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Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

of Mirán. Exaggerated elongation of the ear lobes, rent with great slits or gaping

holes, is now the rule. The worshipping figure (Har. B.), reproduced on the

title-page, has these heavy-lidded eyes and elongated ears, and from behind the

shoulders rise either very stylized wings, a belated and transformed survival from

an earlier period, or it may be that they represent flames. While charming in many

ways, it is full of faults in drawing. In some of these paintings haloes are composed

of bands of plain colour, often with little flickering touches of white, like tiny

flames, at their edges; and the number of colours used is greater than formerly, and

of more sombre and complex hue.

Turning now to the Turfán region, 600 miles to the north-east of Khotan

(north of the Taklamakán desert and at the foot of the Kuruk-tágh), greater com-

plexity of styles is found. The geographical position of Turfán has always ren-

dered it especially subject to the varied political and ethnic fluctuations already

referred to. Lying on the trade route, the `New Route of the North', opened in the

first century A.D., carrying traffic between China and the West, it could be, and

was, invaded from the north of the Tien-shan range by way of several relatively

easy passes. It was here that repeated clashes occurred between Huns and Chinese

from the time of the Han dynasties onwards. Western Turks, Uigurs, and

Tibetans, invading from different directions, exercised, in turn, periods of supre-

macy. But the strongest influence seems to have been that of the Chinese, whose

firm hold on the region in Tang times had a lasting and civilizing effect. A

significant fragment of painting from the wall of one of the Bezeklik cave shrines

(Bez. xi. A—C, plate xx) depicts a crowd of mourners gathered round the bier

of the Buddha, composed of representatives of the many kingdoms present on

that mournful occasion, and affords an interesting opportunity of identifying the

several types of communities usually at variance, but here united in expressing a

common grief.

The Turfán region, rich in remains of Buddhist and Muhammadan shrines, has

been explored and closely studied by several eminent scholars, Russian, German,

British, and French. Dr. Klementz, acting under the auspices of the Russian

Academy of Sciences in 1897, reported on the ruins. In 1902 and 1907 Professors

Grünwedel and von Lecoq carried out most thorough investigations, and the

results of their labours are recorded in several beautiful and impressive volumes.

Large sections of the paintings were removed from the walls of the shrines and

transferred to the Ethnographic Museum in Berlin, where, according reports,

orts,

P

XXIV