Painted Image of Maheshwara in typical Kashmiri style Second: Painted Bodhisattva on same

1)First: Painted Image of Maheshwara in typical Kashmiri style
Second: Painted Bodhisattva on same wooden plaque wearing typical Sassanian headgear and boots from Dandan- Uiliq, Xinxiang

Dated: ~6th century CE

Rectangular votive panel painted on both sides.

2)One side shows a three-headed and four-armed male deity, seated cross-legged on a chequered cushion supported by two white bulls. This figure holds in the hands the sun and the moon, a vajra (thunderbolt), and a white round object, possibly a bijapura (citrus fruit).

3)He is also depicted as ithyphallic and with a third vertical eye on the forehead. On these iconographic grounds, he has been identified with Śiva in his Mahesvara aspect, with a female head on his right side and his aghora (fierce) aspect on the left side.

4) The triple-headed deity, with one fierce grotesque head and one feminine or benign one, is ithyphallic and holds the sun and moon, a vajra and another object. He has been identified by Joanna Williams  as Mahesvara, the name by which Siva appears in Khotanese texts.

5)As such he is seated on the vehicle of Siva, the bull Nandin, here shown twice.
Siva’s presence at Khotan shows the influence of tantric Buddhism and Saivism from India(through Kashmir): forms of Siva, which reached both Yungang (Cave 8,late 5th century) and Dunhuang

6)are referred to by https://t.co/6uQGsRlU4b the case of Cave 285, he is shown with three heads and six arms, holding aloft the sun and moon discs and seated on a blue bull.The early date at which these Siva images made their appearance in China might lead one to question whether

7)this image, and indeed the other wooden painted plaques from the Khotan area, may not also be dated nearer the sixth century than the eighth that is generally accepted (because of numerous finds of eighth-century Chinese coins).

8)[This is wooden plaque hence dates can be easily ascertained by radioactive carbon dating and various other techniques leaving out much of 'futile speculation'. I wonder what stops them to date scientifically. ]

Credit: Aurel Steins work on Khotan and Gandhara