A mountain of anomie: Transformations of the soushan tu genre (China).

摘要

This study focuses on a genre of Chinese paintings known as soushan tu, which depict a throng of demon-like men charging through wooded mountains to ferret out noxious spirits in human guises. These images and scenes are among the most violent in Chinese art, radically different from the landscape and figure compositions which embody the harmony and elevated dignity extolled by conventional Chinese aesthetic theory. Artistic interest in depicting the mountain-search persisted for nearly a millennium—from the tenth century, when famous artists were said to have painted soushan tu, to the nineteenth century, the latest era for which an example in this genre has been found.; Previous scholarship on the subject has assumed that soushan tu illustrate a preexisting story and conclude that the legends surrounding a deity known as Erlang were their original inspiration. This study shows that during the first one hundred years of the Song dynasty, Erlang was regarded by the imperial court as a deity of yinsi (licentious cults) which were to be suppressed. Yet it was precisely during this period that the earliest written references to soushan tu, as well as to court patronage of such paintings, appeared. Although Erlang was later promoted by the Song court as a powerful guardian of the state, he certainly could not have been the subject of these early soushan tu.; Literary, as well as early pictorial, evidence point to a gradual process through which the core artistic repertoire of soushan tu scenes developed. They suggest that Bishamen Tianwang (Vaisravana) was the first among a succession of deities that were portrayed in soushan tu. Furthermore, the identity of the commander of the mountain-search varied according to the changing predilections of the imperial court.; Despite such variations, the central theme of the soushan tu images remained the same for a millennium: the forces of order marshal a search to locate and expunge demons and other malign influences that threaten cosmic harmony. This study thus concludes that the soushan tu are not illustrations of an identifiable text, but rather they are pictorial works that are historically aligned with a range of similar endeavors which employed various cultural media and ritual acts to establish and defend symbolic regimes related to the maintenance of political power.