The subject is the goddess Tārā, the Śakti or female emanation of Avalokiteśvara. The goddess, represented in her usual form as a beautiful young woman, is seated in the centre on a variegated lotus which floats on the blue water of a lake. She sits with her right knee raised and the left leg bent across. The right hand with palm turned outwards in the vara-mudrā rests on the right knee, the left is at the breast, both holding long curving sprays with a conventional blue lotus at the end. The pose of the body slightly inclined to the right is balanced by the head leaning in the opposite direction. The sinuous line of the whole figure conforms to a characteristic tendency of Tibetan art. The flesh had been gilded, but this gilding has almost entirely worn off.
The goddess wears a dark red skirt and stole spangled with gilded flowers. Her knees are covered with elaborately ornamented caps. Rich jewellery decks neck and breast. Above her black hair bound with scarlet fillets is set a five-leaved tiara with a high-peaked crown. A nimbus of very dark green, now almost turned to black, sets off the head, while behind the figure is shown an oval vesica with a rayed border of rainbow-like colours.
On a dark cloud above the goddess’s head appears the small figure of a Buddha seated in meditation with the alms-bowl in his lap. On either side of him, on praying mats carried by dark green clouds, sit two black-haloed saints wearing the peaked hoods of Lamas. Along the sides of the picture are ranged eight subsidiary forms of Tārā, differentiated by varying colours of flesh and dress. Their pose is the same as that of the central goddess; the right hand rests on the knee, holding a flask, and the left raises a long-stemmed blue lotus.
Interspersed between these subsidiary Tārās are shown six scenes of deliverance from Calamities similar to those represented on the sides of certain Paradise paintings, such as the one in Plates [i], [ii]. Not all are intelligible; but we may note in the middle one on the left a man being pushed over a cliff into the lake. In the scene opposite on the right he is seen calmly kneeling on a lotus, flame-encircled, while another man on the cliff above looks on in astonishment. In the left bottom corner are seen three men pursued by different animals, and to the right of them a barge-like boat sailing on the lake, with a fourth man kneeling in prayer. The men throughout these scenes are shown in Chinese secular costume such as is often seen in our Jātaka banners.
While these figures clearly point to a Chinese model of the scenes, the demonic deity in the centre of the foreground shows characteristic features of truly Tibetan taste. His squat dark blue figure sits sideways on a yellow horse, brandishing a scarlet club in his right hand. His hair is a flaming mass streaming upwards; a man’s bleeding head hangs from his saddle-cloth. It is impossible to mistake here a conception of that monstrous type which Tibetan Buddhism under the influence of Tantra doctrines absorbed from India and under that of its own demon worship has always greatly cherished.
PLATE XXXII
PAPER PICTURES OF A BODHISATTVA, SAINT, AND MONK
XXXII
Of the pictures reproduced in this Plate (all on the scale of three-fifths) the two on the sides bear Tibetan inscriptions and thereby prove themselves as produced and deposited after the Tibetan conquest of Tun-huang. But there is nothing essential to distinguish their style from that of other of our paintings in which hieratic figures are represented with close adherence to traditional treatment derived from India.
The paper painting on the left (Ch. 00377) shows a Bodhisattva of the type above designated as ‘Indian’ seated on a yellow lotus, with legs all but crossed and the right hand raised in the vitarka-mudrā. The Tibetan inscription kindly read by Dr. Barnett[68] describes him as the ‘Lord of the upper region’, and as the Indian cosmic system places the Sun and Moon in this ‘upper region’, the discs above the Bodhisattva, with the emblem of the Sun god on the right and that of the Moon god (now effaced) on the left, are fully accounted for.