In the left corner scene we see a personage in official dress seated on a small platform or throne before the gate of what seems to represent a walled palace. To the left of him a demon-like figure is shown striding, while on the right he is being approached by a group comprising a Buddha and two smaller figures of monkish disciples. A little to the right of this group stands a layman in adoring pose; above the whole there appears a dragon-like monster descending on a cloud. In the background to the right within the arched opening of a reed hut is seen a pair, apparently man and wife, seated on a low platform before which stands erect a lady wearing the wide-sleeved dress and the elaborate coiffure familiar from the donatrices of our tenth-century pictures.[14]
If the significance and interrelation of the top scenes at present escapes us we have less difficulty about the general interpretation of those at the bottom of the picture. On the right and left the scenes placed below the flanking terraces of the Paradise manifestly show conversions to the Buddhist Law. On the right is seen a personage elaborately dressed and obviously of high rank, who is seated upright on a square platform, with feet on a footstool, undergoing tonsure by a monk. Four men in secular costume, holding rolls of paper in their hands, stand behind him. Three others attend in front, one of them holding a wide dish to receive the cut hair and a second carrying a vase. In the background stands a groom holding three elaborately caparisoned horses. Their figures are well drawn with elegant small heads, broad shapely breasts, and slim legs. Two are white and one red. Their type closely recalls the present Badakhshī breed of Western Turkestān, a favourite region for China’s horse imports since early times; it is exactly represented also among the numerous clay figures of horses which in 1915 I excavated in plenty from Turfān graves of the T‘ang period. The saddles, high-pommeled at back and front, and covered with long saddle-cloths, are met with there also. For the ornamentation of headstall, breast-band, and crupper, reference to a painted panel from Dandān-oilik showing a horseman and also of the T‘ang period is instructive.[15]
The scene on the left forms an exact pendant to the one just described. Here a lady similarly placed and attired is having her head shaved by a monk. Among the attendants behind her two ladies have their hair done in topknots with two high loops, whereas two others, evidently girls, wear it in a bunch on either side of the head with a short lock hanging from each. Behind appear bearers of the hexagonal palanquin with pagoda roof, of which a small portion is included in the reproduction.
The central scene shows the adorning of a Stūpa or Buddhist relic tower and presents points of distinct antiquarian interest. Its shape is cylindrical, with a low flat dome and a square base below. A three-tiered umbrella, hung with streamers and metal ornaments, surmounts it. Below workmen are seen engaged in arranging the draperies. Two long tables are laden with flasks, bowls, and other offerings, while bundles of manuscript rolls are placed at either side; they are all likely to represent votive gifts made at the time of consecration.
PLATE X
AMITĀBHA WITH ATTENDANTS
X
The painting (Ch. liii. 001) which this Plate successfully reproduces in colours, on the scale of three-eighths of the original, is a good representative of the small but interesting class of what may be designated as simplified Paradise pictures. We see in it Amitābha enthroned on a lotus between Avalokiteśvara and Mahāsthāma, with two lesser Bodhisattvas in front and a row of well-individualized disciples behind. No lake is represented; but a comparison with the painting represented in the next Plate, [xi], with which ours shares a number of marked peculiarities in composition, style, colour, and treatment, suffices to show that a representation of Amitābha’s Heaven is intended.
Amitābha is seated with legs interlocked and his right hand raised in the usual vitarka-mudrā. His flesh is yellow shaded with red which has changed to a curious iridescent mauve; his hair a bright blue. His mantle, vivid crimson, is wrapped round both shoulders, its drapery reproducing all details of the arrangement which Graeco-Buddhist sculpture had borrowed from Hellenistic art and handed over to be stereotyped with hieratic convention in the Buddha figures of Central Asia and the Far East. The lotus, his seat, is raised on a high stepped pedestal and has its pink petals covered all over with beautiful floral scrolls in white, blue, and black. Similar rich scroll-work adorns the base of the pedestal and reappears on the canopy which hangs above the Buddha’s head, raised on two trees. Their stems are treated like jewelled poles, and their large star-shaped leaves are arranged in whorls enclosing conical clusters of red fruit. An Apsaras sweeps down on either side, scattering flowers; her floating garments and the gracefully curling clouds which support her express rapidity of movement.
Avalokiteśvara and Mahāsthāma occupy well-designed, if less ornate, lotus seats, the former raising a flaming jewel in his left hand and the latter an alms-bowl. Among the multicoloured jewellery with which they are bedecked, the Dhyāni-buddha set in front of the tiara may be mentioned. Below them are seated two lesser Bodhisattvas, in similarly rich dress and adornment, the one, in profile, holding a red lotus, the other, in three-quarters profile, a flask. Their foreshortened elliptical haloes in green and the transparent light blue stoles deserve notice.