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Tamara Talbot Rice
ANCIENT ARTS OF
CENTRAL ASIA
An extract from Chapter Three, pp. 101-110
The most important and best preserved Soghdian paintings have been discovered at Piandjikent. The city's ruins lie some 65 kilometres south-west of Samarkand, in the Zaravshan valley, straddling the road linking Zaravshan to Samarkand, and only some 35 kilometres from Bokhara. Founded in the fourth and fifth centuries AD to serve as the Hephthalite capital, Piandjikent was at the height of its prosperity in the seventh century. Soon after that date it was destroyed by the Arabs, but it recovered from the disaster lingering on until the ninth century when, having been rendered useless by the growth in both size and importance of Samarkand and Bokhara, it slowly died. By the seventh century it had developed into a city of impressive appearance. Its Shahristan or city centre had by then been surrounded by high walls strengthened by ten oval towers built of unbaked brick. The citadel, several temples and the richer houses were situated in that area. The earliest caryatides used in Central Asia were found there. Some measured as much as 3½ feet in height. All were made of wood, as were a number of elegant statuettes. One, a woman, with carefully dressed hair, and wearing a rich necklace, wore such a low-cut robe that it savours of Indian influence (Ill. 85).
The main temple stood in the centre of the town. It too was built of unbaked bricks and contained a large central hall, the roof of which rested on four columns. The eastern end of the hall was left open to face onto a courtyard in the manner of an iwan, but the western end led to a windowless and doorless room but for this single entrance. This chamber had been used as an inner sanctuary. Other rooms were disposed round the square central hall and many of them retained fragments of wall-paintings. However, the most important of all the known Soghdian paintings were found in another, similar temple. Many of these were in relatively good condition. Its columned hall displayed an elaborate composition which some scholars believe represents the Soghdian burial rite expressed in a scene illustrating the death of the god Syavush (Ill. 86). The god is represented by a youth who personifies the dying year, with its re-birth in the spring seen through an archway in the far distance. This method of presentation was devised in order to achieve the two-tiered effect popular in Soghdia, where it was generally attained by the division of the walls into two horizontal bands.
In his death scene Syavush is shown surrounded by mourners who are grouped below his bier in various attitudes of grief; six of them are placed below the others and differ so much in their appearance that Soviet archaeologists have attempted to recognize Soghdians in some of them and Turks in others. The decorations of the room's southern wall include a group of courtiers and three members of Syavush's bodyguard. In addition all four walls had had niches cut in them to hold clay statues, none of which survived in a recognizable form.
The mural decorations of Piandjikent include both religious and genre scenes (Ills. 87, 88). The former reveal the existence in Central Asia of a somewhat different form of Zoroastrianism from that practised in Persia for it retained certain local forms of pagan sun and moon worship. Soghdian religious paintings are therefore of particular interest to students of religion, but their importance is perhaps secondary to that of the genre scenes, the subject-matter of which is both fascinating and unusual. Soviet scholars regard them as illustrations of national epics of the type usually associated with the literature of Islamic Persia. Orientalists such as the late J. Orbeli, A. I. Jakubovski and Krachkovski have in fact succeeded in relating some of the paintings to specific passages in Firdausi's Shah-nama (Ill. 89). This great Persian poet was born at Tus in northern Persia at the end of the tenth century and wrote his masterpiece whilst living in Ghazni, in what is now Afghanistan, at the court of the Ghaznavid sultan Mahmud. Like Homer, he too was inspired by the legends which were current at the time. Some scholars believe that some very early ones were kept alive throughout the intervening centuries, fostering local patriotism and the survival of native traditions. Krachkovski found fifteen passages in the Shah-nama which he was able to relate to scenes appearing in the mural-paintings of Piandjikent and one which, in describing the discovery of Jamshid's treasure, refers to sculptures. Thus, when describing Syavush's palace at Syavushgird, Firdausi records that the walls of its iwan were decorated with painted scenes:
'Of kings and feasts, and battlesAnother verse tells us that 'when the golden iwan was built Jamshid was depicted on its walls worshipping the Sun and Moon'. Scenes such as these occur more than once in Piandjikent's surviving paintings, but Krachkovski noted that the one of Bahram Gur out hunting, though a favourite theme in Islamic times, has not as yet been met with in Soghdian art. Instead a woman harpist (Ill. 92), battles between horsemen and contests between knights, all of which are often mentioned by Firdausi, frequently appear as does the picture of an enthroned king and dekhans sitting cross-legged (Ill. 91).
First shah Kavus is shown, wearing a necklace, a club in his hand;
Near the throne stands Rustem, the elephant bodied,
And Zal, with all the courtiers assembled there.
On his other hand are Afrasiab and the captain of his army.'
In contrast to Bactrian artists, whose works will be considered in the next chapter, the Soghdians do not appear to have been interested in portraiture. Rather was it the pomp and ceremony of court life which appealed to them. Painting with little regard for perspective but with a conscious endeavour to present light figures against dark backgrounds, they set out to record royal audiences, contests between riders of a type still practised today by Central Asia's horsemen, battle scenes and beautiful women such as the poets of medieval Persia delighted in describing. The people they portrayed wear clothes of Central Asian cut which, however, include many Sassanian details. Thus the shape of the crowns worn by kings, together with their veils and bells are culled from the Sassanian repertory. So too are the cups and other vessels used in the libation scenes, the elaborately cut hair and carefully trimmed beards worn by men whose faces are, however, often rendered in a manner which is closer to the Indian or Hellenistic convention than the Persian. On the other hand the haloed figure discovered at Piandjikent beneath a slightly later overpainting displays such strong Byzantine influence that it must have been executed by one of the Nestorians who lived, preached and worked in Central Asia in early Christian times.
86 The Death of Syavush, Piandjikent
87 A Ritual Scene, Piandjikent
88 Men Playing Chess, Piandjikent
89 Rustram slaying the Dragon, Piandjikent
91 Dehkans Sitting at a Libation, Piandjikent
92 Harpist, Piandjikent
