Sir Aurel Stein

“ There is no altar before the Buddha, as in other Paradise scenes, no dancer or musicians, no celestial mansions. But a sacred vessel is borne on a lotus from the water before Amitābha and small Bodhisattvas kneel on either side. In front of them again, on a wooden platform, are grouped a two-headed Garuḍa, a phoenix, duck, crane, and peacock.
On the terrace which fills the whole foreground are seated Bodhisattvas four a side and well spaced. By the rail in front are two half-naked infants, no doubt newly born souls, one advancing slowly, the other dancing or running. ”

“ Śākyamuni, in Buddha robes, with halo and vesica and gilded flesh, is seated on a lotus upon a chased throne. Over him hangs a draped canopy supported by a pair of red-flowering star-leaved trees just as Paradise pictures show them. Of three monks standing behind the throne the shaven heads are visible. In front kneel the audience—three men with high topknots and gay party-coloured jackets and long under-robes. With their faces raised towards the Enlightened One they seem to listen intently to his teaching. Throughout the colouring is ornate and carefully applied in illuminating style. ”

“ The same curling maroon cloud on which Vaiśravaṇa advances carries also his retinue of varied aspects. Before him to the right we see the graceful figure of a nymph bowing and presenting a dish of flowers. Her identity is uncertain; in form and attire she resembles the ‘Nymph of Virtue’ we have already met in the paintings of the Thousand-armed Avalokiteśvara.94 Of her rich attire may be specially noted the wide sleeves which almost sweep the ground, the acanthus-like leaves covering her shoulders, and the wreaths thrown over her arms. ”

“ His purposeful figure in movement is cleverly set off by the serene appearance of a man standing in front with hands folded in adoration. He wears a full-sleeved maroon jacket over a flowing white under-robe and over his smooth black hair a gilded tiara of peculiar shape.
The special powers of Chinese pictorial art pervading the whole picture manifest themselves with particular clearness in the masterly spacing of the background. ”

“ In the Tun-huang painting we feel that the artist obeys an instinct which controls the complex lines of many grouped figures into a continuous reposeful harmony; a subtle relation between form and form and between group and group is set up; these relations rather than delineation of objects engross the painter. There is a sense of movement in the passage of the great Bodhisattva on his pacing elephant, preceded and attended by blessed beings, but it is as if they moved to music ”

“ The topmost Judge on the right is clad in full armour, with helmet and a coat of mail, fringed with tiger-skin, and reaching down to the feet.
In front of Kṣitigarbha is seated a white lion, faced by a monk raising his hands in adoration to the Bodhisattva. Further in the foreground we see a condemned soul, naked except for a loin-cloth, and wearing the cangue, led by an ox-headed mace-carrying demon. In a magic mirror he is made to see the crime for which he has been condemned—the murder of an ox. A cloud above the mirror marks the scene as a dream. ”

“ A kind of gangway projects in front of the dancer’s platform into the lotus lake, and at its entrance stands a Garuḍa with widespread wings, playing on cymbals. From the lake rise trees and purple or scarlet lotus buds and flowers, the latter supporting souls reborn. Two of these, at the extreme right and left, are sitting upright as fully developed Bodhisattvas, but with a languid air of newly awakened consciousness. Two others, faintly visible in the foreground, are represented as naked infants just springing to life or still curled up in sleep. ”

“ It is in this sumptuous setting that Chinese Buddhism has visualized from an early period the idea of a Paradise where the souls of believers in the Law may be reborn, free from all taint, in the buds of the lotus lake to enjoy thereafter for aeons, or in popular belief for ever, blissful rest and pleasures in the company of Bodhisattvas, Arhats, and other beatified personalities. ”

“ On the main terrace in front of the triad we see a dancer performing in spirited movement. Its rhythmic rapidity is happily conveyed by the graceful scroll-lines of the scarf she waves freely in her hands. On either side four Bodhisattvas occupy lotus seats with hands folded in adoration. Pairs of musicians sit in front of them, playing on a reed-organ, lute, psaltery, and clappers. Gangways lead down from the terrace to the lotus lake. ”

“ Here we see Bhaiṣajyaguru seated with folded legs and wearing a crimson mantle over a green under-robe. While his right hand is raised as usual in the vitarka-mudrā, the left holds the begging bowl in his lap. Behind him a couple of flowering trees support a hexagonal canopy of red drapery. A halo and nimbus of manifold but harmoniously blended colours{12} surround the Buddha’s figure, which in pose and dress and in the features of the mild pensive face bears the impress of the type first evolved in Graeco-Buddhist art even more clearly than the figures of the surrounding Bodhisattvas. ”

“ A third man, in a corresponding position on the left, carries what appears to be a writing-brush.
In the foreground we see again, crouching, a white lion, of very stylized form. A man’s figure, probably representing the soul of a departed, stands in adoring pose at its head, while on the opposite side another person with grotesque features raises his hands imploringly towards Kṣitigarbha. Both as regards its archaic style of design and its peculiar hard colouring the picture has no pendant in our collection. ”

“ The drawing of the tree is unmistakably Chinese in character, and the whole disposition of the little picture illustrates the mastery of spacing inherent in Chinese artistic feeling. For once we are taken away from the sphere of hieratic conventions and brought into touch with life as the eyes of the artist, or those of an earlier master, saw it. ”

“ In Tibetan Buddhism the Tantra system of magic and witchcraft, and the worship of demons (supposed to be converted by Buddha and to be vassals under his sovereignty) , play a dominant part; and in the paintings the forms are often monstrous and horrible, the colouring sombrely splendid. But the harmonies of fluid, sinuous line, for which they are even more remarkable, seem to be an element borrowed from Chinese art and carried to excess in Tibet. If we compare for a moment this painting with, for instance, the one reproduced on Plate xlii, we see how much this element counts for. ”

“ Look, again, at the small paintings of Jātaka scenes at the side of Plate i, and note even there the use of spacing. In contrast with Indian artists, the Chinese understand to the full the power of suggestion and the value of reticence. They know how to foil forms in movement{9} with forms in repose, rich detail with empty space, so as to stir in the spectator the intensest appreciation of each particular element. Space is not, in Chinese painting, something left over and unfilled; it is a positive power and an integral factor in design. ”

“ The subjects of the Tun-huang paintings are, then, single figures of Bodhisattvas, especially of Avalokiteśvara, or of the Lokapālas; small pictures of scenes from Gautama’s life, or the Jātakas, stories of his lives in previous incarnations; and representations of the Western Paradise. This last subject is sometimes highly elaborated, with an immense number of figures of the blest grouped in pavilions and terraces built about a lotus lake. Flowers are rained through the air, and celestial beings dance and sing for the delight of the souls dwelling in the Happy Land of Amitābha’s creation. ”

“ They are either men who, having won the right to enter Buddhahood, refuse that peace for the sake of suffering mankind, or else celestial beings who assume a human form. Of this last order of beings is Avalokiteśvara, whom the Chinese know as Kuan-yin, and the Japanese as Kwannon; the favourite object of adoration in Mahāyāna Buddhism. He appears in art both in male and female form. In later art the female form is almost universal, but in the Tun-huang paintings the male form is predominant. Avalokiteśvara is the spiritual son of Amitābha, the impersonal Buddha, the Light of the Enlightened ”

“ The muscles are drawn in strong black lines to which modelling is added by brushwork in light red or pink. Abundantly decked with jewellery as the figures are, they carry but scanty dress. It comprises a short skirt, bright crimson or scarlet with slate border, which is tied round the hips by a trailing white girdle; also a narrow stole, olive green with brown or pink reverse, which winds over both forearms.
The sinuous lines of the drapery, the fillet ends of the head-dress flying upwards, the coiling clouds above the haloed heads, all help to intensify the expression of violent effort. ”

“ Plate xlii illustrates, much reduced, an imposing example of the kind of painting in a mixed style which flourished in Eastern Turkestān. Note how the flowers dropping through the air suggest none of that sense of the fragility of flowers, and of their light floating on the air, which the Chinese artist knows instinctively how to give: they are heavy and motionless. There is a certain rigidity and solidity in the whole picture; and the effect of solidity is consciously aimed at by the system of modelling the central figure in two tones of colour. ”

“ Binyon’s Introductory Essay there will be found a lucid exposition, by the hand of a competent expert, of the reasons which invest those paintings with special interest for the study of Buddhist art as transplanted from India through Central Asia to the Far East, and with great importance, too, for the history of Chinese art in general. There light is thrown also on the manifold problems raised by the variety of art influences from the West, the South, and the East which are reflected in different groups of these paintings and which some of them show in striking intermixture. ”

“ The painting (Ch. 0084) reproduced here on half the scale of the original also represents Kṣitigarbha, like the one in the preceding Plate, but shows striking differences of style in composition, drawing, and colouring. Simplicity of design, delicacy of line, and harmonious quiet of colours all combine to give to this picture a singular charm of its own, admirably expressive of serene beatitude. It is painted on pale green silk and, except where it is broken at the bottom, well preserved along with its border of greenish-blue silk. ”

“ With workmanship showing mastery of a fully established technique in details, the painting combines an air of individual feeling which makes its subject one of the finest single figures amongst our Ch‘ien-fo-tung paintings.
Avalokiteśvara stands facing the spectator, with head erect but eyes downcast. His pose, with the weight thrown on the right hip and the body aslant to the left shoulder, is characteristically Indian. The head is that of a young man and shows marked influence of Gandhāra art in its features. The nose is long and straight, the brow high, and the eyes only slightly oblique. ”

“ Wherever the eye falls in this small but exquisite picture we may appreciate the sure drawing with its cleanness of touch, the harmonious colouring, and the highly finished workmanship. But it is in this background that we can realize best to what extent the artist shared that understanding of the Chinese genius for the control of ordered fluent line and the power of suggestion in spacing. ”

“ The now well-known sculptures of Gandhāra, a fine series of which may be seen in the British Museum, date from about the first century of our era to about the sixth. They represent a late Hellenistic tradition put to the service of the Indian religion. It was in{4} Gandhāra that the types of Buddhist art became fixed. It was there that the type of Śākyamuni himself was first invented, or rather adapted from the ideal forms of Hellenistic sculpture. For some centuries after the Buddha’s death, Indian artists had always refrained from representing the image of the Lord. ”

“ The shoulder-pieces end in a lion head, through the jaws of which the arm passes. Gilded shoes cover the feet.
The high three-leaved crown on Vaiśravaṇa’s head, with the wing-shaped ornament at the top and the white streamers flying up at the sides, unmistakably recalls the royal head-dress of Sassanian times.92 The flames rising from his shoulders are an emblem also likely to have an Iranian origin.93 Their flickering tongues, like the fluttering streamers and the freely floating stole, emphasize the Guardian-king’s rapid movement. ”

“ In the face of the flute-player on the left delighted absorption in the music is admirably expressed, while the curving lines of the body and the floating loose garments convey a sense of rhythmic motion in complete harmony with the subject. Equally expressive is the drawing in the face of the musician to the right, with its look of intent concentration. ”

“ This group of paintings gives to the collection found at Tun-huang an artistic importance quite beyond that of any of the groups of works of art discovered by various expeditions in Turkestān; and it is worth while to examine them a little more closely.
The flooding wave of Indian religion and Indian art, after traversing a region of inferior cultures, meets in China for the first time an established art of original power and native genius. The Indian religion, in spite of vicissitudes and rebuffs, takes a firm hold on the Chinese. Buddhist paintings are demanded of the great masters. ”

“ This representation of the Buddha in our banner reflects Indian hieratic tradition in every detail. He is shown seated on a large scarlet lotus, with the left hand raised in the attitude of ‘protection’ (abhaya-mudrā) .25 A crimson under-robe, with light blue lining, covers legs and right shoulder, while a brown mantle lined with light green is thrown over the bare left. The finely drawn face, with arched black brows and level eyes, shows no trace of Chinese influence. Throughout the drawing is firm and clear in the smallest details and the workmanship very delicate. ”

“ The demons are characterized by grotesque features and colouring of deep red. The attendant divinity seen walking in the lower right corner awaits identification. He wears the dress of a Chinese dignitary (high-waisted flowery under-robe and wide-sleeved jacket) , while coiffure and nimbus are those of a Bodhisattva. He carries a fan and is attended by two nymphs; of the one on the right only the head survives in the extant fragment. The leader of the lion has a skin of chocolate-brown colour and coarse features, suggesting a negro type. ”