A Journey across Many Realms: The Shi Jun Sarcophagus and the Visual Representation of Migration on the Silk Road JIN XU Keywords: pictorial biography of the Buddha, Sogdians in China, Sogdian sarcophagi T HE SHI JUN SARCOPHAGUS (580 CE), a house-shaped stone coffin of a Sogdian immigrant couple, is one of the most important Silk Road discoveries ever made (figure 1). 1 Excavated in Xi’an (Shaanxi Province, China) in 2003, it belongs to a group of sarcophagi created for Sogdian community leaders in sixth-century China that have been uncovered over the course of the past century, primarily in the last two decades. The Shi Jun sar- cophagus sets itself apart from the others with an epitaph inscribed in both Chinese and Sogdian. The epitaph recounts the migration of a Sogdian couple from Central Asia to the Chinese heartland. Even more unusual than this inscription is the exterior of the sarcophagus, which is carved with a continuous sequence of narrative reliefs. These represent the deceased’ s multifaceted journey on the Silk Road. 2 The epitaph of the deceased couple provides crucial information about their life together. 3 Shi Jun (494–579 CE), or Wirkak in Sogdian, was born in the state of Shi (Kesh in present-day Uzbekistan). After he migrated to northwest China, he became a government official responsible for local immigrant communities in Liangzhou (Wuwei, Gansu Province) and thereby assumed the title sabao. Shi Jun’ s wife Kang Shi (d. 580 CE), or Wiyusi, came from a family originating in the state of Kang (Samarkand, Uzbekistan). She was born in Xiping (Xi’ning, Qinghai Province), where she and Shi Jun got married. Later, the couple relocated to and died around the same year in Chang’an (Xi’an), the capital of the Western Wei and Northern Zhou dynasties (535–81 CE). They were buried in the eastern suburb of Chang’an in 580 CE. The imagery on the sarcophagus further illustrates the life of the deceased. The exterior of the sarcophagus shows eleven vertical panels, which begin on the west wall, continue on the north wall, and conclude on the east wall of the sarcophagus (hereafter denoted W, N, and E) (figure 2). Based on their subjects, these panels can be broken into Jin Xu (jxu@vassar.edu) is Assistant Professor of Art History and Asian Studies at Vassar College. 1 Yang Junkai and Shaanxi sheng kaogu yanjiusuo, Beizhou Shi Jun mu [Shi Jun tomb of the North- ern Zhou dynasty] (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 2014). 2 All images and drawings of the sarcophagus are provided by the Xi’an Cultural Relics Conservation and Archaeological Research Institute. 3 Yang, Shi Jun mu, 45–48; Albert Dien, “Observations Concerning the Tomb of Master Shi,” Bul- letin of the Asia Institute, no. 17 (2003 [2007]): 105–6; Yoshida Yutaka, “The Sogdian Version of the New Xi’an Inscription,” in Les Sogdiens en Chine, ed. Éric Trombert and Étienne Vaissière (Paris: École Française d’Extrême-Orient, 2005), 57–59. The Journal of Asian Studies Vol. 80, No. 1 (February) 2021: 145–165. © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc., 2021 doi:10.1017/S0021911820003617 145 terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021911820003617 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 100.40.199.163, on 25 Feb 2021 at 16:54:44, subject to the Cambridge Core