Afrāsiāb Mural (I): the Southern Wall
The Procession of King Varkhuman to his Ancestors'Shrine
In 1965, Afrāsiāb mound, the original site of nowadays Samarkand, Uzbekistan, has become a problem for city traffic. The mound extended significantly into the middle of the developing Samarkand and forced the inhabitants to take long detours. A straight road started to be cut into the mound, reveling a masterpiece of Sogdian art: a square hall, carefully oriented, each one of the four walls decorated with masterly frescoes. The hall was proposed to be the audience room or one of the pavilions of Palace of King Varkhuman, Ikhshid of Sogdia during the second half of the 7th century CE. The upper register of the frescoes was sadly destroyed before taking consciousness of the unique recovery unearthed.
King Varkhuman is clearly mentioned in an inscription depicted on the Western wall. He was recognized as governor of Samarkand and Sogdia by the Tang Emperor Gaozong around 650 CE.
In the New Book of Tang, a similar pavilion is indeed described, located this one in the east part of one of the cities of the Kushan Empire. The pavilion had four wall, oriented, with frescoes: on the northern wall were depicted the Chinese Emperors, on the western wall the Persian and the Byzantine ones, on the southern kings and princes of Turks and of Hindus. It was visited each morning by the local prince for prying.
The hall discovered by chance on the Afrāsiāb mound was of the very same kind the New Book of Tang describes.
The hall is now universally known as the Ambassadors’ Hall. That’s because King Varkhuman decided a variation to the usual frescoes program, and reserved the western wall to himself - if not to Nana, the goddess granting kingship to Sogdian rulers - describing a reception of ambassadors from China, Korea, Tibet, Chach and from the whole Asian oikoumene gravitating around Sogdia. Envoys were conjured to his throne - in this very same squared hall - escorted by his honor Turkic guard.
Yet, what was depicted on the southern wall, the wall that even the New Book of Tang doesn’t mention?
On the southern wall an impressive procession is moving: King Varkhaman double-sized on horseback, his Queen on elephant and all his wives on horseback, his Zoroastrian priests, some on camel with ritual clubs, some with masks pulling an horse and geese to sacrifice. All are heading est, the very some direction the Kushan prince had to follow to reach the pavilion mentioned in the Tang chronicles. Certainly not by chance, since astronomical orientation, calendars and festivals, adopted by the mosaic of Central and East Asian kingdoms, are the key to understand the themes the frescoes show.
The whole court is wearing precious tissues, decorated with mythical or symbolic animals: simurghs, griffons eagle, lion or dog-headed, peacock. Granting power and protections.
To decode the meaning of the procession we have to turn to a second Chinese chronicle. The Book of Sui describes the ceremonial the king, the queen and the dignitaries of the neighboring kingdom of Chach - ancient name of Tashkent - on the north border of Sogdia, adopted to worship, on the 6th day of the First month and on the 15th of the Seven one, the mortal remains of the ancestors of the king, the remains being kept inside a golden urn, on a column, in a pavilion. They used to have a procession to the shrine, to honor the ancestors, turning around the urn and bestowing flowers and fruits, eventually taking places in separate tents to consume a banquet.
…to be continued with the Western wall:)
Light Bibliography for Essential Argonauts
M. Mode, Reading the Afrasiab Murals: Some Comments on Reconstructions and Details, 2006
B. Marshak, Le programme iconographique des peintures de la «Salle des ambassadeurs» à Afrasiab (Samarkand), 1994
M. Compareti, Further Evidence for the Interpretation of the ‘Indian Scene’ in the Pre-Islamic Paintings at Afrasiab (Samarkand), 2017 (exhaustive review article with a complete bibiography)
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