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Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

tures. This is probably accidental coincidence, without canonical significance.

Such disproportion is not usual in Chinese art, and perhaps indicates that despite

the strong Mongolian quality present in most of the Bezeklik paintings they are,

with few exceptions, not the work of Chinese painters. Taking into account the

known practice of using the same cartoons repeatedly, shortening of the figure

could be explained, although not quite satisfactorily, by employment of the sum-

mary method of adapting an existing cartoon to a space of insufficient vertical

measurement, by cutting out a central part   a kind of telescopic reduction an

operation not unknown to the artisan decorator of our own time.

In the badly damaged painting Bez. x. K—O, reproduced in plate xxiv, and an

enlarged portion in plate xxv, there is more Chinese quality of drawing, combined

perhaps with something of Tibetan inspiration. This picture is described as fully

as its condition permits in the section dealing with the plates.

Comparing the paintings here reviewed with those of early cave shrines in

southern and central India, such as Ajanta and Bágh, there are many differences,

partly ethnographic and geographical. There are sharp distinctions between the

racial types of the two regions, and their social habits. In the south, where climate

dictates a minimum of clothing, the paintings express enjoyment in depicting the

human form, with emphatic insistence upon sex distinction in figure and pose.

The architectural setting of open pavilions permits our visual participation in the

intimate felicities of domestic life, and we are invited to witness fine pageants and

festivals in delightful gardens where peacocks perch on stylistic rockeries, mon-

keys sport, and happy, fat little kínnaras make music in the air. There is, in short, a

sensation of joy in life accentuated by occasional reminders of sad incidents.

In the north it is otherwise. Elaborate garments conceal the often ill-propor-

tioned bodies; and sex is, in many instances, indeterminate. Of ordinary human

happiness and relaxation there is no indication. Almost every personage is super-

human and those who are human are paying homage to the others. Every scheme

is hieratic, and each figure, excepting the few puny earthlings, is furnished with a

halo, advising us that we look upon a being of a superior order. No relief from the

devotional tension is offered or permitted. Tantric figures, in fancy dress, flourish

implements of painful import in their multiple, threatening hands, and repulsive

imps of the nether regions rush madly about, bent on mischief. In the narrative

picture, Bez. xiv. B—D, plate xxxi, a kind of predella, Chinese influence is evident,

and the presence here of real human beings, engaged in familiar mundane

XXVI"