Buddhist Murals of Kucha on the Northern Silk Road
11. November 2020
Buddhist Murals of Kucha on the Northern Silk Road
Prof. Dr. Monika Zin, Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Leipzig
11. November 2020, 17.15 – 18.45 Uhr
On the ancient Silk Roads, running north along the Taklamakan Desert, there once flourished a Tocharian kingdom named after its capital, Kucha. In the region (today Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, PR China) impressive Buddhist murals have been preserved dating from the 5th to 10th centuries.
Since 2016, a long-term project in Leipzig, at the Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities, is devoted to the documentation and scientific study all of Kucha’s paintings in a comprehensive database-supported information system. The aim of the project is to record all paintings, including fragments that are kept in museums and collections around the world, as well as paintings that have only been preserved in photographs, drawings or descriptions. Based on this documentation, the researchers examine the image programs as well as the content of individual paintings, establish their literary basis and, if possible, their affiliation with particular Buddhist schools and thus provide a differentiated picture of the cultural history of the region.
The lecture offers an insight into the ongoing work and presents the first results.
Monika Zin is the head of the research group “Buddhist Murals of Kucha on the Northern Silk Road” at the Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Leipzig, Germany.
She studied Dramatics, Literature, Art History, and Indology in Krakow and Munich where she also taught Art of South and Central Asia for 25 years.
Zin’s dissertation focused on the Sanskrit dramas discovered in Trivandrum; for her second dissertation (Habilitation) she studied the paintings at Ajanta. Among her research contributions are monographs (Ajanta – Handbuch der Malereien, Devotionale und ornamentale Malereien, Wiesbaden 2003; Mitleid und Wunderkraft, Schwierige Bekehrungen und ihre Ikonographie im indischen Buddhismus, Wiesbaden 2007; [with Dieter Schlingloff] Saṃsāracakra. Das Rad der Wiedergeburten in der indischen Überlieferung, Munich 2007; as well as numerous shorter studies on Buddhist narrative art ranging from Kucha in Central Asia to Borobudur on Java. One of her long-term research interests is the art of ancient Āndhradeśa; the book The Kanaganahalli Stūpa was published in 2018. Her book Representations of the Parinirvāṇa Story Cycle in Kucha, the second volume of the Leipzig Kucha Studies, has recently been released.