Defensive Armor of the T'ang Period 295 



expression and lively motion, standing on the body of a sow. 1 The 

 animal is represented in the agony of death, with wide-open muzzle 

 and with its facial muscles distorted, stretching forth its four feet. The 

 terrific god has the head of a bull, exactly as in the corresponding Tibetan 

 images, — with two curved horns, bushy eyebrows, and protruding 

 eyeballs painted black; his mouth is wide agape, and shows the esopha- 

 gus. Palate and face are coated with a red pigment. Hands and feet 

 are provided with sharp eagle-claws. The head is surrounded by 

 flames. 2 A projecting crest is attached to the spine, and there is a 

 tail at the end of it. 



Another representation (Plate XLV), likewise with horned bull- 

 head, shows him in the same posture, standing over the back of a re- 

 clining bull, a snake winding around his left arm. In another clay 

 figure (Plate XLVI) he is clad with a leopard-skin, and standing in the 

 same attitude as the two preceding ones, but without a bull; the bearded 

 face, though of human traits, bears a grim, demoniacal expression, and 

 is painted red, beard and mustache being in black outlines. The 

 erect ears are animal -like, as are the hands and feet; the head is sur- 

 mounted by a long, slightly twisted horn, somewhat similar to that on the 

 clay figures of sphinxes. 



Between the animal and the human types, there is an intermediary 

 form with some features borrowed from both. In Fig. 1 of Plate XLVII, 

 his head is still modelled in the style of the bull-faced Yama, with horns 

 and flames, but he is equipped with an armor in the same manner as the 

 human forms; and the plume surmounting his head-dress is identical 

 with the one in the figures of knights (Fig. 2 of the same Plate). The 

 statuette on Plate XLVIII, belonging to the same intermediary type, 

 displays all these features brought out still more clearly, — the two- 

 horned bull-like head with a certain assimilation to human traits, the 

 high plume and pommels of the elaborate head-dress, animal-heads 

 protruding from the sleeves, breastplates, an apron, and a skirt con- 

 sisting of two flaps; thus he is standing over the figure of a demon. 3 A 

 demon of exactly the same type is modelled in the glazed statuette on 

 Plate XLIX. The god, however, is here represented as a purely human 

 form, a knight clothed with heavy armor, pressing his right hand on his 

 hip, and raising his left. The figure, except the head, is coated with 



1 Why in this particular case a sow, and not as usual a cow, is represented, I do 

 not know. The interpretation itself is indubitable, the animal being modelled in a 

 most naturalistic style and thoroughly characterized by the anatomy of the head and 

 the crest on the skull and spine. 



2 The tips of two of them are broken off. 



8 Compare in Indian art Kubera standing on a Yaksha (Grunwedel, Buddhist 

 Art in India, p. 40; and Mythologie des Buddhismus, p. 15). 



