Liu Zhijun narrated porcelain spread all over the world, and met the Liao Dynasty three-color Arhat Buddha statue (above).
Among the major museums in the world, the Liao Dynasty three-color Arhat Buddha statue handed down from the Eight Buddha Valleys in Yixian County, Hebei Province has become a unique focus. There are 16 Buddha statues in this group, all of which were unearthed in a cave halfway up the mountainside, and it is said that this is the place where the Arhats lived. The history of these Buddha statues, especially the wrongdoing of one of the antique dealers, Berčeski, is even more mysterious.
In 1912, the Yixian Arhat was secretly excavated by Berchsky and resold all over the world. In the process, some of the Arhat Buddha statues were destroyed, and only 11 of them are still alive today. The statues are scattered among the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Nelson Museum of Art in Kansas City, the Museum of Archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania, the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada, the British Museum in London, the Guimet Museum of Asian Art in Paris, France, the Kojiro Matsukata Collection (** Museum) in Japan, and the Hermitage Museum (Hermitage) in St. Petersburg, Russia.
The Eight Buddha Waliao Three-color Arhat Statues show remarkable realism in the accuracy of the proportions and structure of the human body. By comparing the Eight Buddha Valleys of the Eight Buddha Valleys in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Longmen Binyang Middle Cave in the Northern Wei Dynasty and the two bodies of the Buddha Cave in the Sui Dynasty and the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang in the Sui Dynasty, we can clearly see the outstanding performance of the Liao Dynasty statues in terms of structural accuracy and realistic charm. In particular, the Eight Buddhas and Arhats in the British Museum's collection are very well shaped with their hands that are as revered as Leonardo da Vinci's famous "Mona Lisa".
The craftsmen of the Liao Dynasty not only paid attention to the details in the shaping of the human body, but also showed great wisdom and ingenuity in all aspects of the statue. Their apt depiction of the human anatomy and meticulous attention to detail make these Arhat Buddha statues of exceptional artistic value.
Liu Zhijun).