This Plate reproduces the only painting (Ch. lii. 001, scale
three-fourths) among those brought away from the walled-up chapel which
is entirely Tibetan in style. The special interest it derives from
this fact is further increased by the probability of its being ‘the
oldest of its kind now in existence, or at least one of the oldest’.
Mr. Binyon in his Introduction[66] has already referred to the Tibetan
supremacy established in the Tun-huang region from the middle
of the eighth to the middle of the ninth century as explaining the
presence of this Tibetan painting. He has also lucidly discussed the
relation which links the art of Buddhist Tibet, in spite of its marked
and strangely persistent peculiarities, closely with Chinese art. My
remarks may hence be confined to the technique and iconography of the
painting.
The picture, which is preserved complete together with its frame of
dark green silk, is painted in tempera on strong close-woven linen. The
colours have generally darkened and in places have been rubbed off,
leaving whitish patches or the cloth bare.[67]
The subject is the goddess Tārā, the Śakti or female emanation of
Avalokiteśvara. The goddess, represented in her usual form as a
beautiful young woman, is seated in the centre on a variegated lotus
which floats on the blue water of a lake. She sits with her right knee
raised and the left leg bent across. The right hand with palm turned
outwards in the _vara-mudrā_ rests on the right knee, the left is at
the breast, both holding long curving sprays with a conventional blue
lotus at the end. The pose of the body slightly inclined to the right
is balanced by the head leaning in the opposite direction. The sinuous
line of the whole figure conforms to a characteristic tendency of
Tibetan art. The flesh had been gilded, but this gilding has almost
entirely worn off.
The goddess wears a dark red skirt and stole spangled with gilded
flowers. Her knees are covered with elaborately ornamented caps. Rich
jewellery decks neck and breast. Above her black hair bound with
scarlet fillets is set a five-leaved tiara with a high-peaked crown.
A nimbus of very dark green, now almost turned to black, sets off the
head, while behind the figure is shown an oval vesica with a rayed
border of rainbow-like colours.
On a dark cloud above the goddess’s head appears the small figure
of a Buddha seated in meditation with the alms-bowl in his lap. On
either side of him, on praying mats carried by dark green clouds,
sit two black-haloed saints wearing the peaked hoods of Lamas. Along
the sides of the picture are ranged eight subsidiary forms of Tārā,
differentiated by varying colours of flesh and dress. Their pose is the
same as that of the central goddess; the right hand rests on the knee,
holding a flask, and the left raises a long-stemmed blue lotus.
Interspersed between these subsidiary Tārās are shown six scenes of
deliverance from Calamities similar to those represented on the sides
of certain Paradise paintings, such as the one in Plates I, II. Not all
are intelligible; but we may note in the middle one on the left a man
being pushed over a cliff into the lake. In the scene opposite on the
right he is seen calmly kneeling on a lotus, flame-encircled, while
another man on the cliff above looks on in astonishment. In the left
bottom corner are seen three men pursued by different animals, and to
the right of them a barge-like boat sailing on the lake, with a fourth
man kneeling in prayer. The men throughout these scenes are shown in
Chinese secular costume such as is often seen in our Jātaka banners.
While these figures clearly point to a Chinese model of the scenes,
the demonic deity in the centre of the foreground shows characteristic
features of truly Tibetan taste. His squat dark blue figure sits
sideways on a yellow horse, brandishing a scarlet club in his right
hand. His hair is a flaming mass streaming upwards; a man’s bleeding
head hangs from his saddle-cloth. It is impossible to mistake here a
conception of that monstrous type which Tibetan Buddhism under the
influence of Tantra doctrines absorbed from India and under that of its
own demon worship has always greatly cherished.