Murals of the Feast of Water and Land and Lord Guan at the Monastery of the Peaceful Sage 安賢寺水陸、關公壁畫 — (Guangling County 廣靈縣, 1818 [?])

Structure Type: Buddhist Monastery 佛寺.

Location: East Liu [Family] Village, Guangling County, Shanxi Province 山西省廣靈縣東留疃村. The temple is located just to the south of the walls of the old village fort, adjacent to the location of the south gate on the east.

Period: 1818. According to one of the steles, the monastery was originally founded in 1596. It was then repaired in 1776, in 1807, and again in 1818. One of the monastery steles is blocked by the other ones, so there may be more information than this; neither of the two visible steles seem to mention the murals, so far as I can find.

Artist: Unknown. This seems curious to me, given how detailed the two repair-steles are. A long list of masons is found on one of them; perhaps I have just missed the artists.

Mural Contents: The monastery is a warren of small spaces packed with dense and un-labeled paintings. I have put up the Water and Land 水陸, the Lord Guan 關公 murals, and the murals in the Hall of the Patriarchs 祖師堂 here. Besides this there is also a shrine to Avalokiteśvara-Guanyin 觀音, which is not well-preserved or unusual and thus I haven’t uploaded the images. Given the size and close-ness of these halls, the only way to get full images was to create composites, thus some of the straight lines are a little bit wonky.

The front-hall 過殿 of the monastery contains a shrine to Lord Guan 關公, presumably in his role as Guardian of the Saṃghārāma 伽藍神. Three walls survive here, showing panel-narratives from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms 三國演義.

The central Mahāvīra Hall 大雄寶殿 of the monastery has murals of the Dharma Feast of Water and Land 水陸法齋. These depict the myriad deities and ghosts of earth, sea, and sky descending to receive offerings and be worshipped or delivered as necessary. The two rear walls depict the wrathful Wisdom Kings 明王, wrathful emanations of Boddhisattvas who guard the bodhimaṇḍa 道場 from evil influences.

Outside in the courtyard there is a small chapel referred to as the Hall of the Patriarchs 祖師堂. I’ve not seen such a hall elsewhere in the north; usually in southern Chan monasteries these would be halls where portraits of previous abbots were hung, but this is not the case here. Rather, the hall has images of the Arhats 羅漢 in the lower register and on the upper register a series of boddhisattva-like figures that I don’t recognize. It may be the case that these are the enlightened deities of the Water and Land Feast or the pacific forms of the Wisdom Kings in the main hall, but since they’re not labeled, I’m not sure.

Another interesting aspect of all of these halls is the small panels under the eaves. These show various hard-to-identify scenes, set against backdrops that make clear use of western-style perspective and European-influenced architecture. If we accept the 1818 date for these images, then they’re one of the earliest unambiguous and clearly-dated examples of western artistic influence I’ve seen out in these villages.