Asset number
1613277131
Description
This is a square damask piece, originally a head for a banner which has been folded in half and painted with two Buddhas, each seated on a lotus. The textile is white twill damask showing half of a lion over 40 cm long, with only the head and tail still visible. This design was previously misinterpreted by Stein as a floral pattern, and Roderick Whitfield as phoenixes. The lion may be in a crouching or walking position, as seen in a paper painting found in Cave 17. There is a small pattern to the left of the lion, probably a stone, and another opposite the head, and symmetrically repeated along the warp direction. However, there is no woven pattern where the lion’s body should be, indicating that this is probably the beginning of the fabric. There is a similar banner head in the V&A loan collection: a similar image of the Buddha is painted on a different woven damask image of the lion (LOAN:STEIN.490). On the basis of the style of the painting, Roderick Whitfield dated this piece to th… (See Merlin record for full description)
© The Trustees of the British Museum
Using this image
Commercial use
To license images for charged-for journals and publications, and other commercial uses, please contact British Museum Images.
Contact BM images
Non-commercial use
You are permitted to use images from the British Museum website subject to our terms of use.
The image will be released to you under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license. You can read more about the British Museum and Creative Commons here.
Download this image
New photography
If you cannot see an image that you want on the British Museum website, you can order new photography from us.
Order new image