The two pictures on paper reproduced in this Plate on the scale of three-fourths claim interest by their subjects as well as by their artistic merit. The one on the right (Ch. 00380) presents an aged hermit with a tiger walking by his side. The hermit is represented with a face extremely wrinkled, shaggy eyebrows, deeply sunken eyes and cheeks. With his right hand he leans upon a rough staff, in his left he carries a stick ending in a Vajra and fly-whisk. He wears sandals, long spotted trousers, and two tunics, the shorter of which is spotted, has long sleeves, and reaches below the waist. His head is covered by a mushroom hat put above a skull-cap and tied under the chin by scarlet bands. On his back is seen a bundle of manuscript rolls tied in a cover and slung by a chain to a thorny branch. The attachment of this branch to the hermit’s person is not clear; but in another picture of the same subject a pole supporting the bundle is shown as carried on his right shoulder.
On the further side of the old man there advances a tiger of disproportionately small size. Both figures stand on a cloud of dark red fire, and above them in the left top corner appears a small seated Buddha, also on a cloud. The paint used for the cloud scrolls has destroyed much of the paper, and of the figure too, where it was used on it. The only other colours are grey and a light pink, distributed over the clothing and figure, while the flesh is left uncoloured. The drawing of the hermit’s figure is done with masterly skill, especially in the features, to which impressive strength is imparted by a few lines combining firmness with great freedom.
Very different in character is the picture on the left (Ch. 00150), one of the very few non-Buddhistic paintings from the ‘Thousand Buddhas’. Its subject has not been determined with certainty, but may possibly be related to the story of how the Emperor Fu-hsi, the legendary founder of the Chinese polity, first received the system of written characters from a ‘horse-dragon’.69
Before the kneeling monster we see standing a bearded man, with smiling face, who holds tablet and brush in his hands in the act of writing. The back of his figure has been cut off when adapting the picture as a mount for the two woodcuts under which it was discovered. He is clad in a white-sleeved under-robe, long pink mantle, and a stiff black head-dress with a square ornament stuck in front. A branching column of flame rises from the tablet. Others stream from the dragon’s head and body.
The dragon is a composite monster. The head is of a conventional lion-like type, with voluminous upstanding mane, out of which rise three sharp-pointed objects resembling mountain peaks. The body suggests that of a scaly snake, with wings of curling feathers attached and with the forelegs of a bull (?). In the foreground lies a string of square-holed Chinese coins, an emblem the meaning of which at present escapes us. The whole is drawn with much vigour and, in spite of the fearsome appearance of the monster, with a distinct touch of humour.