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In recent years, discoveries of tombs of people from the Western Regions in the Central Plains have attracted the wide attention of the academic community. The most representative examples include the tomb of Kang Ye dated in the sixth year of the Tianhe era in the Northern Zhou (571 CE) from the northern suburb of Xi’an in Shaanxi province, the tomb of An Jia dated in the first year of the Daxiang era of the Northern Zhou (579 CE), the tomb of Shi Jun dated in the second year of the Daxiang era (580 CE), the tomb of Yu Hong dated twelfth year of the Kaihuang era of the Sui (592 CE) from Wang Guo Cun in Taiyuan, Shanxi province, and the undated tomb from the mountain top of Wenshan in Shimaping, Tianshui, Gansu province. Some of the occupants of these tombs can be identified with certainty; they include the nine Central Asian lineages of Zhaowu from the floodplain of the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya in Central Asia, the so-called Sogdians during the Han to Western Jin Dynasties. Sogdians mostly believed in Zoroastrianism, and during the Northern and Southern dynasties many of them migrated to the inner plain and to the Xinjiang province of China. The burial furnishings in these tombs are decorated with a rich array of pictorial images. On the basis of the ethnicity of the tomb occupants, some scholars conclude as a matter of course that these pictorial images are direct reflections of the real life events of the tomb occupants. They even use these materials as the basis to further construct the concept of an“art history of Zoroastrianism.”The contributions of these scholars deserve to be fully acknowledged. On the other hand, the methodology used in the iconographic interpretation of pictorial images in some of the studies needs to be questioned. Using the stone couch pictures from Kang Ye’s tomb in the northern suburb of Xi’an excavated in 2004 as examples, I will attempt to discuss my own point of view. According to the tomb epitaph, Kang Ye is a descendant of the king of the state of Kangju, and had once held positions such as the Grand Heavenly Master during the Wei. The four stone slabs standing on top of the platform of Kang Ye’s stone couch are carved with pictures of a folding screen. In comparison to the pictorial images found on many burial furnishings of people from the Western Regions excavated earlier, the pictorial themes on Kang Ye’s stone couch are relatively simple and do not have references to subjects distinctly related to Zoroastrian beliefs and customs. For the sake of convenience in description, I have numbered the sequence of pictures from the first picture on the south end of the west wall, on to the main (north) wall, then to the first picture on the south end of the east wall as “picture no. 1”to “picture no. 10”respectively (Figure 1). Due to the limited scope of the present essay, I will only discuss five pictures: 1, 2, 3, 9, and 10. The compositions of these pictures have quite a few similarities that can be summarized into three main points. First, they are group portraits. At the center of the picture is a portrait of a male or female figure sitting on a small couch, with their faces turned at three-quarters view. Presumably they represent the tomb occupants as husband and wife. Surrounding the master and mistress are many attendants or guests, and some of these figures, either seated or standing, seem to be listening to the master’s or mistress’s

Notes on the Stone Couch Pictures from the Tomb of Kang Ye in Northern Zhou