But how did this Tibetan art grow up? What is the indigenous element in it? Buddhism was only introduced into the country in the seventh century, and whether Tibet had any art to speak of before its introduction we do not know. 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. And on the whole it seems likeliest to suppose that Tibetan painting is rather an offshoot of Chinese art, developed in a certain direction, and so acquiring a special character, than a native growth. But of this we cannot be certain.
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. This system is carried yet further in Plate [x], where high lights on nose and forehead (blackened through oxidization in some places) have been added in white. Compare also Plate [xi], illustrating a very large painting of similar character, full of the most interesting detail (note the babies enclosed within the lotus-buds, souls of the blessed about to be born into Paradise). These pictures are painted in what Sir Aurel Stein calls ‘the fresco style’, because they repeat on silk the manner of the fresco paintings of Tun-huang. In all these pictures the Chinese element is present but not dominant; and the system of modelling in two tones of colour comes, we cannot doubt, from the west. It is true that it was sometimes copied by the Chinese in their Buddhist paintings, as we know from early Japanese examples following Chinese prototypes: but the Chinese of T‘ang times were intensely interested in the western countries; they liked to introduce figures of people from those regions into their pictures; and, as we know, a painter from Khotan settled in China in the eighth century and had great success there. But the desire to suggest mass and roundness by means of modelling in painting was against the instincts of the Chinese and Japanese; it occurs only in certain Buddhist pictures, the survival of a borrowing from the west preserved by hieratic tradition.
One of the finest of all the Tun-huang pictures is not a painting but a piece of embroidery. Unfortunately it does not lend itself well to photography in colour; and its quality and impressive character are merely suggested in the small Plate (Pl. [xxxiv]) and in the detail with a group of donors (Pl. [xxxv]). Though merely the reproduction by craftsmen of a master’s work, it shows such skill and taste in execution, it is so fine in colour, and so well preserved, that it must be ranked with the very finest of the paintings as an indication of the grandeur of the Buddhist art of T‘ang.
[1]For the wall-paintings and sculptures of the cave-temples of Tun-huang, see now the fine reproductions in M. Paul Pelliot’s Les Grottes de Touen-houang, Peintures et Sculptures des époques des Wei, des T‘ang et des Song (Paris, Paul Geuthner, in progress).
DESCRIPTIVE ACCOUNT OF PICTURES FROM THE CAVES OF THE THOUSAND BUDDHAS AT TUN-HUANG
BY
AUREL STEIN
PLATES I, II
THE PARADISE OF BHAIṢAJYAGURU
I
