Maria Menshikova
Maria Menshikova is Curator of the Dunhuang collection in the State
Hermitage Museum. She started work at the Hermitage over
forty years ago and while there studied art history. Her interest in
Dunhuang dates back to childhood as her father, Professor Lev
Menshikov, was a renowned Chinese scholar and curator and cataloguer
of the Dunhuang Chinese manuscripts at the Institute of Oriental
Manuscripts. She has recently curated an exhibition of
Sergei Oldenburg’s expedition to Dunhuang at the Hermitage.
Her chosen item is a pair of seated guardians DH-1 and DH-2.
Maria Menshikova writes:
It so happened that through my
visual memory I always remember the images from Dunhuang. In my
childhood my father, Lev Nikolaevitch Menshikov, showed me the
pictures of the ceiling ornaments, books with the reproductions
and photographs of the Mogao Thousand Buddhas caves. And on
Sundays papa took me to the museums and of course to the
Hermitage and the rooms with the Dunhuang collection. Maybe it
was my childish impression but in the exhibition the most
attractive for me were the fantastic beasts, the dogs that sat
in the middle of the room in the glass cages. I was not afraid
of them but thought they were looking at me breathing and
smiling as the real pets can.
Two sculptures of the
fantastic animals were brought from Dunhuang to St. Petersburg
in 1915 by the second Russian Turkestan Expedition, led by
academician Sergei Feodorovitch Oldenburg. No other such beasts
from Dunhuang are known or have survived. They must be the pair
of seated guardians at the entrance to the Buddhist cave. One of
them is shown with the open mouth like roaring, the second with
the closed mouth but tentative. They are vigorous and listen to
the sounds of the world. Any moment they are ready to protect
the Buddhist faith from any evil.
Link to original post on IDP blog.