Pictorial representations of the Suddhana Jataka describe Sakyamuni's former life as Prince Suddhana, a life of dedication to religious observances and selfsacrifice. Material preserved today suggests that the representation of the Suddhana Jataka in Chinese Buddhist art was most popular during the Northern Wei (386-534) period, at the time of the move of the capital to Lo-yang. Representations of this kind were most common in the geographical area of present-day Honan, a fact that is closely related to the flourishing of Buddhist culture around the new capital. While Buddhist sutra's such as the P'u-sapen-yttan Sutra, the Liu-tu chi Sutra, and the T'ai-tzu Hsu-ta-nu Sutra all contain versions of the story of the Suddhana Jataka, and may therefore to a certain extent have served as a textual basis for Northern Wei narrative wall-paintings, pictorial traditions transmitted from India and Central Asia still were the main source of inspiration for early Chinese representations of the story. Chinese representations of the Suddhana Jataka reveal restricting influences from Confacian ethics in the selection of themes to be depicted. Scenes describing the sacrifice of wife and child appear to have been avoided, while those relating to ideals of filial piety from the T'ai-tzu Hsu-ta-nu Sutra, would become a preferred topic in wall-paintings of the story. This clearly illustrates the fact that Buddhist art was not isolated from the reality of its socio-cultural environment, but on the contrary, that mutual interaction with this environment constituted the foundation for its further growth and development.