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The Thousand Buddhas / Ancient Buddhist Paintings from the Cave-Temples of Tun-huang on the Western Frontier of China cover

The Thousand Buddhas / Ancient Buddhist Paintings from the Cave-Temples of Tun-huang on the Western Frontier of China

Chapter 45: PLATE XLIV FRAGMENT OF STANDING AVALOKITEŚVARA
By Sir Aurel Stein
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About This Book

The volume presents reproductions and detailed descriptions of ancient Buddhist paintings recovered from a sealed cave-temple complex on China’s western frontier. An introductory essay situates the images within Buddhist iconography and traces artistic influences from Indian, Central Asian, and Chinese sources. The main body catalogs individual plates with concise iconographic identifications, notes on composition, color, preservation, donor inscriptions, and related legends, and discusses large mandala compositions and variations of Bodhisattva and Buddha imagery. Technical remarks describe conservation and curatorial efforts undertaken to unfold, clean, and mount fragile silk paintings. Appendices and commentary provide comparative material and interpretive guidance for non-specialist students of Far Eastern religious art.

PLATE XLIV
FRAGMENT OF STANDING AVALOKITEŚVARA

XLIV

This Plate shows the remaining upper portion of a large silk painting (Ch. 00451, scale one-third) which represented Avalokiteśvara standing without attendants. Considerably broken as the painting is and injured in its surface, we recognize in it a fine pendant to the Avalokiteśvara picture reproduced in Plate xxi. Here, too, we see a figure of the conventional ‘Indian’ Bodhisattva type imbued with that grace and refined quality which Chinese mastery of fluid line and reposeful design is specially able to impart.

The physical type and the pose of the body, with its inclination to the left shoulder, closely correspond to those seen in Plate xxi. But here this line is counterbalanced by the pose of the head, which leans gently over the right shoulder. The eyes are turned back to the left proper and look down with an expression of mildness and compassion. They are almost straight, and the recurving line added to the eyelids is here absent. Of the willow spray in the right hand only a few faint indications remain.

The dress, jewellery, and colouring agree closely with those displayed by the figure in Plate xxi. But more remains here of the white shaded with pink which is used for the colouring of the body. The nimbus is made up of plain circular rings of dark olive, red, and white. The Chinese inscription of the cartouche to the right still awaits interpretation.