Innermost Asia : vol.1 / Page 341 (Grayscale High Resolution Image)

0341	Innermost Asia : vol.1

for the reproduction of motifs carried westwards by the export trade of Chinese figured silks could
well have offered than the local tapestry weaver's needle.

Thus we are finally led to consider the question whether figured fabrics from China affected Silk trade
also the textile designs of countries farther west than the Tārīm basin. Once the Central-Asian carries
route had been opened and secured towards the close of the second century B.C., the flourishing designs
silk trade must have carried these in abundance across to Irān and thence to the Mediterranean westwards.
regions. Professor J. Strzygowski was the first to raise this important question in a very stimulating
paper. Basing himself mainly on comparisons of style, supported by certain historical notices,
he had answered it in the affirmative as regards Irān and the Hellenized Near East.²⁶ This would
not be the place to examine the arguments upon which an art historian distinguished by such
breadth of vision based his theory, even if I had access in my Kashmir camp to all the materials
bearing on the problem. Nor do our Lou-lan finds of Chinese figured silks, as exported in Han
times, supply archaeological evidence sufficient to decide it. I must therefore restrict myself to
a few observations on points which, I think, deserve to be kept in view.

In the first place it should be remembered that among the abundant classical data referring Classical
to the silk brought from the distant Seres we have Pliny's important testimony to the fact that mention of
Chinese silk fabrics, not merely the raw material of spun silk, were carried to Syria to be there imported
unravelled and re-woven.²⁷ That silk fabrics reached the Mediterranean even before our era can Chinese
be concluded from Ovid's reference in his Amores published B.C. 14 to 'vela colorati qualia Seres silks.
habent'.²⁸ Even in Byzantine times silk fabrics from China were to be found in the Near East and
were brought into the Eastern Roman Empire, as shown by a notice of Leo Diaconus.²⁹ But it is
difficult not to attach weight to Mr. Dalton's argument that the absence of designs which can be
identified as Chinese upon early surviving silks in the West 'is against the supposition of any
important Chinese influence'.³⁰ This view is taken also by Professor von Falke, who, when
referring in the second edition of his great work to our Lou-lan stuffs, expresses the belief that the
style of Chinese figured silks, such as those of L.C. 07. a ; iii. 011 (Pl. XXXIV), reproduced by
him from Mr. Andrews' drawings, could not make an impression in the West as long as classical
art feeling survived.³¹

Professor Strzygowski had laid special stress on the probability that the preference which the Lattice
designers of early Byzantine and 'Coptic' fabrics show for the lattice diaper made up of lozenges, diaper in
a motif also found decoratively used in Hellenistic sculpture, would be found traceable to the influence textile
of Chinese figured silks.³² The grave-pits of L.C. have actually furnished those examples of early designs.
Chinese silks with this lozenge 'all-over' pattern for which Professor Strzygowski was looking.
Yet no definite conclusion appears to me at present possible on this point either, since Professor
von Falke shows that the frequent use of the lozenge scheme of design on Western textiles is attested
by representations in Greek vase paintings as early as the sixth to the fourth century B.C.³³

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

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

Citation Information

OCR Text

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