Episodes of the Buddha’s life are portrayed at the Dunhuang grottoes either as large-scale separate murals or as small vignettes painted in an illustration of the sutra. For a long time, scholarship has only paid attention to the former of these, while the latter has received scant attention, and some of them have not been identified and categorized due to fading colors, and inconspicuous position in the cave. As of today, no attempt has been made to systematically examine them as a group of illustrations of the Buddha’s life. This study is dedicated to examining the vignettes of the Buddha’s life as it is represented in illustrations of sutra at Mogao caves from the seventh to the tenth centuries.
These vignettes can be grouped by motifs: Māra’s assault, Parinirvana, and the scenes of the Conception, the Buddha’s birth, First Steps, and the bath in the Lumbinī Garden. This study of the vignettes of the Buddha’s life not only fills a gap in understanding the evolution of this subject matter on the murals at Dunhuang, but also provides us with valuable information on iconographic features which are not discernible in freestanding illustrations.
Moreover, as some of the vignettes are accompanied with inscriptions, the study of the vignettes provides us with the opportunity of investigating text-image relations in motifs related to narratives on Buddha’s life. The integration of text is a feature not found in other artistic expressions of Buddha’s life in the Dunhuang area.