South, East, Southeast Asia and the Pacific: every key term you need (+ practice quiz)
37 flashcard terms for AP Art History Unit 8, written to match the course framework. Study them here, then drill them as interactive flashcards, or test yourself with the 22-question quiz — free, no account needed.
South, East, Southeast Asia and the Pacific (CED Unit 8)
Arts c. 300 BCE–1980 CE: Hindu-Buddhist South and Southeast Asia, imperial China and Japan, and Pacific voyaging cultures.
Great Stupa at Sanchi
India, c. 300 BCE–100 CE. Buddhist relic mound with harmika, yasti, and four carved toranas; devotees circumambulate clockwise around the dome.
Stupa
A solid mound enshrining relics of the Buddha; walking around it (pradakshina) traces the cosmic order and earns merit.
Torana
The carved gateway of a stupa precinct; Sanchi's four toranas teem with jataka tales and yakshi figures at the cardinal points.
Yakshi
Voluptuous nature spirit whose touch makes trees bloom; on Sanchi's toranas she welcomes devotees, absorbing older fertility cults into Buddhism.
Terra Cotta Warriors
Qin dynasty, c. 221–209 BCE. Thousands of individualized clay soldiers buried with Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi to guard him — assembly-line production, personalized heads.
Funeral Banner of Lady Dai
Han dynasty, c. 180 BCE. Painted silk T-shaped banner mapping underworld, earthly mourning, and heaven — a cosmic diagram guiding the soul upward.
Longmen Caves (Vairocana Buddha)
Luoyang, China, 493–1127. Rock-cut Buddhist grottoes; the colossal Fengxian Vairocana (c. 675) was sponsored by Empress Wu Zetian.
Angkor Wat
Cambodia, c. 800–1400. Khmer temple-mountain of Vishnu (later Buddhist) mirroring Mount Meru, ringed by moats; galleries carry the Churning of the Ocean of Milk relief.
Churning of the Ocean of Milk
Angkor's bas-relief of gods and demons tug-of-warring a serpent around Mount Mandara to produce the elixir of immortality — Khmer kingship joined to cosmic myth.
Borobudur
Java, c. 750–842. Colossal stepped Buddhist mandala-mountain: pilgrims ascend through relief galleries of desire and teaching to open terraces of bell stupas and emptiness.
Lakshmana Temple
Khajuraho, India, 930–950. Northern-style Hindu temple with rising shikhara towers and erotic-auspicious sculpture over a garbhagriha housing Vishnu's image.
Garbhagriha
The small dark 'womb chamber' at a Hindu temple's heart where the deity's image dwells and darshan (ritual seeing) occurs.
Shiva Nataraja
Chola dynasty, c. 11th c. Bronze Shiva as Lord of the Dance in a ring of fire — creation, preservation, destruction, and release in one balanced icon, cast for procession.
Lost-Wax Chola Bronzes
South Indian temple bronzes cast solid by cire perdue, dressed and garlanded, and carried through streets during festivals — gods that travel.
Travelers among Mountains and Streams
Fan Kuan, c. 1000. Monumental Northern Song hanging scroll: a towering ink peak dwarfs tiny travelers — Daoist scale of humans within nature.
Literati Painting
Chinese scholar-amateur ideal: expressive brushwork, poetry, and calligraphy united; personal cultivation valued over professional finish.
Forbidden City
Beijing, 15th c. onward. Ming imperial palace city on a strict north-south axis; nested gates and courts staged the emperor as cosmic pivot.
Yuan dynasty, 1351. Dated blue-and-white porcelain altar vases with cobalt underglaze dragons — benchmarks for the global blue-and-white trade.
Porcelain
High-fired white kaolin ceramic perfected at Jingdezhen; Chinese blue-and-white became a world commodity imitated from Iran to Delft.
Ryoan-ji
Kyoto, c. 1480 onward. Zen temple's dry rock garden (karesansui): 15 stones in raked gravel for seated contemplation — never all visible at once.
Karesansui
Japanese dry landscape garden abstracting water and mountains into gravel and stone, an aid to Zen meditation.
White and Red Plum Blossoms
Ogata Korin, c. 1710–1716. Rinpa screens: stylized gold ground, patterned stream in curling lines, and asymmetrical plum trees — decorative boldness with poetic charge.
Under the Wave off Kanagawa
Hokusai, c. 1830–1833. Ukiyo-e woodblock from Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji: the great wave with Prussian blue pigment; mass-printed and globally influential.
Ukiyo-e
Edo 'pictures of the floating world': affordable woodblock prints of actors, beauties, and landscapes, produced by designer-carver-printer-publisher teams.
Todai-ji
Nara, Japan, 743 onward; rebuilt c. 1700. Great Eastern Temple housing the colossal bronze Vairocana; its Great Buddha Hall is among the world's largest wooden buildings.
Nan Madol
Pohnpei, Micronesia, c. 700–1600. Ninety-two artificial islets of stacked basalt 'logs' on a reef — the Saudeleur dynasty's ceremonial-administrative sea city.
Moai on Ahu
Rapa Nui (Easter Island), c. 1100–1600. Monolithic ancestor figures on stone platforms, backs to the sea, projecting mana over communities; some wear pukao topknots.
Mana and Tapu
Polynesian concepts of spiritual power and sacred restriction that govern who may make, touch, or wear ritual objects.
'Ahu 'ula
Hawaiian feather cloaks of red and yellow feathers on fiber netting — divine protection and rank worn by chiefs; hundreds of thousands of feathers each.
Hiapo (Tapa)
Niue, c. 1850–1900. Barkcloth beaten from mulberry bast, painted with fine grids, spirals, and plant motifs plus early written names — a living Pacific textile art.
Tamati Waka Nene
Gottfried Lindauer, 1890. Oil portrait of the Maori rangatira with full facial moko, feather cloak, and staff — European medium recording Maori mana.
Moko
Maori tattoo of carved spiral patterns; facial moko encodes lineage and status, treated as a person's living signature.
Malagan Display
New Ireland, c. 20th c. Openwork carvings and masks made for mortuary festivals, displayed once to honor the dead and traditionally left to decay afterward.
Presentation of Fijian Mats (Tapa)
Fiji, 1953. Photograph of women in ceremonial procession presenting barkcloth and mats to Queen Elizabeth II — textiles as the currency of Pacific diplomacy.
Navigation Chart (Rebbelib)
Marshall Islands, 19th–20th c. Stick lattice mapping ocean swells and islands (shells); memorized before voyages, not carried — knowledge over object.