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

is revealed the individual touch of a master, and the skill and taste of the craftsmen who
reproduced his work make it easy for us to recognize the merits of the lost original.

The design in our hanging has been worked solid throughout in satin-stitch. The
embroidery has been executed with admirable care and the silks used have remained clean
and glossy.⁷² The ground is a coarse natural-coloured linen faced with light buff silk. This
has mostly worn off in the interspaces of figures. Two of the figures, too, representing
monkish disciples, having fallen along the line of folding, while the hanging was stored
away and crushed for long centuries, have perished except for remains of the heads. Other-
wise the picture is practically complete, and neither the effect of the whole nor that of
characteristic features of treatment is impaired.

Śākyamuni stands facing the spectator with his feet on a lotus. His right arm hangs
stiffly by his side with the fingers stretched downwards and the palm turned to the side.
The arm wrapped in the folds of the glowing red mantle holds an 'ear' of it gathered at
the breast. The mantle closely draped about the body falls in a point to below the knees
and allows a light green under-robe to be seen thence to the ankles. The yellow lining
of the mantle shows in a rippling edge along the outline of the left arm and down the body,
a device which is familiar already to Gandhāra sculpture. The right shoulder and arm
are left bare and are painted a deep golden yellow. The Buddha's face is shown in light
buff and, curiously enough, the right forearm as well. This distinction is emphasized in
the case of the latter by the work being executed in thin rows of chain-stitch and is obviously
intentional. But its iconographic significance is for the present uncertain.⁷³ Behind the
head, with its narrow, slightly slanting eyes and hair of very dark indigo, appears a nimbus
in plain rings of variegated colours. A narrow halo shaped like a lotus petal, similarly
coloured, surrounds the whole figure, and behind this again appears a border of rocks
emblematic of the Vulture Peak.

By the side of the Buddha stand pairs of disciples and Bodhisattvas, both on lotuses.
The latter, who may represent Avalokiteśvara and Mahāsthāma, turn three-fourths towards
him ; the one on the left with hands in adoration, the other with both arms slightly advanced
from the elbows and the right hand held as if in the vara-mudrā. The dress and adorn-
ments of these figures conform to those of Bodhisattvas of the 'Indian' type as already
noticed, but are drawn more trimly. A certain stiffness and simplicity in their design
suggest close affinity to Indian models. But in the Bodhisattvas' faces we notice the
influence of Chinese style, as also in the ornamental borders of their dress.

Of the disciples' figures in the background enough remains to show that their heads
were shaven and haloed and their dress that of monks, with mantles barred with cross-
stripes. The face of the one on the Buddha's left was lined and frowning, which suggests
identity with Kāśyapa ; the other with face plump and benign may represent Śāriputra.
By the side of the small and somewhat stiff canopy above Śākyamuni's head are seen two
graceful Apsaras floating down with outspread arms, borne up by fine cloud scrolls and
their billowing stoles. Their resemblance to the Apsaras of Plates x and xi is striking.

Below the Buddha's feet there kneels on either side a small lion of conventional type
with one forepaw lifted. Below them again is a panel for a dedication, which, however,
has never been worked in. Of the narrow cartouches placed by each line of donors, only
the two foremost on the men's side bear Chinese characters, now mostly illegible.

The groups of donors on either side of the panel, disposed in strict symmetry, present
special interest by their life-like treatment and by their costumes. This is easily seen from
Plate xxxv, which reproduces the group of the ladies on the more adequate scale of two-