LADY YUCHI IN THE FIRST PERSON: PATRONAGE, KINSHIP, AND VOICE IN THE GUYANG CAVE

Abstract Recent research sheds new light on the importance of maternal and matrilineal kin relationships during the Northern and Southern Dynasties period. Yet accounts of women’s family lives remain rare in the historical record, and first-person accounts still rarer. The dedication of Buddhist images by women during this period provides the occasional exception to this rule. The Maitreya niche sponsored by Lady Yuchi in 495 ce in the Guyang Cave at Longmen, dedicated to her deceased son, constitutes a first-person account of her own identity and her place in her husband’s family. Despite the social eminence of her husband’s primary wife, an imperial princess, she omits the princess and her son from the family group represented in her niche. Lady Yuchi depicts instead a nuclear family group centered on herself, and privileges her own mother-son relationship over all others in commemorating her son Niujue.