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

CHAPTER 12
BUDDHIST ART IN TURKESTAN
5^
For our purpose of indicating the spread of
Indian art beyond the actual geographical
boundary of the Indian peninsula, the history
of art in Central Asia can be said to begin with
the introduction of Buddhism to this region in
the early centuries of the Christian era. By
Central Asia we mean the territory extending to
to the north and east of the Hindu Kush and
Pamir mountain ranges eastward to the Gobi
Desert. It is a plain without outlet, bounded on
the north by the T'ien Shan range, by the
Pamirs on the west, and by the Altai and Kuenlun
mountains of Tibet to the south. Eastward
lies China. In such a region life was sustained
on a chain of oases girdling the desert basin or
along the courses of rivers like the Tarim.
Throughout the period in which we are
interested - roughly the first millennium of our
era -a northern and southern trade route skirted
the edges of the Taklamakan Desert. The two
routes join at Kashgar, and at this point east of
the Pamirs was the 'Stone Tower' (Lithinos
Pyrgos) mentioned by Ptolemy as the meetingplace
for silent barter between traders from the
two ends of the world. 1 It was along these
arteries that the Buddhist kingdoms separating
India and China sprang up at the isolated oases
on the fringe of the desert. They provided both
a barrier and a link between the two poles of the
Buddhist world.
As early as the first century a.d. these
territories
were disputed by the Kushans and
the armies of Han China. Kanishka is believed
to have extended his conquests as far east as
Khotan. For the next four or five hundred years
the oases along the highway linking the
western world with China were dominated by a
number of semi-independent kingdoms, tributary
in some measure to either India or China.
We can get a remarkably clear idea of the
importance of Central Asia for Buddhism and
its art from the accounts of the pilgrims Fa
Hsien and Hsiian-tsang, who travelled over
Turkestan in the fifth and seventh centuries
a.d. Their descriptions of the courts of Kucha
and Khotan are hardly less enthusiastic than
their admiration for the great sites of Buddhism
in India proper.
The extraordinary riches of Buddhist art in
Central Asia were revealed by many archaeological
expeditions in the first decades of the
twentieth century. A number of German
expeditions headed by Albert von Le Coq
brought to light the wall-paintings at Kizil and
Turfan. The most arduous and scholarly
exploration of sites along those northern and
southern trade routes was conducted by Sir
Aurel Stein over a period of nearly three
decades.
Other expeditions sponsored by the
Japanese under Count Otani and the Imperial
Russian Government under Baron Oldenburg
added further to our knowledge of this once
flourishing centre of Buddhist civilization.
The art of Central Asia divides itself into two
main parts: one, centred around Kashgar
and Kizil, at the western end of the trade route,
the other farther east, located in the Turfan
oasis. The paintings and sculptures of the
former sites were for the most part decorations
of Hinayana Buddhist establishments, and
should be dated no later than the sixth century
a.d. The work at Turfan, some of which dates
from as late as the ninth century a.d., is really a
provincial form of Chinese art of the T'ang