Jataka of the Deer King: A Buddhist Tale Told the Chinese Way

Few would have imagined that visitors would throng to a museum to partake of the beauty of a mural, despite it being a replica, at an exhibition on Chinese civilization earlier this year at the Palace Museum, or popularly known the Forbidden City, in Beijing.

The mural or its replica is not beautiful in the visual sense. A mural from the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang, northwest China’s Gansu Province, it has lost its original luster due to 1,500 years of wear and tear in the dim and dark cave, and the changing climate. So the replica of the mural depicting Jataka of the Deer King must have drawn people’s attention because of a completely different reason.

Today, we talk about how a Jataka tale rendered in the Chinese context in a mural in the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang has blossomed in popular memory across the country, thanks to a popular animation.