A Study of the Ming-Dynasty Murals at Dahui Temple through Textual Verification and Digital Reconstruction

Abstract

The Great Compassion Hall of Dahui Temple preserves a central image of the Thousand-Armed Guanyin, two attendant bodhisattvas, polychrome sculptures of the Twenty-Eight Guardian Deities, and murals depicting the story of Princess Miaoshan. Together, these remains constitute an important component of Beijing’s historical and cultural heritage, with religious, artistic, literary, and spatial-narrative significance. Taking the Dahui Temple murals as its object of study, this article combines textual verification with visual analysis to reconstruct their narrative sequence, identify the scenes represented, and examine their correspondences with written sources. Particular attention is paid to the representation of Miaoshan’s compulsory labor at the White Sparrow Monastery, her descent into the underworld and salvation of suffering beings, her religious cultivation at Xiangshan, and her offering of her hands and eyes to cure her father. On the basis of this research, an interactive interpretive system was developed in Axure. The system organizes the murals’ original spatial setting within the hall, the mural images, and the relevant textual passages into bidirectional pathways through which users can move between space, image, and text.