Chinese Aesthetics: The Ordering of Literature, the Arts, and the Universe in the Six Dynasties

Chapter 3. Xie He’s “Six Laws” of Painting and Their Indian Parallels

Chapter 3 •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Xie He’s “Six Laws” of Painting and Their Indian Parallels Victor H. Mair The “Six Laws” [sic] of India and the “Six Laws” of Xie He are actually two unrelated theories. —Jin Ronghua (1984) I feel in my bones that Xie He’s “Six Laws” come from India. —Tsu-Lin Mei (ca. 1990) There is universal agreement that Xie He’s “Liu fa” (Six Laws) constitute the first systematic exposition of painting theory in China.1 Toward the end of the Tang dynasty, the great art critic and historian Zhang Yanyuan (ca. 810–880), in his enormously influential Lidai minghua ji (A Record of the Famous Painters of Successive Dynasties, ca. 847) makes the Six Laws the centerpiece of his discussion of painting criticism. During the Five Dynasties, Jing Hao (ca. 870–ca. 930) elaborated upon the Six Laws in his “Liu yao” (Six Essentials). Guo Ruoxu (eleventh century), begins the chapter entitled “Lun qiyun fei shi” (On Vital Resonance Not Being Teachable) of his Tuhua jianwen zhi (A Record of Things Seen and Heard 81 about Painting) with the seemingly obligatory recitation of the Six Laws. The Song landscape painter Song Zifang was inspired by Xie He’s Six Laws to write his own “Liu fa” (Six Laws) and “Liu lun” (Six Discussions). Also in the Song period, Liu Daochun (the eleventh-century painting critic) brought out another “Liu yao” (Six Essentials) and a “Liu chang” (Six Strengths), while a work under the latter title was also issued by the Qing critic Sheng Dashi . During the Yuan dynasty Xia Wenyan begins his Tuhui baojian (The Precious Mirror of Painting) with the words “Xie He says” and then commences immediately with the enumeration of the Six Laws. The editors of the Qinding siku quanshu zongmu tiyao (Essentials of the General Catalog for the Imperially Commissioned Comprehensive Library in Four Divisions; completed 1781, published 1789), 112, while recognizing that nothing is known of Xie He as a person, close their notice on his [Gu]hua pinlu (A Record of the Rankings of [Ancient] Painters) by stating that his book is the arbiter for discussions about painting and that the Six Laws from its preface constitute the millennial, immutable standard up to their own day. The term liufa was so ubiquitous in later discussions of Chinese art that right through the twentieth century it could be used to signify “painting.”2 Indeed, it would probably not be exaggerating to say, as more than one scholar has put it, that there has been an obsession with Xie He’s Six Laws in the evolution of Chinese painting. Contrasting sharply with the unanimity of opinion that the Six Laws are the fountainhead of all later Chinese art theory and criticism is the virtually universal disagreement concerning two essential matters relating to the terse formulations of Xie He: (1) how to read and understand them, and (2) whether they were based on Indian models. Through a close examination of the relevant texts, this study reveals that the solution to these two problems lies in the realization that they are tightly interwoven. The Six Laws are extremely difficult, almost impossible, to comprehend without taking into account their Indian background. Conversely, once one reads the Six Laws correctly, the one-for-one Indian influence upon them becomes obvious. We must begin by admitting that we know next to nothing about Xie He, the formulator of the Six Laws. Biographical information concerning the father of Chinese painting theory is virtually nonexistent.3 Xie He was himself apparently a fashionable court portrait painter of considerable skill but by no means a distinguished artist.4 Fortunately, 82 VICTOR H. MAIR there is sufficient internal evidence concerning Xie He’s [Gu]hua pinlu, in the preface to which the Six Laws appear, enabling scholars to form a broad scholarly consensus that it may be dated to between the years 532 and 549.5 Given this dire poverty of hard facts about Xie He, it is clear that we cannot rely upon biographical information concerning him to help us solve the thorny problems surrounding his Six Laws. Instead, we will have to concentrate on the philological analysis of the Six Laws and of their Indian counterparts. Before we embark on our philological quest, it is necessary to observe that the scholarship on the forty-two characters of the terse Six Laws (only twenty...