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

196 ROMANO-INDIAN ART
Turkish culture with many elements of Western
and Iranian origin was greatly influenced by its
contact with the Chinese. The great series of
wall-paintings from the monastery of Bezeklik,
divided between the Museum for Central Asian
Antiquities in New Delhi and the Ethnological
Museum in Berlin, bear inscriptions in Chinese
and Brahmi. The principal panels consist of
enormous, almost identical compositions representing
the Buddha Sakyamuni in various
earlier incarnations, greeting the Buddhas of
these past eras. c The figures themselves show
exactly the same synthesis of Indian and
Chinese elements as distinguishes the mature
art of the T'ang Period in China. Both Chinese
and Indian types are represented :
the draperies
of the Buddhas are drawn in linear version of the
Gandhara formula; the architectural details
and the floral patterns of the frames are completely
Chinese. The heads of the Buddhas, in
their suggestion of the spheroidal mass of the
head in a completely linear technique, conform
to Chinese Buddhist painting of the eighth and
ninth centuries a.d.
Among the archaeological finds in the Turfan
region were numerous illuminated manuscripts
dedicated to the Manichaean faith, a syncretistic
religion of Iranian origin that had found favour
with the Uighur chiefs. The style of these
brilliantly coloured book-illustrations has many
reminiscences of Late-Antique and Near-
Eastern art forms. It probably represents a
perpetuation of a Sasanian style of painting kept
alive by the Manichaean tradition. 9
The Buddhist art of Central Asia comes to an
end with the eastward advance of Mohammedanism.
As early as the eighth century, the
monasteries of Kizil were devastated by the
Islamic ruler of Kashgar, and by the tenth
century only the easternmost reaches of Turkestan
had escaped the rising tide ofMohammedan
conquest. The Uighur civilization in this region
From classical times to the days of Marco
Polo Central Asia was the bridge of trade,
religion, and culture that spanned the world
between East and West. The stations along the
Silk Roads were visited by traders when
Ptolemy wrote his Geography and by the
Chinese pilgrims who recorded their travels in
diaries from the fifth to the ninth centuries a.d.
Even in these remote periods life in the centres
of culture along the trade routes was always one
of precarious tension before the ever-present
menace of the barbarian nomads who moved in
waves across the wastes of Siberia to the north.
Although the little kingdoms of Khotan and
Kucha enjoyed autonomy under the eyes of the
great powers of India and China, they were for
many centuries hardly more than protectorates
of these states. Life depended on trade and on
the constant vigilant supervision of the irrigation
systems that alone made possible the
fertility of the oases. Once these systems were
destroyed, as they were by the Arabic and
Mongol invaders, the desert quickly and
inexorably buried the silent palaces and temples.
This total desolation along the length of the old
Silk Roads makes the landscape of Central Asia
appear like vistas on the moon. The setting of
the civilization which the early expeditions of
Stein and von Le Coq resurrected from its
shroud of sand gives the impression of the total
death of a culture even more than ancient Egypt
and Mesopotamia, so deserted and totally
removed do these poor ruins appear from any
ensuing culture. It is perhaps this complete
extinction that makes it possible to regard
Central Asia and its art with a completee
objectivity and detachment. The ravages of th
Mongols, and the mortifying hand of Islam that
has caused so many cultures to wither for ever
aided by the process of nature, completely
stopped the life of what must for a period of
centuries have been one of the regions of the
earth most gifted in art and religion.
was finally overwhelmed by the Mongol invasion
of Genghis Khan in the twelfth century.