RAS Art Focus

in collaboration with the Consulate General of India in Shanghai

Buddhist Jataka Texts as Visual Narratives

Thursday, 29 October 2026

5:45 am Registration

6:00 pm to 8:00 pm

We are pleased to announce out autumn Art Focus series, in collaboration with the Consulate General of India in Shanghai and convened by art historian Julie Chun. The series explores the transmission of Buddhism, and with it, Buddhist imagery from India to China. This vast and fascinating subject provides our guest speakers with an opportunity to share their areas of expertise and distinctive perspectives, providing insight to the general public of how religious ideas and visual traditions traveled across geographies, and were circulated, transformed, and interpreted along the way.

For our second lecture in the four-part series, we are extremly pleased to host Dr. Jinchao Zhao, Assistant Professor of Art History at the School of Humanities, Tongji University in Shanghai.

Lecture topic:

Buddhist Jataka stories underwent intriguing transformations as they were transmitted into the Chinese context during the early medieval period, revealing the complex processes underlying the localization and Sinicization of Buddhism. This lecture focuses on three Jatakas that gained particular popularity in early medieval China, examining the transformation of their settings from forests to mountains in both textual and visual traditions.

In the earliest Chinese translations of these Jataka texts, dating to the third and fourth centuries CE, the textual narratives absorbed indigenous conventions, particularly the traditions of "entering the mountains to cultivate immortality" and "pursuing the Way amid mountain seclusion." During the Northern Dynasties, the iconographic representations of these narratives were further integrated into the cultural context of the Central Plains, where they became intertwined with indigenous landscape imagery and scenes of heavenward ascent. The trajectory

from "forest" to "mountain," thus reveals not only the influence of indigenous Chinese traditions of mountain cultivation and spiritual practice, but also the active adaptation and transformation of Buddhist art within the sociopolitical and funerary, cultural contexts of Central Plains society. What may initially appear to be a difference between Indian and Chinese visual traditions in their representations of nature ultimately reveals a deeper commonality: the ways in which both cultures used visual imagery to represent and imagine nature, and to explore the relationship between humanity and the natural world.

This event is complimentary for members and institutional members of RAS China. To subscribe or renew your membership, please visit: https://ras-china.org/memberships​

About the speaker:

Jinchao Zhao is Assistant Professor of Art History in the School of Humanities at Tongji University in Shanghai. She holds an M.A. in Comparative Literature from Peking University and a Ph.D. in Art and Architectural History from the University of Virginia. Prior to joining Tongji University, she completed a joint postdoctoral fellowship in Asian Studies at NYU Shanghai and Fudan University.

Her research focuses on medieval Chinese Buddhist art, early Indian Buddhist art, and the cultural history of Chinese communities in South Asia. She has published in Dunhuang Research, Asian Studies, Religions, and Eurasian Studies.