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0564 Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.2
Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.2 / Page 564 (Grayscale High Resolution Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000213
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368 KARA-SHAHR AND ITS OLD SITES CH.LXXXIII

representations of Satyrs in Roman and Hellenistic art. The head-dress and ornamentation in most of these relievos point to the extreme North-West of India or the Kabul Valley as the region where this adaptation of Hellenistic models to subjects of Buddhist imagery originally took place. But apart from the types common also to the Buddhist art of Gandhara, there are others which distinctly presuppose a local development of that art. There is, for instance, a curious naturalistic feeling, strangely recalling phases of Gothic art, in almost all the heads reproduced in the top rows of the two plates, and in the shrouded head in the middle of Fig. 27o, 4, emotion being expressed with a freedom that is rare in Graeco-Buddhist art.

These reminiscences of post-classical European art will have nothing very startling for those who have followed the result of recent research. Professor Strzygowski has drawn attention to the pregnant influence which the Orientalized Hellenistic art of the Near East exercised through Byzantine mediation upon the early mediaeval art of Europe. As an instance of the very close connection existing between these relievos of Kara-shahr and the art of Buddhist Khotan, I may mention that the grotesque head so frequent as a plaque on the terra-cotta vases from the site of the ancient Khotan capital occurs in exact reproduction on several miniature shields in stucco from the

Ming-oi ' site (see Fig. 274), and is thus proved to be directly derived, as I long ago conjectured, from the model of the classical Gorgo's head.

The comparatively late occupation of the site would be difficult to reconcile with the survivals of early GraecoBuddhist art, especially when these were executed in such friable material, were it not certain from manifold evidence that much of the plaster work was reproduced, and if necessary restored, from moulds which might be far older than the shrine itself. It was curious to find direct proof of this also in the case of some well-modelled architectural tiles (Fig. 274), which were hardened at the outset by burning, and of which numerous cast' specimens were discovered in an oven built close to one of the smaller shrines. But a number of delicately carved relievos in wood dis-