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The Baisha Mural is located in the Baisha Village
on the plain north of Lijiang. the mural was made from 1385 to
1619, employing the eclectic artist energies of Chinese Taoist,
Tibetan and Naxi Buddhists and local dongba shamans. This rich
fusion had resulted in a tremendously powerful art, heavy in
spirit and awe-inspiring in its presentation of the mystical
world. Dominated by black, silver, dark green, gold and red
colours, the murals in the back hall,overlaid with centuries of
brown soot, are doomladen and bizarre, the scenes and figures,
some still vivid in detail, are largely taken from Tibetan
Buddhist iconography and include the wheel of life, judges of the
underworld, the damned, titans and gods, Buddhas and bodhisattvas.
There are trigrams, lotus flowers and even Sanskrit inscriptions
on the ceiling. The deliberate damage done to the paintings is
apparent and terrible, but the loss of the irreplaceable wooden
statuary that filled the temple, of which there is no trace, is
even more tragic.
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