Emperor, Empress, and the Divine in San Vitale and the Binyang Central Cave

Abstract

This essay compares historically unrelated religiopolitical iconographic programs executed in Byzantine Empire and Northern Wei China of the sixth century, and points out the common mechanism, through which these two cultures made use of religious imagery to promote imperial authority. They deployed different religious topoi befitting their respective Orthodox Christian and Buddhist-Confucian statecrafts, but arrived at surprisingly similar visual experiences. The key to the visual tactic employed in both sites, I would argue, lies in the trinity and multiplicity of the divine. The apse of San Vitale in Ravenna, completed in the years 547, suggests a double parallelism between Emperor Justinian and Christ that is further mirrored in the relationship between Christ and God the Father. The Binyang Central Cave in Longmen, completed in 523, implies a parallelism between Emperor Xuanwu's succession to his late father, Emperor Xiaowen, and the successive salvific endeavors of the Buddhas of the Three Ages. The religiopolitical theories of Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea (260–340) and the Pure Land patriarch Tanluan (曇鸞, 476–542) provide significant clues to understand these similarities.

Though lacking historical association or contact, the apse of San Vitale in Ravenna, completed in the years 547, and the Binyang Central Cave in Longmen, completed in 523, are strikingly similar in their structures and iconographic programs. These two sixth-century religiopolitical constructions of the Byzantine Empire and the Northern Wei Dynasty represent, in three-dimensional space, comparable scenes of imperial couples with their retinues proceeding to worship their Deities, God the Son on the one hand and Buddha Śākyamuni on the other. This essay discusses and compares how these two unrelated religious and political cultures made use of religious imagery to promote imperial authority. They deployed different religious topoi befitting their respective Orthodox Christian and Buddhist-Confucian statecrafts, but arrived at surprisingly similar visual experiences. The religiopolitical theories of Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea (260–340) and the Pure Land patriarch Tanluan (曇鸞, 476–542) provide significant clues to understand these similarities and yet subtle differences as well.

The key to the visual tactic employed in both sites, I would argue, lies in the trinity and multiplicity of the divine. I believe that the Trinity in Christianity can be loosely compared to the multiple Buddhas in Mahāyāna Buddhism.¹ Three hypostases of Christian God constitute one God. Also in Mahāyāna tradition of Avataṃsaka Sutra, countless Buddhas are reduced to one single cosmic Buddha of the Law, Vairocana. In short, the San Vitale apse suggests a double parallelism between Emperor Justinian and Christ that is further mirrored in the relationship between Christ and God the Father. On the other hand, the scheme for the Binyang Cave decoration, devised by Emperor Xuanwu, also suggests a parallelism between his succession to his late father, Emperor Xiaowen, and the successive salvific endeavors of the Buddhas of the Three Ages. Both in Orthodox Christianity and in Mahāyāna Buddhism, then, the trinity and multiplicity of the divine serve as a metaphoric model for the promotion of imperial authority. In two unrelated cultures of the Byzantine Empire and China, divine and earthly authorities reflected and resembled each other in strikingly similar visual terms. This comparative study, therefore, helps us to understand a common mechanism, through which the coordinations between religion and politics have been visually translated in two cultures.²

These two sites in Ravenna and Longmen, separately, have been more than thoroughly discussed in Art History scholarship, which, as a historical discipline, is bound to examine the meanings of visual representations strictly within their temporal and geographic contexts. Art History compares a visual object with another, only when the two objects had direct association, influence, or contact. In this regard, art historical comparison is reminiscent of the early twentieth-century French scholarship of Comparative Literature, which also limited its discussion to the relation of two literary phenomena.³ On the other hand, I attempt here a comparative study, not of two art historical monuments per se, but of two religiopolitical ideas in the Byzantine Empire and Northern Wei China, which appropriated the visual representations of the divine for imperial authority in a very similar way. In this regard, I am attempting a thematic study of Comparative Religion, but in the visual sphere.

I primarily consulted the method of William Paden's New Comparativism, which urges to consider the bilateral and heuristic nature of comparison, to enlarge the concept of pattern, to maintain controlled aspectual focus, and to make distinction between comparativist and insider domains of meanings.⁴ He further suggested more simplified principles in his 2005 article entry for the Encyclopedia of Religion, which I take as methodological guidelines for my current essay.⁵ First, even though I am comparing two sites that were not historically related, my understanding and discussions of these sites are firmly based on their respective historical contexts of the Byzantine Empire and Northern Wei China of the sixth century. I am attempting here a kind of ahistorical comparison, but of two historically understood sites. Second, my essay has a "limited aspectual focus," which discusses the visual appropriation of the divine for imperial authority found in two religiopolitical cultures. Thirdly, I discuss not only similar elements common to these two cultures, but their differences as well.

Imperial processions

The Emperor Justinian and the Empress Theodora appear on the left and right walls of the apse in San Vitale (Figures 1 and 2). They are seemingly heading toward the eastern end of the apse, where in the vault appears the figure of Christ accompanied by Saint Vitalis and the Bishop Ecclesius (Figure 3). Justinian and Theodora did not visit San Vitale, and this church was consecrated a year before Theodora's death. Their presence in this space is thus symbolic rather than historical or literal. Scholars today agree that this representation of their procession underlines the institution of the Eucharistic liturgy.⁶ The emperor carries a patent full of Eucharistic bread and Bishop Maximian holds a ceremonial cross, while two other priests carry a Gospel book and incense burner.

On the opposite wall appears the procession of the Empress, who carries a large chalice for Eucharistic wine (Figure 2). Three Magi are represented in the lower part of her robe, thus paralleling the Eucharistic liturgy and the Magi's offerings to Christ. Unlike the panel depicting Justinian, the background to Theodora's panel shows detailed features, such as a curtained door, fountain, and shell canopy above the empress. These elements have led scholars to suggest different interpretations concerning the exact location of the imperial couple at that moment. One theory, noting the veiled door and fountain, interprets the moment as the Little Entry, when the congregation met in atrium before entering the church for Mass.⁷ This theory, however, cannot explain the magnificent niche with the shell canopy behind Theodora, which suggests that she is already inside of the church.

Another theory assumes an interior location and questions whether the imperial couple is about to cross the choir barrier, which is suggested by the veiled door. If so,

Figure 1.

Emperor Justinian and his retinues, sixth century, apse, San Vitale, Ravenna.

Figure 2.

Empress Theodora and her retinues, sixth century, apse, San Vitale, Ravenna.

Figure 3.

Christ with St. Vitalis and Ecclesius, sixth century, apse, San Vitale, Ravenna.

this is the moment of the Grand Entry, when the emperor entered the space of the Eucharistic liturgy during Mass. However, whether the empress as a woman could also participate in the Grand Entry is debatable.⁸ Because the couple did not commission the San Vitale decoration, and because they never visited San Vitale, such a literal reading of the panels seems unnecessary. Not in a literal but in a symbolic sense, the couple is already included in the most sanctified space of the Eucharist, since their mosaic panels were installed in the eastern end of the apse under the eyes of the youthful Christ depicted on the vault above.

The spatial arrangement in the Binyang Central Cave is slightly different, but the iconographical semantics is fundamentally the same. In this instance, the main deity of Śākyamuni Buddha is seated cross-legged on the western end of the cave (Figure 4). Unlike in the San Vitale apse, however, the right and left side walls are occupied further by two additional standing Buddhas, whose identities I discuss in the next section. The Emperor Xiaowen and Empress Wenzhao with their retinues appear on the eastern wall, respectively on the left and right sides of the gate (Figures 5 and 6). Since three sides of the cave are occupied by the central and accompanying Buddhas, the worshippers' processions find their space on the wall opposite the central Śākyamuni. It is apparent from the logic of the iconographical relationship, however, that these processions are entering the cave through the gate and heading toward the seated Buddha at the cave's western end.

Given his height, the Emperor Xiaowen is easily identifiable. He is followed by subsidiaries who hold a large fan and a canopy. He is putting incense powder into a burner held by another of his attendants in front of him. The message is clear: the emperor is preparing to offer incense to the Śākyamuni Buddha. The depiction of the landscape behind the figures must be the outside view of the cave, suggesting that the emperor and his retinue have just arrived in this area and that they are about to enter the cave.⁹ Compared with the rather illogical and thus symbolic background depiction of Theodora's panel in Ravenna, this one is much easier to understand. In its original location in the cave, this procession extends to the edge of the southern wall, thus creating not a flat but a winding procession at its end.

The Empress Wenzhao's procession, which appears frequently in Chinese art textbooks, covers the right side of the eastern wall and extends to the eastern edge of the

Figure 4.

Śākyamuni Buddha, Kāśyapa, Ānanda, and two bodhisattvas, sixth century, Binyang Central Cave, Longmen.

Figure 5.

Emperor Xiaowen and his retinues, sixth century, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Figure 6.

Empress Wenzhao and her retinues, sixth century, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansan City.

southern wall in its original location, though this terminal portion is today lost (Figure 6). The empress, distinguished by her highly decorative hat and two flanking attendants, holds an incense stick, which will be stuck in the incense burner held by another attendant, who is slightly kneeling in front of her. Other ladies in the procession carry flowers and fruits as offerings to the Buddha Śākyamuni. The preparation of incense, flowers, and fruits in the male and female groups suggests that they will walk across the space of the cave to its western end, where the Buddha Śākyamuni is seated and awaits them with the hand signs for Non-Fearing and Wish-Granting.

With the exception of the expansion of the deities' space in the Binyang Central Cave, which drives the imperial processions to the wall opposite from the Buddha Śākyamuni, the semantics between worshipers and deities remains essentially identical in the San Vitale apse and the Binyang Central Cave. The emperors and empresses with their retinues proceed to serve and worship their deities, who occupy the inner focus of the sanctified spaces of church apse and cave chapel.

The divine

The central focus of worship in the Binyang cave is the western wall, where the Buddha Śākyamuni is seated and flanked by both his eldest and youngest disciples, Kāśyapa and Ānanda, and by two unidentified bodhisattvas (Figure 4). Furthermore, on the southern and northern sides standing Buddhas appear with flanking bodhisattvas (Figure 7). As a result, all three walls of the cave present the Buddhas, even though the central focus is placed on the western wall, where the lone seated Buddha and a small altar are located. He is also distinguished by two more attendants, who are his disciples.

Other than the Śākyamuni Buddha and his two disciples, all of the other Buddhas and bodhisattvas in the cave are unidentifiable by their iconographic features. McNair interprets these three Buddhas, the one seated and two standing, as

Figure 7.

A standing Buddha with two bodhisattvas, sixth century, south wall, Binyang Central Cave, Longmen.

the Buddhas of the Three Ages (三世佛), in other words, past, present, and future.¹⁰ In this set of three Buddhas, the Buddha Dīpaṃkara usually represents the countless Buddhas of the past, probably due to the famous story that He had predicted the enlightenment of Buddha Śākyamuni in the latter's previous life. The future Buddha refers to Buddha Maitreya, who sometimes appears in the figure of a bodhisattva, indicating that his Buddhahood has yet to be attained in this present age. All three Buddhas in this cave have fundamentally identical iconographic forms but such a rendition of the Three Buddhas is not rare in iconographic tradition.

By the time the Binyang cave was being planned, devotion to the Three Buddhas was already well known. In the Longer Sukhāvatīvyūha Sutra or Sutra of the Infinite Life (佛説無量壽經), translated into Chinese by the Indian monk Saṅghavarman in 252, the Buddha Śākyamuni recounts in detail the story of the past Buddha Dīpaṃkara. In a later part of the sutra, He also converses with the bodhisattva Maitreya, who will become a Buddha in a future age.

佛告阿難。乃往過去久遠無量不可思議無央數劫. 錠光如來興出於世. 教化度脱無量衆生. 皆令得道乃取滅度.¹¹

The Buddha said to Ānanda, "In the past, long ago, uncountable, inconceivable kalpas ago, Tathāgata Dīpaṃkara appeared in the world. He taught and saved innumerable living beings so that they could attain the way [to the enlightenment]. And he went into nirvana."

佛告彌勒. 汝等能於此世. 端心正意不作衆惡. 甚爲至徳. 十方世界最無 倫匹.¹²

The Buddha said to Maitreya, "If in this world you and others are able to keep your mind upright and do not commit any evil acts, then you will attain the utmost virtue and not be equalled by anybody in the worlds of ten directions."

Scholars believe that the actual translator of this sutra was the later Indian monk Buddhabhadra (359–429), but in any case the sutra had already circulated in Chinese long before the Binyang Cave complex was constructed in the sixth century. The Longer Sukhāvatīvyūha Sutra, the longest among the so-called Three Pure Land Sutras (淨土 三部經), was a significant source of doctrinal authority for Pure Land Buddhism, the simple and straightforward soteriology of which has always appealed greatly to Buddhists since its introduction into China.¹³ These sutra passages support the identification of the Buddhas in the Binyang Central Cave as the Buddhas of the Three Ages.

In the apse of San Vitale, the focus of the imperial couple's worship appears to be the youthful Christ, who appears on the eastern vault at first glance. However, when seen in the context of the whole apsidal space, He also becomes threefold. The beardless Christ, likely underscoring his hypostasis as the Son and also partially influenced by the classical imagery of Apollo, sits on the heavenly orb, holding the Book of Life and offering a wreath to the martyr Saint Vitalis, who stands on His right. The iconography as a whole suggests His Second Coming. However, and more importantly, He is not the only hypostasis appearing in the apsidal space. Along the triumphal arch appears the busts of twelve apostles, while its apex is occupied by God the Father, whose beard and aged physiognomy make clear his Paternity (Figure 8). Between this motif of God the Father on the triumphal arch and that of God the Son in the eastern vault, there is still another figure: the sacrificial lamb held up by four angels in the center of the ceiling.

Cormack suggests that these three motifs are possibly a reference to the Trinity, even though he admits that the sacrificial lamb cannot explicitly denote the Holy Spirit.¹⁴ Prof. Irina Yazykova of St. Andrew's Biblical-Theological Institute, Moscow, has confirmed that the motif of the sacrificial lamb, together with the motifs of God the Father and the Son here, might signify hetoimasia (ἑτοιμασία) or the prepared throne for the Holy Spirit and might thus serve as a metonymic reference to the Holy Spirit. However, what interests me about the San Vitale apse is not the appearance of all three hypostases, but the appearance of God the Father and the Son, who are clearly differentiated from each other through their unique physiognomic features. In fact, the panels of Justinian and Theodora are encapsulated by the icons of the Father and the Son in this apsidal space. Whether all three hypostases of the Trinity were represented or not, it is clear that a distinction between God the Father and the Son was an important issue in the decorative program of the San Vitale apse. The imperial couple is proceeding to worship not simply God in abstract terms but specifically God the Son, who is presented in a relation of filiation with God the Father.

Figure 8.

Ceiling area of apse, sixth century, San Vitale, Ravenna.

In both the Binyang Central Cave and San Vitale, the deities being worshiped are thus plural, not singular. This is a significant aspect common to both of these two contemporary but not historically associated sites, where religion and politics interacted with each other. In the following two sections, I turn to the religiopolitical significations produced by this trinity and multiplicity of the divine underscored in these Byzantine and Chinese shrines.

Emperor and god the son

The architecture and mosaic program of San Vitale first began under Bishop Ecclesius in 526, probably to celebrate the restoration of Ravenna to Byzantine rule from the Ostrogoths. Its construction continued through the appointments of two more bishops. Eventually the church was completed and consecrated under its fourth bishop, Maximian, in 547.¹⁵ The first bishop, Ecclesius, appears in the vault to the left of the seated Christ, and the last bishop, Maximian, prominently appears in the Justinian panel next to the emperor. The emperor and the empress, despite their prominence within the sanctified area, neither fully participated nor were engaged in the process of the San Vitale's construction and decoration. For this reason, it has often been observed that the protagonist of the apse mosaic program is Bishop Maximian, who took advantage of the church's consecration and decoration to full extent. It has even been suggested that he inserted his face and name in the Justinian panel, where originally his predecessor, Bishop Victor, was intended to be.¹⁶

However, to contemporary and later viewers, the imperial couple, who are represented in direct association with Christ on the vault, remain the most prominent figures in the mosaic program. Any prominence Bishop Maximian might have appropriated in this visual program is derived from the fact that he stands next to the emperor as the bishop of the church. In short, all the glory and honor in this mosaic program originate in the relationship between Christ and the emperor. As a result, I will focus on this visual and theological relationship between the emperor and Christ and its seeming message.

In Christendom, earthly monarchical authority was justified by biblical references to the precedents of King Saul, David, and Solomon (1 Samuel 9:17, 2 Samuel 5:10, 2 Samuel 12:24), which all underscore that God endowed His chosen one with rulership and anointed them as kings. In addition to these scriptural grounds, however, a specific theorization unique to the Byzantine Empire was asserted by Eusebius of Caesarea (260–340). A theologian and bishop of Caesarea, Eusebius wrote numerous eulogies praising the virtues of the Emperor Constantine, who in practice initiated the Byzantine Empire.¹⁷ Like Emperor Constantine before him, who had to compete with his rivals through continuous military campaigns, the reign of Justinian was plagued by wars with the Ostrogoths, Persians, and even Slavs. In the panel representing Justinian, one of his soldiers holds a shield bearing the initials XP, alluding to Constantine's revelatory dream of victory the night before the battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312 (Figure 1). This revelation led not only to Emperor Constantine's victory against Maxentius but also to his conversion to Christianity. The inclusion of these initials XP, the sign of Constantine's revelation, in Justinian's panel suggests that the latter was the inheritor of Constantine's legacy.

Eusebius's theorization of emperorship, originally devised for Emperor Constantine, could equally apply to Emperor Justinian, who recovered from the Ostrogoths the Christian territory of Ravenna, which had lawfully belonged to the rule of Emperor Constantine. Especially interesting is Eusebius's De laudibus Constantini oratio in eius tricennalibus habita of 336, often shortened to Laus Constantini, in which he presented a parallel between Christ and Constantine.

… καὶ αὐτὸς ὲπὶ πᾶσι καὶ πρὸ πὰντων καὶ μετὰ πὰντας, ὁ προὼν αὐτοῦ μονογενὴς λόγος, ὁ δὴ μέγας Ἀρχιερεὺς τοῦ μεγἀλου θεοῦ, παντὸς χρόνου καὶ πάντων αἰὼνων πρεσβύτατος, τῇ τοῦ Πατρὸς καθωσιωμένος τιμῇ, …

αὐτὸς δ᾽ ὰν εἳη ὁ τοῦδε τοῦ σύμπαντος καθηγεμὼν κόσμου, ὁ ὲπὶ πάντων καὶ διὰ πάντων καὶ ἐν πᾶσιν ὁρωμένοις τε καὶ ἀφανέσιν, ὲπιπορευόμενος τοῦ Θεοῦ Λόγος. παρ᾽οὗ καὶ δι᾽οὗ τῆς ἀνωτάτω βασιλεἰας τὴν εἰκόνα φέρων ὁ τῷ θεῷ φίλος βασιλεὺς, κατὰ μίμησιν τοῦ κρείττονος, τῶν ἐπὶ γῆς ἁπάντων τοὺς οἳακας διακυβερνῶν ἰθύνει.¹⁸

He who is in all, before all, and after all, his only-begotten, pre-existing Logos, the High Priest of Great God, elder than all time and all ages, dedicated to the honor of the Father …

He is the one who has dominion over all this world. He is the Logos of God, who traverses toward, through, and in all things seen and unseen. By and through whom, the king, bearing the image of heavenly kingdom and being dear to God, administers the handle of all the works on earth, according to the imitation of the higher [kingdom].

Εἶθ᾽ ὁ μὲν τῶν ὃλων σωτὴρ τὸν σύμπαντα οὐρανόν τε καὶ κόσμον, τήν τε ἀνωτάτω βασιλεἰαν, εὐπρεπῆ τῷ αὑτοῖ Πατρὶ παρασκευἀζει. Ὃ δὲ τούτῳ φίλος, αὐτῷ τῷ μονογενεῖ καὶ σωτῆρι Λόγῳ τῶν ἐπὶ γῆς τοὺς ὑπόχειρίους προσάγων, ἒπιτηδείους πρὸς τὴν αύτὴν βασιλείαν καθίστησι.¹⁹

The Savior of all prepares everything heavenly and worldly, and also the heavenly kingdom, to conform to His Father. The friend (i.e., the emperor) of Him, makes his subjects suitable to His kingdom, by bringing his own subjects to the only-begotten and Savior Logos of [all men] on earth.

Christ, God the Son, came to earth as a kind of vicar or representative of God the Father, in order to reveal the glory of the heavenly kingdom to mankind on earth. Likewise, the Emperor Constantine, the "friend of God," represents God the Son in ruling his earthly empire in "imitation" of the heavenly kingdom of God. As a result, there is a parallelism between God the Son and Emperor Constantine: both mirror the divine will and execute it for mankind on earth.

Justinian was not engaged in the process of devising San Vitale's iconographic program, but its visual results openly suggest that Emperor Justinian, as the true inheritor to Constantine, rules as the representative of God the Son, exactly as the Son executes the will of God the Father. This double parallelism, first between God the Father and God the Son and second between the Son and the Byzantine emperor, becomes clear when the entire apsidal space from the triumphal arch to the imperial panels and the eastern vault is collectively considered as a single iconographic composite.

The emperor as a filially devoted buddhist

The multiplicity of the divine is also a significant motif in the Binyang Central Cave, where not only the present Buddha Śākyamuni but also two additional standing buddhas of the past and the future appear. Because three Buddhas occupy the three sides of the cave shrine, the scenes representing the imperial processions have been relegated to the eastern wall, next to the gate, and thus directly face the primary deity Śākyamuni across the cave space. The cave shrine was only planned after the deaths of Emperor Xiaowen and Empress Wenzhao. In a manner similar to San Vitale, therefore, the protagonists of the cave's processions, the emperor and empress, did not participate in the planning and construction of the shrine. It was instead commissioned by their son, Emperor Xuanwu, to commemorate and attain blissful afterlife for his late parents. Emperor Xuanwu's personal engagement is reflected not only in his choice of the Buddhas of the Three Ages but also in the figure of Vimalakīrti on the upper tier of the eastern wall. Vimalakīrti was a lay sage whose wisdom overwhelmed even the bodhisattva Mañjuśrī, and Vimalakīrti Sutra (維摩經) was Emperor Xuanwu's favorite.²⁰ For this reason, and unlike the San Vitale apse, political benefit this cave shrine accrued went to Emperor Xuanwu rather than his dead parents who appear in its processional panels. His parents would receive karmic benefit by the dedication of cave chapel, but their son Emperor Xuanwu's reign would be sanctified by the Buddhas of Three Ages. Furthermore, the Emperor's act of dedication highlighted him as a filially devoted son, a very Confucian ideal.

As in Christianity, Buddhism has long served to consolidate the earthly rule. The earliest and most well-known case is the Emperor Aśoka (268–32 BC) of the Maurya Dynasty, who claimed the identity of Cakravartin (轉輪聖王), or the king who turns the wheel of dharma and propagates the Buddhist Law throughout the world.²¹ After him, it became very common for East Asian emperors and kings devoted to Buddhism to appropriate the identity of Cakravartin in order to elevate their authority. In China, Empress Wu Zetian (624–705) of the Tang Dynasty even more boldly claimed that she was the female reincarnation of future Buddha Maitreya.²² This tradition of identification continued in the later imperial period. The Qianlong Emperor (1711–1796) of the Qing Dynasty, for instance, left his own portrait as bodhisattva Manjuśrī.²³

In comparison with such direct associations between Buddhist deities or even the Buddha Himself, what Emperor Xuanwu executed for his late parents in the Binyang Central Cave provided a subtler but equally powerful statement. The representation of the Buddhas of the Three Ages is comparatively rare in East Asian art history. Nonetheless, McNair argues that Emperor Xuanwu adopted the Buddhas of the Three Ages for a specific political reason. She quotes a phrase from a commentary written by Tanluan (曇鸞), a fifth-century patriarch of Pure Land Buddhism. In his Short Treatise on the Peaceful and Delightful Pure Land (略論安樂淨土義), Tanluan writes:

二者. 若一佛度一切衆生盡者. 復亦不應後有佛. 何以故。無覺他義故. 復 依何義. 説有三世佛乎. 依覺他義故. 説佛佛皆度一切衆生. 三者. 後 佛能 度. 猶是前佛之能. 何以故. 由前佛有後佛故. 譬如帝王之甲得相紹 襲後 王. 即是前王之能故.²⁴

Secondly, if one Buddha can save all the living beings, there is no need for a later Buddha to exist. Why is it so? Because there is no need to enlighten others [any more]. [If so], on what ground can we say that there exist the Buddhas of the Three Ages? [There are the Buddhas of the Three Ages], because they need to continue to enlighten others. [That is why we say that] all the Buddhas save all the living beings. Thirdly, the later Buddha's ability to save is like the ability of the earlier Buddha. Why is it so? Because the later Buddha can exist after an earlier Buddha existed. It is similar to the case of emperors and kings, who transmit their achievements to their inheritors. Therefore it (the later king's ability) originates in the ability of the previous king.

This passage compares the continuation of Buddhist Law, from the past through the present and to the future, to the imperial succession that will guarantee peaceful and lawful rulership throughout the ages.

The iconographic programs in both the San Vitale apse and the Binyang Central Cave thus center on the parallelism between Divine Law and earthly rule. In the Byzantine Empire, the emperor mirrors the role of God the Son, who came in flesh to spread His divine grace throughout the earthly realm. In a similar manner, the earthly emperor produces in the earthly empire a mimetic reflection of the heavenly kingdom. In Northern Wei China, the succession of rulership from Xiaowen to Xuanwu resembles the continuation of Buddhist Law through the Buddhas of the Three Ages. I think McNair's interpretation is convincing, since such a use of the Buddha of the Three Ages occurs again later in the Qing Dynasty under the powerful Qianlong Emperor. Qianlong selected the iconography of the Three Buddhas to be painted as a gift to the Seventh Dalai Lama, in order to express his wish for the thriving succession of the Dalai Lama's rulership in the ages to come.²⁵

There are also important differences. In San Vitale, the actual engineers of the construction and decoration, the four bishops, could attain spiritual and political benefits only in relation to the authority of the Emperor Justinian or Christ, who sits on the heavenly orb. The true protagonists of the entire program, who are given the highest spiritual and political benefits, are the imperial couple, who were not engaged in the construction and design process and in fact never visited the church. However, in Binyang, it was not the protagonists of the shrine, the late imperial couple, but the current Emperor Xuanwu who gained the credit, glory, and secular recognition not only as a devout Buddhist but also a filially devoted son, a virtue highly valued by the Chinese.

It is known that Xuanwu continued to pursue the agenda of his late father, the sinicization of the Northern Wei Dynasty. Northern Wei was founded not by the indigenous Han Chinese, but by the nomadic northern tribe of Xianbei. In a similar way, Buddhism, which was an alien Indian religion imported into China, was still undergoing the process of assimilation into Chinese culture. The sinicization efforts of the Xiaowen Emperor are also therefore reflected in the Buddhist art of the period, including those pieces at Longmen.²⁶ His son, the Emperor Xuanwu continued this policy, which naturally included the promotion of Confucian studies and culture.²⁷ By dedicating the two caves of Binyang to the commemoration and prayer of blissful afterlives of his late parents, Emperor Xuanwu demonstrated both his non-Chinese and Chinese subjects that he was the true Chinese emperor, who was not only a devout Buddhist but also a filially devoted son, a virtue highly valued in Confucian culture.