Vast numbers of Chinese texts both religious and secular are preserved in all the principal centres and offer many points of interest among which two may be noticed. Firstly the posts on the old military frontier near Tun-huang have furnished a series of dated documents ranging from 98 B.C. to 153 A.D.[469] There is therefore no difficulty in admitting that there was intercourse between China and Central Asia at this period. Secondly, some documents of the T'ang dynasty are Manichæan, with an admixture of Buddhist and Taoist ideas[470].
The religious monuments of Central Asia comprise stupas, caves and covered buildings used as temples or vihâras. Buddhist, Manichæan and Christian edifices have been discovered but apparently no shrines of the Zoroastrian religion, though it had many adherents in these regions, and though representations of Hindu deities have been found, Hinduism is not known to have existed apart from Buddhism[471]. Caves decorated for Buddhist worship are found not only in the Tarim basin but at Tun-huang on the frontier of China proper, near Ta-t'ung-fu in northern Shensi, and in the defile of Lung-mên in the province of Ho-nan. The general scheme and style of these caves are similar, but while in the last two, as in most Indian caves, the figures and ornaments are true sculpture, in the caves of Tun-huang and the Tarim not only is the wall prepared for frescoes, but even the figures are executed in stucco. This form of decoration was congenial to Central Asia for the images which embellished the temple walls were moulded in the same fashion. Temples and caves were sometimes combined, for instance at Bäzäklik where many edifices were erected on a terrace in front of a series of caves excavated in a mountain corner. Few roofed buildings are well preserved but it seems certain that some were high quadrilateral structures, crowned by a dome of a shape found in Persia, and that others had barrel-shaped roofs, apparently resembling the chaityas of Ter and Chezarla[472]. Le Coq states that this type of architecture is also found in Persia[473]. The commonest type of temple was a hall having at its further end a cella, with a passage behind to allow of circumambulation. Such halls were frequently enlarged by the addition of side rooms and sometimes a shrine was enclosed by several rectangular courts[474].
Many stupas have been found either by themselves or in combination with other buildings. The one which is best preserved (or at any rate reproduced in greatest detail)[475] is the Stupa of Rawak. It is set in a quadrangle bounded by a wall which was ornamented on both its inner and outer face by a series of gigantic statues in coloured stucco. The dome is set upon a rectangular base disposed in three stories and this arrangement is said to characterize all the stupas of Turkestan as well as those of the Kabul valley and adjacent regions.
This architecture appears to owe nothing to China but to include both Indian (especially Gandharan) and Persian elements. Many of its remarkable features, if not common elsewhere, are at least widely scattered. Thus some of the caves at Ming-Ŏi have dome-like roofs ornamented with a pattern composed of squares within squares, set at an angle with each other. A similar ornamentation is reported from Pandrenthan in Kashmir and from Bamian[476].
The antiquities of Central Asia include frescoes executed on the walls of caves and buildings, and paintings on silk paper[477]. The origin and affinities of this art are still the subject of investigation and any discussion of them would lead me too far from my immediate subject. But a few statements can be made with some confidence. The influence of Gandhara is plain in architecture, sculpture, and painting. The oldest works may be described as simply Gandharan but this early style is followed by another which shows a development both in technique and in mythology. It doubtless represents Indian Buddhist art as modified by local painters and sculptors. Thus in the Turfan frescoes the drapery and composition are Indian but the faces are eastern asiatic. Sometimes however they represent a race with red hair and blue eyes.
On the whole the paintings testify to the invasion of Far Eastern art by the ideas and designs of Indian Buddhism rather than to an equal combination of Indian and Chinese influence but in some forms of decoration, particularly that employed in the Khan's palace at Idiqutshähri[478], Chinese style is predominant. It may be too that the early pre-buddhist styles of painting in China and Central Asia were similar. In the seventh century a Khotan artist called Wei-ch'ih Po-chih-na migrated to China, where both he and his son Wei-ch'ih I-sêng acquired considerable fame.
Persian influence also is manifest in many paintings. A striking instance may be seen in two plates published by Stein[479] apparently representing the same Boddhisattva. In one he is of the familiar Indian type: the other seems at first sight a miniature of some Persian prince, black-bearded and high-booted, but the figure has four arms. As might be expected, it is the Manichæan paintings which are least Indian in character. They represent a "lost late antique school[480]" which often recalls Byzantine art and was perhaps the parent of mediæval Persian miniature painting.
The paintings of Central Asia resemble its manuscripts. It is impossible to look through any collection of them without feeling that currents of art and civilization flowing from neighbouring and even from distant lands have met and mingled in this basin. As the reader turns over the albums of Stein, Grünwedel or Le Coq he is haunted by strange reminiscences and resemblances, and wonders if they are merely coincidences or whether the pedigrees of these pictured gods and men really stretch across time and space to far off origins. Here are coins and seals of Hellenic design, nude athletes that might adorn a Greek vase, figures that recall Egypt, Byzantium or the Bayeux tapestry, with others that might pass for Christian ecclesiastics; Chinese sages, Kṛishṇa dancing to the sound of his flute, frescoes that might be copied from Ajanta, winged youths to be styled cupids or cherubs according to our mood[481].
Stein mentions[482] that he discovered a Buddhist monastery in the terminal marshes of the Helmund in the Persian province of Seistan, containing paintings of a Hellenistic type which show "for the first time in situ the Iranian link of the chain which connects the Græco-Buddhist art of extreme north-west India with the Buddhist art of Central Asia and the Far East."
Central Asian art is somewhat wanting in spontaneity. Except when painting portraits (which are many) the artists do not seem to go to nature or even their own imagination and visions. They seem concerned to reproduce some religious scene not as they saw it but as it was represented by Indian or other artists.