Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.2 / Page 563 (Color Image)

0563	Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.2

iconoclastic zeal and atmospheric influences, plentiful spoil
rewarded our systematic clearing.
The deep débris layers filling the interior of the
larger shrines yielded a great quantity of fine relievo
sculpture in stucco, much of it fragmentary and small in
size, yet of great artistic merit. In all cases of good
preservation the stucco (recte, mud plaster) was quite
hard, a result evidently due to the effective firing which
these pieces had undergone when the shrines were burnt
down. In the same shrines some larger relievo figures,
as seen in Fig. 269, had escaped more or less from the
effect of the conflagration through their position low down
in sheltered corners. But these had owing to damp become
so soft and rotten that any attempt to remove them would
have caused complete collapse. So I learned to feel grate-
ful for the catastrophe which had helped to preserve the
rest for us.
The remarkable abundance of delicately carved heads,
busts, or torsos, as seen in Figs. 270, 271, which came to light
from the débris of certain cellas—I gathered them by the
hundreds—was due to the fact that the decoration there
had largely consisted of relievo friezes running round the
walls at some height. The rows of holes for the wooden
supports of these friezes could still be discerned in places,
as seen at the top of Fig. 269. The burning of the timber
and other inflammable materials within the shrines had
quickly calcined these friable relievos where they stood ; and
by the time the projecting stucco masses fell away, the débris
on the floor had accumulated sufficiently to mitigate the
fall and protect the fragments. To attempt any reconstruc-
tion of the scenes which might have been represented in
those friezes would be hazardous at the present stage. But
the pieces reproduced in Figs. 270, 271 from the spoil of one
or two of the cellas, will give some idea of the striking
variety of types and the strongly marked classical influence
displayed in their style.
Some of the heads, indeed, are as classical in modelling
and expression as any to be found among the Graeco-
Buddhist sculptures of Gandhara (Figs. 270, 272). Thus,
the bearded heads are unmistakably derived from the

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