The small picture (Ch. lxi. 009) reproduced here on half-scale is remarkable for its peculiar colour scheme and for its archaic appearance in composition and drawing. It represents Kṣitigarbha in his combined character as Patron of Travellers, Regent of Hell, and Lord of the Six Worlds of Desire. We have already above, when dealing with the paintings reproduced in Plate xxv, had occasion to indicate briefly the several functions which have made this Bodhisattva one of the most popular figures in the Buddhist Pantheon of the Far East.86 Our observations here may, therefore, be restricted to particular features of his presentation.

The picture is painted on indigo blue silk which, though much broken, especially on the edges, yet retains the strong colours of the painting in great freshness. Kṣitigarbha in stiff hieratic attitude is seated on a red Padmāsana with his left leg resting on a small lotus and the right bent across. With his right hand raised he grasps the mendicant’s staff, while the left, palm uppermost, is held outwards empty. Over an under-robe of yellow with vermilion border he carries a maroon-bordered mantle of perished colour, while a traveller’s shawl of maroon covers head and shoulders. Gilded diamonds sprinkle shawl and borders. The face and breast are gilded, but the exposed portions of the limbs are painted light red.

From the large circular halo in blue, vermilion, and white spread out on either side three waving rays in the same colours, intended to bear figures representative of the Six Worlds (gati) as seen in Plate xxv; but these have not been drawn in. On either side of the Bodhisattva stands an amply robed figure with hands in adoration. From the fashion in which the hair of the figure on the left is done in two knobs it can be recognized as a man, while the hair descending in a roll on the neck of the other figure marks it as a woman. Whether the donor and his wife are intended is not certain.

In slanting rows descending from Kṣitigarbha’s lotus seat the Ten Infernal Judges are shown sitting on their heels, five on each side. They wear magisterial robes with head-dresses of varying shapes and carry narrow rolls of paper in their hands. Their faces, drawn in three-quarter profile, show some endeavour at individual characterization. Behind them on the right stand two men, with belted coats and wide-brimmed hats, holding a small and a very large roll of paper respectively. A third man, in a corresponding position on the left, carries what appears to be a writing-brush.

In the foreground we see again, crouching, a white lion, of very stylized form. A man’s figure, probably representing the soul of a departed, stands in adoring pose at its head, while on the opposite side another person with grotesque features raises his hands imploringly towards Kṣitigarbha. Both as regards its archaic style of design and its peculiar hard colouring the picture has no pendant in our collection. But, as Mr. Binyon has justly observed, it remains at present uncertain ‘whether the primitive features may not be due to provincial style preserving old tradition rather than to actual antiquity’.87