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

An example of this figure, with slight variations, is that painted on an extremely

interesting wooden panel, found by Stein at the ruined dwelling D. VII at the

ancient desert site of Dandan-oiliq in 1900, and reproduced in colour on plate xL

of Ancient Khotan. In that panel painting the figure looks the reverse way, and instead

of a pomegranate in the right hand he holds a white object, which may be a drum

(damarft) but is probably a fruit. The positions of the two subsidiary heads are

reversed: the smiling (female?) head to the left and the demon to the right. The

positions of the sun and moon emblems (identified provisionally and probably

wrongly in the panel painting as the cakra and sankha) are also transposed. In the panel

the loins are covered by a tiger skin which rises to a point in front exactly as in our

present figure. As everything below the knees is missing in our picture, comparison

must stop there. It has been suggested that this figure, undoubtedly Siva, and

one of the numberless importations into Maháyána Buddhism from Brahmanic

iconography, is adopted as one of the forms of the favourite Bodhisattva

Avalokitesvara.

Above, to the left, is a seated Buddha figure, closely resembling F. XII. 007

and 008; with the same heavy-lidded eyes, almost closed, and the rather incre-

dulous lift of the eyebrows. His dark red robe is powdered with rosettes of three

and four white dots. The grey-blue padmásana is outlined with black and has light

dots on the bases of the petals. Behind is a green-grey vesica, shaped like a lotus

petal, surrounded by red-brown, and the nimbus is buff. To the left are traces of

other figures, turned towards the right. At top right are the toes of a large right

foot resting on a lotus with buff centre studded with red rings (seeds) surrounded by

a red-brown band and pink petals. The red-brown background of the upper part

of the painting is dotted with white sprigs, as is the dark red of the lower part.

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