CH. IV BUDDHIST MURAL PAINTINGS 6i
unopened were all within easy reach. The camels were sent off eastwards to graze by the Keriya river, while the donkeys were returned to Tawakkel. Then the men were set to work at excavations which kept us all busy for a fortnight. For me it was a happy time full of interesting finds and growing experience.
The first ruin cleared was a small square building which Turdi had once searched in his own fashion and knew as a `But-khana', or `temple of idols'. The sand, though lying only two or three feet high, had not been removed. The clearing of this and other small shrines soon familiarized me with their typical arrangement. There was always an inner square cella enclosed on all sides by equidistant outer walls which formed a quadrangular passage (Fig. 28) . This was meant for the ceremonial circumambulation or pradakshina prescribed by Indian custom. The walls built with wattle and plaster were invariably decorated with tempera paintings. judging from what remained of them on the lowest portions of the walls, these paintings often represented Buddhas above life-size, or else rows of small figures of Buddhist saints forming a kind of diaper. But occasionally there were left remnants, too, of legendary scenes (Fig. 29) or of representations of donors kneeling at the feet of the large Buddha figures. Needless to say, of the latter only the lowest parts could survive. Plenty of small stucco relievos showing Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, flying Gandharvis, a kind of Buddhist angels, etc., could often be picked as they had fallen from the walls higher up.
Wall paintings and stucco relievos alike showed a style unmistakably derived from that Graeco-Buddhist art which had flourished during the early centuries after Christ in the
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