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

l86 ROMANO-INDIAN ART
•
Period, with only a remote connexion with
Indian prototypes. It will be possible to give
only a sampling of this enormous amount of
material.
In Central Asia, as at Bamiyan, which is in
itself in the westernmost reaches of Turkestan,
we are confronted with a great variety of styles
in sculpture and painting, many of them
existing contemporaneously, and likewise testifying
to the cosmopolitan or international
character of Central Asian civilization. What
are probably the earliest remains of Buddhist
art in Central Asia were discovered by Sir Aurel
Stein at the oasis of Miran on the southern trade
route about three hundred miles to the west of
Tun-huang. In the ruins of a circular edifice
enclosing a stupa there was brought to light a
considerable collection of stucco sculpture and
wall-paintings that are the easternmost extension
of the Gandhara style. 2
The paintings at Miran, which at one time
completely covered the interior walls of the
circular sanctuary, consisted of a frieze of
Jataka scenes and a dado painted with busts
of winged divinities and erotes supporting a
garland. These paintings bear the signature of
a certain Tita or Titus, who was presumably a
journeyman painter from the eastern provinces
of the Roman Empire. The Jataka scenes are a
translation into pictorial terms of the same
subjects as treated in Gandhara relief sculpture.
The decoration of the dado with the winged
busts and planetary divinities framed in the
swags of a garland [126] has its equivalent in
Gandhara sculpture, most notably on the
famous reliquary of King Kanishka. The origins
126. Miran, sanctuary, detail of painting on dado