National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

the double cincture. The head of the black-bearded man with heavy moustache

and long bushy hair in the next hollow is badly damaged. He probably faces to the

right. His green coat seems to have broad revers of, perhaps, brown fur. Then

comes a supporter of very Semitic visage, nude to the waist. His expression is

bright and happy. The fingers of both hands are curled over opposite sides of the

loop of the garland which he carries cheerfully on his shoulders. His head is

partly shaven, leaving a thick tuft on the top. The head of the beautiful girl or peri

in the next hollow is tilted slightly as she turns to gaze, with a contemplative

expression of wide-eyed innocence and a delicate blush on her cheeks, in the direc-

tion of the bearded man to her right. Her well-separated eyebrows are delicately

arched and her rather full rosy lips have a provocative pout. Her black hair,

smooth over the forehead, falls in a bunch to the nape of the neck, which is plump

and has the usual desirable horizontal creases. Like the two girls, M. III. 0019 on

plate II, she has long, carefully ordered `kiss-curls' caressing her cheeks. Red

jewels or blossoms adorn her ears, and on her head is a tiara of white flowers with

pink centres. An ample, green stole is draped over her left shoulder.

The supporter to the right of the damsel has been briefly alluded to in the

Introduction.' He seems to be practically nude, and his head is partly shaven like

that of the preceding boy. Unlike all the other putti, he does not seem happy. His

face and the tilt of his head bear an unmistakable expression of weariness and

perhaps of pain. The reason for this is disclosed by the uplifted left foot, grasped

by his right hand as though to relieve and comfort it. He has been standing too

long, and the foot has become tender or is painful from some other cause. The

fingers of the left hand appear over the upper loop of the garland. It is an unexpected

incident, perhaps inspired by a sudden whim of the artist, very efficiently por-

trayed. Apart from the interesting touch of human feeling, so eloquently shown,

there is the surprising and significant fact of its precise repetition on the Kaniska

casket in the Peshawar Museum,' and again on a fragment of Gandhára stone

sculpture in the British Museum.' There may be other replicas which are unknown

to me. Whether just the whim of an artist or bearing some deeper significance, its

archaeological value as an additional link between the Mirán paintings and the

Kusana period, and definitely with Gandhára, is unquestionable. The point of

chronology naturally arises: which of these three examples is the earliest? And

which, if either, is the prototype? Then comes the bust of a young man, looking

I Cf. p. xx.   z Fig. I, p. 13.   3 Fig. 2, p. 13.

II