Gems of Chinese Literature/Shên Kua-Aureoles

←

Gems of Chinese Literature (1922)
translated by Herbert Allen Giles

→

SHÊN KUA.

a.d. 1030-1093

[A distinguished scholar who, in accordance with ancient custom, was employed in military expeditions, and who was held responsible for a defeat in which 60,000 Chinese soldiers perished and banished to Shensi. He ranks among the highest as an art critic]

Shên Kua1524123Gems of Chinese Literature — Aureoles1922Herbert Allen Giles

WHEN painters paint Buddha’s aureole, they make it flat and round like a fan. If his body is deflected, then the aureole is also deflected,―a serious blunder. Such a one is only thinking of Buddha as a graven image, and does not know that the roundness of his aureole is everlasting. In like manner, when Buddha is represented as walking, his aureole is made to tail out behind him, and this is called the wind-borne aureole,―also a serious blunder. For Buddha’s aureole is a divine aureole which even a universe-wrecking hurricane could not move, still less could our light breezes flutter it.