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

grotesque features. The right hands carry sword and arrow, and the left hands a trident
and bow ; above his crown is seen a horse's head.

With the comparative stiffness of the figures contrasts the freedom of the whirling
mass of cloud upon which the whole group is shown sweeping past as in a vision. The
colouring is strong, yet harmonious, and the workmanship careful.

The picture below (Ch. lvii. 002), which is in excellent preservation and still retained
its original Kakemono mounting of brown silk, is a noble composition strikingly different
in style and entirely Chinese in feeling. It shows the figure of Avalokiteśvara, as Guide
of Souls, drawn with much dignity and grace, and behind him an attendant soul repre-
sented on a smaller scale in the guise of a Chinese woman.

The figure of Avalokiteśvara, who turns head and gaze backwards over the left shoulder,
is in physical features and dress a fine specimen of the ' Chinese ' Bodhisattva type already
repeatedly noticed. In his right hand he carries a smoking censer, in his left a curving lotus
spray and a waving white banner with triangular top and streamers, the whole exactly alike
in shape to the silk banners brought away from Ch'ien-fo-tung. In the dress of soft and
harmoniously blended colours the elaborate rosettes of the borders may be noted as mani-
festly reproducing contemporary textile patterns.

The figure of the woman behind, with her head bowed and hands muffled in wide
sleeves at her breast, well expresses devout reliance on the divine guide. Her attire, by
the brilliant colouring of the robes and the absence of the elaborate metal head-dress,
stands out in marked contrast to the costume familiar from the donor figures of our tenth-
century paintings. The purple cloud which carries both figures sweeps up behind them
to the top of the picture. There a Chinese mansion resting on conventional cloud scrolls
represents the Paradise to which Avalokiteśvara leads his worshippers.

By the evidence of the dress and coiffure of the Bodhisattva's attendant, which seem
to belong to post-T'ang times, the painting may be classed amongst the latest of the
deposit. But what for our appreciation of this beautiful picture must matter far more
than this chronological difference is the fact that the style of its design and its refined
execution give full and exclusive expression just to those qualities which are characteristic
of Chinese pictorial art at its best. As Mr. Binyon, when comparing this picture with
another presentation of Avalokiteśvara, the one reproduced in our Plate XLII, has pregnantly
put it, ' we have [here] a sense of suavity and flexile movement. Flowers seem really to
be floating down the air, and the cloud on which the votaress follows the Bodhisattva coils
up with a wavering motion. We feel the presence of the Chinese genius, with its instinct
for living movement, and its love of sinuous line, and its reticent spacing.' ⁸⁵

PLATE XXXIX

KṢITIGARBHA WITH THE INFERNAL JUDGES

The small picture (Ch. lxi. 009) reproduced here on half-scale is remarkable for its
peculiar colour scheme and for its archaic appearance in composition and drawing. It
represents Kṣitigarbha in his combined character as Patron of Travellers, Regent of Hell,
and Lord of the Six Worlds of Desire. We have already above, when dealing with the
paintings reproduced in Plate xxv, had occasion to indicate briefly the several functions
which have made this Bodhisattva one of the most popular figures in the Buddhist Pantheon
of the Far East.⁸⁶ Our observations here may, therefore, be restricted to particular features
of his presentation.

The picture is painted on indigo blue silk which, though much broken, especially on
the edges, yet retains the strong colours of the painting in great freshness. Kṣitigarbha