Persian influence also is manifest in many paintings. A striking instance may be seen in two plates published by Stein[479] apparently representing the same Boddhisattva. In one he is of the familiar Indian type: the other seems at first sight a miniature of some Persian prince, black-bearded and high-booted, but the figure has four arms. As might be expected, it is the Manichæan paintings which are least Indian in character. They represent a "lost late antique school[480]" which often recalls Byzantine art and was perhaps the parent of mediæval Persian miniature painting.
The paintings of Central Asia resemble its manuscripts. It is impossible to look through any collection of them without feeling that currents of art and civilization flowing from neighbouring and even from distant lands have met and mingled in this basin. As the reader turns over the albums of Stein, Grünwedel or Le Coq he is haunted by strange reminiscences and resemblances, and wonders if they are merely coincidences or whether the pedigrees of these pictured gods and men really stretch across time and space to far off origins. Here are coins and seals of Hellenic design, nude athletes that might adorn a Greek vase, figures that recall Egypt, Byzantium or the Bayeux tapestry, with others that might pass for Christian ecclesiastics; Chinese sages, Kṛishṇa dancing to the sound of his flute, frescoes that might be copied from Ajanta, winged youths to be styled cupids or cherubs according to our mood[481].
Stein mentions[482] that he discovered a Buddhist monastery in the terminal marshes of the Helmund in the Persian province of Seistan, containing paintings of a Hellenistic type which show "for the first time _in situ_ the Iranian link of the chain which connects the Græco-Buddhist art of extreme north-west India with the Buddhist art of Central Asia and the Far East."
Central Asian art is somewhat wanting in spontaneity. Except when painting portraits (which are many) the artists do not seem to go to nature or even their own imagination and visions. They seem concerned to reproduce some religious scene not as they saw it but as it was represented by Indian or other artists.
Only one side of Central Asian history can be written with any completeness, namely its relations with China. Of these some account with dates can be given, thanks to the Chinese annals which incidentally supply valuable information about earlier periods. But unfortunately these relations were often interrupted and also the political record does not always furnish the data which are of most importance for the history of Buddhism. Still there is no better framework available for arranging our data. But even were our information much fuller, we should probably find the history of Central Asia scrappy and disconnected. Its cities were united by no bond of common blood or language, nor can any one of them have had a continuous development in institutions, letters or art. These were imported in a mature form and more or less assimilated in a precocious Augustan age, only to be overwhelmed in some catastrophe which, if not merely destructive, at least brought the ideas and baggage of another race.