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

turn his head towards his neighbour as though to murmur some remark, an action

repeated in the front row. The overlapping of the bodies of two pairs at the back

is done with a similar object.

The figures, erect and broad-shouldered, have effeminate waists and hips; and

those at the back have a fault, common in many of the paintings, in the dispro-

portionate shortness of the legs. The smaller figures in front promise better

proportions, but as the feet are broken away there can be no certainty of this. The

heads are of a distinctive type, differing from most of those in the pictures. They

are square and flat-crowned; have small straight noses, narrow, oblique slits of

eyes, and small ears. The jowls have a Mongolian heaviness, and the line from the

back of the neck to the top of the head is nearly straight. The form of the chin is

merged in the fleshiness of the jowls; and the insignificant, pursed lips are a mere

token for a mouth. It is noticeable that the eyebrows are in one case marked each

by a single arched line; in the rest they are emphasized by four or five additional

lines, almost straight but sloping upwards. The necks lack the `classical' trans-

verse creases. On the faces of some of the figures in the back line, thin, drooping

moustaches and a small imperial are faintly indicated in grey; and the same tint

indicates a shaven chin. A slight variety of expression is imparted by the direction

of the gaze, angle of the eye, and tilt of the head.

The finger-nails are long and sharply pointed.

Although the drawing is rather mechanical and the contouring rendered in a

thin, monotonous line, yet there is a certain deftness in execution.

The unusual style of robe, both in the use of figured material and in the `tailor-

ing' of the garment, and the wearing of shoes by monks, if these be monks, raises

the question as to the sect to which they belong. Reference to the other pictures

recovered from the same cella or passage, referred to as being now in the British

Museum, and reproduced in plate cxxvi, Serindia, shows, in Mi. xiii. 4, the aged

teacher wearing a robe of material figured similarly to those in our present picture.

He is certainly not the Buddha; he has no usnisa, no úrná, and his hair is white. The

building may have been a theological college, the aged teacher a saintly person

greatly revered, and the monk-like figures in this picture pupils or devotees, who,

from the implication of their wearing shoes, would seem to have journeyed from

a distance to pay homage to the aged one.

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