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Serindia : vol.2 |
Sec. iii] DESIGNS OF 'SASSANIAN' TYPE AND THEIR IMITATIONS 909
confronting deer in each standing on a palmette base. Indented quatrefoil panels, each containing a pair of geese, fill the interspaces. The medallion border is ornamented here with elliptical discs, a motif very common among ` Sassanian ' textile designs and their derivatives in general, and found also in others of our fabrics belonging to this group.' The border of the medallions in fragment (b) of Ch. 00359 shows again a different ornamentation, while the pair of ducks represented in them agree closely with the geese in the interspace panels of Ch. 009. Other specimens among our fabrics attributable to this group are Ch. 0026, 63, 375. They are small fragments of which the designs cannot be completely restored, but which show clearly corresponding features in the treatment of details." It is worthy of note that in none of the designs of this group do we find that interlacing or linking of adjoining medallions which is very common in other ` Sassanian ' designs and their derivatives, and appears also in another group of our ` Sassanian ' textiles.'"
The specimens just discussed are the only ones in our collection which in design and details of treatment are wholly of Western type. We can safely assume that they reached Chien-fo-tung through Central Asia, and in view of this geographically obvious inference special interest attaches to the fact that Professor von Falke has been led to attribute to the exactly corresponding group of textiles in European collections an origin in the north-east of Iran, including the Oxus region. I am not able at present to acquaint myself with the reasons that account for this view of the eminent expert. But, on the ground of wholly independent considerations of geographical and antiquarian nature, it appears to me very probable that those few undoubtedly Western pieces found among our Chien-fo-tung fabrics were not brought there from Persia proper or the still more distant Near East, but are products of that wide Sogdian region extending from Farghana to the Oxus. There are situated those ancient centres of industrial arts, Samarkand and Bukhara, which from the very commencement of the overland silk export from China must have become great marts for this textile trade, and are likely to have developed at an early date their own silk manufacture also."
It is neither possible nor necessary for me to explain here in detail the manifold relations which, ever since the first expansion of Chinese trade and policy westwards, linked ancient Sogdiana with the Tarim Basin and the western confines of China proper. The abundant finds of Sogdian manuscripts both at Turfan and Tun-huang would alone suffice to attest them.'2 It may be difficult to trace the exact origin of the ` Sassanian ' designs which reached the great silk manufacturing regions of China and were imitated there during Tang times or before, when the far easier seaborne trade with the West was already fully established. But, in the case of those few silk fabrics from the West which found their way into the walled-up chapel of Tun-huang, local production in that old Sogdian region, which by that time must have grown its own silk just as it does at present, appears to me on general grounds by far the most likely solution.13
Textile products from Oxus region.
Silk textile
industry of
Sogdiana.
8 See Ch. 0026, 63, 375. The same decoration of the medallion border appears also in the Lion-stuff from the Sancta Sanctorum, now in the Vatican, which otherwise shows agreement with Prof. von Falke's Oxus group ; see Kunstgeschichle der Seidenweberei, i. Fig. 139 ; Dalton, Byzantine An and Archaeology, p. 593, Fig. 373.
9 In Ch. 00375 the medallion contains a pair of birds, undetermined ; in Ch. 0026 (Pl. CXII) apparently some plant motif.
10 See, e.g., 11 Iigeon, Les arts dli tissu, pp. 8, 13, 17, 19, 22 ; Dalton, Byz. An and Archaeology, Figs. 368, 369 ; and Ch. 00182 (Pl. cxviii), 00291-2 (Pl. cxvi. A).
" The important part played in the history of ancient silk trade and manufacture by Samarkand and Bukhara has been
briefly but very clearly indicated by M. Migeon Les arts du tissu, p. 9.
12 See above, pp. 675 sq., 818 sq. ; also below, pp. 920 sq., and M. Pelliot's remarks, J. Asia., 1916, janvier-février, p. 123.
" No more than the briefest reference can be made here to the pieces of brocade-like silk fabrics with patterns of a ` Sassanian ' type which my explorations of r 9 r 5 brought to light from numerous tombs of the seventh century near Astana, Turfan. Closer examination has not yet been possible. They, too, must have come from the West. The great mass of other silk materials used for shrouds in these tombs seems to be of Chinese origin.
The fragment of a well-woven figured silk, E. i.
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