Jinchao Zhao - Profile on Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Jinchao Zhao

Religions, 2023

The Śyāma jātaka is renowned for its portrayal of a devoted son who cared for his blind parents. ... more The Śyāma jātaka is renowned for its portrayal of a devoted son who cared for his blind parents. The story has been translated into various textual versions and depicted in reliefs and murals, gaining wide circulation in the Buddhist world. Previous scholarship on the story's transmission in China has primarily focused on its representation of filial piety and its resonance with the Chinese context. However, a careful examination of surviving visual depictions of jātaka stories brings to light historical and regional disparities that have often been overlooked in relation to the reception of Śyāma jātaka's didactic teachings in early medieval China. While the story has flourished in North China (including the Central Plain and the Hexi Corridor) from the late fifth century onwards, it was intriguingly absent from the region during the first half of the sixth century. This absence of the Śyāma jātaka stands in contrast to the popularity of other jātakas such as Sudāna and Mahasattva, which were widely circulated in China. In this article, I explore the uneven adaptation of the Śyāma jātaka within Chinese visual culture by placing the story's textual and visual traditions within the broader historical milieu of depicting Buddhist stories and filial paragons in the sixth century. My study demonstrates that the story's theme in multiple dimensions was simplified to filial piety during the textual translation process of the story in third-and fourth-century China. Moreover, it reveals that the story's visual legacy faced challenges and negotiations when integrating into the local teaching of filial piety. This reluctance can be attributed to two historical factors: the revival of preexisting visual traditions depicting Chinese filial sons, and the growing preference for other jātakas that embodied teachings on generosity in early sixth-century North China. Furthermore, this study sheds light on the tension between textual and visual traditions when incorporating Buddhist teachings into a new social context. While various rhetoric strategies were developed in text translation to integrate Buddhist teachings into existing Chinese thought, the visual tradition posed separate questions regarding its necessity, the didactic intentions of patrons, and the visual logic understood by viewers.

MDPI: Religions, 2023

The production of stone sculptures in the form of statues, steles, and pagodas was arguably one o... more The production of stone sculptures in the form of statues, steles, and pagodas was arguably one of the most prominent forms of Buddhist devotion in early medieval China. The abundant Buddhist imagery and devotional inscriptions adorning their surfaces provide rich information on their creation, commission, consecration, and worship, which is essential for comprehending the local community’s religious landscape. This paper employs a network analysis approach to visualize and analyze the spatial arrangement of Buddhist images on the surfaces of pagodas from Nan-nieshui 南涅水, Shanxi 山西 Province. Network analysis reveals that Nannieshui pagodas were commissioned and worshipped differently from other kinds of stone sculpture, as shown by its emphasis on the spatial and sequential order of Buddhist images depicted on the exterior of these pagodas.

《文学与图像：文图互释》, 2022

欧美学者自19世纪以来，对波斯细密画展开广泛收集和系统研究，至20世纪下半叶，逐步在大学、博物馆建立起独立的专门研究领域。这一发展历程交织着由西方主导的东方历史书写，和西方的艺术史学科研究方法的... more 欧美学者自19世纪以来，对波斯细密画展开广泛收集和系统研究，至20世纪下半叶，逐步在大学、博物馆建立起独立的专门研究领域。这一发展历程交织着由西方主导的东方历史书写，和西方的艺术史学科研究方法的变化。本文梳理两个世纪以来欧美学界研究波斯细密画的方法论，勾勒波斯细密画研究史的嬗变脉络，并在近年来艺术史学科检讨西方中心主义的思潮下，重新审视波斯细密画的研究方法和问题，评析近年来的新方法与新视角。在此基础上，本文着重探讨学术界就波斯插图写本的叙事问题的讨论在过去一个世纪中的发展，及其与整体伊斯兰艺术领域研究视角变迁之间的关系。在现存种类繁多的波斯插图写本中，基于史诗与诗歌的作品尤为丰富。史诗与诗歌文本的叙事性使其插图本兼具文本叙事和图像叙事。图像的叙事方式及其与文本叙事的关系一直是艺术史领域的重要议题，相关讨论历久弥新。对于波斯插图本所作的相关研究在推进具体作品分析的同时，也不断加深着艺术史领域对于图像叙事的理解。

Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Asian Interactions , 2022

The Vessantara jātaka (also called the Sudāna jātaka in its Chinese versions) is one of the most ... more The Vessantara jātaka (also called the Sudāna jātaka in its Chinese versions) is one of the most renowned and widely circulated jātakas, or birth stories of the Buddha, in the Buddhist world. During the fifth and sixth centuries CE, the story became frequently depicted in Chinese murals and reliefs. Among a few sixth-century reliefs, scenes showing prince Sudāna in exile appear to have been selected to crystallise the whole story, replacing the highlight on Sudāna's gifting of his children in the previous tradition. This study integrates early Indian sources as well as relevant scholarship to explore the reason why Sudāna's exile was selected. I argue that the choice to depict Sudāna's exile was shaped by two historical contexts. The first relates to a specific rhetorical strategy of integrating indigenous Chinese accounts of immortals into the story's textual tradition in the third century. The second refers to the underlying religious mentality that focused on the quest for transcendence in the mountains, an idea that grew more popular during the flourishing of Buddhist meditation practice in the early sixth century. This study further provides methodological reflections on the study of Chinese Buddhist art, focusing on how existing research has yet incorporated enough Indian sources and scholarship. Thus, it engages with the ongoing methodological reflection on China-India studies.

Dynamics of Interregional Exchanges in East Asian Buddhist Art, 4th – 13th Century, 2022

Religions, 2021

This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY)

Asian Studies, 2019

The present research focuses on the depiction of the sun and moon in the imagery of Fuxi and Nüwa... more The present research focuses on the depiction of the sun and moon in the imagery of Fuxi and Nüwa during the Han and Wei-Jin periods. Through typological and iconographical approaches, it proposes four primary modes in terms of the ways in which the sun and the moon are combined with Fuxi and Nüwa. It contributes to the current field by providing new perspectives for readdressing some issues that remain underexplored. First, it challenges the over-absolute identification of the earliest representation of Fuxi and Nüwa in a pair, and that of Changyi and Xihe, another set of paired deities recorded to be in close relation to the celestial world, in Western Han mural tombs from the Luoyang area, and instead suggests a shift of focus to the recognisable distinctions in visual details, such as the chronological sequence of the application of the first and second modes in the Luoyang Han tomb paintings, and the masculine appearances of both the deities depicted in the Western Han Qianjingtou tomb. Further examinations of the development and dissemination of each mode through the Han and Wei-Jin eras reveals complicated interactions between different regions and exchanges of motif with other forms of imagery. The local tradition of depicting Fuxi and Nüwa, together with that of the depiction of the sun and moon in Nanyang, has been incorporated into the formation of the sun and moon in anthropomorphic representations in the Southwest. Finally, this research proposes that it is more significant to organise the surviving materials through the development and context of each visual element represented in the scene, rather than making an absolute identification based on scattered evidence.

International Journal of Eurasian Studies Vol.VII, 2018