APPENDIX I 

 JADE IN BUDDHIST ART 



In our collection there are several jade carvings of Buddhistic and 

 Taoistic images which will be treated in a separate monograph dealing 

 with Buddhist stone sculpture. Also the Ku yii Vu p'u (Ch. 98) figures 

 six religious subjects executed in jade. One of these has a particular 

 interest for us, as it is connected with the name of the great painter 

 Yen Li-pen of the T'ang period, who worked in the latter half of the 

 seventh century (Giles, Introduction to the History of Chinese Pictorial 

 Art, p. 38; Hirth, Scraps from a Collector's Note Book, p. 66). In the 

 course of this study, we have had occasion to refer several times to the 

 names of painters and to pictorial influence penetrating into the decora- 

 tive motives of jades. To this tendency, which seems to set in from the 

 beginning of the tenth century, we owe the preservation of some ancient 

 pictures which would otherwise be lost. If not exact copies, they are 

 authentic in so far that they preserve the style of the master and make 

 us acquainted with the subject which he treated. As we were forced 

 to expose the Sung Catalogue of Jades to severe criticism, it will be a 

 matter of justice to credit it also with what is good in it, and to empha- 

 size this merit of having transmitted to us a certain amount of valuable 

 pictorial material. 



The medallion-picture here reproduced in Fig. 201 is carved on a 

 slab of jade light-green and white, two feet six inches (Chinese) long, 

 two feet one inch wide, and 1.6 inches thick. The title given to the 

 picture by the editors of the work is in the original on the upper right 

 hand side outside of the frame, but here inserted inside in the upper 

 left for technical reasons. It reads: "Ancient jade image of P'u-hien 

 (Samantabhadra) , the Great Master (Mahasatva)." An inscription of 

 seven lines is carved in the slab which may thus be translated: " In the 

 period K'ai-p'ing (907-911 a. d.) of the Great Liang (i. e. Hou Liang) 

 dynasty, from the imperial treasury, bestowed by imperial command as 

 a dedication on the temple Hung ming (sze). Carved by the jade- 

 cutter P'eng Tsu-shou. Picture of how the Great Master has his ele- 

 phant washed. Style approaching that of Yen Li-pen." 



In the palace of the Sung emperois, forty-five scrolls ascribed to this 

 artist were still preserved (Siian ho hua p'u, Ch. 1, p. 8) ; and, though the 

 subject of the present picture is not mentioned there in the list of his 



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