The painting (Ch. liii. 001) which this Plate successfully reproduces in colours, on the scale of three-eighths of the original, is a good representative of the small but interesting class of what may be designated as simplified Paradise pictures. We see in it Amitābha enthroned on a lotus between Avalokiteśvara and Mahāsthāma, with two lesser Bodhisattvas in front and a row of well-individualized disciples behind. No lake is represented; but a comparison with the painting represented in the next Plate, xi, with which ours shares a number of marked peculiarities in composition, style, colour, and treatment, suffices to show that a representation of Amitābha’s Heaven is intended.

Amitābha is seated with legs interlocked and his right hand raised in the usual vitarka-mudrā. His flesh is yellow shaded with red which has changed to a curious iridescent mauve; his hair a bright blue. His mantle, vivid crimson, is wrapped round both shoulders, its drapery reproducing all details of the arrangement which Graeco-Buddhist sculpture had borrowed from Hellenistic art and handed over to be stereotyped with hieratic convention in the Buddha figures of Central Asia and the Far East. The lotus, his seat, is raised on a high stepped pedestal and has its pink petals covered all over with beautiful floral scrolls in white, blue, and black. Similar rich scroll-work adorns the base of the pedestal and reappears on the canopy which hangs above the Buddha’s head, raised on two trees. Their stems are treated like jewelled poles, and their large star-shaped leaves are arranged in whorls enclosing conical clusters of red fruit. An Apsaras sweeps down on either side, scattering flowers; her floating garments and the gracefully curling clouds which support her express rapidity of movement.

Avalokiteśvara and Mahāsthāma occupy well-designed, if less ornate, lotus seats, the former raising a flaming jewel in his left hand and the latter an alms-bowl. Among the multicoloured jewellery with which they are bedecked, the Dhyāni-buddha set in front of the tiara may be mentioned. Below them are seated two lesser Bodhisattvas, in similarly rich dress and adornment, the one, in profile, holding a red lotus, the other, in three-quarters profile, a flask. Their foreshortened elliptical haloes in green and the transparent light blue stoles deserve notice.

A particularly interesting element is introduced into the celestial company by the six disciples ranged behind the triad, three a side in ascending tier. They all have the shaven heads of monks and plump solid features; but their alert faces are well individualized and the expression markedly varies, from the jovial smile of the second figure on the right to the serious and even severe look of the last on the left. It is specially regrettable here that, as in so many of our paintings, the cartouches above the different divine figures have not been filled in. The red lotus bud carried by the last disciple on the left and the priest’s staff in the hand of the corresponding figure on the right do not help to identify them, nor do the crossbars on their mantles. The haloes of all these figures, including those of the triad, are only outlined in narrow rings of red and white, the interior being shown as practically transparent—not a usual treatment.

Below Amitābha’s lotus seat, and partly covering the front of its pedestal, is the panel for the dedicatory inscription, in the form of a stone slab with a low arched top, carried on the back of a tortoise. Unfortunately the dedication was never inscribed, and we are thus left without means for exactly dating this interesting picture. But very valuable help in this direction is afforded by what remains of the figures of the donors in the bottom corners. That of the man on the right is lost, except for the top of his cap. But that of the wife kneeling on the left is complete and a figure of great charm. It is manifestly a portrait, painted with considerable skill, and was deservedly chosen by M. Petrucci for full-size reproduction in the Vignette of the present publication.

The lady kneels on a mat, her hands holding a long-stemmed red flower. The pose and face admirably express pious devotion. The delicate treatment of the features distinctly recalls that of female heads in a silk painting, unfortunately very fragmentary, which I recovered in 1915 from a seventh-century Chinese tomb at Turfān. The lady’s costume, with its pleated skirt high under the arms, small bodice with long narrow sleeves, and little crossover shawl, as well as her hair plainly done in a small knot on the neck, represent a fashion distinctly older than that to be seen in the donatrices’ figures of our earliest dated picture (see Pl. xvi) of a.d. 864. We find the same indications of an early date in the dresses and coiffures worn by the donors and donatrices in the silk painting Ch. xlvii. 001 (Pl. xi), which shares many peculiarities of our picture, and also in the undoubtedly ancient embroidery picture shown in Plates xxxiv, xxxv.16

This chronological observation lends special interest to a notable point of technique, the use of ‘high lights’ to bring out the modelling of the flesh, in addition to ordinary colour shading. This is very conspicuous in the faces of the monkish disciples, and equally striking also in most of the figures in Plate xi, but it cannot be traced elsewhere among our Ch‘ien-fo-tung paintings. The western origin of this system of modelling has been duly emphasized by Mr. Binyon.17