国立情報学研究所 - ディジタル・シルクロード・プロジェクト
『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ

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
(damarū) 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 śankha) 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 Śiva, and
one of the numberless importations into Mahāyāna Buddhism from Brahmanic
iconography, is adopted as one of the forms of the favourite Bodhisattva
Avalokiteśvara.
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 padmāsana 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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