国立情報学研究所 - ディジタル・シルクロード・プロジェクト
『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ

Jătaka, on the upper part of the wall in the same shrine, not removed by him and,

alas, subsequently destroyed by the clumsy operations of a Japanese `archaeologist',

he refers to an appearance of continuity of the several incidents in the picture, which

in Gandhára sculpture would have been divided by an architectural feature such as

a pilaster; but in the painting no such dividing feature appears, nor would this have

been appropriate. But on subsequent study of the photographs and in an endeavour

to join them in their proper sequence, it seemed to me that the incidents had been

separated from each other by trees. This, in the painted version, would be a suit-

able and artistic way of marking the division while giving a pleasing effect of

continuity. Such a device, I have since found, does actually occur, although rarely

and less happily, in Gandhára sculpture, where a series of niches or compartments

are formed by the trunks and arching branches of trees. In support of the assump-

tion of the early date of the Mirán paintings and their relation to Gandhára sculp-

ture, a few further points may be noted. In sculptures and paintings alike the

figures are, with few exceptions, barefooted, and do not stand on padmásanas. The

costumes are simple and without jewellery. The nimbus is used only with the

head of the Buddha, and then as an unornamented simple disk, there being no

vesica piscis.

Speculations as to the `origin' of the typical figure of the Buddha are many. In

the fragment from Mirán, M. III. 003, plate 1, there is nothing exotic about him.

He is just an ordinary man in the act of teaching, such as any painter might draw

from observation of any contemporary preacher. He is distinguished only by his

plain nimbus and the colour of his robe. The same simple quality pertains to all

the persons in the Mirán paintings.

There is considerable internal evidence in these paintings in favour of the

probability that they are Indian in conception and execution. The men are of

Indian type, some with generous moustache and beard; their garments are Indian;

they have bare feet, and their hands are those of Indians. In the destroyed painting

of the Vessantara Jataka referred to above, the elephant shows the accuracy of form

and truth of action that the Indian artist alone can so faithfully render. The girls,

although suggestive of the Persian type of beauty, may well be Indian, perhaps

influenced by contact with Persian fashion. Further, the inscriptions occurring in

the paintings being in Kharosthi, an ancient script used in India, and the legend

of the presence of an Indian colony in Khotan in Asoka's time, help to strengthen

the probability that Indian artists, familiar with Buddhist lore, may have found

XXi