It has been mentioned that a series of Nepalese paintings of
Bodhisattvas were found at Tun-huang. These are precious documents,
because of the extreme rarity of Indian paintings of so early a period;
but as their artistic interest is but slight, they have not been
chosen for illustration. Plate XXXI reproduces a Tibetan painting. The
territory of Tun-huang was conquered by the Tibetans in the middle of
the eighth century A.D., and till the middle of the ninth century the
Tibetan power was dominant. Quantities of Tibetan Buddhist writings
were found in the cave: and among the paintings this one, certainly,
is entirely Tibetan in style. (Two Tibetan drawings are reproduced on
Pl. XXXII.) It is of the same type as the numerous pictures brought
from Tibet itself in recent years, collections of which are in the
British Museum, and in other museums of Europe and America. With regard
to these pictures the question of date has always been a matter of
conjecture. Many are darkened by incense-smoke, which in a few years
can give an appearance of impressive antiquity. The probability is
that the Tun-huang specimen dates from about the tenth century, and,
if so, it is likely to be the oldest of its kind now in existence, or
at the least one of the oldest. It is painted in distemper on linen, a
technique favoured by the Tibetan artists.
But how did this Tibetan art grow up? What is the indigenous element
in it? Buddhism was only introduced into the country in the seventh
century, and whether Tibet had any art to speak of before its
introduction we do not know. In Tibetan Buddhism the Tantra system
of magic and witchcraft, and the worship of demons (supposed to be
converted by Buddha and to be vassals under his sovereignty), play a
dominant part; and in the paintings the forms are often monstrous and
horrible, the colouring sombrely splendid. But the harmonies of fluid,
sinuous line, for which they are even more remarkable, seem to be an
element borrowed from Chinese art and carried to excess in Tibet. If
we compare for a moment this painting with, for instance, the one
reproduced on Plate XLII, we see how much this element counts for. And
on the whole it seems likeliest to suppose that Tibetan painting is
rather an offshoot of Chinese art, developed in a certain direction,
and so acquiring a special character, than a native growth. But of this
we cannot be certain.
Plate XLII illustrates, much reduced, an imposing example of the kind
of painting in a mixed style which flourished in Eastern Turkestān.
Note how the flowers dropping through the air suggest none of that
sense of the fragility of flowers, and of their light floating on the
air, which the Chinese artist knows instinctively how to give: they are
heavy and motionless. There is a certain rigidity and solidity in the
whole picture; and the effect of solidity is consciously aimed at by
the system of modelling the central figure in two tones of colour. This
system is carried yet further in Plate X, where high lights on nose and
forehead (blackened through oxidization in some places) have been added
in white. Compare also Plate XI, illustrating a very large painting of
similar character, full of the most interesting detail (note the babies
enclosed within the lotus-buds, souls of the blessed about to be born
into Paradise). These pictures are painted in what Sir Aurel Stein
calls ‘the fresco style’, because they repeat on silk the manner of
the fresco paintings of Tun-huang. In all these pictures the Chinese
element is present but not dominant; and the system of modelling in two
tones of colour comes, we cannot doubt, from the west. It is true that
it was sometimes copied by the Chinese in their Buddhist paintings, as
we know from early Japanese examples following Chinese prototypes: but
the Chinese of T‘ang times were intensely interested in the western
countries; they liked to introduce figures of people from those regions
into their pictures; and, as we know, a painter from Khotan settled in
China in the eighth century and had great success there. But the desire
to suggest mass and roundness by means of modelling in painting was
against the instincts of the Chinese and Japanese; it occurs only in
certain Buddhist pictures, the survival of a borrowing from the west
preserved by hieratic tradition.
One of the finest of all the Tun-huang pictures is not a painting but
a piece of embroidery. Unfortunately it does not lend itself well to
photography in colour; and its quality and impressive character are
merely suggested in the small Plate (Pl. XXXIV) and in the detail
with a group of donors (Pl. XXXV). Though merely the reproduction
by craftsmen of a master’s work, it shows such skill and taste in
execution, it is so fine in colour, and so well preserved, that it must
be ranked with the very finest of the paintings as an indication of the
grandeur of the Buddhist art of T‘ang.
[1] For the wall-paintings and sculptures of the cave-temples of
Tun-huang, see now the fine reproductions in M. Paul Pelliot’s _Les
Grottes de Touen-houang, Peintures et Sculptures des époques des Wei,
des T‘ang et des Song_ (Paris, Paul Geuthner, in progress).
DESCRIPTIVE ACCOUNT OF PICTURES FROM THE CAVES OF THE THOUSAND BUDDHAS
AT TUN-HUANG