Structure Type: Village Temple 村廟. The temple is a very large and grand one, hence its self-appellation “The Pure-Rock Palace” 淨石宮.
Location: Dry-River Village, Hongdong County, Shanxi 山西省洪洞縣乾河村. To be honest I don’t know anything about this village or this area, whether the village was walled or not, whether the temple has any connection to those walls, etc.
Period: 1648; this is attested on cartouches in the upper part of the painting itself. There’s an extremely thorough article on this by Hou Huiming 侯惠明; see 侯惠明. “淨石宮 ‘玄天上帝應化圖’ 初探.” 世界宗教研究, 2015, pp.92-104.
Artist: Eight artists of the Yang 楊 family, of Shiming li at Zhaocheng County 趙城縣石明里. The head artists appears to have been Yang Chenglian 楊成廉 and his brother Yang chunlian 楊[ ]廉 (elsewhere attested 楊純連). Under them worked their sons, Yang Facui 楊法翠, Yang Fayou 楊法有, and a number of others whose names are no longer clear. Hou Huiming’s article on this site does an excellent job of tracing the Yang family painters through about 150 years of Hongdong County temple inscriptions, see p.93.
Mural Contents: The two central walls on either side of the altar 神龕 depict the Primordial Generals 元帥 of the Perfected Warrior. The side-walls show scenes from the Perfected Warrior’s Apotheosis 起聖錄. Again, see Hou Huiming for a detailed analysis of the textual sources of this.
Other Notes: This room is dark and the walls are high; it’s difficult to photograph any of the higher registers of the Apotheosis narrative, although I did my best. For sheer high style, these are probably some of the finest Ming-Qing village murals ever painted.
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