国立情報学研究所 - ディジタル・シルクロード・プロジェクト
『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ

because they repeat on silk the manner of the fresco paintings of Tun-huang. In all these
pictures the Chinese element is present but not dominant ; and the system of modelling in
two tones of colour comes, we cannot doubt, from the west. It is true that it was sometimes
copied by the Chinese in their Buddhist paintings, as we know from early Japanese examples
following Chinese prototypes : but the Chinese of T'ang times were intensely interested in
the western countries ; they liked to introduce figures of people from those regions into their
pictures ; and, as we know, a painter from Khotan settled in China in the eighth century and
had great success there. But the desire to suggest mass and roundness by means of modelling
in painting was against the instincts of the Chinese and Japanese ; it occurs only in certain
Buddhist pictures, the survival of a borrowing from the west preserved by hieratic tradition.
One of the finest of all the Tun-huang pictures is not a painting but a piece of embroidery.
Unfortunately it does not lend itself well to photography in colour ; and its quality and
impressive character are merely suggested in the small Plate (Pl. xxxiv) and in the detail
with a group of donors (Pl. xxxv). Though merely the reproduction by craftsmen of a
master's work, it shows such skill and taste in execution, it is so fine in colour, and so well
preserved, that it must be ranked with the very finest of the paintings as an indication of the
grandeur of the Buddhist art of T'ang.