@article{oai:tobunken.repo.nii.ac.jp:00006127,
 author = {榮, 新江 and 西林, 孝浩 and Rong, Xin-jiang and Nishibayashi, Takahiro},
 issue = {384},
 journal = {美術研究, The bijutsu kenkyu : the journal of art studies},
 month = {Nov},
 note = {The eastward migration of Sogdian people from Central Asia in the period between the Han and Tang is an important component of the interaction between East and West in the early medieval period. From their native lands, the Sogdians moved into the Tarim basin and China, on the one hand introducing elements of the Persian religious system into China and on the other absorbing elements of Buddhist and Han Chinese culture. Because of this, the culture of the Sogdian émigrés is even richer than the culture found in the original Sogdian territories. Furthermore, the wide distribution of Sogdian émigrés brought them into contact with many different ethnic groups and gave rise to different kinds of cultural interactions. These contact and interaction provide us with a wealth of material for the study of religious, cultural, and artistic change.
     The Sogdians and their culture are of the Persian type. Although Manichaeism (which originated in Persia), Nestorian Christianity (known in China as jingjiao), and Buddhism from India were all transmitted into Sogdiana, the official religion of the Sogdians was Zoroastrianism (called xianjiao in China), which also arose in Persian territory. During its long-term development, Zoroastrian beliefs influenced law, ritual, architecture, and customs extending into many aspects of daily life.
     The Sogdians were a mercantile people, their trading caravans were organized by leaders called s'rtp'w in Sogdian and sabao in Chinese. With their movement eastward across Asia, they gradually established settlements in the main cities and towns. In this way, they left many remains along the Silk Road as they traveled from Sogdiana to China. Following their eastward movement came Zoroastrian beliefs and other related cultural elements, including artists and religious imagery, which this paper addresses.

     Images are a form of artistic expression that has traveled to different regions following people's movements. Some Zoroastrian imagery may have been brought to China directly from original Sogdian territories, but for the most part it was likely to have been produced by Sogdian émigrés. First I will discuss Sogdian artists in China, especially the Northern Qi artist Cao Zhongda.
     Zhang Yanyuan, Tang dynasty author of the Lidai minghua ji, referred to Cao Zhongda's Buddhist paintings as the “Cao style,” characterized by closely pleated garments clinging to the body as though they had just emerged from water. Many scholars consider the recently excavated Northern Qi Buddhist sculptures from the Longxing Temple site in Qingzhou to be evidence of this style, but the description refers to painting, not sculpture. Cao Zhongdawas a native of the Central Asian kingdom of Cao, located south of the Nami (Zeravsan) River, about one hundred kilometers from the Sogdian metropolis of Samarkand in the Kang Kingdom. Thus it might be expected that Cao Zhongda should have been influenced by Zoroastrian art. Therefore we should pay attention to existing Sogdian mural paintings, such as figures in the scenes of feasting at Pyanjikent and Balaleke Tepe, in which the clothing of the figures displays a close pattern of folds that can be related to the “Cao style.”
     Historical texts record that Cao Zhongda's miraculous images of the western countries were highly regarded in the Northern Qi capital of Ye. During his lifetime Ye had a strong non-Chinese flavor. Sogdian artists captured the fancy of the Northern Qi rulers, and the Emperor Houzhu even incorporated Zoroastrian rituals into traditional court ceremonial observances. From the activities of the foreign community at the capital, we can imagine that in other areas there may have been even more foreign artists and sculptors at work. A Northern Qi stone funerary couch discovered previously in the Anyang area is carved with Zoroastrian imagery and is likely to be the work of a Sogdian artist at Ye. Just as Sogdian music influenced that of the Sui and Tang period (as demonstrated by Chen Yinke), the style of Sogdian artists of the Northern Qi was handed down to later centuries.

     We now can no longer view any works known to be by Cao Zhongda. However there are two types of Sogdian art that remain--one from the temple and the other from the tomb. The first type has been found in the murals of shrines at Panjikent and other Sogdian Sites. The Second aries from Afrasiyab and other areas. The two kinds of Sogdian art traveled across Central Asia into China, as known from textual and archeological materials.
     In general, according to the evidence from typical Sogdian settlements, there was a religious center-a temple established for worshipping Zoroastrian gods-in each community. For example the Shazhou tujing records a Zoroastrian temple in Dunhuang with constructed halls, painted images, and a total of twenty niches or caves. Jiang Boqin has identified a painting of a goddess on paper from Dunhuang (Pelliot 4518 (24)] as a Zoroastrian deity. Dunhuang documents inform us that up to the tenth century there was a Zoroastrian temple on the east side of Dunhuang. Other documents record that the local government gave material supports to saixian-sacrificial festivals to the Zoroastrian gods held each year. Because the military official documents frequently contained records such as “the donation of thirty sheets of paper,” Jiang Boqin believes that the painting of the goddess may be of the tenth century and could have belonged to the Zoroastrian temple.
     Fortunately, other Zoroastrian images have also been discovered at the ancient Khotanese temple site at Dandan Uiluq in northeastern Hetian, Xinjiang province. A 1992 article by Markus Mode determined that the images painted on wooden planks excavated in Hetian were not Buddhist but Zoroastrian images of Sogdian type, particularly a triad depicting the deities Ahura Mazda, Nana, and Weshparkar.
     Zoroastrian temples were built in the heart of the Sogdian settlements. From records of sacrifices performed at these temples, we know that they were also centers of entertainment and music. Therefore, aside from their use by the Sogdian immigrants, their art was seen and admired and even copied by other peoples.

     The second type of Sogdian art that entered China is funerary art. We know that in Sogdiana, followers of Zoroastrianism practiced burial customs very different from those of Chinese tradition. According to the Vendidad, a text on the subjugation of demons in the Zoroastrian scripture the Avista, and other sources, and based on discoveries by Russian archeologists, corpses of the deceased were placed on platforms (dakma), which could be either naturally occurring or constructed. After the flesh was eaten by dogs and wild animals, the bones were collected and placed in ossuary vessels and buried.
     In recent years, Russian archeologists have analyzed the typology and content of the ornamentation of Sogdian ossuaries. These pottery vessels have carved relief designs and show signs of having been exposed to fire. This kind of vessel has also been found in Xinjiang, but the ornament on Xinjiang examples is simpler than those from Sogdiana. Inside the Zhongyuan (northern metropolitan) area of China, in spite of the many Sogdian residents, archeologists have found nothing that can be positively identified as ossuary jars. Instead, funerary couches with clearly Sogdian characteristics and Zoroastrian images have been discovered. These include: 1) the stone funerary couch from Anyang, mentioned above, that is divided among a number of collections abroad, 2) the stone funerary couch said to have been excavated in northern China and now in the Miho Museum in Japan, 3) the marble funerary couch of Yu Hong (dated 592) discovered in July 1999 in the Jinyuan district of Taiyuan, Shanxi province, and 4) the funerary couch of An Jia (dated 579), excavated in July 2000 in the northern suburbs of Xi'an, Shaanxi province. Their dates are concentrated in the late Northern Dynasties period, a time when Sogdian immigrants to China had already been living there for a significant period of time and had adopted a Chinese
style of burial in subterranean chambers. However, there are differences between these funerary couch burials and the Han Chinese burials of the time in the Zhongyuan area. The tombs of Sogdians do not have any inner or outer coffins, and only have funerary couches and for the most part were comprised of a base, a platform, and upright screen-like slabs. Among these examples, the bones of An Jia were found placed in the tomb corridor, which had been burned. The tomb chamber contained only the funerary couch. This type of burial conforms neither to the traditional Chinese way of burial, nor to the original Sogdian style, but may be regarded as a result of the adaptation by Sogdian immigrants of their ossuaries with carved relief ornament to Chinese style pit burial and stone coffin construction.
     This kind of stone funerary couch is much larger than an ossuary jar and offers a greater ornamental surface. Their pictorial content is richer than that of the ossuaries. For example that of An Jia is 2.28 meters in length, 1.03 meters wide, and 1.17 meters high. The twelve upright screen-like slabs are decorated with various scenes with human figures, animals, and objects. Many of the images on these funerary couches, however, show the influence of Chinese metropolitan art.
     When Sogdians first entered Chinese territories, most of them lived in their own enclaves. But in the late Northern Dynasties and the Sui-Tang periods, the Chinese court, in order to control these settlements, began to appoint officials of the sabao to supervise them. Later the enclaves were administered as districts. During this transitional period, as the Sogdian population adopted Chinese customs and converted to Buddhism, many of the Zoroastrian temples were dismantled. At the same time, as Sogdian funeral customs were not readily acceptable in metropolitan China, the Sogdians adopted the Chinese style of burial, but still retained forms of imagery from their ossuaries. The religious content of the burials shows that Zoroastrian faith existed far longer than the survival of their temples would indicate. The relief carvings of gods, music and dance, and scenes of mourning were transferred from the ossuaries to the funerary couches, and in addition other subjects were added, such as festivals, hunting, and feasting. While the significance of the scenes departs from their original meanings, these burials can find their own place in the history of Chinese funerary practice. 
(Wu Hung, ed., Han tang zhi jian wenhua yishu de hudong yu jiaorong [Between Han and Tang: Cultural and Artistic Interaction in a Transformative Period], Peking: Wenwu chubanshe [Cultural Relics Publishing House], 2001, pp. 68-72.)},
 pages = {1--17},
 title = {ソグド祆教美術の東伝過程における転化―ソグドから中国へ―},
 year = {2004},
 yomi = {［栄新江］}
}