The two silk paintings reproduced in this Plate on the scale of one-fourth, and originally mounted as Kakemonos, present special interest on account of their subjects and treatment. The one above (Ch. liv. 007), according to the Chinese inscription in the left-hand top corner, dates from A. D. 897, and yet is painted in a style which, as pointed out by Mr. Binyon,82 looks distinctly earlier. It represents the Buddha Tejaḥprabha (‘radiant with light’) on a chariot which two bullocks draw, and surrounded by the genii of the five planets whom the inscription mentions. The same subject appears to be treated also in one of the finest of the wall-paintings of the Thousand Buddhas’ Caves.83

The Buddha is shown seated on a blue lotus which occupies the top of an open two-wheeled car. A draped altar placed in front of him across its shafts is decked with gilded vessels. Two elaborately decorated flags float behind the car, hung from slanting poles. The Buddha, whose figure alone in the picture shows distinct Indian convention, raises his right hand in the abhaya-mudrā. His flesh was originally gilded and his hair is shown blue. Rays of different colours radiate from his person, replacing a halo. Overhead a rich canopy waving in his advance symbolizes rapid movement. By the side of the trotting bullock strides a dark-skinned attendant, recalling the ‘Indian’ leaders of Mañjuśrī’s and Samantabhadra’s mounts, but carrying a mendicant’s staff instead of a goad and playing a sistrum with his left hand, as clearly seen in the original.

Of the genii represented two stand beyond the car dressed in Chinese official costume with trailing under-robes and wide-sleeved jackets. The one on the left carries a dish of flowers, and within the crown of his black head-dress appears a white boar’s head. The other on the right holds a brush and a tablet in his hands; between two loops of his elaborate head-dress there rises the figure of a monkey. A third, dressed all in white, plays upon a large lute with a very long plectrum;84 his head is surmounted by a phoenix. The figure of the fourth divinity is of demonic type, four-armed, with fiery hair and grotesque features. The right hands carry sword and arrow, and the left hands a trident and bow; above his crown is seen a horse’s head.

With the comparative stiffness of the figures contrasts the freedom of the whirling mass of cloud upon which the whole group is shown sweeping past as in a vision. The colouring is strong, yet harmonious, and the workmanship careful.

The picture below (Ch. lvii. 002), which is in excellent preservation and still retained its original Kakemono mounting of brown silk, is a noble composition strikingly different in style and entirely Chinese in feeling. It shows the figure of Avalokiteśvara, as Guide of Souls, drawn with much dignity and grace, and behind him an attendant soul represented on a smaller scale in the guise of a Chinese woman.

The figure of Avalokiteśvara, who turns head and gaze backwards over the left shoulder, is in physical features and dress a fine specimen of the ‘Chinese’ Bodhisattva type already repeatedly noticed. In his right hand he carries a smoking censer, in his left a curving lotus spray and a waving white banner with triangular top and streamers, the whole exactly alike in shape to the silk banners brought away from Ch‘ien-fo-tung. In the dress of soft and harmoniously blended colours the elaborate rosettes of the borders may be noted as manifestly reproducing contemporary textile patterns.

The figure of the woman behind, with her head bowed and hands muffled in wide sleeves at her breast, well expresses devout reliance on the divine guide. Her attire, by the brilliant colouring of the robes and the absence of the elaborate metal head-dress, stands out in marked contrast to the costume familiar from the donor figures of our tenth-century paintings. The purple cloud which carries both figures sweeps up behind them to the top of the picture. There a Chinese mansion resting on conventional cloud scrolls represents the Paradise to which Avalokiteśvara leads his worshippers.

By the evidence of the dress and coiffure of the Bodhisattva’s attendant, which seem to belong to post-T‘ang times, the painting may be classed amongst the latest of the deposit. But what for our appreciation of this beautiful picture must matter far more than this chronological difference is the fact that the style of its design and its refined execution give full and exclusive expression just to those qualities which are characteristic of Chinese pictorial art at its best. As Mr. Binyon, when comparing this picture with another presentation of Avalokiteśvara, the one reproduced in our Plate xlii, has pregnantly put it, ‘we have [here] a sense of suavity and flexile movement. Flowers seem really to be floating down the air, and the cloud on which the votaress follows the Bodhisattva coils up with a wavering motion. We feel the presence of the Chinese genius, with its instinct for living movement, and its love of sinuous line, and its reticent spacing.’85