ROMAN ORIENT AND FAR EAST SELIGMAN 563 



Twelve ministers assist the King in the government. When the King leaves 

 his palace he is attended by a man carrying a bag, into which any person is free to 

 drop petitions. The men wear their hair cut short and are clothed in embroidered 

 robes which leave the right arm bare. The women wear their hair in the form of a 

 crown. The people of Fu Lin esteem wealth, and they are fond of wine and sweet- 

 meats. On every seventh day [the Christian Sunday] no work is done. 



From this country come byssus, coral, asbestos, and many other curious prod- 

 ucts. They have very skilful conjurors who can spit fire from their mouths, pour 

 water out of their hands, and drop pearls from their feet. Also they have skilful 

 physicians who cure certain diseases by extracting worms from the head. 36 



Let me now return to the caravan route that kept the T'ang capital 

 in touch with the West. Besides objects of rarity and value? that 

 passed in bulk or from hand to hand along the highway between the 

 Near and Far East, there were those far more important impondera- 

 bilia — religion and story. It is not my purpose to discuss the former, 

 but I must mention a piece of painted wood, discovered by Stein at 

 Dandan Uliq in the Takla Makan desert to the east of Khotan and 

 now in the British Museum, which shows the astounding mixture in the 

 religious art of old Khotan. On both sides Bodhisattvas are painted. 

 That on the obverse is a three-headed deity in full Indian style; the 

 figure on the reverse (pi. 3, fig. 2) affords the most striking contrast, 

 presenting, in spite of its four arms, secular Persian treatment in 

 style and accessories. 



The clue to the significance of these two paintings was discovered 

 by Stein many years later when examining the mural paintings of a 

 ruin in southeastern Persia, dating to about the seventh century 

 A. D. The Persian bodhisattva represents Rustam, the hero of the 

 Persian national epic, and the three-headed figure is a non-Persian 

 rendering of one of the demonic adversaries conquered by Rustam and 

 forced into submission to his king. 38 Here, then, is a striking absorp- 

 tion of Iranian iconography into the Buddhism of the Far East. 



Passing to story, Laufer has shown that the legend of the Diamond 

 Valley reached China from the west. It must be remembered that in 

 the earlier periods the number of gem-stones known to the Chinese 

 was exceedingly limited, while the cut jewel with its qualities of luster 

 and sparkle did not yet exist, so that the beautiful stones which 

 reached the Far East in small quantities from the Hellenistic Roman 

 Orient must have created a profound impression. Laufer points out 

 that the oldest version of the western legend is contained in the 

 writings of Epiphanius, Bishop of Constantia in Cyprus (c. 315-403): 



In his discourse on the 12 jewels forming the breastplate of the High Priest of 

 Jerusalem, the following tale is narrated of the hyacinth. The theater of action 

 is a deep valley in a desert of great Scythia, entirely surrounded by rocky moun- 



38 Fitzgerald, op. cit., pp. 323-4. To a question as to how closely this account could be dated. Mr. Fitz- 

 gerald expressed the opinion that, while accurate dating was impossible, it could probably be attributed 

 to the seventh or eighth century. 



»« Stein, On Central Asian Tracks, pp. 64-65, 1933. 



114728—39 37 



