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

DESCRIPTIVE ACCOUNT OF PICTURES
FROM THE CAVES OF
THE THOUSAND BUDDHAS AT TUN-HUANG

BY

AUREL STEIN

PLATES I, II

THE PARADISE OF BHAIṢAJYAGURU

THE first two plates reproduce portions, on half the scale of the original, from the right
and left of a large painting on silk (Ch. lii. 003), remarkable for its noble design, the deli-
cacy of its drawing, and its glowing colours. In spite of the damage it has suffered along its
sides and bottom (see Serindia, Pl. LVII) it still measures close on seven feet in height and over
five and a half feet across. It represents a Buddhist Paradise and, according to M. Petrucci's
interpretation, the one presided over by Bhaiṣajyaguru, the Buddha of Medicine, whose cult
since an early period has been widespread in Northern Buddhism from Tibet to Japan.
His Heaven is placed in the East by sacred texts preserved in the Chinese Tripiṭaka. In their
descriptions as well as in our painting Bhaiṣajyaguru's Paradise shares the essential features
of that still more popular abode of Buddhist bliss, the Western Paradise, or Sukhāvatī,
presided over by the Buddha Amitābha. Of this the 'Caves of the Thousand Buddhas'
have preserved numerous representations both among the pictures recovered from the
walled-up chapel (see Pls. VI–VIII, X–XI) and among the mural paintings decorating the
temples. But the legendary scenes occupying the side panels of our painting and connected
with Bhaiṣajyaguru are different, and so are also certain details in the arrangement and
personnel of the main subject. These distinctive features are found again in another some-
what less elaborate picture of Bhaiṣajyaguru's Paradise, reproduced in Plate XXXVI.

His Heaven presents itself in our picture, as in all the large Paradise paintings of Tun-
huang, as a great assemblage of celestial beings, elaborately staged on richly decorated
terraces and courts which rise above a lotus lake. On the sides and behind the terraces there
are seen pavilions and elaborate structures of characteristically Chinese style, representing
the heavenly mansions. It is in this sumptuous setting that Chinese Buddhism has visualized
from an early period the idea of a Paradise where the souls of believers in the Law may be
reborn, free from all taint, in the buds of the lotus lake to enjoy thereafter for aeons, or in
popular belief for ever, blissful rest and pleasures in the company of Bodhisattvas, Arhats,
and other beatified personalities. The scheme of the whole, as in all representations of
Buddhist Heavens among the Tun-huang paintings, is ordered on the strictly symmetrical
lines of a 'Maṇḍala', buildings, trees, groups, and even individual figures balancing each
other on either side of the picture and all centring round the presiding Buddha in the middle.

Here we see Bhaiṣajyaguru seated with folded legs and wearing a crimson mantle over
a green under-robe. While his right hand is raised as usual in the vitarka-mudrā, the left holds
the begging bowl in his lap. Behind him a couple of flowering trees support a hexagonal
canopy of red drapery. A halo and nimbus of manifold but harmoniously blended colours