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

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over Chinese Turkestán. An unusually good example of the latter is that in plate

xxly. In the present case the conception of an unlimited range of mountains

affords opportunity to introduce appropriately trees, birds, and animals, while at

the same time providing regular spaces for pictorial representation of the jataka

stories or incidents from the life of Gautama Buddha.

Imbricated triangles, which by repetition must result in lozenge shapes, appear

in medieval miniatures in Europe as signifying mountains, and a simple example

occurs in a twelfth-century Psalter of St. Swithun's Priory, Winchester, con-

jectured to be copied from a picture brought from Italy in 1152.

Kao. I

This is described as `a large complex of buildings in great part demolished'

situated within the walls of the town. Among the things found in the debris were

fragments of texts in Uigur, Sogdian, Runic, Turki, and Chinese. There seems to

be considerable evidence that the establishment was monastic, of the Manichaean

sect.

t

~

Kao. I. ii. 08, 010, &c.

This small specimen is composed of four fragments picked from the debris

lying along the foot of the western wall of one of the halls. The two heads depicted

are of Mongolian type and probably are those of Manichaean donors. Their head-

dresses are peculiar. That of the man seems to be a close-fitting, white felt hat, the

lower part like a broad collar, turned up, with the rounded ends pointing forward.

His scanty black hair and beard have a painfully wiry character and his bushy eye-

brows are uncertain in their growth. His complexion is pink, with dark red lips.

Rising beside his face is a long, curved flower-stalk bearing thin green leaves and

a red globular flower at the top. He seems to grasp the stalk with both hands, the

left near his beard and the right at his chest.

The woman appears to be younger than the man. She has a pink complexion,

small red lips, well-defined eyebrows placed high, and a red spot (caste mark?) on

her forehead and another on the cheek. Her black hair forms a straight line across

her brow and falls in heavy, solid tresses, decorated with flowers, beside her face.

It is probably dressed in two high loops above, curving apart and carrying between

them an upright, red, egg-shape ornament probably drapery. Her robe is red.

The execution is bold but rather careless.

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