The art and architecture of India - Buddhist, Hindu, Jain (Art Ebook)

174 ROMANO-INDIAN ART
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schematized representation of the celestial
regions and the mystical Buddhas presiding
over them. Numerous examples of the lantern
roof may be seen in the rock-cut architecture of
Central Asia. The form was reproduced in the
stone temple architecture of Kashmir that in
many respects was a prolongation of the architecture
of Gandhara. It is finally reduced to a
completely flat design and typifying a mandala
painted on the ceilings of the Thousand Buddha
Caves at Tun-huang in China. Cave XI at
Bamiyan, immediately to the east of the one-
1 17. Bamiyan, Cave XI, dome
118. Bamiyan, Cave XI, reconstruction of dome
hundred-and-seventy-five-foot Buddha, has a
dome composed of an elaborate coffering of
triangles, diamonds, and hexagons around a
central octagon in a six-pointed star [117]. This
central space, as well as the hexagonal compartments
and the niches at the base of the cupola,
were originally filled with seated Buddha
images, so that this dome, too, was a kind of
mandala with the Buddhas of all the directions
of space circling about the Buddha of the zenith
[118]. The stylistic arrangement of this ceiling
comes direct from the Roman West, where
similar coffering may be seen in the Temple of
Bacchus at Baalbek and in Roman mosaics. 17
The surviving fragments of wall-paintings at
Bamiyan present no less interesting and even
more complicated problems than the remains of
sculpture. Three categories or styles of painting
may be found at this site: one pure Sasanian,
one Indian, and a third that can only be
described as Central Asian in character. The
actual technique of all is essentially the same.
The rock walls and vaults of the caves and
niches were covered with a layer of mud mixed
with chopped straw. A final thin layer of lime
plaster provided the ground for the actual painting
in colours largely manufactured out of local
earths and minerals. The paintings still decorating
the top of the niche and the soffit of the vault
above the one-hundred-and-twenty-foot Buddha
are entirely Sasanian in style. The massive
figures of donors that alternate with figures of
Buddhas on a level with the head of the great
statue are the pictorial equivalents of images in
the Sasanian rock-cut reliefs at Naqsh-i-
Rustam and Shapur. The same massive bulk
and frozen lifeless dignity that characterize the
reliefs of the Iranian kings are here translated
into painting. Typically Sasanian, too, is the
essentially flat, heraldic patterning of the forms
that is particularly noticeable in the enormous
decoration of the ceiling of the niche representing
a solar divinity in a quadriga [119]. It is a
pictorial version of the relief of Surya at Bodh