II

The pictorial treasures brought away from Tun-huang by Sir Aurel, and

now divided between the Indian Government and the British Museum,

consist of votive paintings (mostly on silk, though a certain number

are on paper) of various sizes, some being as much as six or seven feet

high; of a long series of small banners on silk and larger banners on

linen; of one or two magnificent specimens of embroidery, the finest of

which is reproduced (Pls. XXXIV and XXXV); of outline drawings, and of

woodcuts.

The present publication is intended to illustrate the specimens which

have most importance for the study of Eastern art.

The paintings and drawings, with a few unimportant exceptions, are all

of Buddhist inspiration. At first sight the limitation of scope and the

repetition of similar themes may give an impression of monotony. Closer

study reveals a remarkable variety. This variety is due to differences

of style, which are accounted for partly by the different dates, still

more by the different localities at which they were produced, partly by

the very varying degrees of skill in the painters who produced them.

Being all found in one place, the paintings might be supposed to be all

the product of a single local school. But this is certainly not the

case, as a brief examination shows at once. There are specimens (of

little account as art) which are purely Indian in style and probably

Nepalese; there are examples of the well-defined Tibetan type of

Buddhist picture; there are paintings which are entirely Chinese; and

there are, lastly, a number which contain Indian, Chinese, and possibly

Tibetan elements in varying proportions, but are in an intermediate

style and may safely be held to be the product of local schools of

Chinese Turkestān, and of the region which, on the east, joins it to

China proper.

Until a few years ago, scarcely anything was known in Europe of

Buddhist painting beyond the famous frescoes of Ajaṇṭā in India and

Buddhist paintings by Japanese masters, of which the frescoes in the

Horiuji Temple at Nara are among the oldest and most celebrated. It

was known that the Japanese modelled their work closely on Chinese

tradition; and a few Chinese Buddhist paintings of early periods are

preserved in Japan; but while an extensive series of ancient Japanese

_Butsu-yé_ exists, corresponding specimens from China are very rare

indeed. And if the early Buddhist art of China was little known, still

less was known of the intermediate links in the tradition which passed

on from India to China through Turkestān. But now, through successive

explorations and discoveries, the story of Buddhist art and the phases

of its progress eastwards through Asia are fairly plain and familiar.

And some of the most illuminating and important documents have been

supplied by the discoveries of Sir Aurel Stein.

In the paintings with which we are dealing, the Indian element is

obviously very strong, just as ‘The Caves of the Thousand Buddhas’,

where they were found, were hollowed out of the cliff in obedience to

immemorial Indian tradition: we are reminded at once of the frescoed

caves of Ajaṇṭā. But there are other elements besides the Indian, as we

shall see.

How did Buddhism penetrate into Central Asia? From India proper it

travelled by way of the extreme north-west frontier, the valley

of Peshawar, then known as the kingdom of Gandhāra; thence to the

countries lying north, and so eastwards by the great trade-route across

the desert to China. Gandhāra is the first stage of this long journey:

and it was in Gandhāra that the Buddhist art of the Further East, as

we know it, was first formulated. The now well-known sculptures of

Gandhāra, a fine series of which may be seen in the British Museum,

date from about the first century of our era to about the sixth. They

represent a late Hellenistic tradition put to the service of the

Indian religion. It was in Gandhāra that the types of Buddhist art

became fixed. It was there that the type of Śākyamuni himself was

first invented, or rather adapted from the ideal forms of Hellenistic

sculpture. For some centuries after the Buddha’s death, Indian artists

had always refrained from representing the image of the Lord.

The Hellenistic element, apparent in poses, in drapery, in decorative

motifs like the acanthus-ornament, tends to become submerged in

the later phases of the art, though something of it still persists

recognizably in the Buddhist art of remote Japan, even to-day. At a

desert site of Khotan, the little kingdom lying at the southern edge

of the Taklamakān Desert, beyond the mountains on the north-eastern

frontier of Ladākh and Kashmir, Sir Aurel Stein found on his first

expedition (1900–1) the remains of settlements abandoned to the

encroaching sand about the third century A.D. Among these remains were

heaps of letters and documents written in early Indian script and

language on wooden tablets, tied with string and sealed; and in most

cases the seal was a Greek seal, engraved with a figure of Athene,

Heracles, or other deity. Again, at Mīrān, a site near Lop-nōr and much

further east, Sir Aurel, on his second expedition, discovered Buddhist

shrines adorned with frescoes of about the fourth century A.D. painted

in the style of late classical tradition.

Fascinating as are these traces of Greece and the West in the midst

of the Asian deserts, the influence of Hellenism was not profound or

formative. India was the main influence on the culture of the cities

once flourishing along the chain of oases in the deserts west of China,

Buddhism the great civilizing factor, and Gandhāra the source from

which the local schools of art drew their inspiration. Gandhāra art was

itself not without some admixture from Persian sources; and Iranian

motives of decoration are found in these desert sites, as they are

found in China itself, just as some of the Tun-huang manuscripts are

written in the Iranian dialect called Sogdian. The art of Turkestān is

full of mixed influences, the reflection of its civilization.

And what of China? For during the second century B.C. and the

two centuries following China pursued a policy of political and

military expansion westward, with a view to opening up trade-routes,

consolidating her frontiers and protecting them from the ravages of

the Huns and other tribes; and Eastern Turkestān became a Chinese

protectorate. Though afterwards China’s hold became weakened and

her power receded, in the seventh century A.D., under an Emperor of

the great T‘ang dynasty, the whole region came again under Chinese

government, and the Empire’s political sphere of influence was extended

as far as the borders of Persia and the shores of the Caspian. But

Chinese influence seems to have been confined mainly to administration,

and to have affected but little the culture of the people, though

traces of it are discernible in their arts and industries, ever more

marked as we go further east.

This way passed the old great high road between east and west, by

which the Chinese silks were carried overland to Antioch and the

Roman Empire. It was a highway for commerce, but also for ideas and

religions. And the early centuries of our era were marked by an

extraordinary ferment of mystical beliefs both in east and west. While

Christianity and Mithraism were contending for supremacy in the Roman

Empire, Buddhism was making its victorious progress eastwards. But

it was no longer the simple ethical doctrine preached by Gautama.

Mahāyāna Buddhism, as the later development of Buddhism is called—the

Great Vehicle, as opposed to the Hīnayāna, or Small Vehicle, of the

original doctrine—was first formulated about the first century A.D.

It was no longer the salvation of the individual which was the aim of

the devout, but the salvation of the whole world, towards which the

Bodhisattvas strive unceasingly out of their boundless love for every

sentient being. The Bodhisattvas in this new phase of Buddhism became

more and more the object of popular worship. They are either men who,

having won the right to enter Buddhahood, refuse that peace for the

sake of suffering mankind, or else celestial beings who assume a human

form. Of this last order of beings is Avalokiteśvara, whom the Chinese

know as Kuan-yin, and the Japanese as Kwannon; the favourite object

of adoration in Mahāyāna Buddhism. He appears in art both in male and

female form. In later art the female form is almost universal, but in

the Tun-huang paintings the male form is predominant. Avalokiteśvara is

the spiritual son of Amitābha, the impersonal Buddha, the Light of the

Enlightened; and Amitābha is said to have created a Paradise in the

West, where souls who believe in him may be born and rest for a long

age, or in popular belief for ever. Śākyamuni, we note, has no longer

the supreme position, though sometimes he is painted as reigning over a

Paradise, or, as in the large embroidery-picture (Pl. XXXIV), standing

on the Vulture Peak, the scene of his last teaching.

As Avalokiteśvara is incarnate Pity, so, among other great

Bodhisattvas, Mañjuśrī embodies the Spirit of Wisdom, Samantabhadra

stands for the power of the Church, Kṣitigarbha is the breaker of the

powers of Hell and the illuminator of its darkness. Bhaiṣajyarāja is

the lord of medicine; and Maitreya is the Buddha that is to come.

Besides the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, the Lokapālas or Demon Kings who

guard each one of the Four Quarters of the World are frequent figures

in art. These are survivals of primitive demon-worship adopted into

Buddhism.

The subjects of the Tun-huang paintings are, then, single figures

of Bodhisattvas, especially of Avalokiteśvara, or of the Lokapālas;

small pictures of scenes from Gautama’s life, or the Jātakas, stories

of his lives in previous incarnations; and representations of the

Western Paradise. This last subject is sometimes highly elaborated,

with an immense number of figures of the blest grouped in pavilions

and terraces built about a lotus lake. Flowers are rained through the

air, and celestial beings dance and sing for the delight of the souls

dwelling in the Happy Land of Amitābha’s creation.

All this carries us far indeed from the Four Noble Truths and the

Eightfold Path—the simple doctrine in which Śākyamuni taught the means

of Salvation here on earth. Much of this later Buddhism was doubtless

an accretion from other faiths with which it came in contact on its

progress through Asia. Amitābha may be a borrowing from the worship

of Mithras; and certain of the Bodhisattvas may have been originally

deified heroes of lands into which Buddhism made its way. In Eastern

Turkestān, Manichaeism, the religion founded by the Persian Mani in the

third century A.D., found a home; and at Turfān—one of the oases which

have been explored—Manichaeans, Buddhists, and Christians were living

peaceably side by side.

For the study of religion, then, the art found in the various sites

on the borders of the Taklamakān and Lop deserts is of extraordinary

interest. But, as art, it is of a local and provincial type, and though

often of considerable merit, it nowhere rises beyond a certain level.