Between India and China, the Murals of Bagan

International audiencePagan murals offer a wide spectrum of aspects which have been only but partly studied. As a matter of fact, publications have mainly dealt with issues bearing on the iconography, more rarely on the ornamental decoration. The iconography depicted in the temples of the site mainly traces its sources in the art of ‘Eastern India’ (Indian States of Bihar and West Bengal; Bangladesh) and illustrates the official Buddhist language; iconography is submitted to strict rules concerning the selection of topics, their precise location within the monument and their composition, rules to which the painters had to submit. Iconography differentiates itself deeply from the second category which allows more freedom to the artists. However, the ornamental decoration is not, as one could initially think, free from specific meaning. Quite on the contrary, it fills all space let free by the iconographic program, acting as a frame to it and giving to the architectural structure its meaning as image of the cosmos. The ornamental decoration encompasses different motifs, but I wish to draw here the attention to the specific and important motif of the floral intertwined volutes. Two major treatments of the motif are encountered which correspond to two successive phases in the history of the Pagan murals. Continuous round scrolls which clearly relate to an Indian prototype are seen in eleventh- and twelfth-century monuments, whereas twelfth- to thirteenth-century murals introduce the spiked lobed leaf encountered in China. Intermediary treatments of the scroll motif are also encountered with the earlier motif of Indian origin evolving and integrating the spiked lobed leaf whereas murals of the thirteenth century more clearly evidence the impact of Chinese ornamentation of the Yuan and even earlier Northern Song dynasties; this is particularly shown with the introduction of the monochromatic style and of different motifs, such as the poly-lobed frame seen on the walls or the intersecting circles or poly-lobes covering the vaults. In one case or the other, this rich ornamentation was most probably made accessible to the painters through garments imported from India and China