巧遇九色鹿 A Chance Encounter with the Nine-Coloured Deer

 

 

“咦，这不就是九色鹿吗？”

去年在敦煌莫高窟，参观完八个普通窟和三个特窟，我漫步流连，舍不得离开。走着走着，看见一座洞窟敞着门，里面有两个人指指点点，正在讨论什么。我和同行的伙伴好奇地凑进去。

洞窟中央耸立着塑有佛像的塔柱，旁边安装了玻璃。隔着玻璃，瞧见里面斑驳暗淡的壁画，我起初看不出什么名堂，正想再聚精会神，忽然发现塔柱左后方的墙上有个似曾相识的身影。啊，九色鹿！多年向往的九色鹿，竟然在这里遇见了！

我早就知道九色鹿。佛像、飞天之外，这大概是最早留在我记忆里的敦煌印象。后来又看过上海美术电影制片厂制作的动画片《九色鹿》，再从图册欣赏它的色彩与姿态，总盼望着有一天能在莫高窟亲眼见到原作。心愿这样意外实现，雀跃欢欣。可惜眼睛没有跟上心情：一千五百多年的岁月让墙面污渍残损，又有塔柱和玻璃阻挡，看不全画面。我终于看到了九色鹿，却没能把它看清楚。

九色鹿故事取材于《佛说九色鹿经》。讲的是释迦牟尼成佛以前，曾经是一只身上有九种毛色的鹿。有一天它在恒河救起一个落水人，对方发誓绝不泄露它的踪迹。后来王后想得到鹿皮，国王悬赏，落水人竟然为奖赏出卖九色鹿，带领国王和随从去捕猎它。九色鹿面对国王讲出真相，落水人遭到报应，颜面和全身生疮。

在抵达莫高窟以前，我先在兰州敦煌艺术馆看到介绍《鹿王本生图》的展板，注意到其中的叙事顺序与众不同：通常横向展开的连环故事画，从右到左叙述情节；九色鹿图却从两端开始，先左后右，最后结束于中间。

画面上救人、立誓的场景在左侧；王后求鹿、告密和出猎在右侧，两边的人物与行动逐渐朝中央推进。最醒目的位置，聚焦九色鹿向国王陈情——故事接近结局的一刻，竟站上了画面的“C位”！观众或许先看见结果，再回头寻找前因。画家把故事发展的时间线，安排成跳转的空间配置。

今年，在新加坡亚洲文明博物馆的敦煌特展，我再次遇见九色鹿。这回是1988年的临摹画，颜色鲜明，人物与山水轮廓容易辨认，我可以从容地沿两侧铺陈故事，再凝视中央。慢慢琢磨去年未能细看的许多地方，却更难忘那一次在原窟隔着玻璃，突然发现它的惊喜。

越能看清一些细节，越让我想要探究这幅画的图像叙事结构。于是我打开数字敦煌网站，进入第257号虚拟洞窟重新查看：《鹿王本生图》绘于北魏，位于窟主室西壁中段南侧，正好是礼佛信众绕中心塔柱转角的位置。如果按照敦煌研究院的资料，画面分为8段图像叙事，从第1到第3（落水、救人、立誓）就是合乎行进的方向，接着视线会集中到第8段（陈情），也就是最具张力，揭发背叛的高潮。然后才从右侧看第4段（王后求鹿）以及其他。

我想起十多年前曾经参观新疆库车的克孜尔石窟，搬回厚重的龟兹壁画图册。把图册摊开在地上，跪着一页一页翻看，终于在第 175 窟看到了同样是九色鹿故事的图画。图画集中处理的是国王骑在马上，右手举着箭，准备挥向九色鹿，这惊险的刹那，激发了九色鹿吐露真相。也许克孜尔石窟和莫高窟的画家都认为，最应该让信众会意的，就是这个场景吧。

动画片让我记住故事，图册让我熟悉形象，兰州的展板提醒我留意叙事顺序，在莫高窟远观原作，在新加坡由临摹画重新细读，数字敦煌则帮助我确认图像的空间位置。我与九色鹿反复相逢，每一种媒介都赋予兴味盎然的观看方式，也留下值得继续追索的问题。保护壁画使我们不能随心所欲地拍摄，临摹和数字技术则让图像传播更便捷，利于玩味推敲。亲临现场的身体记忆与后来逐步获得的知识见解，在观看体验中彼此补充。

去年，我巧遇九色鹿；如今，我仿佛离它更近了。

从看不清，到认出它；从认出它，到试着读懂它，我一次又一次走进敦煌。

 

2026 年 11 月 7 日，《联合早报》“上善若水”专栏

 

A Chance Encounter with the Nine-Coloured Deer

I Lo-fen

“Wait—isn’t that the Nine-Coloured Deer?”

Last year, after visiting eight regular caves and three special-access caves at the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang, I was still reluctant to leave. As I wandered around, I noticed an open cave entrance. Two people inside were pointing at something and talking. Curious, my travelling companion and I stepped in.

At the centre of the cave stood a pillar with sculpted Buddhist figures, with glass barriers installed alongside it. Through the glass, I could make out the faded, weathered murals, though at first I could not quite tell what I was looking at. Just as I was trying to focus more carefully, a strangely familiar figure caught my eye on the wall behind and to the left of the central pillar.

The Nine-Coloured Deer! After all these years of longing to see it, I had stumbled upon it here!

I had known the Nine-Coloured Deer for as long as I could remember. Apart from Buddhist statues and flying apsaras, it was among my earliest impressions of Dunhuang. Later, I watched The Nine-Colored Deer, the animated film produced by Shanghai Animation Film Studio, and admired the creature’s colours and graceful form in illustrated books. I had always hoped that one day I would see the original mural at Mogao.

To have that wish fulfilled so unexpectedly was exhilarating. Unfortunately, my eyes could not keep up with my excitement. More than 1,500 years had left the wall stained and damaged. The central pillar and glass barriers obstructed my view, making it impossible to see the entire painting. I had finally seen the Nine-Coloured Deer, yet I had hardly been able to see it clearly.

The story of the Nine-Coloured Deer comes from the Sutra of the Nine-Colored Deer. It tells of a previous life of Shakyamuni Buddha, before he attained Buddhahood, when he was a deer whose coat displayed nine different colours.

One day, the deer rescued a drowning man from the Ganges. The man solemnly promised never to reveal its whereabouts. Later, the queen desired the deer’s beautiful hide, and the king offered a reward for its capture. Tempted by the reward, the rescued man betrayed his benefactor and led the king and his attendants to hunt it down. Confronting the king, the deer revealed the truth. The treacherous man received his karmic retribution, developing sores on his face and body.

Before arriving at the Mogao Caves, I had visited the Dunhuang Art Museum in Lanzhou, where an explanatory panel about the Deer King Jātaka caught my attention. What intrigued me was its unusual narrative sequence.

In conventional horizontal narrative paintings, the story often unfolds from right to left. Here, however, the episodes begin at opposite ends of the composition. The eye moves first from the left, then from the right, before the story concludes in the middle.

On the left are the scenes of the deer rescuing the drowning man and the man pledging his gratitude and secrecy. On the right are the queen’s demand for the deer, the man’s betrayal and the royal hunting expedition. Figures and actions on both sides gradually converge towards the centre.

The most prominent position is reserved for the deer confronting the king and pleading its case. A moment near the end of the story occupies centre stage—the composition’s very own “C-position”!

Perhaps viewers first encounter the outcome, then look back towards either side to discover what led to it. The painter has transformed the chronological progression of a story into a spatial arrangement that invites the eye to move back and forth.

This year, at the Dunhuang exhibition at Singapore’s Asian Civilisations Museum, I encountered the Nine-Coloured Deer once again.

This time, I was looking at a painted copy dating from 1988. Its colours were vivid, and the outlines of the figures and landscape were much easier to distinguish. I could take my time following the narratives from either side before returning my gaze to the centre. I lingered over details that had escaped me in the original cave. Yet I could never forget the excitement of that first unexpected discovery, when I caught sight of the deer through the glass.

The more details I could discern, the more curious I became about the painting’s visual narrative.

I turned to the Digital Dunhuang website and entered a virtual reconstruction of Cave 257. Painted during the Northern Wei dynasty, the Deer King Jātaka occupies the southern section of the middle register on the cave’s west wall. This is near the point where worshippers would have turned as they moved around the central pillar.

According to the Dunhuang Academy, the painting can be divided into eight narrative episodes. Episodes one to three—the man falling into the river, the deer rescuing him, and his pledge of gratitude—follow a plausible direction of movement around the cave. The viewer’s gaze may then be drawn to episode eight, the deer’s confrontation with the king, where the betrayal is exposed in the story’s most dramatic moment. Only afterwards might the viewer turn to the right-hand section, beginning with episode four, in which the queen demands the deer, and proceed through the remaining events.

I was reminded of a visit more than a decade ago to the Kizil Caves near Kuqa in Xinjiang. I had brought home a hefty volume of reproductions of the murals of ancient Kucha. Spreading the book across the floor, I knelt down and turned its pages one by one, until I came upon another depiction of the Nine-Coloured Deer story, identified as being from Cave 175.

This painting concentrated on a moment of great tension: the king, mounted on horseback, raising an arrow in his right hand, poised to shoot the deer. Faced with imminent danger, the deer reveals the truth.

Perhaps the painters of Kizil and Mogao alike believed that this was the moment worshippers most needed to understand.

The animated film helped me remember the story; illustrated books made the deer’s image familiar. The exhibition panel in Lanzhou taught me to pay attention to the narrative sequence. At Mogao, I saw the original mural from a distance; in Singapore, I could study its painted copy more closely. Digital Dunhuang, in turn, helped me establish the painting’s position within the cave.

I have encountered the Nine-Coloured Deer again and again. Each medium has offered its own fascinating way of seeing, while leaving me with further questions to pursue.

The need to preserve fragile murals prevents us from photographing them freely or approaching them as closely as we might wish. Painted copies and digital technologies, meanwhile, make these images more accessible, allowing us to examine and reflect upon them in greater detail. The bodily memory of standing before the original and the knowledge gradually gained through subsequent encounters complement one another.

Last year, I happened upon the Nine-Coloured Deer. Today, I feel as though I have drawn a little closer to it.

From struggling to see it clearly, to recognising it; from recognising it, to trying to understand it—I find myself entering Dunhuang, again and again.

7 November 2026 | “Shang Shan Ruo Shui” column, Lianhe Zaobao