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Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.1 |
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IP
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476 THE FRESCOES OF MIRAN CH. XLII O6
With the same aim they are given the air of rising ill
towards him ; this is expressed by the inclination of the f1
shoulders and the graceful upward curve of the wings, 1
which with their long feathers separated at the extremities
distinctly suggest fluttering. 01
But where did the conception of these youthful winged
figures originally take shape, and how did they come to be o d
depicted here on the walls of a Buddhist temple ? The ! 1
first of these questions is more difficult to answer with pre-
cision than might appear at first thought. If we take into it
account the general classical basis of all this art and the iM
winged forms occasionally met with in Graeco-Buddhist ii
relievos as representations of certain divine attendants, we ,i
can scarcely resist the conclusion that it is the young it
winged Eros of Greek mythology to whom these figures of o
the Miran dado must be traced back as their ultimate
ancestor. But there is plenty to warn us that this descent
01
cannot have been without intermediate stages in which an
lil
infiltration of Oriental conceptions has left its mark. To b
put it quite plainly, the figures before us, with their youth- a
ful but not childlike looks, their low-cut garments and it
quasi-sexless features, suggest far more closely the angels
it
of some early Christian Church than the love-gods which originally served as their models. If
li
the possibility of influence exercised by early Christian iconography should seem too startling, it will be well to remember that the idea of angels as winged celestial messengers was familiar to more than one religious system
of Western Asia long before the rise of Christianity, and ii
was in particular firmly established within the region of ancient Iran through which all elements of classical art and culture must have passed before being transplanted to Central Asia. Nowhere in the Hellenized East, not even in Egypt, have graphic representations of angels survived from a sufficiently early period to throw light on the
question as to where and when the Cupids of classical mythology underwent transformation into that type of
winged figures which the painter of the Miran fresco dado made use of for the decoration of a Buddhist shrine. Yet there is so distinct a suggestion of Semitic traits in most
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