The Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra and its transmission in Pingcheng 平城 period (398–494) of the Northern Wei 北魏

This paper discusses the development of ideas of the ultimate in the thought of Chinese Buddhism in the Northern and Southern Dynasties. The concept of ultimate truth is, along with that of conventional truth, a core concept in Mahāyāna Buddhism. During the Sui Dynasty, Chinese Buddhism developed the unique perspective of the Three Truths, the foundation for which was formed during the Southern and Northern Dynasties. This begins with Jie jie Jing 解節經 (in full, Foshuo Jiejie Jing 佛說解節經) by Paramārtha (499–569), which is a partial translation of Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra and presents the theory of ultimate truth (paramārtha) to Chinese Buddhists. Through a comparison of Jiejie Jing with other Chinese and Tibetan translations of Saṃdhinirmocana-sūtra, we establish Paramārtha’s thoughts on the ultimate. The relationship between Paramārtha’s thought on the ultimate and the development of the Three Truths is evaluated in a comparison of Paramārtha’s thoughts on ultimate truth with the thinking of nearly contemporary Chinese monks.

In the Northern and Southern Dynasties, there existed differences in the Chinese language between the North and the South of China. It is considered one of the important tasks in the Chinese language history to reveal these differences. We carried out a study on the lexical differences between Songshu and Weishu from the different commonly-used words: “ta-jian”, “mang-xia” and “shi-zhu”. Based on historical documents in the Northern and Southern Dynasties, we preliminarily found “ta” “mang” and “shi” were chosen in the North of China, while “jian” “xia” and “zhu” were chosen in the South of China. Key words: Songshu; Weishu; Lexical differences; the Northern and Southern Dynasties; commonly-used words

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English. 冢墓作爲中世重要的文化場域，在詩歌領域中，從東漢以來附庸於“哀傷”詩的景觀陪襯，轉變爲南朝詩的歌詠主題，冢墓與詩歌的連結，展現出獨特的發展與變化。南朝詩的冢墓書寫具有强烈的移動性質，不僅强調作者對於冢墓的意外發現，冢墓的存在迥異人類經驗世界，從生活之“常”走入冢墓之“非常”，需要透過移動才能達成。而此一移動特徵，亦表現於南朝冢墓詩書寫的臨場性與當下性。謝靈運與蕭子良文學集團，對於故人之拜墓與追念，從哀傷抒懷到同題共作，展現“爲情造文”與“爲文造情”兩種書寫風格。至何遜、庾信結合冢墓與詠史，使冢墓書寫不限於生死感嘆，更加拓展了冢墓在詩歌書寫的可能性。南朝詩冢墓書寫融會移動、抒情、詠史三項詩歌性質，交會時間與空間、生命與死亡的探討，實爲觀照南朝詩歌的重要視角。 Graves were an important cultural field in Medieval China. In poetry, its role changed from a subsidiary element in Eastern Han to being a main theme in the Southern Dynasties. The connection between graves and poetry has created a unique development and transformation. Poems on visiting graves in the Southern Dynasties are characterized by the theme of mobility. They not only emphasize the poets incidental discovery of graves but also point out that the graves very existence is different from the world of human experience. It requires mobility to step into the “unusual” world of the grave from the “usual” world of everyday life. On the themes of visiting graves and mourning, the two literary circles led by Hsieh Ling Yun and Hsiao Tzu Liang demonstrate two different modes of writing, “create writing for the sake of feeling” and “create feeling for the sake of writing.” In the latter part of the era, by integrating the genres of grave visiting poetry and poems on history, He Xun and Yu Xin further expanded the possibilities of the former, taking it beyond reflections on life and death. The grave visiting poetry in the Southern Dynasties feature travel, mourning and reflection on history, combine the discussion of time and space as well as life and death, and provide an important perspective in appreciating the poetry of the Southern Dynasties.

Two periods in Chinese history can be characterized as constituting a North/South polarization: the period commonly known as the Northern and Southern Dynasties (420ad-589ad), and the Southern Song, Jin, and Yuan Dynasties (1115ad-1368ad). Both of these periods exhibited sharp contrasts between the North and South that can be seen in their respective political and economic institutions. The North/South parity in both of these periods had a great impact on the course of Chinese history. Both before and after the much studied Tang-Song transformation, Chinese history evolved as a conjoining of previously separate North/South institutions. Once the country achieved unification under the Sui Dynasty and early part of the Tang, the trend was to carry on the Northern institutions in the form of political and economic administration. Later in the Tang Dynasty the Northern institutions and practices gave way to the increasing implementation of the Southern institutions across the country. During the Song Dynasty, the Song court initially inherited this “Southernization” trend while the minority kingdoms of Liao, Xia, Jin, and Yuan primarily inherited the Northern practices. After coexisting for a time, the Yuan Dynasty and early Ming saw the eventual dominance of the Southern institutions, while in middle to late Ming the Northern practices reasserted themselves and became the norm. An analysis of these two periods of North/South disparity will demonstrate how these differences came about and how this constant divergence-convergence influenced Chinese history.

Hands are referred to as a “second face,” offering clues into a variety of social information about a person’s personality, occupation, etc. In China, there are several medieval records that depict the tradition of nail dyeing, and in literature, fair, long and slender hands and nails are suggested as a female beauty ideal. This article sketches out the characteristics of hand and nail beautification culture of the Wei, Jin, Northern and Southern Dynasties and Tang Dynasty, through examining 『New Songs from a Jade Terrace』, an anthology of poetry from the Wei, Jin, Northern and Southern Dynasties that offers insight into the research of hand and nail care culture of the time, as well as 『Tang Poetry』, the pinnacle of Chinese literature during the Tang Dynasty. The Wei, Jun, Northern and Southern Dynasties were a period of social turmoil, with the fusion of Hu (non-Han) and Han, and Taoism spreading. 『New Songs from a Jade Terrace』 features several variations of describing fair and slender hands and fingers.The Tang Dynasty was the most powerful and prosperous in Chinese history, driven by an open foreign policy, internationalism, and the strong influence of foreign cultures. We can see slender, long, fair hands and fingernails being depicted in the illustrations of 『Tang Poetry』 and know the characteristics of the hand and nail beautification culture of the time through the descriptions of clear and red fingernails, and the tradition of nail dying using touch-me-nots.

The Medieval China is a “Manuscript era”. The four divisions of Jing, Shi, Zi, Ji, and the documents of Buddhism and Taoism, all have to be considered based on this general background. For the first part of this paper, the keyword used in the comparison with “Buddhism” in the Medieval China is “Confucianism” rather than “Confucian classics”. Then, the concept and classification of Jiyi (collection of the lost parts of classics) are explained. The second part, starting from the newly published Lunyu Yi shu in Japan in 2020 and integrating with Jiang Zhou yi shulunjia yi ji and other manuscripts, is to analyze some Buddhist factors in the study of Confucianism Yi shu. The third part, from the East Asian Civilization sphere, explores the academic significance of Chinese Buddhism under the perspective of the integration of the Three teachings in the Middle Ages. Special attention will be paid to the Japanese written Guketsu getensho, and how the text form absorbed the Confucian thought will be analyzed. Through these cases, a preliminary conclusion about the relationship between the manuscript culture of Confucianism and Buddhism in the medieval China will be made.

Reviewed by: Structures of the Earth: Metageographies of Early Medieval China by D. Jonathan Felt Hieu Phung Structures of the Earth: Metageographies of Early Medieval China. D. Jonathan Felt. Harvard University Asia Center, 2021. Pp. xii+391, 2 photos, 11 illustrations, 17 maps, footnotes. $68.00, hardcover, ISBN 978-0-6742-5116-8. One of the most problematic geographical units in world history is "China." In contrast to the historiographies of classical societies like Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome, or Angkor, the narrative of Chinese civilization continues to spark debate on the insidious influence of teleological thinking in the field. Moreover, emphasis on the theme of Chinese unification has overshadowed counternarratives of fragmentation. D. Jonathan Felt's Structures of the Earth is a delicate project that unveils the "ruptures, inconsistencies, and disjunctions" (11) in the historical geography of a place often oversimplified as "China." Structures of the Earth tells the spatial history of four centuries, from around 200 to 600 CE, a period during which a unified Chinese empire did not exist. Felt's central argument is that the framework of imperial unification is only one among many spatial paradigms that the various peoples living in historical China perceived. To illustrate, Felt analyzes four spatial schemes, or metageographies, that emerged in the eastern part of the Eurasian landmass between the third and seventh centuries. They include ecumenical regionalism, the Northern and Southern dynasties, the hydrocultural landscape, and the Indo-Sinitic bipolar worldview. Chapters 2 to 5 each analyze one of these spatial schemes. In addition to the introduction and conclusion, the first chapter discusses in detail how geography emerged as a new literary genre in early medieval China. As suggested in its title, this monograph speaks of spatial history and historical geography. Inspired by the work of Martin Lewis and Kären Wigen, Felt's use of "metageographies" aims to identify the kind of spatial structures that were (and have been) unconsciously accepted as natural entities. For instance, Felt shows in chapter 3 that the metageography [End Page 94] of the Northern and Southern dynasties—as two halves of one "China"—was a teleological product that the literati of the later periods created to characterize the sociopolitical conditions of the fifth and sixth centuries. By contrast, the rulers and literati of both the Northern and Southern dynasties did not perceive themselves as part of a fragmented empire awaiting reunification. They instead presented themselves as universal empires. Felt also utilizes Henri Lefebvre's dialectic relationship between spatial practices, representations of space, and representational spaces (70). He argues that the decline of the Han imperial metageography, which emphasized top-down political control and the cultural ecumene, resulted from a series of interconnected transformations in spatial practices after the third century CE. The Han imperial order was replaced by several different fragmented sociopolitical entities. Thanks to major waves of immigration out of the original Sinitic core at the Yellow River valley, the period also saw the rise of the Yangzi basin as another core of civilization. Thus, early medieval literati sought to reconcile the relationship between imperial and local geographical models by means of the metageography of "ecumenical regionalism" (chapter 2). Likewise, the movement of travelers and ideas between the Indic/Buddhist and the Sinitic worlds compelled the literati to create a new metageography that synthesized geographical information from both cultures (chapter 5). The most important contribution of this study is its masterful analysis of the Shuijing zhu (SJZ, Guide to waterways with commentary). Despite the rich information preserved in this early medieval source, Felt's work is the first substantial analysis of the text within English-speaking scholarship. The statistics Felt extracts from this source are impressive. The SJZ contains information of "1,252 rivers and the physical and cultural geography surrounding them" in the land that goes beyond China proper "to include India, Inner Eurasia, and Southeast Asia" (12). Arguing persuasively that "the single defining feature of geographical writing was its spatially organized textual structure" (22), Felt brilliantly uses drainage basins as a spatial unit to visualize the distribution of information in the SJZ (e.g., maps 1.1, 1.2, 1.3). Moreover, the information from the SJZ serves as the...

This paper is an examination of the medical activities of Taoists during Eastern Han, Wei-Chin and Northern and Southern Dynasties, and of the healing arts which they employed. It also examines the relationship between Taoism, in its formative and early stages, and Chinese medical culture. Relying on 'hagiographic' material and related records, we find that many Taoists functioned as medical practitioners during the Eastern Han and Six Dynasties period (ca. 2^(nd)-6^(th) century AD). Moreover, in the case of some Taoist lineages, medical practice was not merely a matter of individual interest but was of long standing and regular concern to the lineage itself. A number of Taoist scriptures are devoted to medical practice, providing detailed discussions of causes for disease as well as methods for healing, A number of Taoists depended on medical practice for their livelihood, either as a source of income or as a means of attracting donations from Taoist adherents. Healing methods practiced and advocated by Taoists, generally fell into four types: physicians' methods, methods of ＂nurturing life,＂ shamanistic methods and healing rites developed by Taoists themselves. Although these four types of practice were not completely synthesized into a single system and Taoists held differing views concerning their respective uses, we may generally conclude that Taoism, since first forming a distinct medical system, influenced the development of Chinese medicine and of medical culture more generally. Taoists were successful in attracting numerous adherents and disciples through their healing arts during periods of ＂severe plagues＂ in medieval China. The establishment of some Taoist sects and lineages was based on the success of such practices. In conclusion, medical practice was one of the primary methods of Taoists for spreading their beliefs, converting disciples, attracting adherents and forming religious communities in medieval China.

In the Northern and Southern Dynasties, there were many types of Buddhist scripture-interpretation literature, including xuanyi 玄義, xuanlun 玄論, yishu 義疏, yizhang 義章, etc. These exegetical forms are related to Chinese traditional literary style, but mainly inherit the tradition of Indian Buddhist hermeneutics. In this paper, all such types would be summarized as yi (義, exegesis), lun (論, treatise) and shu (疏, commentaries), which are described as follows.BR The style of yi is related to the interpretation tradition of the Confucian classic Spring and Autumn Annals, which finds two variants in the interpretation of Buddhist scriptures. The first is yizhang as the general interpretation of Buddhist ideas, such as Dasheng yizhang by Jingying Huiyuan, and the second is xuanyi as the general exegesis of a Buddhist scripture, such as Fahua xuanyi by Zhiyi.BR Lun for Buddhist treatises is the same term used for Chinese traditional treatise lun, but its connotation mainly derives from Indian Buddhist hermeneutics. There are two variants of this style, one is a general interpretation, such as the Dasheng xuanlun by Jizang, and the other is general exegesis, such as Fahua xuanlun by Jizang. Sometimes, this style is also titled with yizhang and xuanyi.BR Shu as a genre of literature, which is related to Chinese tradition of classical annotation, usually means record, classification, and interpretation of various commentaries. When interpreting Buddhist scriptures, this genre explains Buddhist scriptures from the perspective of yi and is later called yishu, such as in Qixin lun yishu by the author Jingying Huiyuan. It is often also referred to as yiji 義記, jijie 集解 or wenju 文句.BR Yi and lun are actually the same style or genre, typically having a small number of volumes (juan 卷, rolls or scrolls) and focusing on a few profound meanings. There are many examples of yishu that had such a wide influence that the term changed to become zhangshu 章疏—together with yizhang—since the Tang dynasty. In the history of Chinese Buddhism, yi and lun gradually faded out while zhangshu continued to be produced. This change is an indication that the focus of Chinese Buddhism shifted from Indian Buddhist scriptures to Chinese patriarchal works deriving from Buddhist schools, such as Tiantai, Huayan, Chan, and Pure Land Buddhism.

During the Northern and Southern dynasties (420–589 CE), Chinese Buddhist monasteries transitioned from singlequadrangle structures into large compounds encompassing central and subsidiary courtyards.Historians studying this transition, often characterized as part of a long acculturation process as Buddhism moved from India to China, have generally focused on the principal buildings of these complexes—the central stupas and image halls. In Buddhist Architectural Transformation in Medieval China, 300–700 CE: Emperor Wu’s Great Assemblies and the Rise of the Corridor-Enclosed,Multicloister Monastery Plan, Zhu Xu considers courtyard spaces and the buildings surrounding them, focusing on the historical and ceremonial significance of the multiple-courtyard, corridorenclosed form developed for Liang-era imperial monasteries. Emperor Wu and the architect-monk Sengyou played a central role in this process by adapting the traditional forms of imperial ritual architecture for spectacular public Buddhist assemblies. These utilized monastic space for imperial and dynastic purposes while responding to and facilitating ritual interactions between lay and monastic communities. EmperorWu’s imperial Buddhist ritual programs and architectural innovations distinguished southern monasteries of the sixth century and were later adopted by northern elites andmonastic reformers. Thus did the corridor-enclosed, multicloister plan became the preeminent

This work offers a sweeping reassessment of the Jiankang Empire (third to sixth centuries CE), known as the Chinese “Southern Dynasties.” It shows how, although one of the medieval world’s largest empires, Jiankang has been rendered politically invisible by the standard narrative of Chinese nationalist history, and proposes a new framework and terminology for writing about medieval East Asia. The book pays particular attention to the problem of ethnic identification, rejecting the idea of “ethnic Chinese,” and delineating several other, more useful ethnographic categories, using case studies in agriculture/foodways and vernacular languages. The most important, the Wuren of the lower Yangzi region, were believed to be inherently different from the peoples of the Central Plains, and the rest of the book addresses the extent of their ethnogenesis in the medieval era. It assesses the political culture of the Jiankang Empire, emphasizing military strategy, institutional cultures, and political economy, showing how it differed from Central Plains–based empires, while having significant similarities to Southeast Asian regimes. It then explores how the Jiankang monarchs deployed three distinct repertoires of political legitimation (vernacular, Sinitic universalist, and Buddhist), arguing that the Sinitic repertoire was largely eclipsed in the sixth century, rendering the regime yet more similar to neighboring South Seas states. The conclusion points out how the research reorients our understanding of acculturation and ethnic identification in medieval East Asia, generates new insights into the Tang-Song transition period, and offers new avenues of comparison with Southeast Asian and medieval European history.

The designation “early medieval China” denotes the centuries between the end of the Eastern Han 東漢 (27 ce–220 ce) and the Sui 隋 dynasty (581 ce–618 ce), or c. 200 ce–600 ce. During this period the Eastern Han devolved into rebellion and warlordism, ending with the founding of the Wei 魏 dynasty (220 ce–265 ce). The Wei in turn was supplanted by the Jin 晉dynasty (265 ce–420 ce). Although the new rulers managed to unify China for a brief time, the dynasty was forced south of the Yangzi River when non-Han nomadic tribes sacked Luoyang and Chang’an. Following this came the Northern and Southern Dynasties 南北朝 (420 ce–589 ce), which took place, respectively, to the north and south of the Yangzi River. Non-Han clans ruled during the Northern Dynasties 北朝 (386 ce–581 ce), whereas the Southern Dynasties 南朝 (420 ce–579 ce) era was controlled by northern emigré and southern clans. Sometimes, the period is referred to as the Six Dynasties 六朝 period or simply the Period of Disunion. Although this period was not one of grand empire building, it was acclaimed as an age of great literary, intellectual, and cultural accomplishment. Of particular cultural importance was the emergence of pentasyllabic (wuyan五言) and heptasyllabic (qiyan七言) shi詩 (lyric poetry), which began to rival and, eventually, eclipse the dominant, tetrasyllabic (siyan四言) form, which could be traced back to the Classic of Poetry (Shijing [詩經]). It should be noted, however, that although literary histories often conventionally characterize early medieval China as dominated by pentasyllabic poetry, the genre fu賦 (rhapsody, rhyme prose) was as significant in terms of cultural prestige. Also of importance was yuefu shi樂府詩 (Music Bureau poetry), often treated as a genre, but actually an amorphous poetic corpus with musical associations, from ritual hymns to local song traditions and literati imitations. The three major forms are often treated separately, but they share many thematic commonalities. Furthermore, there is a vast literature in Chinese and Japanese devoted to the poetry of this period, and the following article is intended simply as a starting point for research. This article provides a guide to the main traditional sources and modern critical editions for early medieval poetry, along with important English-language scholarship and selected scholarship in Chinese, Japanese, French, and German. Those interested in more general reference works and resources for Chinese poetry should consult the article on Traditional Chinese Poetry.

Reviewed by: A Journey into China's Antiquity, Volumes 1-4 Elizabeth Childs-Johnson (bio) Yu Weichao , editor-in-chief. A Journey into China's Antiquity. Compiled by the National Museum of Chinese History and Yu Weichao. Beijing: Morning Glory Publishers, 1997. Volume 1, Palaeolithic Age-Spring and Autumn Period. 271 pp. Hardcover $80.00, ISBN 7-5054-0476-8. Volume 2, Warring States Period-Northern and Southern Dynasties. 303pp. Hardcover $80.00, ISBN 7-5054-0483-0. Volume 3, Sui Dynasty-Northern and Southern Song Dynasties. 323pp. Hardcover $80.00, ISBN 7-5054-0507-1. Volume 4: Yuan Dynasty-Qing Dynasty. 302pp. Hardcover $80.00, ISBN 7-5054-0514-4. This hefty, four-volume set is a pictorial history documenting representative works of art belonging to the permanent collection of the National Museum of Chinese History (Zhongguo Lishi Bowuguan) in Beijing, founded after the fall of China's last dynasty in 1912 and established as a permanent institution in 1959. This heroic publication is organized chronologically—as are the exhibition halls in Beijing—and thus in one sense may be viewed as the long-awaited multivolume catalog of the Museum's collection. The perspective of the publication, as with the galleries, is historical and factual, yet ideologically Marxist, as formulated and refined under the editorial leadership of archaeologist and professor Yu Weichao, director and curator of the Museum from 1985 to 1998. In a visual narrative, Chinese "antiquity" is traced from its origins in the Paleolithic period (1.7 million years ago) through the demise of the last dynasty, the Qing, in 1911. Volume 1 encompasses the Paleolithic, Lower Neolithic, and Upper Neolithic periods; the Xia, Shang, and Western Zhou dynasties; and the Spring and Autumn period. Volume 2 covers the Warring States period, the Qin and Han dynasties, the Three Kingdoms through the Western and Eastern Jin, and the Northern and Southern Dynasties. Volume 3 covers the Sui and Tang dynasties, the Five Dynasties, the Ten Kingdoms, and the Northern and Southern Song dynasties, and volume 4 the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties. Each volume is approximately three hundred pages long, and each includes some three hundred color photographs of artifacts, all of excellent quality, in addition to informative maps, technical drawings, and chronological or related charts. Each of the chapters consists of a brief introductory paragraph followed by numbered photographs of art works or artifacts accompanied by an explanation that describes the [End Page 275]significance of the subject. Thus, for the first chapter on the "Palaeolithic Age" there is an initial introductory paragraph followed by introductory remarks for each subchapter, including in this case "Evolution and Geographical Distribution of Man in Remote Antiquity," "Life of Homo Erectus," and "Life of Homo Sapiens." Illustrations of representative objects in each subchapter, such as photograph no. 1 of the upper and medial incisors of Yuanmou man from Shanxi, are followed by lengthy explanatory notes. The reader learns, for example, that these incisors belong to the "earliest upright-walking creature so far discovered in China" (p. 3). For the last chapter in volume 4 on the "Qing Dynasty"—the "final feudal dynasty in China" (p. 147)—the organization is similar but the content far longer, with more numerous subsections and historically relevant photographs, which, in the latter case, total approximately 150 (nos. 148-294). For chapters on the Qing and all other earlier dynasties and periods, the content is balanced by internal subchapters on historical, social, economic, scientific, cultural, or artistic issues. The Qing is divided, for example, into six subchapters that encompass history ("National Unification"), society ("Social Life of Various Ethnic Minorities"), economy ("Economy of Early Qing" and "Economic and Cultural Exchange between China and Other Countries in the Early Qing"), science and culture ("Science and Culture"), and another, final, section on history ("Decline and Downfall of the Qing Dynasty"). The strengths of this publication are that it is extremely rich in content and that it is an authoritative introduction to the subject from both a factual and a visual standpoint. The quality of the photography is high and the layout exquisitely beautiful. For example, the ritual jade congobjects, axe and awl-shaped ornaments from...

This paper examines the two lines of development Daoist paradises took as they were recreated as gardens in ancient and medieval China. It problematizes contrasting differences between Penglai (Immortals’ Isles) and Xuanpu (Hanging Garden) by analyzing a selection of mythological, historical, and literary texts. It concludes that they were founded on the two different Daoist desires, one secular and the other transcendental. Penglai and other islands developed into a formula of three islands in one pond beginning in the Qin-Han epoch (221 B.C.E.–220 C.E.). They then came to play an integral role in imperial garden culture both in China and neighboring countries. Emperors saw the active incorporation of otherworldly island paradises as an effective way to enhance prestige or a sublimation of their desire for eternal life. In contrast, the Hanging Garden was created for crown princes mainly during the Northern and Southern Dynasties. Prince Zhaoming (501–531) transformed it from a pleasure garden into a natural park in concert with aristocratic eremitism.

This article investigates liuli qinglou (琉璃青樓, blue–green glazed pavilions) of medieval China as architectural manifestations of the trans-Eurasian jeweled paradise ideal. Tracing developments from the Northern and Southern Dynasties (420–589 CE) through the Tang dynasty (618–907 CE), it outlines an evolutionary trajectory in representing sacred space: from the use of genuine gemstones in West Asian traditions, through their imitation in glass and glazed ceramics, with applications before the Tang remaining selective and elite, to the ultimate abstraction into symbolic blue–green palettes in the cave murals of Kucha and Dunhuang, where chromatic choices may at times reflect pictorial convention. Integrating textual, archeological, and visual evidence, the study shows how Chinese rulers appropriated imported glazing technologies, together with painted or coated blue–green finishes that simulated liuli effects, not merely for ornamentation but to materially embody Buddhist cosmology and to legitimize imperial authority by creating a terrestrial Buddha land. The pervasive use of qing (青, blue–green) in religious art thus reflects a profound sensory-theological translation, illustrating how Eurasian flows of materials, techniques, and ideas were adapted to shape localized visions of paradise through innovative processes of material and visual transformation.