceed 1 of the area occupied by the statues and figures of the same monument. "A Que Buddhist Shrine Monument" also describes the whole process of grotto excavation, the manpower and material resources consumed, and the design of the interior of the grotto. In the beautiful long parallel inscription, the shape and content of the statue itself reached a highly mature stage at this time. However, after An Lushan captured Luoyang in the 14th year of Tianbao in the Tang Dynasty (755), the Central Plains region was constantly in war and people's livelihood was depressed, so the sculpture activities were hit. This situation is also clearly reflected in the statue. Taking the statistics of a pair of Longmen Grottoes in Xiong Min and Mizuno Kiyoshi in Changguang as an example, the statues in the Tang Dynasty reached their peak in about 650-720, and then gradually decreased. By the 1970 s, there were almost no statues on stone carvings and gold and copper statues. Compared with this situation, the latest age of existing statues in the Tang Dynasty in Sichuan is the second year of Guanghua (899), which shows that Sichuan has maintained the tradition of opening caves and statues since the late Northern Wei Dynasty. This is related to the fact that Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty and Xuanzong brought in a large number of craftsmen from the Central Plains during their refuge in Sichuan, and many monks went to Sichuan to preach when Tang Wuzong destroyed Buddhism. It can be seen from this that the appearance of statues can indeed reflect the diversified and complicated development of Buddhism in various times and regions.
After the Five Dynasties, there are still a large number of Buddhist and Taoist statues and murals in grottoes and Buddhist temples in various regions of China. The tradition of statues is still endless. However, there is no new development in the content and form of this kind of statues with strong worship. On the other hand, under the influence of the rise of the scholar-bureaucrat class, which replaced the nobility and promoted the thorough China of Buddhism, many painters, monks and professional painters with literati backgrounds began to create new styles of Taoist and Buddhist figure paintings. They may create in the form of sketching, reducing pen and splashing ink, and setting colors in blue and green, so that the style of Taoist and Buddhist figure painting gradually breaks away from the limitations of classics and ceremonies and develops into works of art with more independent appreciation value. As can be seen from the Painting of Xuanhe, there are dozens of Taoist and Buddhist figure paintings by Li (1049- 1 106, 1070 Jinshi) in the Northern Song Dynasty. In the Yuan Dynasty, Zhao Mengfu (1254- 1322) had "Lohan in Red" (collected by Liaoning Provincial Museum), and in the Ming Dynasty, Ding (about 1547- 162 1) had "Three Religions" and "Grand Prix". In the Qing Dynasty, Jin Nong (1687- 1763) and Luo Pin (1733- 1799) and others also created such works. Among them, either only the year of creation, the author and the subject matter are recorded, but also some people use the topic to play and write poems to clarify their minds. Whether the inscriptions in this kind of Taoist and Buddhist figure paintings can also be included in the sculpture model remains to be further discussed.
What I have seen above roughly reflects the development process of sculpture records from simple to complex, from rough to fine, from subsidiary to main. Among them, it also reflects the complicated development of Buddhism in China and the situation of Buddhist art in China.