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

PAINTED FRAGMENT FROM KHÁDALIK

Kha. i. E. 0047

THIS is a part of a large composition from the passage wall of the shrine, about

42 feet above the floor. A vertical, yellow band divides a series of small, upright

panels on the right from a large panel on the left. The part of the large panel

visible shows a portion of the petalled border (yellow, shaded with red-brown)

of a vesica. On the shaded white ground of the vesica appear part of the left arm

and knee of a figure seated on a lotus. The arm wears a richly ornamented

armlet; and a narrow, jewelled scarf comes from behind the shoulder, falling to

the thigh, which is clothed in a yellow garment. The padmásana is pink. Above

the shoulder, and standing on a pink lotus, is an elaborately decorated flask, with

ovoid body, spreading foot, and narrow neck curving inwards as it rises from

the body and outwards again to a trumpet mouth which is covered by a lid of

inverted funnel shape. The flask is yellow, and from its shoulder projects a

grotesque bearded mask with tongue thrust out. The mask, the form, and the

decorative details of the flask recall the ancient pottery recovered by Stein, in

1900, at Yotkan, about seventy miles west of Khádalik.I Between the vesica and

the vertical band is an architectural shaft composed of sections of crystal or other

translucent material, held together by very ornate bands and crowned with an

elaborate bracket capital. The ornamental details are interesting. The bands of

ornament are reproductions of metal ferrules or housings such as were used in

wooden buildings of the Chinese, and frequently depicted in the terrace pavilions

on the painted silk temple-banners brought by Stein from the Caves of the

Thousand Buddhas. The capital is a clumsy modification of beautiful Byzantine

and Indian examples, expressive of a vase of flowers and leaves. The architrave

supported by the bracket capital is composed of three horizontal, decorated mem-

bers, in front of which comes some scroll ornament, perhaps proceding from the

top of the vesica.

The narrow panels to right of the vertical dividing band, one above the other,

each contain a standing figure. The upper one is a Buddha or Bodhisattva against a

vesica of green and grey flames arranged en échelon, outlined alternately with black

and red. The black hair shows a high usnisa. The tilaka is marked on the forehead

and a spot in the palm of the right hand (not clear in the reproduction). Both hands are

upraised the right in abhaya mudrá and the left, probably counting the points of the

I See Stein: Ancient Khotan, plates XLIII, XLIV, vol. H.

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