From Sacred Narrative to Ethical Everyday Life: Baodingshan’s Pictorial Program and the Changing Viewing Relationship at the Dazu Rock Carvings, 892-1252

Abstract

The World Heritage List states that the Dazu Rock Carvings shed increasing light on everyday life over time, a claim never tested at niche level. Drawing on the nomination dossier, published inscription transcriptions, and niche-by-niche studies of Baodingshan, 84 niches across seven carving sites dated 892-1252 were coded. Evidence for image-text matches was graded niche by niche. Cross-period comparisons were performed using Wilson intervals, whole-site permutation tests, and step versus linear models. Close readings of Baodingshan’s hymns, precepts, and inscriptions were also undertaken. Among the 23 mid-late Southern Song niches, ethical exhortation and serial narrative each occur in 9, against 3 each among the 61 niches carved before 1174 (risk difference 0.34, 95% CI [0.15, 0.55]). Image-matched text stands at 8 out of 23 against 8 out of 61 when only niche-level records count (0.22 [0.02, 0.43]) and at 18 out of 23 with the dossier’s bay-wide summary. No rise is detected before 1174 and increases in ethical exhortation above 0.13 can be ruled out; donor inscriptions had already fallen from 0.86 to 0.44 of niches in the late Northern Song, when carver signatures appeared. The Baodingshan texts address viewers in generic terms and invoke statutes and hell retribution, whereas earlier donor inscriptions vow in the first person for the donor’s household. With only 7 sites and no niche-level record of Baodingshan donor inscriptions, inference is descriptive. The change is concentrated at one ritual site; the claim of gradual increase is not supported.