Baxiang bian 八相變is a Dunhuang bianwen 敦煌變文based on the Baxiang story of Buddha. A Baxiang story consists of eight stages, from the Buddha’s birth to his death. Since the ‘xiang’ 相of ‘Baxiang’ can be said to be a kind of scene, it is closely related to Buddhist paintings, similar to the ‘xiang’ in ‘bianxiang’ 變相. The relevance of this term to painting is one of the characteristics of the typical Dunhuang bianwen works, so this paper will analyze the characteristics of Baxiang bian from the perspective of pictorial storytelling. One of the important elements in the pictorial storytelling of bianwen is the use of a verse-introductory formula. This formula is a unique phrase used when showing a picture to the audience at the beginning of verses. There are two types of verse-introductory formulas in bianwen: ‘~處, 若爲陳說’ and ‘當爾之時, 道何言語?’, and Baxiang bian uses the latter. Keeping the assumption that the form of the performance of bianwen may vary depending on the verse-introductory formula, this paper suggests that the storytelling of Baxiang bian did not use a picture scroll but rather used a mural scene or a large bianxiang containing several scenes Bianwen storytelling was a multimedia performance that included stories, songs, and pictures, and it was very popular at the time. People desire stable possession of popular stories, which leads to the production of works for reading. Since Baxiang bian was also a popular story performance, in this paper, the manuscript of Baxiang bian is considered to be an early form of written work, reflecting its popularity.