Woven Mandalas in the Mongol Imperial Court

Yong Cho

Vajrabhairava Mandala

Mongol Empire/Yuan dynasty, probably Daidu (Beijing, China) ca. 1329

Vajrabhairava Mandala; probably Daidu (Beijing), China; Yuan dynasty; ca. 1329; silk and gold, tapestry with slits (kesi); 96 5/8 × 82 1/4 in. (245.5 × 209 cm); The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; 1992.54; CC0 – Creative Commons (CC0 1.0)

Summary

Art historian Yong Cho examines the origins of this silk tapestry of the tantric deity Vajrabhairava, commissioned by Mongol emperors and their wives according to the teachings of Tibetan masters. Mongolian court workshops adapted Central Asian weaving techniques to create these silk icons, which became a special focus of Mongolian court production. Such images may have hung in portrait halls within monasteries, referencing traditions of Buddhist kingship with the worship of Yuan dynasty imperial ancestors.

Key Terms

deity

Different Asian religious traditions posit different types of divine beings. Hindus generally believe in an all-encompassing God-like being, called Brahman. They also believe in a variety of other gods (deva), including Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. Early Buddhists denied the existence of a single, all-powerful creator god. Nevertheless, they always recognized a variety of powerful spirits, like gandharvas and nagas. Mahayana Buddhists came to see bodhisattvas as beings of enormous power, and buddhas themselves as cosmic beings with the ability to create entire universes. Buddhist and Bon traditions in Tibet worshiped a variety of other gods (Tib. lha), like the mountain gods, or gods of the land. According to Buddhist tradition, enlightened deities are seen as beyond the cycle of death and rebirth, whereas gods (including Hindu gods) are not.

donor

In Buddhist context, donor is a person who contributes to or commissions a religious work of art. This act is intended to increase merit on behalf of the benefactor and is dedicated to the benefit of all. It is also usually done for a specific purpose, such as longevity, prosperity, or well-being; to advance religious practice; or to ensure a good rebirth of a deceased relative, teacher, or friend. A similar practice is also known in Hinduism and Bon.

iconography

In the Himalayan context, iconography refers to the forms found in religious images, especially the attributes of deities: body color, number of arms and legs, hand gestures, poses, implements, and retinue. Often these attributes are specified in ritual texts (sadhanas), which artists are expected to follow faithfully.

kesi

Kesi is a type of silk weaving known from China and eastern Central Asia, originally associated with the Sogdian and Uyghur peoples. Kesi uses raw silk for the warp and boiled silk of various colors for the weft, producing vivid blocks of color. As the finished surface has a carved-like effect, giving the textile a three-dimensional quality, the technique became known as kesi, which literally means “carved silk.” By the early thirteenth century, the Tanguts employed this luxury medium for the creation of Tibetan Buddhist icons, which would be emulated by other courts, such as the Mongols, Chinese, and Manchus.

wrathful

In Hinduism, Buddhism, and Bon, some gods and deities are shown with flaming hair, bulging eyes, mouths showing fangs, adorned with garlands of severed heads, and trampling enemies, real or metaphorical. In Tantric Buddhism, such deities are said to be wrathful manifestations of wisdom and method who assume fierce appearance to protect, remove or overcome mental afflictions blocking the path to enlightenment. Others are unenlightened, indigenous gods bound by oath to protect Buddhist traditions. Some female deities, or dakinis, like Vajrayogini, appear as semi-wrathful, in beatific form but bearing small fangs. In the Bon tradition, similarly to Tibetan Buddhism, wrathful deities can be emanations or represent local gods and sprits. In Hindu traditions, gods and goddesses can appear fierce, holding many weapons meant to overcome demons.

Yuan Dynasty

The Yuan dynasty (1271–1368) is the branch of the Mongol Empire in Asia. In 1260 when Qubilai Khan declared himself Great Khan, his realm included Mongolian, Chinese, Tangut, and Tibetan regions. In 1271 emperor Qubilai Khan proclaimed the Yuan dynasty on a Chinese model, employing Tibetan and Tangut monks. Tibetan Buddhism played an important role in the state, establishing a political model that would be emulated by later dynasties, including the Chinese Ming and Manchu Qing dynasties. The Mongols were major patrons of Tibetan institutions, and many Mongols converted to Tibetan Buddhism, though their interest declined with the fall of the empire.

The is a large work, produced by weaving silk and gold threads using a highly sophisticated technique known in Chinese as “silk tapestry with slits ().” The iconographic composition of this tapestry follows a standard pattern found in the Buddhist visual idioms of the wider Himalayan world. Dominating its pictorial program at the center is the mandala itself, which consists of a series of concentric circles and squares that create an architectural blueprint of a palatial structure. Vajrabhairava, the main of the mandala, occupies its central niche. In the top row, weavers added portraits of Buddhist deities and monks who participated in the transmission of the iconographic and ritual knowledge associated with the Vajrabhairava mandala below. Along the bottom row, portraits clearly identify the work as a product of the imperial during the Yuan period (1271–1368), the that ruled over eastern Eurasia.

The Tibetan-language inscriptions provide names of each of these imperial donor figures. The white-robed figure in the bottom left corner is labeled “Emperor Tuq-Temür (Gyelpo Tuk Timur)” (Wenzong, r. 1328–1329, 1329–1332), while the blue-robed figure sitting next to him is his brother, labeled “Prince Qoshila (Gyelbu Koshala)” (Mingzong, r. 1329)(fig. 2). The two female donors, the respective wives of these two male figures, appear opposite them in the bottom row. “Budashiri Qatun (Ponmo Bhudhashri)” (1307–1340), the wife of Tuq-Temür, sits on the edge of the bottom right corner, and the wife of Qoshila, “Babusha Qatun (Ponmo Bhabucha)” (d. 1330), sits next to her (fig. 3).

Fig. 2

Male imperial donor portraits, Emperor Tuq-Temür and Prince Qoshila, detail from Vajrabhairava Mandala; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; 1992.54; CC0 – Creative Commons (CC0 1.0)

Fig. 3

Female imperial donor portraits, Budashiri Qatun and Babusha Qatun, detail from Vajrabhairava Mandala; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; 1992.54; CC0 – Creative Commons (CC0 1.0)

Mandalas and Portraits

There are differing opinions about the intended function of this tapestry Vajrabhairava mandala. One plausible theory is that it was originally produced to be hung inside one of the Yuan imperial portrait halls. Starting in 1294, when the portrait hall was commissioned for the first Yuan emperor, Qubilai (Shizu, r. 1260–1294) (fig. 4), and his principal wife, Chabui (Chabi, d. 1281) (fig. 5), the members of the Mongol ruling house enshrined portraiture of their deceased family members in the imperially sponsored Buddhist monasteries. These monasteries, established around the Yuan capital of Daidu (modern Beijing), had separate halls devoted to this purpose.

Fig. 4

Qubilai Khan; album leaf from Album of the Bust Portraits of Yuan Emperors (Yuandai di banshen xiang ce 元代帝半身像冊); probably Daidu (Beijing), China; Yuan dynasty (1279–1368); ink and color on silk; 23 3/8 × 18 1/2 in. (59.4 × 47 cm); National Palace Museum, Taipei; image from Araniko, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Fig. 5

Chabui; album leaf from Album of the Bust Portraits of Yuan Empresses (Yuandai hou banshen xiang shou ce 元代后半身像手冊); probably Daidu (Beijing), China; Yuan dynasty (1279–1368); ink and color on silk; 24 1/4 × 18 7/8 in. (61.5 × 48 cm); National Palace Museum, Taipei; image from Araniko, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

According to Chinese textual records, in each of these halls, the Mongol ruling house enshrined the portraits that captured the likeness of their deceased family members together with tantric Buddhist mandalas. All of the imperial portraits and mandalas were completely woven in silk, rather than being painted or sculpted, as was previously the norm for imperial portraiture in eastern Asia. These woven images were large, comparable in dimensions to the Vajrabhairava mandala.

The iconographic choice of Vajrabhairava as the main deity, occupying the center of the mandala, was likely to have been related to the fact that Vajrabhairava is a emanation of the . This bodhisattva was a particularly important figure for the members of the Mongol ruling house, so much so that the Yuan emperors fashioned themselves as bodily emanations of Manjushri. An architectural inscription from 1345, for example, praised Qubilai as “the bodhisattva of wisdom,” Manjushri’s epithet. Put another way, enshrining the Vajrabhairava mandala in proximity to the Mongol imperial portraiture was a way to layer the rhetoric of Buddhist kingship into the visual program of the Yuan imperial portrait halls.

Judging from the inscriptions that accompany the donor portraits, one can deduce that this tapestry Vajrabhairava mandala was produced under the patronage of Emperor Tuq-Temür about the year 1329. Having usurped the throne after killing his half-brother Qoshila, Tuq-Temür sought to establish his political legitimacy by elevating the status of his deceased mother, for whom he conducted a posthumous coronation as Empress Wenxianzhaosheng. Unlike Qoshila’s mother, who was of Mongol origin, Tuq-Temür’s mother was a Tangut, and the posthumous coronation made her the first non-Mongol empress in Yuan history. During this process, Tuq-Temür commissioned a new portrait hall for his father and mother, and this Vajrabhairava mandala was likely enshrined inside this structure.

Transmission Lineage

Around the thirteenth century, Vajrabahraiva was a relatively new deity in eastern Asia, with the associated tantric scriptures existing only in and Tibetan. It was through the Mongol ruling house’s close relationship with the wider Tibetan Buddhist world that the tantric iconographies and rituals of Vajrabhairava came to be transmitted to the members of the Yuan court. The specific of the Vajrabhairava mandala reveals the transmission lineage associated with what is known as the “forty-nine deity cycle.” Indeed, Pakpa Lodro Gyeltsen (1235–1280), the highest-ranking Tibetan monk working for the Yuan court during its early decades, also composed his own version of the Vajrabhairava liturgical hymn following in this cycle, titled Sadhana of Forty-Nine Deity Vajrabhairava.

Woven Images

Archaeological records suggest that the weaving technique “silk tapestry with slits” already existed in the in the sixth to eighth century. By the thirteenth century, this weaving technology had already become a mainstream component of the Chinese material culture. Even so, in eastern Asia before the Yuan period, the technique of silk tapestry was primarily used for the production of utilitarian items such as sartorial products or protective covers for scrolls and texts; there is no evidence that the technique was employed to produce figural images intended to fulfill devotional or other ritual functions. In other words, the medium of the Vajrabhairava mandala—and all other images that were enshrined in the Yuan imperial portrait hall—was a major innovation that marked a significant development in the history of silk tapestry in eastern Asia.

This new development was most likely linked to the Mongol ruling house’s exposure to the visual culture of the Tangut state of the Western Xia (Xixia, 1038–1227), where earlier examples of the silk tapestry Buddhist icons have been preserved. At (Mongolian; Chinese: Heishuicheng), a site associated with the Western Xia, artists produced Buddhist icons in silk tapestry during the twelfth century. The most famous example of the tapestry icon from Khara-Khoto is the image of the Green now in the State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg (fig. 6). Considering the significant roles played by Tangut personnel and culture in the formation of Yuan imperial courtly culture, it is likely that the members of the Yuan court were aware of such a tradition and drew inspiration from it.

Fig. 6.

Green Tara; Khara-Khoto, Inner Mongolia, China; Western Xia; late 12th–13th century; silk tapestry with slits (kesi); 39 3/4 × 20 5/8 in. (101 × 52.5 cm); State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg; photograph by Vladimir Terebenin © The State Hermitage Museum

Within the Yuan court, this choice of medium was also part of the larger shift in the hierarchy of artistic forms that the members of the Mongol ruling house promoted. The Yuan rulers maintained a close relationship with their pastoral nomadic roots and environmental surrounds, which included the abundance of animal fibers that constantly provided material for visual and material productions. The ruling house preferred fiber arts over other forms of artistic expression, such as painting and calligraphy, previously considered the most prestigious in China.

More broadly, the production of monumental woven images such as the Vajrabhairava mandala was representative of the larger trend in the Yuan court workshop to experiment with a variety of materials and techniques in making Buddhist icons. In addition to silk tapestry images, the Yuan court artists fabricated icons of Buddhist deities using a wide range of materials and technologies. Examples of Buddhist imagery fired as a porcelain (fig. 7) or sculpted using (fig. 8) survive in museum collections around the world, attesting to the creativity and flexibility of those who produced Buddhist imagery for the Yuan court.

Fig. 7

Seated Bodhisattva; Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Province, China; Mongol Empire; Yuan dynasty (1279–1368); late 13th–14th century; porcelain with relief decoration under bluish-white glaze (Jingdezhen Qingbai porcelain); 20 × 12 × 8 in. (50.8 × 30.5 × 20.3 cm); The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; 51.166; CC0 – Creative Commons (CC0 1.0)

Fig. 8

Bodhisattva; China; Mongol Empire; Yuan dynasty (1279–1368); 13th century; lacquer, cloth, traces of blue, gold, and green paint, gold leaf; 23 × 17 × 11 1/4 in. (58.5 × 43.3 × 29.5 cm); Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; F1945.4

Footnotes

For more information on Vajrabhairava and the Vajrabhairava tantras, see Bulcsu Siklós, The Vajrabhairava Tantras (Tring: The Institute of Buddhist Studies, 1996); Ra Yeshé Sengé, The All-Pervading Melodious Drumbeat: The Life of Ra Lotsawa, trans. Bryan Cuevas (New York: Penguin Books, 2015).

“Wenzong” and “Mingzong” are Chinese titles of the respective emperors.

For various interpretations, see Patricia Berger, “Preserving the Nation: The Political Uses of Tantric Art in China,” in Latter Days of the Law: Images of Chinese Buddhism, 850–1850, ed. Marsha Weidner, Exhibition catalog (Lawrence: Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, 1994), 89–124; James C.Y. Watt and Anne E. Wardwell, eds., “When Silk Was Gold: Central Asian and Chinese Textiles,” in The Metropolitan Museum of Art in Cooperation with the Cleveland Museum of Art, Exhibition catalog (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art in cooperation with the Cleveland Museum of Art, 1997); Shang Gang 尚刚, “Yifu juzuo, jidian caice 一幅巨作 , 几点猜测,” in Hanzang fojiao meishu yanjiu 汉藏佛教美术研究, ed. Xie Jisheng 謝繼勝, Luo Wenhua 罗文华, and Jing Anning (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2009), 261–67; Denise Patry Leidy, “Buddhism and Other ‘Foreign’ Practices in Yuan China,” in The World of Khubilai Khan: Chinese Art in the Yuan Dynasty, ed. James C. Y. Watt, Exhibition catalog (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2010), 87–128; Yong Cho, “The Mongol Impact: Rebuilding the Arts System in Yuan China (1271–1368)” (PhD diss., Yale University, 2020).

For more on this theory, including a thorough reconstruction of the original context of the work’s production, see Yong Cho, “The Mongol Impact: Rebuilding the Arts System in Yuan China (1271–1368)” (PhD diss., Yale University, 2020), 74–108.

Song Lian 宋濂 (1310–1381), Yuanshi 元史 [The History of the Yuan, 1370] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1976), 75, 1875–78, 134, 3253–54.

For more on the history of imperial portraiture in the Yuan, see Isabelle Charleux, “The Making of Mongol Buddhist Art and Architecture: Artisans in Mongolia from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century,” in Meditation: The Art of Zanabazar and His School, ed. Elvira Eevr Djaltchinova-Malets (Warsaw: Asia and Pacific Museum, 2010), 59–105; Xu Zhenghong 許正弘, “Yuan taixizongyin yuan guanshu jianzhi kaolun” 元太禧宗禋院官署建置考論,” Qinghua baogao 42, no. 3 (2012): 443–87; Yong Cho, “The Mongol Impact: Rebuilding the Arts System in Yuan China (1271–1368)” (PhD diss., Yale University, 2020).

Zhao Shiyan 趙世延 (1260-1336) and Yu Ji 虞集, “Jingshi Dadian Jijiao 经世大典輯校 [The Imperial Compendium for Governing the World, 1330],” in Wei Xuntian 魏訓田, And, ed. Zhou Shaochuan 周少川, Wei Xuntian 魏訓田, and Xie Hui 謝輝 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2020), 841–47.

For example, see Zhao Shiyan 趙世延 (1260-1336) and Yu Ji 虞集, “Jingshi Dadian Jijiao 经世大典輯校 [The Imperial Compendium for Governing the World, 1330],” in Wei Xuntian 魏訓田, And, ed. Zhou Shaochuan 周少川, Wei Xuntian 魏訓田, and Xie Hui 謝輝 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2020), 842.

On the importance of Manjushri in the Yuan, see David Farquhar, “Emperor as Bodhisattva in the Governance of the Ch‘ing Empire,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 38, no. 1 (1978): 5–34; Herbert Franke, From Tribal Chieftain to Universal Emperor and God: The Legitimation of the Yuan Dynasty (Munich: Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1978); Karl Debreczeny, “Wutai Shan: Pilgrimage to Five-Peak Mountain,” Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 6, no. December (2011): 30–39.

David Farquhar, “Emperor as Bodhisattva in the Governance of the Ch‘ing Empire,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 38, no. 1 (1978): 12; Herbert Franke, From Tribal Chieftain to Universal Emperor and God: The Legitimation of the Yuan Dynasty (Munich: Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1978), 52–69.

For the relationship between the idea of Buddhist kingship and the Yuan imperial portrait halls, see Dongyang Dehui 東陽德煇 (fl. 14th century), Chixiu baizhang qinggui 勅修百丈清規 [Imperial edition of Baizhang’s Rules of Piety, 1338], Taishō Tripiṭaka, T. 2025 (Imperial: China Buddhist Electronic Text Association, n.d.), T.2025: 1114c20–1114c22, http://tripitaka.cbeta.org/T48n2025.

For an overview of the political history during this time period, see Ch’i-Ch’ing Hsiao, “Mid-Yüan Politics,” in The Cambridge History of China, Volume 6: Alien Regimes and Border States, 907–1368, ed. Herbert Franke and Denis Twitchett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 490–560. For the role of the imperial ancestral halls and portraiture in Yuan political history, see Ma Xiaolin 马晓林, “Yuanchao Taimiao Yanbian Kao—Yi Shici Wei Zhongxin 元朝太庙演变考—以室次为中心,” Lishi Yanjiu 5 (2013): 67–82; Yong Cho, “The Mongol Impact: Rebuilding the Arts System in Yuan China (1271–1368)” (PhD diss., Yale University, 2020).

Bulcsu Siklós, The Vajrabhairava Tantras (Tring: The Institute of Buddhist Studies, 1996).

For an overview of the relationship between the Mongol court and the Tibetan Buddhist world, see Luciano Petech, Central Tibet and the Mongols: The Yüan-Sa-Skya Period of Tibetan History, Serie Orientale Roma 65 (Rome: Instituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1990); Shen Weirong, “Tibetan Buddhism in Mongol-Yuan China (1206–1368),” in Esoteric Buddhism and the Tantras in East Asia, ed. Charles Orzech, Henrik Sørensen, and Richard Payne (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 539–49; Tsangwang Gendun Tenpa, “Tibetan Buddhism and Art in the Mongol Empire According to Tibetan Sources,” in Faith and Empire: Art and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism, ed. Karl Debreczeny, trans. Eveline Washul, Exhibition catalog (New York: Rubin Museum of Art, 2019), 105–23, http://issuu.com/rmanyc/docs/faith_and_empire.

See Bsod nams rgya mtsho, The Ngor Mandalas of Tibet: Listings of the Mandala Deities, ed. Tachikawa Musashi et al. (Tokyo: Centre for East Asian Cultural Studies, 1991), no. 57; Tsangwang Gendun Tenpa, “Tibetan Buddhism and Art in the Mongol Empire According to Tibetan Sources,” in Faith and Empire: Art and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism, ed. Karl Debreczeny, trans. Eveline Washul, Exhibition catalog (New York: Rubin Museum of Art, 2019), 105–23, http://issuu.com/rmanyc/docs/faith_and_empire. Also see Bryan Cuevas’s introduction to Vajrabhairava lineages in Ra Yeshé Sengé, The All-Pervading Melodious Drumbeat: The Life of Ra Lotsawa, trans. Bryan Cuevas (New York: Penguin Books, 2015), ix–xliv.

For the origins of this weaving technique, see Angela Sheng, “Chinese Silk Tapestry: A Brief Social Historical Perspective of Its Early,” Orientations 26, no. 5 (May) (1995): 70–75; Angela Sheng, “Addendum to ‘Chinese Silk Tapestry: A Brief Social Historical Perspective of Its Early Development.,’” in Chinese and Central Asian Textiles: Selected Articles from Orientations 1973–1997 (Hong Kong: Orientations, 1998), 225.

For histories of silk tapestry prior to the Yuan period, see Amina Malagò, “The Origin of Kesi, the Chinese Silk Tapestry,” Annali Di Ca ’Foscari 27, no. 3 (1988): 279–97; Amina Malagò, “Kesi, Chinese Literary Sources in the Study of Silk Tapestry,” Annali Di Ca ’Foscari 30, no. 3 (1991): 227–62; Alexandra Tunstall, “Beyond Categorization: Zhu Kerou’s Tapestry Painting Butterfly and Camellia,” East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine 36, no. 1 (2012): 39–76.

For an overview of the paintings excavated at Khara-Khoto, see M.B. Piotrovsky, ed., Lost Empire of the Silk Road: Buddhist Art from Khara-Khoto (X–XIIIth Century), Exhibition catalog (Milan: Electa, 1993). For an overview of Tibetan Buddhist art at Khara-Khoto, see Xie Jisheng, “Tibetan Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhist Art in the Xixia Kingdom,” in Faith and Empire: Art and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism, ed. Karl Debreczeny, trans. Michelle McCoy, Exhibition catalog (New York: Rubin Museum of Art, 2019), 83–103, http://issuu.com/rmanyc/docs/faith_and_empire.

For the impact of Tangut culture in the Yuan court, see Ruth Dunnell, “The Hsia Origins of the Yüan Institution of Imperial Preceptor,” Asia Major 5, no. 1 (1992): 85–111; Rob Linrothe, “The Commissioner’s Commissions: Late-Thirteenth-Century Tibetan and Chinese Buddhist Art in Hangzhou Under the Mongols,” ed. Matthew T. Kapstein (Boston: Wisdom, 2009); Shen Weirong, “Tibetan Buddhism in Mongol-Yuan China (1206–1368),” in Esoteric Buddhism and the Tantras in East Asia, ed. Charles Orzech, Henrik Sørensen, and Richard Payne (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 539–49.

For the importance of fiber arts and textiles in the Mongol Empire, see Thomas Allsen, Commodity and Exchange in the Mongol Empire: A Cultural History of Islamic Textiles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); James C.Y. Watt and Anne E. Wardwell, eds., “When Silk Was Gold: Central Asian and Chinese Textiles,” in The Metropolitan Museum of Art in Cooperation with the Cleveland Museum of Art, Exhibition catalog (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art in cooperation with the Cleveland Museum of Art, 1997), 127–41.

Yong Cho, “The Mongol Impact: Rebuilding the Arts System in Yuan China (1271–1368)” (PhD diss., Yale University, 2020), 38–73.

For an overview of the variety of Buddhist icons produced by the Yuan imperial workshop, see Anning Jing, “Financial and Material Aspects of Tibetan Art under the Yuan Dynasty,” Artibus Asiae 64, no. 2 (2004): 213–41; Denise Patry Leidy, “Buddhism and Other ‘Foreign’ Practices in Yuan China,” in The World of Khubilai Khan: Chinese Art in the Yuan Dynasty, ed. James C. Y. Watt, Exhibition catalog (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2010), 87–128. For a deeper exploration of the reasons for this development, particularly with the medium of silk tapestry, see Yong Cho, “The Mongol Impact: Rebuilding the Arts System in Yuan China (1271–1368)” (PhD diss., Yale University, 2020).

Language:: Chinese

Alternate terms:: silk tapestry