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『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ

century which illustrate various sacred images and shrines of Buddhist India. M. Foucher
has conclusively proved that their painters, in all that concerns essential points, have always
been at pains to reproduce faithfully the stereotyped models furnished by long-continued
traditional imagery.³⁴

In what form our painter had received the types he thus conventionally reproduced
is uncertain. But the clearly preserved Graeco-Buddhist style shows that they were
indirectly derived from Gandhāra, and early transmission through Central Asia is obviously
most probable. The question may be hazarded whether the votive object aimed at in the
painting and its assumed prototype was not that of securing the religious merit which
might have attached to an actual pilgrimage to those distant sacred sites. The drawing
in mere outlines with little or scarcely any colour, similar to the technique of certain
Khotanese mural paintings, and the perished state of whole portions of the silk seem to
point to the painting being of early date.

PLATE XV

TWO FORMS OF AVALOKITEŚVARA

The predominant share which the Bodhisattvas claim in popular Buddhist worship
as developed under Mahāyāna influences is illustrated by the fact that about one-half of
our Ch'ien-fo-tung paintings are devoted to their representation, whether singly or along
with attendant divinities. However large may be in devout speculation the number of
different Bodhisattvas, popular imagination had already in the North-Indian home of the
Mahāyāna system been concentrated upon a small select group of Bodhisattvas. Among
them Avalokiteśvara, the Bodhisattva of Mercy, occupies the foremost place, and the fre-
quency of his representations among our Tun-huang paintings is just as marked as the
popularity of his female manifestation, known to the Chinese as Kuan-yin, to the Japanese
as Kwannon, the Goddess of Pity, is in modern Buddhist worship throughout the Far East.

The large and fairly well-preserved painting (Ch. xxxviii. 005), reproduced on the
scale of one-third in Plate xv, presents two almost life-size figures of Avalokiteśvara standing
erect and facing each other. Their outer hands are raised in the vitarka-mudrā, while the
Bodhisattva on the left carries in the other hand a yellow flower, and the one on the right
a flask and a willow sprig. These are well-known attributes of Avalokiteśvara.³⁵ Which
of his many particular forms are intended may be determined from the inscribed cartouche
above, of which no translation is as yet available.

The figures, drawn with much care and painted in a wealth of harmonious colours,
reflect a certain grandeur of design which breaks through the hieratic conventions of pose
and externals. Except for the oblique eyes these conventions are all unmistakably Indian
in type and origin. But equally clear is the change, here seen in highly perfected technique,
which their treatment has undergone by the eyes and hands of Chinese painters. We notice
their distinctive touch quite as much in the grace and dignity of the features as in the
mastery of sweeping line with which the rich robes of the Bodhisattvas are treated. The
features are finely drawn and delicately shaded with pink ; the ears are elongated and show
hieratic convention in a particularly striking fashion. The fine drawing of the shapely
hands curiously contrasts with the clumsy foreshortening of the feet.

Dress, coiffure, and jewellery are of the elaborate style, often displayed by our Bodhi-
sattva banners ;³⁶ but the ornamentation, though carefully treated in detail, is not overdone.
On the front of the tiaras is shown Avalokiteśvara's Dhyāni-buddha, Amitābha. From
lotus buds at their sides descend rainbow-coloured tassels. The garments comprise shawl-
like stoles, lined with light green, under-robes of Indian red, and long skirts of orange