The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c12.7

c12.7

So far we have restricted ourselves to a simple statement of the facts furnished by an examination of the document. Now it is time to broach the more delicate question of its interpretation. Inevitably, as soon as we are confronted by this pious design, we are carried back in memory to some familiar picture of the Virgin nursing the Child Jesus. For this unavoidable rapprochement we see at least two reasons. Firstly, there are not so many ways for a woman to offer her bosom to her nursling. The second, more topical, reason might chance through long habituation not immediately to occur to us. We remember having heard the ingenuous expression of it from the lips of a young Panjabi Brahman, who, in front of an Italian chromo-lithograph of the Holy Family, could not conceal his astonishment that « the mother of the God of the Europeans should not be dressed after the manner of the Mêm-Sahebs ». He expected, as he explained to us, to see on the head of Mary a hat similar to those worn by English ladies, whereas, in fact, her veil gave her quite an Indian appearance. This he could not get over... After having smiled at his amazement, we shall do well not to forget the exact bearings of his remark. It is incontestable that the artistic tradition of the veil does in fact give an Asiatic appearance to the most Gothic of our Virgins. But, if our European images go more than half way to meet this « Notre Dame de Tourfan » — as it had from the first ¹ been christened — it is intelligible that conversely our first instinct will be to connect this latter with a Christian prototype. Have not the excavations in fact proved the former existence, in this oasis of Turfan, of Manichean and even Nestorian sects? The unedifying entourage of eight urchins would indeed be ill-explained by this hypothesis; but, with a little good will, all may be arranged, and in strictness one could reduce these little elves to a purely decorative role, analogous to that played by their counterparts, the *putti*, on the paintings of the Catacombs. In short, definitely to settle the question of the identity of our figure, we may imagine that it will be sufficient to confront it with the first chance representation, provided that it be somewhat anterior, of the Virgin nursing her child.