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

Gandhāra that the types of Buddhist art became fixed. It was there that the type of Śākya-
muni himself was first invented, or rather adapted from the ideal forms of Hellenistic
sculpture. For some centuries after the Buddha's death, Indian artists had always refrained
from representing the image of the Lord.

The Hellenistic element, apparent in poses, in drapery, in decorative motifs like the
acanthus-ornament, tends to become submerged in the later phases of the art, though some-
thing of it still persists recognizably in the Buddhist art of remote Japan, even to-day. At
a desert site of Khotan, the little kingdom lying at the southern edge of the Taklamakān
Desert, beyond the mountains on the north-eastern frontier of Ladākh and Kashmir, Sir
Aurel Stein found on his first expedition (1900–1) the remains of settlements abandoned to the
encroaching sand about the third century A.D. Among these remains were heaps of letters and
documents written in early Indian script and language on wooden tablets, tied with string and
sealed ; and in most cases the seal was a Greek seal, engraved with a figure of Athene, Heracles,
or other deity. Again, at Mirān, a site near Lop-nōr and much further east, Sir Aurel, on his
second expedition, discovered Buddhist shrines adorned with frescoes of about the fourth
century A.D. painted in the style of late classical tradition.

Fascinating as are these traces of Greece and the West in the midst of the Asian deserts,
the influence of Hellenism was not profound or formative. India was the main influence on
the culture of the cities once flourishing along the chain of oases in the deserts west of China,
Buddhism the great civilizing factor, and Gandhāra the source from which the local schools
of art drew their inspiration. Gandhāra art was itself not without some admixture from
Persian sources ; and Iranian motives of decoration are found in these desert sites, as they
are found in China itself, just as some of the Tun-huang manuscripts are written in the
Iranian dialect called Sogdian. The art of Turkestān is full of mixed influences, the reflection
of its civilization.

And what of China ? For during the second century B.C. and the two centuries following
China pursued a policy of political and military expansion westward, with a view to opening
up trade-routes, consolidating her frontiers and protecting them from the ravages of the Huns
and other tribes ; and Eastern Turkestān became a Chinese protectorate. Though afterwards
China's hold became weakened and her power receded, in the seventh century A.D., under an
Emperor of the great T'ang dynasty, the whole region came again under Chinese government,
and the Empire's political sphere of influence was extended as far as the borders of Persia and
the shores of the Caspian. But Chinese influence seems to have been confined mainly to
administration, and to have affected but little the culture of the people, though traces of it are
discernible in their arts and industries, ever more marked as we go further east.

This way passed the old great high road between east and west, by which the Chinese
silks were carried overland to Antioch and the Roman Empire. It was a highway for com-
merce, but also for ideas and religions. And the early centuries of our era were marked by an
extraordinary ferment of mystical beliefs both in east and west. While Christianity and
Mithraism were contending for supremacy in the Roman Empire, Buddhism was making its
victorious progress eastwards. But it was no longer the simple ethical doctrine preached by
Gautama. Mahāyāna Buddhism, as the later development of Buddhism is called—the Great
Vehicle, as opposed to the Hinayāna, or Small Vehicle, of the original doctrine—was first
formulated about the first century A.D. It was no longer the salvation of the individual which
was the aim of the devout, but the salvation of the whole world, towards which the Bodhi-
sattvas strive unceasingly out of their boundless love for every sentient being. The Bodhi-
sattvas in this new phase of Buddhism became more and more the object of popular worship.
They are either men who, having won the right to enter Buddhahood, refuse that peace for
the sake of suffering mankind, or else celestial beings who assume a human form. Of this last
order of beings is Avalokiteśvara, whom the Chinese know as Kuan-yin, and the Japanese as
Kwannon ; the favourite object of adoration in Mahāyāna Buddhism. He appears in art both
in male and female form. In later art the female form is almost universal, but in the Tun-
huang paintings the male form is predominant. Avalokiteśvara is the spiritual son of Amitābha,
the impersonal Buddha, the Light of the Enlightened ; and Amitābha is said to have created