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

1

The three foregoing Toyuk examples have nothing to indicate their connexion

with Buddhism. They are more likely to be Manichaean, a sect of which there

had been a considerable community in Turfán from a period long before the

probable date of these paintings. From the same shrine, however, comes the

painted domed ceiling, reproduced in plate x, wherein there seems to be nothing

relating to Manichaeism. But the early followers of Mani are said to have

believed also in the doctrine of the Buddha, and it is not improbable that a vacant

Buddhist shrine should have been appropriated for Manichaean worship and that

the paintings executed for the former tenant, being free of anything offensive to

the Manichaean conscience, should have been left undisturbed.

The contours of these three paintings are in black and show considerable freedom

in drawing, with a proper understanding of folds in drapery, although the details

of the patterns do not conform to the accidents of the folds.

Toy. VI. 0145

The young, clean-shaven monk on this fragment wears a buff-coloured robe

figured with red-brown bars. He is rather Mongolian in type, with a dome-shape

top to his head and normal ears. He carries a large, golden censer from which

ascending smoke is shown in black, wavy lines. To the right, on a pink-buff

ground, appears the egg-shape top of the bald head of a man, probably carrying

a lotus flower which is seen above on the end of a wavy stalk. Five vertical lines

of an inscription in Uigur are neatly written behind the shoulder of the young

monk. To the right of these are other inscriptions in Uigur, Hsi-hsia (?)‚ and

Chinese.

PAINTED FRAGMENT FROM TOYUK, SHRINE V

LIKE most of the Toyuk shrines, this one, cut into the rock, had been ransacked

by local villagers for saleable material, and its walls completely stripped of paint-

ings. The piece here reproduced was purchased by Sir Aurel Stein from a man who

asserted that it came from this shrine.

Toy. V. 068

Seems to be part of the figure of a richly dressed female, of whose garments the

lower edge of a short tunic and part of the skirt only are present. The pendent left

35