The painting (Ch. lviii. 0011), which this Plate reproduces on the scale of two-fifths, is a good specimen of a fairly numerous group of pictures which represent Amitābha’s ‘Western Paradise’, or Sukhāvatī, as it is named in Sanskrit. It has lost the side scenes and its extreme top and bottom, but is otherwise well preserved. Though not as large as some representations of this, the most popular of Buddhist Heavens, nor quite as sumptuous in its pageantry, our painting yet well illustrates all the typical features of the series. The uniformity with which the general scheme is observed in these Sukhāvatī pictures of our Collection, more than a dozen in all, points to prolonged evolution before even the oldest of them was painted.
On the principal terrace we see the presiding Buddha, Amitābha, seated with his hand raised in the vitarha-mudrā. The Bodhisattvas seated on both sides, Avalokiteśvara to the right and Mahāsthāma to the left, make up the triad typical of Amitābha’s Paradise as determined by inscribed representations and familiar from an early period also to Buddhism in Japan. Between them and in front, by the side of the altar, appears seated a host of lesser Bodhisattvas. The altar carries vessels with offerings and is draped with a valance decorated with triangular tabs and streamers; it is of interest as exactly corresponding to the large silk valances I recovered from the walled-up chapel.[10] In the background above, partly screened by the elaborate canopies of the triad, are seen the celestial mansions in the shape of pavilions and towers of purely Chinese style.
A portion of the terrace projecting in front of the altar is occupied by a dancer and six musicians, to whose strains she performs. Here, too, the dancer’s rhythmic movement is emphasized by the sinuous lines of the stole which she waves in her hands and by bands fluttering upwards from her head-dress. Mouth-organ, clappers, psaltery, flute, and two differently shaped lutes are the musical instruments played on. At the foot of the gangway descending to the water of the lotus lake is shown a figure suggesting a seated Bodhisattva as seen from the back. The lotus seat and the curling drapery of a stole are clearly recognizable. The bent arms seem to support some offering, perhaps like an Indian ‘Dālī’, as traces of red flowers and of leaves can be made out in the original.
Lotus flowers and rocks appear rising above the water. In the centre of the foreground is a black-tiled platform, on which are assembled a Garuḍa, peacock, crane, and some smaller bird resembling a duck but partly effaced. On either side of this platform there rises from the water a terrace bearing a subsidiary representation of Amitābha’s triad. The pose of the Buddha is the same as in the main group above, but both the Bodhisattvas by his side are here shown with hands joined in adoration. This repetition of the divine triad in the bottom corners is very frequent in the pictures of Amitābha’s Paradise. The representation of a newly born soul seated on a lotus and floating up the gangway which leads to each of these subsidiary groups is a pleasing addition to this conventional arrangement.
The workmanship of the painting is throughout careful and well finished. From a background of dull green crimson, orange-yellow and white stand out as the prevailing colours. The last is largely used on the decorated haloes and ‘Padmāsanas’, or lotus seats, as well as for the flesh of all attendant figures. The absence of black and blue is marked in the general colour scheme.
PLATE IX
LEGENDARY SCENES FROM A PAINTING OF MAITREYA’S PARADISE
IX
The scenes reproduced here, on half the scale of the original, are taken from the top and bottom portions of a large and well-preserved silk painting (Ch. lviii. 001) of Maitreya’s Paradise. For a reproduction of the whole picture and for its special points of iconographic interest, as the only representation in our Collection of that famous Tuṣita Heaven in which the future Buddha of the present world period is supposed to reside, a reference to Serindia must suffice here.[11] The Chinese inscriptions which render the attribution of this Paradise to Maitreya certain (even though the Bodhisattva appears in it as a Buddha, a status which he is yet to attain) are taken from the text of the Maitreya-vyākaraṇa-sūtra and accompany legendary scenes shown in the top corners and along the bottom of the painting. These scenes, as seen in our Plate, are not formally separated from the Paradise proper, but merge into it at the bottom and are above only divided from it by a range of pine-clad mountains.
The inscriptions and the legendary scenes to which they refer were to have been interpreted in MM. Petrucci and Chavannes’ separate volume in the Mémoires concernant l’Asie orientale.[12] The materials prepared for it by those lamented collaborators are not at present accessible to me, and in the absence of textual guidance the descriptive notes on the scenes must here be brief. In the scene above on the right we see three men in Chinese magisterial costume seated along a table on a terrace, while before them two men stand right and left of a large disc, provided with a tripod (?) and suggesting a metal mirror into which a third smaller figure appears to gaze. To the left, between two inscribed cartouches, are shown three men seated behind a table, the centre one being on a lotus seat. Their head-dress is the same black hat with broad flaps sticking out sideways which is worn by the three seated figures to the right and which, as stated above, is always found in the representations of donors on our tenth-century paintings.[13] Still further to the left is depicted a husbandman in lobed and tailed cap, driving a plough before which are harnessed a dark bull or cow and a smaller whitish animal of the bovine species, apparently reluctant to move on.