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0335 Serindia : vol.2
Serindia : vol.2 / Page 335 (Grayscale High Resolution Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000183
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Sec. iii]   ARRANGEMENT, MATERIALS, AND TECHNIQUE   845

Mr. Andrews points out to me, floating free gave animation to the banner without injuring, or

interfering with the effect of, the painting.

This well-defined class of banners is represented in the collection by a total of about 230 pieces,

including such as are mere fragments. Here the preponderance of silk over linen paintings is not

quite so great as in the first class, there being about 179 silk banners against 42 painted on linen.

To these must be added 9 banners on paper.

The third class of pictures which still remains to be briefly dealt with is a very miscellaneous Miscel-

one. It comprises a variety of paintings and drawings of which the common characteristics are laneous

paintings

mainly that they cannot be properly brought under the two categories previously discussed, and that and

their material is exclusively paper. Among them we find small paintings and drawings of Buddhist drawings.

divinities, which probably were intended to serve as votive offerings of a humble sort, either to be

deposited at the bases of images or pasted on temple-gates, etc., in accordance with still prevailing

practices.18 A votive purpose may safely be assumed for certain paintings in the form of rolls,

recalling the makimonos of Japan ; one of them, representing scenes from the Buddhist hell, is

partly reproduced in Plate XCIII, CIII. Religious character of some kind attaches, also, to most of

the drawings of which Plates XCVII-XCIX show specimens,10 though they may not have been always

produced for use as votive offerings. Charms and magic diagrams or man 1ata.c proper are

numerously represented.20 Finally, there are illustrations in the form of miniature paintings or

drawings which are to be found in a number of Chinese or Tibetan manuscripts, almost all more or

less of a devotional nature.21 Reference may be made here also to the small but interesting group

of pounces and rough sketches showing the methods used for preliminary stages of work on the

larger votive paintings.22 The total number of paper pictures gathered into our third class amounts

to over a hundred.

Altogether apart, as far as technical execution is concerned, stands the series of woodcuts Woodcuts.

which comprise the earliest known specimens of the art, beginning with the fine frontispiece of the

printed Chinese roll dated A. D. 868.23 With the exception of the banners we find all the previously

discussed types of pictures represented among the fifty odd woodcuts of the collection.24 Small

prints of single divine figures, intended, no doubt, for votive deposit and often accompanied by

block-printed prayers in Chinese and Tibetan, form the vast majority, larger compositions being met

with in a very few instances.25

It only remains here to add some brief remarks regarding the materials which were used for Silk used for

the Tun-huang paintings and the technique employed in them. We have seen already that the paintings.

materials include silk, linen, and paper. Among them the use of silk greatly preponderates, the

proportion between silk, linen, and paper pictures contained in the collection corresponding approxi-

mately to 62, 14, and 24 per cent. respectively. In the silk used two kinds can clearly be

distinguished. A plain finely woven silk cloth appears to have been used always for those

paintings which were intended to be hung up against a wall, and which are comprised in the first

class treated above. In the banners the silk is equally strong and fine, but of a distinctly gauze-like

texture. The difference is in all probability to be accounted for by the fact already explained that

these banners were meant to be suspended free in the air, a position where a transparent material

1e For illustrations, cf. Pl. XCII (Ch. 00160, oox6x ; xi. oo1—oo2; 1V1.0027-31); Pl. xCVIII (00x56); Pl. XCIX (00154, 00155).

19 For some of the best drawings of this class, one apparently Taoist, see Thousand .Buddhas, Pl. xXXII, XXXIII.

20 See Pl. CII, CIII for specimens.

=' See PI. XC showing fine Lokapâla figures from the

small illuminated manuscript book Ch. xviii. 002 ; for other specimens, see also Pl. xcii, XCIV, XCVIIi.

22 For specimens, see Pl. XCIv—xCVi. Cf. below, p. 892.

23 See PI. C (Ch. viii. 00x4). Cf. below, p. 893.

24 Cf. PI. XCIX—CIII for specimens.

46 See Pl. C (Ch. 00158; ciii. 00x4) and the 'Mandala', xliii. 004, Pl. CII.