The mask art is a long standing and well established cultural phenomenon in the world. It is a unique art field taking shape in the early stage of human civilization. It is a historical and cultural heritage spanning all historical stages from the primitive to the modern society. It is also a peculiar symbol of a compound culture, and a mysterious symbolic culture, leaving profound impacts on human mentality at different historical stages.
Masks could be traced back to the totem stage of the primitive society in China, as shown in ancient Chinese records, literary and historical materials, and data explored by scholars in studying traditional cultures across the country in recent years.
Totem worship reflects religious psychology of the primitive era, for the purpose of seeking fortunes and getting rid of catastrophe. Constrained by their intelligence, the primitive was unable to understand all natural phenomena in the universe. They held everything on earth had souls, and misfortunes were the results of haunts and plagues of evil spirits. Subsequently, people began to worship certain natural objects closely associated to their lives out of instinctive desires for survival. Such worships gradually evolved into an emblem and totem symbol of the clan.
Primitive people would hold worship ceremonies in time for wars, hunting, farming and the reproduction of mankind. They would dance, sing and pray for auspiciousness. They would largely wear beast heads, wrap around beast skins, and play in the shape of the totem to please the totem deity. Such face-painting totem dances were main channels for the primitive people to worship heaven, earth and their forefathers, educate their offspring, and release restrained emotions. Masks were bred and fashioned exactly in these totem dances brimming with primitive witcheries. In the earliest hunting period, people survived through capturing animals. In their minds, animals were both necessities for survival and deities for worship. They believed wearing beast heads would surely enable them to win supernatural abilities. They held such beast heads would translate people into inhumans (animals). This led to the birth of earliest forms of masks.
Tibetan masks were cultivated in the Tibetan Buddhist cultures. They are largely separated into the Qiang Mu masks and Tibetan Drama masks. Tibetan masks are mainly found in Tibet, Qinghai, Gansu and Sichuan, where Tibetan people live in compact communities. Tibetan masks apply symbolic colors and all sorts of decoration measures to express Qiang Mu and Tibetan Drama roles, identities, social positions, and characters, showing rich Tibetan cultural features. Tibetan masks refer to the masks worn in the performances of dancing to gods in Tibetan Buddhism rites and the masks for Tibetan drama. They have gradually developed into its own system on the basis of integrating the Tibetan local cultures and introduced Buddhism cultures. Therefore, Tibetan masks boast centuries-old history.
In the course of witnessing Buddhism to enter the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau and integrate with the primitive Ben religion of the Tibetans, Qiang Mu was sanctioned by long-standing customs to be a large-scale mask-based god dance, held respectively in January, April, June and September in Tibetan calendar, and a most popular folk custom activity in the Tibetan area. Tibetan drama masks were rooted in Qiang Mu, while absorbing and integrating the Tibetan folk dance, storytelling and religious cultures.
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