Collection of Chinese Culture: Stone Rubbings

These 4 scrolls containing stone rubbings belong to a collection located at the University of Pennsylvania's Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts. The collection contains a total of 9 scrolls consisting of 4 stone rubbings, 4 vertically printed Chinese characters, and 1 lattice filled with Chinese characters. This collection can be accessed here

Stone Rubbings

Overview

Of the 9 scrolls in the collection, 4 of them are stone rubbings. 2 of the 4 are huge vertical images of Buddhist figures while the other 2 contain scenes of everyday life imprinted within rectangular boxes.

Historical Context

Each of the 4 stone rubbings had a small description/note attached respectively. The scroll containing the Buddhist figure without the halo was from T’ien-Leeng-Shen. Besides that short note, the descriptions belonging to the 2 Buddhist figures contained no relevant information about their creator or date of origin. Given the nature of the collection as well as information about other scrolls, it can be assumed that these scrolls were either gifted to the University of Pennsylvania or bought by the University of Pennsylvania from a collector/outside source. The Buddhist figure scrolls were probably hung inside religious buildings such as places of worship or used by monks/religious authorities to teach and spread Buddhism back in China.

The two scrolls containing stone rubbings of scenes and

Usage

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