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

the middle of the eighth to the middle of the ninth century as explaining the presence of
this Tibetan painting. He has also lucidly discussed the relation which links the art of
Buddhist Tibet, in spite of its marked and strangely persistent peculiarities, closely with
Chinese art. My remarks may hence be confined to the technique and iconography of the
painting.

The picture, which is preserved complete together with its frame of dark green silk, is
painted in tempera on strong close-woven linen. The colours have generally darkened and
in places have been rubbed off, leaving whitish patches or the cloth bare.⁴⁷

The subject is the goddess Tārā, the Śakti or female emanation of Avalokiteśvara. The
goddess, represented in her usual form as a beautiful young woman, is seated in the centre on
a variegated lotus which floats on the blue water of a lake. She sits with her right knee
raised and the left leg bent across. The right hand with palm turned outwards in the vara-
mudrā rests on the right knee, the left is at the breast, both holding long curving sprays with
a conventional blue lotus at the end. The pose of the body slightly inclined to the right
is balanced by the head leaning in the opposite direction. The sinuous line of the whole
figure conforms to a characteristic tendency of Tibetan art. The flesh had been gilded, but
this gilding has almost entirely worn off.

The goddess wears a dark red skirt and stole spangled with gilded flowers. Her knees
are covered with elaborately ornamented caps. Rich jewellery decks neck and breast. Above
her black hair bound with scarlet fillets is set a five-leaved tiara with a high-peaked crown.
A nimbus of very dark green, now almost turned to black, sets off the head, while behind the
figure is shown an oval vesica with a rayed border of rainbow-like colours.

On a dark cloud above the goddess's head appears the small figure of a Buddha seated
in meditation with the alms-bowl in his lap. On either side of him, on praying mats carried by
dark green clouds, sit two black-haloed saints wearing the peaked hoods of Lamas. Along
the sides of the picture are ranged eight subsidiary forms of Tārā, differentiated by varying
colours of flesh and dress. Their pose is the same as that of the central goddess ; the right
hand rests on the knee, holding a flask, and the left raises a long-stemmed blue lotus.

Interspersed between these subsidiary Tārās are shown six scenes of deliverance from
Calamities similar to those represented on the sides of certain Paradise paintings, such as
the one in Plates I, II. Not all are intelligible ; but we may note in the middle one on the
left a man being pushed over a cliff into the lake. In the scene opposite on the right he is
seen calmly kneeling on a lotus, flame-encircled, while another man on the cliff above looks
on in astonishment. In the left bottom corner are seen three men pursued by different
animals, and to the right of them a barge-like boat sailing on the lake, with a fourth man
kneeling in prayer. The men throughout these scenes are shown in Chinese secular costume
such as is often seen in our Jātaka banners.

While these figures clearly point to a Chinese model of the scenes, the demonic deity
in the centre of the foreground shows characteristic features of truly Tibetan taste. His
squat dark blue figure sits sideways on a yellow horse, brandishing a scarlet club in his right
hand. His hair is a flaming mass streaming upwards ; a man's bleeding head hangs from
his saddle-cloth. It is impossible to mistake here a conception of that monstrous type which
Tibetan Buddhism under the influence of Tantra doctrines absorbed from India and under
that of its own demon worship has always greatly cherished.