A long narrative handscroll depicting a royal Mongol expedition Yuan dynasty, 14th century | 元十四世紀 蒙古皇家遠征圖 設色布本 手卷

The opening scenes depict a voyage on water and swordsmen greeted respectfully on landing. A princely Mongol noble is seated on a folding stool attended by drummers, pipers and dancers, one with a tambourine. Three bearded players gather around a game board. A parasol (chattra), the Indian Buddhist emblem of royalty, stands next to a lobed vase of flowering branches supported on a tripod stand. A Luohan sits at ease with an attendant standing at his side. A foreign merchant wearing a tall conical hat and a bundle on his back, walks with a dog. A victory banner (dhvaja), the Buddhist symbol of enlightenment, stands upright with a ribbon fluttering from the finial. Another merchant leads a laden yak through a bamboo grove. More musicians and dancers herald the party on horse as it passes a mountain under storm clouds and rain, emerging the other side onto flat terrain. The princely figure rides a caparisoned horse with an auspicious yak-tail tassel suspended from the breast strap. A procession of mounted musicians, trumpeters, standard-bearers, warriors and a porter approach and pass behind mountainous landscape with grazing deer and cranes and a bird of prey perched on an outcrop. A sumptuously robed dignitary awaits the royal party in a flower garden, with an attendant holding aloft a vase, musicians playing cymbals and a display by acrobats and contortionists.

Costume and headwear throughout the scroll are typical of Mongol fashion in the Yuan dynasty, cf. the wide-brimmed hat worn by the princely figure with a fourteenth century example in the Mongolian Academy of Sciences, Ulaanbaatar, discovered in a cave at Cagaan chanan, Omnögov’ province, Gobi desert, see Dschingis Khan und seine Erben: Das Weltreich der Mongolen, exh. cat. Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn, 2005, no. 63; which in turn is similar to the hat worn by Emperor Wenzong (r. 1328-32) portrayed on a kesi mandala of Vajrabhairava in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, dated ca 1330-32, see Watt, The World of Khubilai Khan, 2010, p. 112-13, fig. 146. A similar brimmed hat in the Gansu Provincial Museum was excavated from the Wang Shixian family tombs, Zhangxian, see Watt, op. cit., p. 79, fig. 111. Compare the black tricorn hats worn by the three dancing drummers beneath storm clouds, with that of a Yuan period black pottery figure in the Xi’an Museum, see Song Dachuan, ed., Da Yuan san du: The Capital Cities of Yuan Dynasty, exh. cat., Capital Museum, Beijing, 2016, p. 171. Compare also the parasol, victory banner and the costume and headwear of Yuan court personages in murals at Shalu monastery in Tibet, painted by Yuan court artists trained in the style established by the Nepalese master Anige (1244-1306), Director of All Artisan Classes at the Yuan court, in Vitali, Early Temples of Central Tibet, 1990, pl. 55. And compare royal Mongol equestrian processions in the illustrations of a fourteenth century Iranian album on paper, see Komaroff & Carboni, The Legacy of Genghis Khan: Courtly Art and Culture in Western Asia, 1256-1353, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2002, figs. 39, 68. And compare the lobed flower vase with a Southern Song (1127-1279) silver bottle excavated in Sichuan province, in Song yun: Sichuan jiaocang wenwu jicui [The charm of Song: Compilation of cultural relics from Sichuan hoards], Beijing, 2006, pp. 198-9.

The verso is painted with a border of Buddhist ritual sceptres (vajra), and scrollwork in alternating red, white, green and blue sections done in the Nepalese manner: cf. the scroll design within the mandala circle of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Yuan dynasty kesi Vajrabhairava, Watt, op. cit.: the composition and style of the mandala echoes that of Nepalese paintings of the period and Tibetan Sakya order thangkas painted by Nepalese artists. The powerful symbol of the vajra ‘the mighty one’ painted on the border represents indestructible protection and evokes the strong vajrayana Buddhist influence of the Sakya order among the hierarchs of the Yuan dynasty. The Nepalese stylistic elements would suggest that, like the Shalu murals, the scroll may have been painted by artists schooled in the Yuan court style of Anike, that is described in Chinese literature as the ‘western style of Buddhist images’ (有劉元者嘗從阿尼哥學西天梵相), referring to the Nepalese influence, see Heather Karmay, Early Sino-Tibetan Art, 1975, p. 33, n. 103.