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| 0153 |
Innermost Asia : vol.2 |
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to throw fresh light on the development of China's silk manufacture. It illustrates in particular
a curious feature which has long been recognized—the influence exercised during medieval times
by the imitation of Western designs on this the most famous, perhaps, of China's industrial arts.
The comparison will be made easier if our rapid survey of the Astāna fabrics conforms to the lines
followed in the analysis of the Ch'ien-fo-tung textiles, with which they offer many points of close
contact.¹
This contact is significantly brought out from the first by the almost total absence among the Abundance
decorated textiles of Astāna of any material other than silk. Even the single piece of painted of silk
canvas i. 8. 04, amongst all the decorated fabrics recovered, is treated in a fashion which clearly fabrics.
suggests imitation of a polychrome figured silk. That there was an abundant supply of silks in
the Turfān tract during the seventh century is attested not merely by the practically exclusive use
of this material in all ornamented textiles, but also by the very frequent occurrence of plain silks,
both undyed and coloured, among the shrouds and miscellaneous remains of old garments in which
the bodies were found wrapped.² This abundance of silk deserves the more notice firstly because
silk is not an indigenous product in the Turfān region nor in any of the oases nearest to it, and
secondly in view of the opinion which, as indicated above, clearly prevailed that only valueless
materials should be used in burial.³ I have not been able to observe any difference, as between
datable tombs, in the degree of profusion with which silk fabrics, whether plain or decorated, were
used, and am hence led to conclude that silk materials must always have been readily available
at Kao-ch'ang, at least for well-to-do people such as were probably laid to rest in the tombs
examined.
I need not examine here how this observation is to be reconciled with the fact that according Origin of
to Hsüan-tsang's account of his desert crossing from Kua-chou to Hāmi in A. D. 630, this, the plain silk
least difficult of the routes from the north-western borders of the Chinese Empire as they then stood materials.
to Turfān, was then unfrequented by traffic, if not altogether closed.⁴ It is possible that a good
deal of the plain silk materials found in the Astāna tombs was imported from Khotan and from
that Sogdian region, comprising the present Ferghāna, Samarkand and Bukhāra, which, as
we shall see farther on, is the most probable source of a great portion of the polychrome figured
silks found in the face-covers and in the remnants of old garments. But Mr. F. H. Andrews, to
whose collaboration I am indebted for all data connected with the Astāna fabrics, has so far been
unable to make any close examination of the plain silks from that locality or to compare them with
those from Ch'ien-fo-tung and Lou-lan. Nor is it by any means certain that comparison would
reveal such definite differences in weave technique as would permit plain silks to be even tentatively
assigned to different regions of manufacture. Even within China itself contemporaneous products
of its silk industry probably varied then in texture, quality, &c., quite as much as they do now.
A reference to Mr. Andrews' 'Notes on the technique of textile fabrics from Ch'ien-fo-tung'⁵
will serve to explain the terms employed in the Descriptive List, and in the following remarks to
describe the different techniques of weave represented among the Astāna fabrics, whether plain
or decorated.
Turning to the decorated silk fabrics from Astāna, it is obvious that the peculiar uses which Polychrome
explain their presence in these tombs must also account for the relative frequency with which the figured silks
various methods of decoration occur among them. In this respect it is particularly to be noted used for
that while among the rag-like remains of miscellaneous garments used for wrapping the bodies we face-covers.
find specimens of all the principal methods of decoration, custom appears to have limited those
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698
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