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The Baisha Mural
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The Baisha Mural is located in the Baisha
Village on the plain north of Lijiang. the mural was made
from 1385 to 1619, employing the eclectic artist energies
of Chines Daoist, Tibetan and Naxi Buddhists and local dongba
shamans. This rich fusion had resulted in a tremendously powerful
art, heavy in spirit and awe-inspiring in its presentation
of the mystical world. Dominated by black, silver, dark green,
gold and red colours, the murals in the back hall, overlaid
with centuries of brown soot, are doomladen and bizarre, the
scenes and figures, some still vivid in detail, are largely
taken from Tibetan Buddhist iconography and include the wheel
of life, judges of the underworld, the damned, titans and
gods, Buddhas and bodhisattvas. There are trigrams, lotus
flowers and even Sanskrit inscriptions on the ceiling. The
deliberate damage done to the paintings is apparent and terrible,
but the loss of the irreplaceable wooden statuary that filled
the temple, of which there is no trace, is even more tragic.
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