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Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

Ch. liv. 007 (Plate LXXI), originally mounted as a Kakemono and bearing a date corresponding to Buddha A.D. 897 in its Chinese inscription. It shows the Buddha Tejahprabha, ` the Giver of Light', seated prâbha on a chariot which two bullocks draw and surrounded by the genii of the five planets.5 Carefully on car. executed both in drawing and in its rich colour scheme, the painting owes a special interest to its

subject. This recurs treated with remarkable vigour and inventive skill in one of the largest and

finest among the frescoes of the ` Thousand Buddhas' Caves '•6 The detailed interpretation and

comparison of the two paintings I must leave to experts.

Nothing can illustrate better the predominant share which the Bodhisattvas claim in popular Preponder-

Buddhist worship as developed under Mandyâna influences in the Far East than the fact that about ance of

Bodhisattva

one half of all our Chtien-fo-tung paintings are devoted to their representation, whether singly or paintings.

along with attendant divinities. To this great abundance of pictures there does not correspond an equally great multiplicity of iconographic types. However large may be in theory of devout speculation and fancy the number of different Bodhisattvas, we know that in the North-Indian home of the Mahâyâna system popular imagination had already remained fixed upon a small select group of Bodhisattvas. Even these were, in pictorial or sculptural presentation, distinguished in the main merely by different attributes. We find the same limitation applying to the Bodhisattvas of our Tun-huang Pantheon also.

But for what these Bodhisattva paintings lack in iconographic variety proportionate to their Differences

numbers we have compensation offered to us in two directions. On the one hand, we find in this of style and

treatment.

great array of Bodhisattva representations marked differences of style and treatment, and these allow us to trace more clearly than might otherwise be possible the varied influences of India, China, Central Asia, and also Tibet, which helped to give to Buddhist religious art as represented at Tun-huang its composite character. On the other hand, this class of paintings derives greatly increased interest from the fact that it includes, besides the great mass of conventional reproductions of common types, a considerable number of works of individual character and artistic merit. This is particularly the case with some of the larger paintings of Avalokitegvara, the most popular of all Bodhisattvas. Nor is it possible to overlook the varied iconographic and artistic interest attaching to those big and sumptuous paintings which show us AvalokiteAvara or Kuan-yin surrounded by his divine attendants, and which have received special treatment by M. Petrucci under the designation of ` Kuan-yin's Mandalas'.7 The fact that for the Bodhisattva paintings all three materials of silk, linen, and paper are used helps further to introduce a certain variety of technique into this disproportionately large class of pictures.

For the purposes of our survey it will be convenient first to illustrate the different styles Classifica-

represented among our Bodhisattva paintings by a classification of the very numerous banners tion of

Bodhisattva

showing single Bodhisattva figures, including those which cannot at present be definitely identified paintings.

in their iconographic character. Turning next to Bodhisattva paintings other than banners, we shall first review the representations of those relatively few individual Bodhisattvas who apart from Avalokitegvara are recognizable with certainty. Avalokitegvara or Kuan-yin's predominance in the Buddhist cult of old Tun-huang is attested by so many paintings that their treatment by separate subdivisions is necessary. These can be conveniently distinguished by the different forms in which Avalokitegvara is represented, whether in human shape, four or six-armed, etc. Examining these forms in succession, we shall have occasion briefly to mention also the pictures showing them accompanied by varying numbers of attendants, as the central figures of those symmetrically

6 Cf. for this identification Petrucci, Annales du Musée Guimet, xli.p.134. [See also Mr.Binyon'sEssay, ThousandB.]. See Figs. 225, 226, and below, pp. 933 sq.

Cf. below, pp. 867 sqq., and Petrucci, Appendix E, III. Viii.