daily life of the people: peasants, merchants, monks, women ... This bias confers a lively and authentic, almost documentary aspect to the scrolls, and gives the painter every opportunity to deviate from the text to imagine adventures or new details, for example the solitary peregrinations of the nun (third scroll) or the rural life painted in the landscapes during the flight of the bags of rice (first scroll). The faces, painted in a human and popular, almost caricatural way, express a wide range of emotions: confusion, agitation, excitement alternate with each other. These expressive faces, whose details are underlined in ink, contrast with the stylised faces of the court paintings, and foreshadow the more realistic iconography that will dominate in during the following century. The paintings also show a good knowledge of Buddhist imagery, in particular the rendering of the Great Buddha of and the deity . Historians identify the latter as one of the twenty-eight messengers of , the main deity of . The wheel that precedes it evokes that of Dharma (Dharmachakra), an ancient and powerful Buddhist symbol, here underlining the power of this deity. As for the calligraphies, they are very parsimonious, having only a function of summary presentation of the story, except for the first scroll where the text has completely disappeared. Historiographical value In view of their themes and narration, the scrolls have a certain historiographical value with respect to the life of their time. So, for example, the genre scenes of the first and third scrolls show the chores of the common people, for example the peasant women drawing water from the well, washing the laundry, spinning or even breastfeeding their children. The scrolls also facilitate observation of the work or hobbies of common people, such as cooking, gardening, reading, and watching over children. Studies by historians have focused in particular on habitat, tools (oven, press), rural work, customs and social practices (such as hospitality), clothing, food and travel. On the other hand, the scrolls present many details of the religious and secular architecture of the time (the imperial palace, the temples and the cottages of the peasants); in the first scroll, the habitat of the rich farmer offers many details of the thatched roof, the hearth, the kitchen, the palisades ... The third scroll even presents a rare glimpse of the original statue at , which burned down in 1180. The monk's journeys