152 linrothe
drawing as well.11 It is clear from comparing various photographs that the
areas surrounding both sides of the head have been subsequently damaged.
The triple-crest crown was elaborate, but the face is nearly completely unread-
able because of spoliation. Long, heavy curling tendrils of hair fall along the
shoulders, while a thick vanamāla (long garland of flowers) flows outside
his shoulders, inside his forearms, and down almost to his ankles. His earlobes
bear massive earrings and he wears an upavīta (consecrated thread) over the
left shoulder to the right waist. His chest is otherwise bare, and he wears a
belted or scarf-tied dhotī at least to his knee on his right side, perhaps shorter
on his left, if the oblique line along his left thigh indicated the lower hem. A
double fold at his front left suggests a belt-end, and a ripple-fold hangs down
between his legs to his ankles, which bear bangles. The first pair of hands hold
a vase at the left hip and make either abhaya mudrā, the gesture of fearless-
ness, or vitarka mudrā, the gesture of instruction, in front of the chest. The
outer proper right hand once held a ring of prayer beads (Skr. akṣamālā), as
confirmed by Francke, and the outer left hand probably grasped a nāgapuṣpa-
flower, like the Mulbek Maitreya (fig. 5.14).
At his feet are three donor figures (fig. 5.3). They wear long outer robes
apparently above pants and boots, belted at the waist. The lower hem of
the robes flare outward slightly, and they end just above the ankles, unlike the
Kuṣāṇa style of tunic. They need to be compared to kneeling and standing
donors in rock paintings recently discovered at Chaghdo in Pakistan,12 as well
as to various donor figures of Zangskar and Ladakh. At any rate they are unlike
the depictions of the royal figures on the ‘donor panel’13 of the ninth-century
Avantisvāmin temple in the Kashmir Valley (fig. 5.4), whose clothing would
not be suited to either the summer or winter of Dras. The male ‘donor’ of
Avantisvāmin more closely resembles the bodhisattva himself than these Dras
donors. A pair of miniature crouching lions, one on each level of the up- and
down-turned lotus petal, face inward towards each other at either ends. Like
the imbalance of the donors, they maintain a slightly asymmetrical tone.
Amy, Heavenly Himalayas: The Murals of Mangyu and Other Discoveries in Ladakh
(Munich: Prestel, 2010), 23.
11 Cunningham, Alexander, Ladák: Physical, Statistical, and Historical—with Notices of the
Surrounding Countries (New Delhi: Sagar Publications, 1854 [1970]), 382.
12 Khan, Nasim M., “Chaghdo Rock Paintings, Baltistan, Northern Areas,” Journal of Asian
Civilizations 21.1 (1998): 100–104.
13 Fisher, Robert E., “Stone Temples,” in Art and Architecture of Ancient Kashmir, ed.
Pratapaditya Pal (Bombay: Marg Publications, 1989), 29–40 and caption of fig. 17.