“Wu Zetian and Buddhist Art of the Tang Dynasty” written by Patricia Karetzky provides a number of evidence that Empress Wu is a generous supporter of Buddhism and her patronage led to a splendid achievement in Buddhist art.
Per my understanding, it is a Standard Textbook or Encyclopedia Entry type of article. This article does not have many references to other published work and the writer is presenting existed evidence to support his objective of the paper. He used descriptive language to tell the fact and to provided information to readers instead of bringing in his own opinion or doing deep analysis of the information he collected.
The article has a very clear structure. Besides the introduction and conclusion parts, the article has three subheadings. The first one is from P114 to P116. The author talks about Buddhist activities in earlier Tang Dynasty and in Zhou. Under this section, the author also made two sub-points. One sub-point demonstrated the relationship Wu Zetian built with Buddhist monks and the Buddha images, such as Emperor Asoka she supported to build in the temple. The second sub-point illustrated that Wu Zetian also sponsored Buddhist monks on their translation activities and she involved in writing preface for these translations, such as Dayun sutra (Karetzky, 116). The second subheading is about Buddhist artistic evidence, which is from P116 to P122 and it includes three subsections, which are Empress Wu as Maitreya and the Dayunjing, Buddhist Art at Longmen, Luoyang, and Gongxian, and Empress Wu in Guangyuan, Sichuan. In the first subsection, it discussed how the different stele dated to Wu’s reign reflect the content of Danyun sutra. The second subsection provides varieties of Buddhist art at three places. The author gave detailed descriptions of the Cosmic Buddha in Fengxian Temple, new scriptures and images brought from India, and the Cave of Ten-thousand Buddhas. In the third subsection, it described how Express Wu is worshipped in Guangyuan area and provided detailed examples in Huangze temple, Qiaofo Grotos, and Dayunjing Cave. In Huangze temple, Wu Zetian’s portrait is presented as the Bodhisattva Guanyin (Karatzky, 125) and people treated her as a god; In Qiaofo Grottos, the bluff has more than 870 niches and over 7000 images and the vast majority was excavated in the Tang (Karatzky, 127); In Dayunjing cave, the Buddha images were replaced by Emperor the portrait of Gagzong and Wu Zetian, which reflected the reverence of the empress at that area. The last subheading of this article discussed the esoteric Buddhist art under Empress Wu from page128 to page130 and the author focused on the caves at Guangyuan’s Thousand Buddha Cliffs and the transformation of Guanyin.
The way that the author organized the article is very logical and effective. In the first subheading, the author provided background of Wu Zetian and how was she related and involved in Buddhism. Since Wu Zetian highly supported all Buddhism related actives, the Buddhist monks had a good environment to preach Buddhism and had opportunities to bring the sutras and Buddha images from India to China. Then, the author provided a number of evidence to support the main point that the unstringing patronage from Wu Zetian led a period of unprecedented creativity in Buddhist art. The last section discussed how the arrival of monks from Western affected the existed Buddhist art in that period.