Remarks on the Sogdian Religious Iconography in 7th Century
For more than ten years the Franco–Uzbek archaeological expedition has started the researches interrupted in the Sovietic period with very important results. The two partner teams had also the opportunity to confront their conclusions with the knowledge of other scholars such as Boris Marshak, Chiara Silvi Antonini, Etsuko Kageyama, etc. In particular, Marshak’s intuitions deserve special attention because they shed new light on the interpretation of the religious meaning of the scene painteded on the southern wall at Afrasyab[1] (fig. 1).
Here a procession can be observed moving from the corner with the western wall onward. Among the riders on the right part of the scene there is also Varghuman himself represented bigger in size than his attendants. On the left part, the procession is led by a white elephant that probably carried the wife of Varghuman followed by three female riders.
As observed above, much of the paintings were destroyed but, thanks to the reconstructions proposed by Markus Mode and Frantz Grenet it is now possible to argue about the more probable original scenes on strong bases[2]. An important detail is constituted by the building at the end of the scene, clearly the target of the procession (fig. 2).
According to Marshak interpretation, this is the temple of the ancestors of the king of Samarkand. This ipothesis is further supported by the Chinese sources: in fact, in the Beishi and in the Suishu it is reported that the king of Chach accomplished the sacrifices for the ancestors on the occasion of the festival of the New Year (Marshak, 1994: 14–15). It is commonly accepted that this last festivity (we could even say the Festivity par excellence in the Iranian lands: the Nouruz) is the one reproduced on the western wall at Afrasyab (fig. 3)
In figure 2 one can observe the state of preservation of this part of the painting (the terminal part of the building and the feet of four people), while in figure 1 it was proposed a reconstruction clearly based on other Sogdian mural paintings (especially from Panjakand).
Among the people of the procession of the southern wall there are also some sacrifical animals and priests or, as it was recently proposed, even nobles who received the honour to lead and probably to kill the animals. They can be recognized by the special masks on their mouths normally used by Zoroastrians not to pollute the rituals with the breath and by the sacrificial maces in the hands of the two camel riders. The sacrifical animals are four birds and an harnessed horse. According to Grenet, the horse is destined to the god Mithra[3] while the four birds are for Zurvan, the Iranian god of time worshipped also by the Sogdians. Unfortunately there are no discoveries of Sogdian works of art with representations of Zurvan however, according to the sources, this divinity was one of the most important gods of the Sogdian pantheon. As it is commonly accepted among scholars, since the 6th century the Sogdians have used the Hindu iconography for the representation of their own gods: in this way Ahura Mazda–Adbagh was associated to Shakra (Indra), Zurvan to Brahma and Weshparkar–Vayu to Mahadeva (Shiva). In Sogdian Buddhist sources also Vaisharavana and Narayana–Vishnu appear but they are not associated to Mazdean gods. However, they are described according to their Indian attire: an armour was the carachteristic of Vaishravana and sixteen arms the one of Narayana–Vishnu. Every Sogdian god was associated with an animal which could be represented also as his vahana according to Hindu concept[4]. For this reason Grenet proposed to link the harnessed horse in the mural painting at Afrasyab with Mithra and the birds with Zurvan, in fact, among ancient Iranians and Indians (but also among the Greeks) the horse was the animal associated to the solar god and, in Hindu culture and art, the swan was the vahana of Brahma[5]. So, if we have to accept Grenet’s idea (perfectly fitting with Marshak interpretation), the birds should be regarded as the sacrificial animals for Zurvan.
The Sogdian religion was not aniconic, on the contrary, archaeological excavations led at the site of Panjakand revealed several representations of gods and goddesses. At this point, one could suppose that inside the temple represented at the end of the procession on the southern wall at Afrasyab there could have been images of the ancestors of the king as suggested in the Chinese sources. However, it is not possible to deny that inside the temple there could have been also images of the gods to whom the animal sacrifices were destined. As already observed above, the fragments of the part of the painting with the temple show the feets of four people (fig. 1–2). According to Marshak the three people inside the building should be considered keepers of the temple or priests and the one just outside the temple clad in harmour should be considered a soldier. However, they could even be considered representations of the gods, most likely statues or even paintings. Just the textile decorations typically Iranian of the four people of the temple (the so–called “pearl roundels”) could constitute the key for the identification of these divinities. As it was already attempted to demonstrate by this writer in another study, the iconography chosen to fill the decorative roundels on some textiles recovered at Turfan (repeated practically identical in the Sogdian paintings) could have had some links with its employement in a funerary context. In fact, the preference accorded in those cemeteries to the winged horse decoration could have alluded to the fact that the pegasus was considered a psychopomp for the ancient population of Turfan (in part also Sogdian) such as for the “Indo–Europeans” people in general (Compareti, 2003: 36). The same hipothesis could be considered true for proper Sogdiana where, in the part of the painting of the southern wall considered here, the figure wearing a cloth embellished with pearl roundels containing birds could have been just Zurvan, while the one with a robe embellished with winged horses could have been Mithra. The subject inside the pearl roundels of the third figure from the right has desappeared but the last one clad in armour should be identified with Vaishravana. On these bases, then, the third figure could be identified with Adbagh or with Weshparkar and, consequently, the pearl roundels on his robe could have been filled with elephants or boars: two subjects quite diffused in other Sogdian paintings and at Afrasyab as well (Al’baum, 1975: figs. 4, 11, pls. VI, XVI, XXII, XXVI).
Another scholar of Central Asian art, Ju. Motov, proposed a similar system based on the textile decorations in order to recognize the Sogdian gods at Afrasyab (Motov, 1999). On the contrary, as already observed above, Boris Marshak does not see in the four figures just mentioned the representation of Sogdian gods. Also Frantz Grenet does not agree with such identification. The latter, in fact, argues that the textile decorations on these four people recur on the clothes of other figures who are clearly not divinities in the same paintings at Afrasyab and, then, they could be considered gods only if their dimensions were bigger in size, for example like those of Varghuman. Although the four figures around the temple could be considered as reproduced of normal size because they are supposed to represent statues or paintings, other objections could be advanced against the hipothesis under consideration. For example, the birds on the garment on the supposed Zurvan seem peacokcs and not swans; then, in the procession, among the sacrificial animals there should be at least one bull destined to Weshparkar. There is the possibility that the white elephant represented the sacrificial animal for Adbagh but this interpretation would completely contrast with the one commonly accepted that considers the elephant as a transportation for a Sogdian queen.
All the ideas just exposed do not want to be a definitive answer to the identification of this part of the painting of the southern wall at Afrasyab, on the contrary, they constitute a series of hipotheses which need more exhaustive study even if scholars such as Marshak and Grenet have already expressed themselves against them. In this brief article it was thought to attract the attention on a detail that, in a country of merchants of precious textiles, should have been absolutely not neglected.
Bibliography
Compareti, 2003: M. Compareti, “Note sull’iconografia del pegaso e del cavallo bardato nell’arte iranica”, in: Il falcone di Bistam. Intorno all’iranica Fenice/Samand: un progetto di sintesi per il volo del Pegaso iranico tra Ponto, Alessandretta e Insulindia, a cura di M. Compareti e G. Scarcia, Venezia, 2003: 27–37.
Cristoforetti, 2003: S. Cristoforetti, Il Natale della luce in Iran. Una festa del fuoco nel cuore di ogni inverno. Ricerche sul sada: occorrenze , rituale e temi mitologici di una celebrazione cortese tra Baghdad e Bukhara, secc. IX–XII, Milano, 2003.
Grenet, 1993: F. Grenet, “Trois nouveaux documents d’iconographie religieuse sogdienne”, Studia Iranica, 22, fasc. 1, 1993: 49–67.
Grenet, 1995/96: F. Grenet, “Vaiśrava³a in Sogdiana. About the Origins of Bishamon–ten”, Silk Road Art and Archaeology, 4, 1995/96: 277–297.
Grenet, forthcoming: F. Grenet, “The Self–Image of the Sogdians” in: Proceedings of the Beijing Conference “Les Sogdiens en Chine”, forthcoming.
Grenet, Samibaev, 2002: F. Grenet, M. Samibaev, “Hall of Ambassadors” in the Museum of Afrasiab (middle of the VII th Century), Samarkand, 2002.
Humbach, 1975: H. Humbach, “Vayu, Śiva und der Spiritus Vivens im ostiranischen Synkretismus”, in: Hommages et Opera Minora. Monumentum H. S. Nyberg, I, Acta Iranica, 4, 1975: 397–408.
Marshak, 1994: B. I. Marshak, “Le programme iconographique des peintures de la «Salle des ambassadeurs» à Afrasiab (Samarkand)”, Arts Asiatiques, XLIX, 1994: 5–20.
Mode, 1993: M. Mode, Sogdien und die Herrscher der Welt. Türken, Sasaniden und Chinesen in Historiengemälden des 7. Jahrhunderts n.Chr. aus Alt–Samarqand, Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Bern, New York, Paris, Wien, 1993.
Motov, 1999: Ju. A. Motov, “Izobrazhenie misterii prazdnika Michragan v nastennych rospisjach Afrasiabskogo dvorca”, in: Istorija i archeologija Semirech’ja, Almaty, 1999: 57–81.
Riboud, 2003: P. Riboud, “Le cheval sans cavalier dans l’art funéraire sogdien en Chine: à la recherche des sources d’un thème composite”, Arts Asiatiques, 58, 2003: 148–161.
Shishkin, 1963: V. A. Shishkin, Varakhsha, Moskva, 1963.
Silvi Antonini, 1989: C. Silvi Antonini, “The Paintings in the Palace of Afrasiab (Samarkand), Rivista degli Studi Orientali, LXIII, 1989: 109–144.
Yang, 2004: Yang Junkai, “Newly Discovered Burials of Sogdian Community Leaders in China: a Preliminary Decoding of the Illustrations on the Stone Sarcophagus of the Sabao Shi of Liangzhou Dating from the Northern Zhou Period”, in: ed. Rong Xinjiang, Zhang Zhiqing, From Samarkand to Chang’an: Cultural Traces of the Sogdians in China, Beijing, 2004: 17–26.
[1] According to Marshak, in the upper part of the painting of the southern wall now lost, there should have been the representation of the goddess Nana: Marshak, 1994: 6. For other scholars there should have been a king: Silvi Antonini, 1989: 116–117; Mode, 1993: 48–75; Grenet, forthcoming. For a third possibility, see: Motov, 1999.
[2] Some reproductions are available both in internet and in form of a small brochure published by the Museum of Afrasyab: http://www.orientarch.uni-halle.de/ca/afras/; www.afrasiab.org; Grenet, Samibaev, 2002: 6–7.
[3] On the horse sacrifice among the Sogdians: Grenet, 1993: 61 n. 44; Compareti, 2003. See also: Riboud, 2003: 158–159. Also the Persians had similar habits: Cristoforetti, 2003: 267–273.
[4] This problem was the subject of the unpublished PhD dissertation of the present writer: M. Compareti, Gli apporti indiani nell’arte della Sogdiana e il ramo marittimo della “Via della Seta”, Tesi di dottorato di ricerca in “Turchia, Iran, Asia Centrale” I° ciclo nuova serie, Università degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale” Dipartimento di Studi Asiatici, 2002–2003. See also: Humbach, 1975; Grenet, 1995/96: 277–278.
[5] Consequently, the vahana of Weshparkar was the bull since the animal of Shiva was the bull Nandi and the vehicle of Ahura Mazda–Adbagh was the elephant. According to this new interpretation, the god with the trishula sitting on three bulls represented on a Sogdian sarcophagus excavated in the region of Xi’an could be identified with Weshparkar: Yang, 2004: fig. 3. In the same way, the god sitting on a white elephant fighting with monstruous animals in the paintings at Varakhsha could be Ahura Mazda–Adbagh: Shishkin, 1963: pls. I–XI.