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Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

conveying the impression of being consciously of the elect and extra-mundane, but

sometimes degenerating, particularly in some northern pictures, into globose-

headed creatures with inadequate features. And yet, probably through Chinese

influence, there is among these occasional evidence of keen observation, and a

capacity to depict accurately anatomical variations and expressions of strong

emotion.

But in the paintings of Balawaste, Farhód-Bg-yailaki, and Khódalik in the

Domoko region, about 500 miles west of Mirón, and probably 300 years later in

date, there is still to be found a certain breadth and freedom of treatment and a

softness of contours in a few examples, as for instance in the fragments F. XII. 007

and 008 (plate v). In the picture of the goddess Hóriti, however, from the same

shrine (plate iv), the contour lines are hard. The same quality of line marks the

examples from Khódalik and Balawaste in plates y and v1, and there is noticeable

extensive infiltration of Sasanian motives in ornamental details.

In the richly patterned garments can be recognized figured silks such as might

have come from looms of the Middle East, or more probably from those of

Khotan where the long-established silk industry flourished in the early part of the

seventh century, as recorded by Hsüan-tsang, who tells the romantic local legend

of the introduction into that kingdom of cocoons concealed in the coiffure of a

Chinese princess, in defiance of the law which prohibited their export from China,

when she went to Khotan as bride of the local king. An extremely interesting con-

firmation of the existence of this story is contained in the seventh-century painting

on a wooden panel discovered by Sir Aurei Stein at the desert site of Dandón-

oilik, about a hundred miles north-east of Khotan.'

The disk-like face of Hóriti (plate iv) is typical of a style found in cave paintings

in the north. The love-locks curling on to the cheeks are more attractively ren-

dered in the `silk princess' of the Dandón-oilik panel, and, much earlier, in the

lady of the Mirón dado (plate III). The almost diagrammatic Buddha reproduced

in plate v11 is perhaps a somewhat extreme example of concession to a desire for

display of symbolism. The face, like that of Hóriti, is a mere disk, the nose badly

drawn, and the mouth feeble. In both Hóriti and the Buddha the upper eyelids are

heavy and drooping, perhaps intended to express intense introspective absorption

or spiritual ecstacy. But this heaviness of eyelid is common to most of the faces in

the Khotan group of paintings, in striking contrast with the frank, wide-open eyes

I Stein: Ancient Khotan, D.X. 4, plate LXIII.

d   XXill