National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

Sec. iv]   TEMPLE REMAINS NORTH OF KHOTAN   1277

male figure intact to the waist (Fig. 326). It collapsed almost as soon as it had been photographed. Torso of It was dressed in a purple coat reaching to above the knees, decorated with large circles marking life-size embroidery or brocade, and an under-garment of brown with blue circlets. The feet were cased in statue. high boots of the ` Châruk' type and light red colour. At the foot of the wall behind this statue

there was found a .Wu-clan coin embedded in the plaster of the base. The stucco relief fragments,

Ta. i. 004-7, found detached, may have perhaps belonged to this figure.

The frescoed wall to the right of this figure still stood to a height of about 4 feet, and showed Painted

interesting remains of painting (Fig. 326). The principal figure, preserved to the neck, was that of Bodhisattva

figure.

a richly adorned Bodhisattva, carrying in his left hand a wreath and raising with the right hand a badly drawn object which at the time of the first clearing appeared to me not unlike the Vajra carried by the figure so frequently accompanying Gautama Buddha in the Gandhâra relievos. The plaster surface at this place peeled off before the clearing was finished. The figure, of remarkably good design, was draped in a white robe with the folds painted dark pink and arranged in a manner strikingly graceful and free. Elaborate bands of jewels were shown round the neck and right arm. At the feet, painted rather clumsily over the under-garment, there appeared the figure of a horned deer.

To the right of the Bodhisattva and below there was visible the poorly preserved small figure Smaller

of a worshipper with a large lotus bud above. To the left above was painted the haloed figure of Painted

figures.

a white-robed Buddha, seated in meditation and about 7 inches high. A much-effaced object below,

looking like a white-haired head, could not be made out clearly. Below this again and reaching

Gown to the floor came the painting, about 16 inches high, of the grotesque warrior figure Ta. i. 009

(Plate xII). Fig. 325 shows its upper part in better condition. The figure, which is fully described

in the List, is of interest on account of the curious animal-like features of the face and the details of

the armour. Below him a child-like worshipper is seen kneeling, while four lines in Cursive Central-

Asian Brâhmi are painted above the latter's head. The significance of the grotesque warrior

remains to be determined as well as that of the deer, the head of which he faces.

The thin and extremely fragile inner wall of the passage Ta. i retained two remarkable paintings Rat-headed

in its lower portion, standing to a height of not more than 4 feet. On the left there appeared within divinity.

a vesica, and thus clearly marked as a deified being, the four-armed figure seen in Fig. 328. Ta. oo8

(Plate xII) is a fragment of it, necessarily in poor preservation. The animal head of the figure,

represented in profile, recalled to me at once the rat-headed divinity of the ancient Khotan legend,

preserved by Hsüan-tsang, whom a painted tablet found at Dandân-oilik had first shown me.10 It

is true that the head has a rather dog-like muzzle, but the sharp teeth in the jaws and the rat-like

pointed ear point clearly to the deified king of the rats whose intercession had saved Khotan from an

attack of the Hsiung-nu, or Huns." Over the pink tiara he carries what at the time looked to me

like a white human head or skull, a not unsuitable cognizance for the destroyer of the country's for-

midable foe. The flowing hair of sandy red agrees well with the dark yellow skin shown by the

Dandân-oilik figure, and so does the drab or pale buff colour of head, neck, and hands. The right

upper hand was broken ; the right lower carried an indistinct object, perhaps a fruit or root. The

left upper hand grasped a white object which might be a bell, while the lower held a patera. The

five black bands, appearing on the forearms and perhaps meant for bracelets, are curious. Both this

fresco and the panel adjoining were covered with numerous small black spots,and in view of the sugges-

tion recorded above it is worth noting that tiny flakes of leaf-gold were found adhering to them both.

The panel just referred to, which occupied the wall immediately to the right, was also very

curious. It showed the standing four-armed figure of a richly dressed woman with halo and vesica,

10 See Ancient Kholan, i. pp. 264 sq. ; ii. Pl. LXIII.   about the destruction of Sennacherib's Assyrian host, cf.

11 For the legend, a counterpart of that told by Herodotus   Julien, .ifimoires, ii. pp. 232 sq.