The cave temple of Maijishan as an example of religious architecture of the medieval China (materials for education course "Archaeology foreign Asia")

The review of materials devoted to the rock temple of Maijishan (at the South-Eastern Gansu Province, PRC) gives us the general presentation on the special category of historic-cultural objects of Medieval China which contains important information about different sides of life in that epoch. Building of the cave temples and monasteries in the 5 th – 6 th centuries was connected with dissemination of Buddhist traditions from Northern India – through Middle (Central) Asia to Western Regions and Northern China. The policy of rulers of so called Barbarian (Northern) Dynasties, namely Late Qin of Qiang, Western Qin of Xianbei and, first of all, Northern Wei of Toba, in many respects contributed this situation. Because of it, the creators of figurative plastic art for cult objects at Hexi acquired and adopted not few Indian and Central Asian models, as well as realized in iconography the images of Sutras that had been actively translating into Chinese at that time. The development of sculpturing at Maijishan followed the common way of development, that could be traced at the other monuments too, i. e. transformation from the ascetic images of accentuated religious art at early stages – to more concrete and quiet living models of the later period. Sinicization of Buddhist Art was carried out in the form of secularization.