 one of a deified king of Sāsānian appearance, while others display the figure of Buddha set within a circle and wearing a costume of the Sāsānian type. Sāsānian motifs of paired birds and griffins placed in medallions or pearl circlets are common. In the murals at Imgur-Enlil, Buddha wears a close-fitting tunic resembling that worn by the Sāsānian king depicted on the rock carvings of Tāq-e Bostān. The traces of Hellenism, which are also evident in these wall paintings, began to disappear by the 5th century, when Sāsānian influence gradually gave way to the Gupta (Gupta dynasty) style of India.Stemming from Gupta art is the practice adopted at Bamiyan between the 5th and 6th centuries of painting in the dome of a sanctuary a Buddha within a circle or hexagon. Gradually, these circles and hexagons became symbols of the heavenly Buddha. Many developed into rosettes and eight-pointed stars—motifs that were retained in the 10th and 11th centuries by the Islāmic Seljuqs, who carried them to Persia and Asia Minor. As Gupta influence increased, sculpture gained in importance. A new style had evolved by the 8th to 9th centuries, but it did not penetrate into western Turkistan, where the Arab conquerors religiously opposed figural art. In the 9th century many Buddhists left Kashgaria, and Islām (Islamic arts) gained ground. Figural sculpture was forced underground and was primarily produced by secret shamanistic cults of an indigenous Central Asian origin. Although figural art was never to flourish in western Turkistan as gloriously as it had prior to the Arab invasion, there was a revival under the Mongols in the form of book illuminations.Eastern TurkistanUighurs (Uighur)The figural arts found new patrons in eastern Turkistan among the Turkic Uighurs, who while living in T'ang dynasty (Tang dynasty) China had been influenced by Manichaean figurative art. The overthrow in China in AD 846 of Buddhism by official Confucianism forced the Buddhist Uighurs to migrate to eastern Turkistan. Gradually, they gained control over the Tien Shan region, Turfan, and the northeastern section of the Tarim Basin. The Turkic Uighurs especially favoured portraiture. In the 7th and 8th centuries Uighur artists already had acquired great proficiency in rendering likenesses in a style heavily influenced by Chinese portraiture of the T'ang period. These portraits were painted on silk and were frequently inscribed with the sitter's name.Khitans (Khitan)The figural style is believed to have been transmitted to the Mongols by the Khitans when the latter were living on the middle reaches of the Yenisey. The wealth of the Khitan princes is reflected in the furnishings of burial mounds discovered at Kopeni, some 200 miles (300 kilometres) to the south of Krasnoyarsk. Dating from the 7th to 8th century, these mounds were similar in type to those constructed by the nomads of the 1st millennium BC. One of the richest graves contained four gold jugs set on a silver dish and a number of gold, silver, and bronze ornaments (State Hermitage Museum). Two of the jugs, although undecorated, carry Orhon inscriptions on their bases. Two others are covered with delicate relief representations of birds and fish surrounded by flowers and vegetation, executed in a style influenced by Islāmic art. A Scytho-Altaic hunting motif of riders pursuing a tiger, a deer, and a panther appears on a bronze ornamental object.Turkic tribes had been concentrating their numbers in Central Asia from about the 5th century AD. In the 6th century the Kul Tepe and Bilge Khan tribes established a state of their own in the Orhon valley. The inscriptions that they carved on the valley's rocks are of considerable historical importance. In the 7th century the Turkic Oğuz people were so numerous that they constituted 24 tribes. The Sāmānids, Ghaznavids, Ghūrids, and Seljuqs were of Oğuz extraction.Sāmānids (Sāmānid Dynasty)The Sāmānids centred their kingdom in Khorāsān. In the 9th century, under the leadership of Esmāʿīl (Ismāʿīl I ibn Aḥmad), they ruled over Transoxania and eastern Persia from thei