There are in ancient Buddhistic sites of Eastern Turkistan a good number of clay statues made by the use of moulds for mass production. Some of them are made by single moulds, others are made by joining the parts severally modelled by respective moulds. What attracts our notice in those moulded images is that they often present interesting variations produced by the difference of coloring, the difference of accessories added after modelling, and the difference of the ways of joining the parts. Similar cases are found among Buddhist pictures in Central Asia. Moulds for pictures are richer in variety than those for statues, and more complex in the methods, which are yet to be studied. There are simple specimens proving the use of stencils, but on the other hand the murals of the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas at Tun-huang, dating from around the Period of Five Dynasties (A.D. 908-959), show an extremely skillful use of moulds. Those moulds are not rich in variety, but the Tun-huang murals have brought out a rich variation in the poses of images very successfully by the different combinations of separate moulds for parts. The murals of the Main Hall and the Five-storied Pagoda of the Horyū-ji Temple, Nara, Japan, appear to have some sort of mould work, too, but the moulds for these seem to have been used in a simpler way than those in the case of Tun-huang.
