Efficacious Underworld : : The Evolution of Ten Kings Paintings in Medieval China and Korea / / Cheeyun Lilian Kwon.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Asian Studies Contemporary Collection eBook Package
• VerfasserIn: Kwon, Cheeyun Lilian,
• Place / Publishing House: Honolulu : : University of Hawaii Press, , [2019]; ©2019
• Year of Publication: 2019
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource :; 120 color, 80 b&w illustrations

The Ten Kings hanging scrolls at Tokyo's Seikadō Bunko Art Museum are among the most resplendent renderings of the Buddhist purgatory extant, but their origin and significance have yet to be fully explored. Cheeyun Kwon unfurls this exquisite set of scrolls within the existing Ten Kings painting tradition while investigating textual, scriptural, archaeological, and visual materials from East Asia to shed light on its possible provenance. She constructs a model scheme of the paintings' evolution based on more than five hundred works and reveals channels of popularization, mass production, and agglomeration.The earliest images of the Ten Kings are found in the tenth-century sūtra The Scripture of the Ten Kings, known to be the work of the monk Zangchuan. By the mid-twelfth century, typological conventions associated with the Ten Kings were widely established, and paintings depicting them, primarily large-scale and stand-alone, became popular export commodities, spreading via land and sea routes to the Korean peninsula and the Japanese archipelago. An examination of materials in Korea suggests a unique development path for Ten Kings subject matter, and this-in conjunction with a close analysis of the Seikadō paintings-forms the core of Kwon's book. Among the Korean works discussed is a woodblock edition of The Scripture of the Ten Kings from 1246. It is markedly different from its Chinese counterparts and provides strong evidence of the subject's permutations during the Koryŏ period (918-1392), when Northern Song (960-1127) visual art and culture were avidly imported. In the Seikadō paintings, Northern Song figural, architectural, landscape, and decorative elements were acculturated to the Koryŏ milieu, situating them in the twelfth to early thirteenth centuries and among the oldest and most significant surviving examples of Koryŏ Buddhist painting.Efficacious Underworld fills major lacunae in Korean, East Asian, and Ten Kings painting traditions while illuminating Korea's contribution to the evolution of a Buddhist theme on its trajectory across East Asia. With its rich set of color reproductions and detailed analysis of textual and visual materials, this volume will invite significant revision to previously held notions on Koryŏ painting.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- Introduction -- EVOLUTION OF TEN KINGS PAINTINGS IN CHINA -- Introduction -- 1. Images of the Ten Kings: Early Traces -- 2. Transitional Link from Handscroll to Individualized Hanging Scrolls: The Former Packard Set -- 3. Full Efflorescence in Southern Song Ningbo -- 4. Post-Song Variations -- THE TEN KINGS CULT IN KORYŎ -- Introduction -- 5. Buddhist Rituals and the Ten Kings Paintings in Koryŏ -- 6. The Scripture on the Ten Kings from Haeinsa (1246) -- THE TEN KINGS FROM THE SEIKADŌ BUNKO ART MUSEUM -- 7. Introduction to the Seikadō Ten Kings -- 8. The Seikadō Ten Kings as Iconic Images -- 9. Northern Song Figure-Painting Styles in the Seikadō Ten Kings -- 10. Northern Song Landscape- and Flower-Painting Styles in the Seikadō Ten Kings -- 11. Ritual Context: Royal Ancestral Worship in the Buddhist Style -- Conclusion -- Appendix -- Glossary -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Illustration Credits -- Index -- ABOUT THE AUTHOR