Re: *****SPAM***** VMs: Re: speculating on silkroad

[Jacques Guy <jguy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

14/03/2005 12:13:14 PM, mesinik@xxxxxx wrote:

>http://www.hfc-hersfeld.de/hfc/marken/scans/658.jpg

>Modern art?
>Nops. Mural paintings from Mogao, Dunhuang.
>Tang or earlier.

They are apsaras (a Sanskrit word), heavenly 
nymphs. Every Thai restaurant in Australia
features full-bosomed apsaras frolicking on 
its walls. There aren't so many Khmer restaurants,
but those that there are do the same.

>btw, in Bibliothèque nationale de France 
>there are drawings (Ink, on paper) of
>Sogdian (Central Asian) female deities
>(not Buddhist, nor Islamic afaik, found
>in these Mogao caves), late Tang.

Hindu I think. Unlike the Voynich nymphs
they have heavy, round breasts, wasp-like
waists, and full bottoms. A very different
kind of female ideal. No, I don't think
the Voynich nymphs are derived in any way
from the Far Eastern nymphs. They look
exactly like the women in 14th-century
European paintings and manuscripts.





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