Dizang and the Ten Kings in Niche No. 73 at Yuanjue Grottoes, Anyue: An Iconographical Reassessment

Abstract

Dizang and the Ten Kings in Niche no. 73, at Yuanjue Grottoes in Anyue, Ziyang, has been considered one of the most famous transformation tableaux of hell (<i>diyu bianxiang</i>) in the Sichuan Basin since it was first introduced by the local scholars in the 1980s. At the time, it was suggested that some relief-scenes in the niche, especially the central figure and its lower part, illustrate the story of Mulian, and this hypothesis continues to be occasionally cited in the academic literature to this day. However, my reexamination of the relief-scenes and related visual and literary materials reveals that the previous discussions on the niche must be reconsidered. In this paper I argue that the arrangement program of the reliefs in the niche follows the typical iconography of Dizang and the Ten Kings, which places Dizang in the center, with the Ten Kings surrounding the bodhisattva in a symmetric composition. In addition, on the bottom left of the main wall are the dead suffering at the court of Yanluo wang, and on the right are those who were saved from the fate of the three evil destinies (<i>san edao</i>) at the court of Wudao zhuanlun wang. There are no evidences of the hell and/or Mulian story in the niche. It seems likely that previous studies misidentified the relief-scenes of the two kings' courts with punishment in hell and made a loosen connection between the reliefs and the story of Mulian without further scrutiny of text and image.