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Absence of Tantric monstrosities.

Portable
Buddhist
pictures.

840 PICTORIAL REMAINS FROM THE THOUSAND BUDDHAS [Chap. XXIII

The time was yet distant when Tibetan style and Lamaistic worship were appreciably to affect the decadent Buddhist art of China.16

This very restricted nature of Tibetan influence in the art of Tun-huang is confirmed also by another observation. I mean the gratifying total absence in the paintings and frescoes of the

Thousand Buddhas of those Tantric extravagances and monstrous obscenities which are so prevalent

in the pictorial representations of the later Lamaistic art of Tibet and the regions it has influenced northward. A few of the ` Tibetan ' paintings from Tun-huang show, indeed, the beginning of

a tendency towards that violent movement, rhythmic torsion of the bodies, and preference for the

demoniac, which are such striking characteristics of the later Tibetan style." But sober Chinese taste and decorum never took kindly to these fantastic aberrations. As M. Foucher very justly

remarked in the notes referred to above, ` the Pantheon which the paintings of Tun-huang reveal to us was evidently composed for the benefit of donors reasonable in their tastes and under the direction of monks still heedful of decency'.

The votive inscriptions of the pictures which M. Petrucci has discussed in his chapter on the donors adequately inform us about the motives from which they were offered.18 Among them pious

wishes for the spiritual benefit of dead parents and relatives are quite as prominent as prayers for

the health and prosperity of the donors and their families. Where we find besides these usual objects of supplication also prayers for peace and security of the territory, it is of interest to note

that the donors are officials of rank and almost always connected with the families Chang and

Ts'ao, which, as stated before, furnished Tun-huang with its local chiefs for centuries.13 M. Petrucci has duly drawn attention to the fact that, by the side of the ideas and wishes proper to true Buddhist

doctrine or compatible with it, the inscriptions often also express hopes and notions which are peculiar to traditional Chinese thought or Taoist in character.20 They clearly reflect the beginning of that syncretistic process which has produced the strange medley of popular worship and superstition prevailing in modern China.

It can scarcely be subject to doubt that the practice of offering pictorial representations of

Buddhist divinities and of scenes of Buddhist mythology at places of worship goes back to the very beginning of Mahayana Buddhism in India, if not earlier. But in India itself climatic and other

adverse causes have not allowed any remains of such pictorial offerings to survive except in the

form of wall-paintings at the Ajantâ caves and a few less important sites. That references to portable pictures may be traceable in Indian Buddhist literature, or in records that Chinese pilgrims

have left of Buddhist shrines in India, is probable. But I cannot spare time to search for such

references nor even to ascertain whether, and where, they may have been treated. In Central Asia, on the other hand, the practice of presenting such pictures at places of Buddhist cult is so

abundantly attested by archaeological finds from the region of Khotan to Turfân and beyond that no detailed references are necessary. It may suffice to mention that the painted panels brought to light by me in 1900 from image bases of Dandân-oilik shrines were probably the first Central-Asian finds of this kind the origin and character of which could be properly authenticated, and that Professors Grünwedel and Von Lecoq's excavations at Turfan sites have subsequently yielded remains of paintings on fabrics which in type and subjects closely resemble those recovered in such numbers from the ' Thousand Buddhas' of Tun-huang.21

Motives
of votive
offerings.

" Regarding this growing influence of Tibetan art, which appears to assert itself in China specially from the time of the early Mongol Emperors onwards, cf. Kokka, No. 311, p. 235.

17 Cf. Petrucci, Annales du Musk Guimet, xli. p. 137.

" See below, Appendix E, II, Les donateurs.

'" Cf. M. Petrucci's abstracts, toc. cat., of the inscriptions

of Ch. oorox, oo185. a, oo205; lvii. 004.

R0 See Appendix E, II (conclusion).

2' Cf. Ancient Khotan, i. pp. 25o sqq.; for the first Turfan discoveries of paintings on silk and linen made in 1902-3 by Professor A. Grünwedel, cf. his Idikulschari, pp. 67 sqq.