The Guardian Beasts which stand guard within Tang dynasty (618-907AD) tombs present a fascinating story of dialogue between the art and iconography of different periods spanning a thousand years, and between cultures and peoples spread over vast distances across the deserts and mountains of Eurasia.

Placed in pairs inside the entrance of a tomb sitting on their haunches, these beasts were respectively known as "Ancestral Intelligence" and "Earth Axis". One was modeled with the face of a lion, the other with the face of a man. Early in the dynasty, in continuation of Sui styles, these guardians of leonine body were relatively simple, with modest triangular spines rising from their back, the lion-faced one having two small horns while the man-faced one possessed a little sharp peak of hair above its forehead. Small feathery spirals decorated their shoulders. As time went on, both their expressions and their accoutrements became progressively more exaggerated so that by the eighth century, the lion-faced guardian sported long flame-like spikes all along its spine, huge wings topped by spiny feathers, enormous webbed ears, and bifurcating horns. In particularly baroque examples, ears and horns also sprouted flame-like spines while an arc of spikes rose from the shoulders to frame the head. His man-faced companion, although marginally less flamboyant, grew huge leaf-like ears while the originally modest peak of hair had metamorphosed into a soaring spiral horn. The expressions developed likewise, that of the lion face becoming increasingly more ferocious while that of the human face, increasingly monstrous. As in all Tang tomb figures, they can be found in grey, red, or cream terracotta, painted and gilded over a covering of white slip, or glazed in the famous "Sancai" (three-color) ware. By the High-Tang period, the original baseboard has also developed into a "rockwork" stand said to represent the Buddhist celestial mountain, Mount Sumeru. Rarely, these later beasts can also be found standing on their hind legs and gesticulating wildly in classic John Travolta Saturday Night Fever pose.

It has been noted that these paired Guardian Beasts first appeared in tomb-sets during the Northern Dynasties period (317-581AD) about the same time that lions appeared in Buddhist icons beneath the Bodhisattvas and Lokapalas, representing the adoption of Buddhist iconography in Chinese burial practice. However, fantastic tomb animals have a much more ancient lineage in Chinese art, and the Buddhist connection is arguably only part of the story.

An early depiction of a winged beast found in tomb furniture is a stunning silver-inlaid bronze animal from the 309BC Warring States tomb of King Cuo of Zhongshan. This ferocious writhing animal sports clawed feet and horns, and appears to be the precursor of the "Bixie" ("to ward of evil") of the Eastern Han dynasty (25-220AD) in Sichuan. Sculpted in both terracotta and in stone, Bixie were described as having the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and the tail of a serpent. They were modeled with wings, clawed feet, horns, scales along their back, and a bifurcating tail. Placed within tombs, they are very rarely found outside. Possessing wings, they have naturally been connected with the Archaemenid sculpture of 6^th century BC Persia. Textiles embroidered with fantastic winged beasts have also been found in tombs of the Pazyryk culture of the 4^th century BC in the Siberian Steppes, so it is possible that the bronze "chimera" of King Cuo may have derived from Persian models passed into China through the agency of the widely ranging nomadic tribes. However, art of the Shang (1766-1045BC) and Western Zhou (1045-771BC) periods are replete with images of fantastic composite animals, so this scenario is by no means indispensable.

By the Southern Dynasties period (420-589AD), Southern mausolea routinely sport monumental carvings of winged leonine beasts. They are placed to the south of the tomb and the full complement consists of a pair of pillars topped by lions (without wings) and a pair of winged beasts. This is the first appearance in China of such pillars, which are almost identical in form to lion pillars placed outside Buddhist stupas in India beginning in the Maurian dynasty of King Ashoka (3^rd c. BC) and continuing into the later Gandharan era. Thus, the Chinese pillars are demonstrably of Buddhist origin. The pair of winged beasts outside Southern imperial tombs consist of a "qilin" to the west which possesses a single horn, and a "tianlu" ("heaven’s fortune") to the east which possesses two horns. Commoners were only entitled to hornless beasts. In early Indian icons, the Buddha is depicted seated on a lion throne (a symbol of royalty), and much more rarely, freestanding lions were shown sitting near the Buddha. This was copied directly onto Chinese Buddhist icons and their influence has been attributed to the appearance of winged beasts both outside Southern Dynasty tombs and within Northern Dynasty ones. However, Buddhist lions do not possess wings, while the monumental carvings in the South are almost identical to the Bixie of Sichuan. Thus, it can probably be said that Buddhist iconography was responsible for a revival of an ancient Chinese form, and the Tang Guardian Beasts are most likely an amalgam of the ancient Bixie and the Buddhist lion.