The Art of Nepal and Tibet

Author(s): Stella Kramrisch

Source: Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin, Vol. 55, No. 265, Art of Nepal and Tibet (Spring,
1960), pp. 23-38
Published by: Philadelphia Museum of Art
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3795115
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 THE ART OF NEPAL AND TIBET
BY STELLA KRAMRISCH
Curator of Indian Art
The Buddhist art of Nepal and Tibet is
a visual system of presenting symbols of
enlightenment and also the way of inducing
the experience of enlightenment. This sys-
tem conveys and gives support to spiritual
facts. Its wide use in wall paintings, scroll
paintings, manuscript illuminations, sculp-
ture and architecture fulfills a need that can
not be met by the word and intellectual
concepts. The Vajrayana, the Buddhist
"adamantine way" towards Reality and
Freedom shines in the colours of the rain-
bow and gleams with golden images. Their
disposition has two components. The one is
the geometrical mandala and the other is
figures of gods based on the shape of man.
Both depict experiences and events of the
path of realization. Yet this art is not con-
sidered an intuitive activity. It is a disci-
pline like mathematics or astrology. It must
be correct according to fixed rules other-
wise the result will not be effective. The
result, the visual evidence of the painting or
sculpture has as its purpose the transfer of
the person who sees or uses the work of art
from everyday existence, the samsara, into
immaculate planes where there is no dis-
tinction between the contingency of exist-
ence, the samsara, and the freedom of the
absolute, the nirvana, for they are one
Reality.
The work of art acts as a field of power.
This field has the shape of a mandala. It
is articulated from and about a center as a
visible projection of a scheme of the cosmos.
This scheme is drawn from inner experi-
ence, while presenting an ontology. An
unfolding from the center, it acts at the
same time in the opposite direction and
leads to the center through the exposition
of its contents in their manifoldness. The
scheme of ontological unfoldment is at the
same time a soteriological diagram, whose
directional forces lead to the center. The
central point is at the place of inmost
reality. This inmost reality is "void"
(sunya), free from the pull of contrary
forces, free from any pair of opposites.
Sunyata, the Void, has its symbol in the
center but is itself beyond and without
definition. It cannot be understood, for it
is unoriginated, uncreated, unformed. It
can only be experienced as the supreme
reality. In the mandala, the symbol value
of the center is occupied by an embodi-
ment of illumination itself in the shape of
Buddha, the Illuminator or Vairocana.
In the scheme of the mandala-the frame-
work of the cosmos-Buddhahood is five
fold. It is visualized in the center as Buddha
Vairocana shining white as a diamond.
Thence this light of illumination is refracted
in colours which show the qualities of illumi-
nation and thereby convey the conscious-
ness of illumination. The consciousness of
illumination (bodhi-citta) transcends con-
sciousness which has man and the world
for its object, that is consciousness which
has any object whatsoever except that of
itself void of object. Worldly conscious-
ness, according to Buddhist definition, has
likewise five constituents which correspond
to the sensuous-or the contact of the five
senses with their objects-to feeling, per-
ception, volition and awareness (vijiiana
skandha). The latter comprises the poten-
tiality of consciousness or consciousness as
such. This very basis however is tran-
scended by means of the mandala. The field
of the ego-bound, individual consciousness
is converted into that of an impersonal or
cosmic consciousness of the Universal Void
(sunyata) -an unconditioned indefinable
plenum. It has its symbol in the center
of the mandala to which it is assigned as
pure radiance without colour. It is refracted
through the cosmos, in the four directions
of the magic square of the mandala: blue in
the East, where the Buddha Aksobhya, the
Immutable, appears; red in the West where
the Buddha Amitabha or Infinite Light is an
embodiment of inner vision; yellow in the
South where the Buddha Ratnasambhava is
the embodiment of universal sympathy; and
green in the North where the Buddha
Amoghasiddhi, the Realizer of the Aim,
embodies volition free from attachment.
The conversion of human consciousness,
attached to the ego and the world, into
Buddha consciousness, free from any at-
tachment, has its symbols in the images of
the mandala. Five-fold Buddhahood is based
on the conversion of human consciousness
with its five constituents (skandha)-and of
human nature with its five fundamental
evils: wrath, passion, pride, envy, and delu-
23
 FIGURE1. Siddhaikavira
Manjusri. Bronze. Nepal,
l1th-12th cent.

sion. It is also based on the five-fold realisa- nature of man, the phases of Buddhahood
tion of Gautama Buddha, the Buddha of and is manifest in the cosmos. This cosmic
this world age, who meditated in Bodh- diagram is a field in which ultimate reality
gaya, called the earth to witness his qualifi- appears articulated in its central symbol,
cation, preached, and vouchsafed the law and the four-fold refraction of the central
in which he is fulfilled. These five suc- figure itself in its different functions. In
cessive aspects of Buddhahood valid evi- this magic square the symbols of ultimate
ternally are a pattern which supports the reality coincide with their manifestation in
pentad and gives to each Buddha image its extended space, with their sequence in time
cognizance: to Amitabha the hands resting within the Buddha, with their sequence in
in meditation on his lap; to Aksobhya the the world cycles, and with their basic
pendant right, calling the earth to witness; correspondence in the nature of man.
to Vairocana, the preaching gesture. The body of man itself was considered
Based on the elements of human na- by the Buddhists as a mandala, a field of
ture and consciousness, supported by the power. In it rage the five fundamental
successive stages of Buddhahood, the quin- passions: wrath (krodha), sexual passion
ary system embraces the components of the (raga), pride (abhimana), jealousy (irsya)
24
and the total bewilderment (moha) into
which they throw the human being. They
are at the same time the effect and the
motive forces of nescience. They obstruct
the consciousness of illumination (bodhi-
citta). For this very reason they may be-
come means of illumination or freedom.
Yoga, as practised by the Buddhists, uses
the "cakras" or foci of meditative concen-
tration and activitation assigned to five
psycho-physical centers within the human
body as pivots where the powers experi-
enced are transformed into exponents of
the consciousness of illumination.
The mandala painted on cloth charts the
manifestation of the ultimate principle in
the cosmos in the same place where it refers
to its manifestation within man. The sym-
bols and figures of the mandala present the
epiphany of the ultimate, the "Void" as
coterminous with the absolute of Buddha-
hood and with the possibility of the realiza-
tion of the Absolute, the Void, within con-
scious beings. This design shows the way
in which the manifold emanates from the
center and, going in the opposite direction,
is resorbed in the center. The way of the
return is laid out on the surface of the
mandala. In the human being who follows
the path of the Buddha this return can not
be effected on one level. It requires a
leap from the here and there of everyday
reality or of the many things to which
human consciousness attributes reality, to
the here and now of the timeless presence
of the Void, the Real beyond all contin-
gency. Because the mandala is a visible
projection of a scheme of the universe, a
"psycho-cosmogram," a visible equation of
macrocosm and microcosm, it is unified by
the center and shows the way towards il-
lumination and freedom. The coherence
of this diagram makes it the framework and
principle of nearly all the types of religious
painting in Nepal and Tibet.
The art of painting, according to Tibetan
definition belongs to the intellect and not
to intuition. The Tibetan term for "to
paint" is "to write gods" [lha bris]. The
writing must be clearly legible in order
to achieve what it is meant to effect, a
"liberation through sight." This is what
paintings are often called.1 Liberation is an
immediate experience of Supreme Reality
as pure consciousness without any attribute
-the "Void." It is at the same time the
essence of every being.
The geometrical scheme of the mandala,
outlined by a quartered circle within a
square, is filled with images of gods. Their
paradigm is the images of five-fold Buddha-
hood; any other divinity is similarly en-
visaged in its mandala. All these images
are projections of the mind and experiences
of the Buddhist. In their epiphany he sees
his innermost being revealed to him, his
innermost being which strives for the in-
effable Real beyond form. When these
divinities appear he knows that they, like
all appearances are not real, that they are
phantoms of his as yet unconquered thought.
He sees them outlined in the shape of man
for in this shape they are accessible to him
in states of mind produced in meditation.
In this shape too, he knows the Buddha
and that he assumed this form so that he
could communicate with man.
Though all the images of the Buddha are
fictions of the mind and phantoms, for
ordinary man they have the appearance of
a monk, while for the elect, those who by
the power of their ecstasy and by their
purity have been carried to higher planes,
to the "Pure Earths" where the Bodhi-
sattvas act, to them the image of the Buddha
appears crowned and bejewelled in glory.
The images are mind-made and known
by the heart, consubstantial with the prac-
tiser, contents of inner vision and conscious-
ness. The images are projected into visual
form in the light in which they appear,
taking the shape of a nimbus and an aureole
edging their bodies if they are gods of
peace who have come forth from the heart.
If they are gods of wrath whose origin is
in the brain center their aureoles take the
shape of a lambent sea of fire around their
presence. Whether the images resemble
man or woman, whether they appear single
or conjoint as couple they are but reflec-
tions of the reality beyond name and form-
caught in the act of revealing itself. The
gods come forth in the meditation on this
Reality, they represent the powers mobi-
lized in meditation. Objectified they can
be faced as helpers on the way. They hold
out their hands, which bless or fight until
the light of Reality or Truth within us is
freed from the obscuring illusion of mind
and body, of I and the other, of life and
death, freed from any of the pairs of oppo-
sites by which the mind distinguishes its
contents.
The images are grouped in hierarchies
and assemblies which originate from and are
25
 FIGURE 2. Indra. Bronze. Nepal, 12th cent.

26
co-substantial with the forms of five-fold of all specific contents, an undifferentiated
Buddhahood. Each image is a specific aspect indefinable plenum. I,
of the total reality at the central point of The union of compassion and gnosis pre
the imaged Buddhist cosmos. There sented by the figures of man and womar
Vairocana shines forth in incandescent radi- in embrace is an ever recurrent seal of th e
ance. Above and beyond Vairocana in the truth communicated by Nepalese and Ti
center of the mandala, beyond even the betan paintings. In this world of mer e
center of Buddhahood manifest, is the appearances, they are not the only polar
primordial Buddha. He too was beheld ities that fill its structure. The very natur,e
as image under the name of Vajradhara or of the painted mandala is conceived as ain
Vajrasatta or Samantabhadra. The para- interpenetration of its dual components, o f
dox of transcendency and image stops short geometrical and figure symbol. The geo
before the Void. metrical order of the surface assigns to th e
The consciousness of illumination (bodhi- figures of the gods their places. Thes,e
citta)-an inner experience whose verifica- figures, moreover, are built according to ai
tion is itself-is mirrored by the mind in the iconometrical geometry adjusted to mean
polarity of the means of attaining the con- ing and function of each god in the totaII
sciousness of illumination and of the state scheme of manifestation and re-integratior
of becoming conscious of Sunyata, the of the mandala.
Void. The means (upaya) is also identified The other essential polarity which has
with compassion (karuna) that moves us its images in the mandala is that of the stat.e
away from our ego so that we do not think of peace (santi) and that of wrath (krodha)
of ourselves but of others. Leaving behind These figures occur on the path of con
the bonds of egoism, we approach the state quest of ultimate Reality. There cognizanc e
of becoming conscious of Sunyata. The is taken of identities in man and the cosmo s
figure of the "means" (upaya) is the image in which lie security and freedom froni1
of the Buddha, an image of compassion
effecting the deliverance of man. The fig-
ure of the state of becoming conscious of
the Void is Gnosis (prajfia) in her image
of woman. The images interpenetrate.
Their embrace is an exposition of Buddha-
hood in which the knower and his knowl-
edge are made one.
Sexual polarity and union are incidents
of the universal polarity of manifestation.
It exists in the world and within ourselves.
In the practise of yoga the union of the
opposites, is of man with the woman within
him. This is spontaneously realized in the
polarity of right and left, and it is made
conscious in the yoga technique of identi-
fying this polarity within the microcosm
with the polarity of the macrocosm where
shines the light of the sun and the moon,
two in effect though one in nature. Sexual
polarity and interpenetration having the
living person for their sphere of action as
contents of inner experience are hyposta-
sized in the symbol of Buddhahood as "yab-
yum" (father-mother) or "yuganaddha,"
meaning unity in the apparent duality of
existence. This interpenetrating unity con-
stitutes the wholeness of the Buddha, and
guarantees the ultimate merging of samsara
and nirvana, of worldly consciousness and
transcendental consciousness. These last
polarities are resolved in Sinyata, the Void FIGURE 3. Vina. Copper. Nepal, 14th-ISth cent.

27

fear. Cognizance is also taken of the abyss
when all connections with the mundane
plane are being cut.
By a leap across the chasm the peak is
reached where the Adibuddha dwells, the
central point of one's labours and being.
All the impulses, all the forces that were
dormant up to this final effort of cutting
loose from discriminating consciousness
(vijfiana), all these forces now rise up in
terrifying strength. Held in check by a
rigorous training and prevented from out-
bursts, they persevered, generating an ever
increasing impetus, a frantic urge to go on.
These terrifying powers within oneself are
the demons now unfettered. They cut
loose from precedents. Confronted, they
are seen in their terror. When their task is
28
FIGURE4.
Sarvabuddhadakini.
Gilt bronze. Nepal,
16th-17th cent.
achieved they are known as helpers and
saviours. Helpers and saviours they are
though they drink our blood that gives
them strength, helpers and saviours like
the Buddhas and their active emanations,
the Bodhisattvas. In fact, in their polarity
to the calm of meditation and to the refrac-
tions of the adamantine pure light which
have their figures in the Buddhas and their
emanations, the Bodhisattvas, these demon-
iac shapes are their other side: dark, im-
petuous driving urges that fight with their
own darkness, stupor and terror in protean
shapes in a sea of flames. The flames that
surround the demoniac shapes are the flames
of knowledge-a knowledge gained at the
price of death, a death to the world with
its attractions and polarities. This is shown
by the skull-bowls full of blood which their own nature, that is, against the evils
these fierce gods of wrath hold in their or dangers of one's own nature. By acti-
hands. These blood drinking divinities vating one's defensive forces a divinity be-
brandish their weapons: the sword which comes a Yidam. The demoniac will power,
cuts through the knots of doubt and con- striving for an expansion beyond limits and
fusion; the axe which cuts off birth and towards destruction when turned towards
death; the skull-bowl which does away with its own destructiveness, destroys the ego,
all notions of substance and non-substance. the limited person, man in bondage. The
But are not some of these weapons held by divinity who activates these defensive forces
the saviours in their serene aspects too? is seen as a Yidam and appears as an image.
Their consubstantion is shown by their The conversion of the drives of passion
attributes. Their polarity breaks through into their destruction has formed this image.
in the striding, dancing ecstasy of the fierce Thus, the Yidam cuts the fetters of worldly
Yidam deities, the gruesome Heruka forms attachment and is the guarantor of the bond
of the Buddhas and those of the Dharma- between divinity and devotee.
palas. The mobilisation of the defensive power
They are the figures of the "mysterium of consciousness is a concomitant of liber-
tremendum" of the leap over the chasm ation. But it is not the only one for there
between intellectual consciousness and in- is another called Dakini. Her image may be
tuitive universal consciousness. In their that of a young and beautiful woman, or
ecstasy, the fierce, wrathful and blood she is hideous, or she has the head of an ani-
drinking gods cut through the fetters of mal-the lion, the horse, the mule. She is
thought. They destroy its illusions and shown dancing or ecstatically striding, with
categories. The terror which the gods of her skull-cup full of blood and the chopper
wrath express acts only on the plane of which she wields. This liberatrix lives on
mundane consciousness when this latter the essence of life out of the skull-cup
loses the deceptive firmness of its conven- wherein there is no distinction of substance
tions, in truth, the weapons of these terrible
gods are instruments of liberation. They
are the tools of the will to Freedom or of
the consciousness of illumination (bodhi-
citta). They destroy all mind-made fetters,
all that belongs to worldly man. Because
they destroy the conventions of thought, its
mere rationality, their place of origin is
associated with the brain center whereas
the gods of peace come forth from the
center of the heart. But all the gods,
whether as Lords of peace or of wrath, are
borne by lotus flowers; they have no other
foundation of their origin than that which
is in the lotus of meditation within the
activated centers, imagined and experienced
in the living body of man.
The Yidam's are the guarantors of the
bond between divinity and devotee. By his
wrath, or jealousy, or passion, or pride, or
bewilderment man is assigned to the family
of one of the five Buddhas. He is carried to-
wards his assignment not only by his con-
scious striving and discipline but also by
the driving power of his particular demon
whose aggressiveness turns towards himself
and cuts him loose by his own weapons.
The experience of the driving power of
the passions-a becoming aware of their
destructiveness-converts them into defen- FIGURE
5. Sarvabuddhadakini.Bronze.
sive powers and turns their arms against Nepal, 19th cent.

29

and non-substance. She inhales this essence,
draws vigour from it. Her ecstasy is the
power of inspiration. She is intuitive con-
sciousness, in many forms, she is Vajrava-
rahi, the Diamond-Sow, the arch-female and
she is Sarvabuddhadakini, the inspiration of
all the Buddhas, sum total of all Buddha
illuminations. If the consort of the Buddhas
is gnosis, the Dakini, in her own right, is
inspiration, the consciousness cf liberation
at its highest pitch. The Dakini, as the con-
sort of the fierce forms of the Buddha, is
Krodhesvari, the "Lady of Wrath." The
dynamics of inspiration and the part played
by gnosis comingle in the "Lady of
Wrath" and in the partners of all the
Yidams and the Dharmapalas who combine
with their Lords in the defense of creative
consciousness against its dangers. In this
function the goddess in her own right is
imaged as Lha mo, the "goddess of arms
30
SMS
t <.f.N#.
x : ?; :
*sX ':' L.
S/.X
@dds
r. " i
s =.4X: .~iiCO6tS
-?:i:::-iJ:'il:? XI:I
. ?**Xk;
FIGURE6. Banquet for the Dharmap
in the world of sensual pleasures." All
these goddesses exist in the inner experience
of the practiser only. He projects them as
images when he becomes conscious of the
drama within him. In progressive experi-
ences the same divinity appears in different
aspects, now as Dakini, now as Prajina, and
Prajiia as ultimate power is Dakini.
The forms of the fierce divinities are self-
contained. Their terror is fixed in their
appearance and has its pattern within this
area. The fearful divinities are not images
of afflictions that befall men. They are
driving powers of destruction that rage in
man. When they are seen in their own
image, they are faced and assigned their
place in the "yantra" of experience. They
are phantom organisms acting out in their
coherent shapes the drives to which they
owe their existence. They are rounded off
in their fearfulness, fulfilled in its pattern.
alas. Tibetan Painting, 18th cent.
They overcome the situation in which they
have arisen. They are detached from suf-
fering, dissociated from anguish and anxi-
ety. They are impersonal patterns of
destructiveness, supports for the mind to
dwell on, for they are viewed with detach-
ment and disinterested participation (mu-
dita). Their gruesome countenances are
drawn with a calligraphy of sympathy,
next, or equivalent to, those of the Buddha
images.
The experiences and concepts which un-
derlie and are served by Buddhist art in
Nepal and Tibet came from India. The
form of sculpture and painting in Nepal is
based on Indian art. In Tibet, much of the
form of Indian art came through Nepal
but some also came from India, either di-
rectly or through central Asia, where In-
dian art, with admixtures of Hellenistic,
Iranian and Chinese elements had long
flourished. Tibet, moreover, directly and
repeatedly drew upon Chinese art forms
grafting them on its own stock.
Nepal has ancient and persistent ties with
India. Legend connects the mandala plan
of the town of Patan in Nepal with Em-
peror Asoka. The four stupas, in the four
directions outside this city, to this day
appear in the shape in which they could
have been set up in the third century B. c.
The fifth stfpa is in the center of Patan,
which is symbolically the center of the
universe. If Rome is the eternal city to
westerners, to the Tibetans Patan is "eter-
nity itself" (ye rang).
Nothing is as yet known of the sculpture
and painting of Nepal during the centuries
from the time of Asoka. Indeed, an outline
of the history of sculpture in Nepal rests on
precariously few dated images not anterior
to the fifteenth century.2 The style of the
31
 FIGURE 7. Kurukulla.
earliest known metal images, however,
agrees with those from Eastern India of
the twelfth century, or somewhat earlier
when traditions also of other Indian centers
reached Nepal (Figs. 1, 2). Nepalese sculp-
tors were not only in great demand in
32
Tibetan Painting, 18th cent.
Tibet, they also made their influence felt
in China. In the thirteenth century, A ni
Ko, a young Nepalese sculptor came to
Tibet with twenty-four other artists and
worked there before he became inspector of
artists at the court of Kublai Khan (1216-
1294). The plastic quality of Indian sculp-
ture continued as a vital force in Nepalese
sculpture to the fifteenth century (Fig. on
cover, Fig. 3). Its residual finesse and icono-
metrical balance of form, its spontaneity and
technical skill outlasted into the nineteenth
century (Figs. 4, 5), the earlier perfection.
Tibetan metal images of the last two cen-
turies almost wholly depend on the virtues
of those from Nepal. An admixture of
Chinese elements, together with a lessened
assurance of style and cruder execution,
determine, as a rule, a metal image as a
Tibetan product. In other cases it is a ques-
tion more of accent than of the place of
origin which gives away the Nepali or Ti-
betan maker. In the eighteenth century,
however, lamaistic metal images of Chinese
provenance, added preciosity and finish to
their Himalayan prototypes.
The earliest known sculptures, in West-
ern Tibet,3 are cut in the living rock in a
very low relief. A rigid, plank-like effigy
carries such suavity of modelling as it could
assimilate when this was added from India
to its framework. This upright rigour of
Himalayan art however was soon super-
seded by the Indian import. Tibetan and
Nepalese monasteries shelter, to this day,
Indian sculptures, most of which are of the
Pala and Sena school of Eastern Indian
sculpture. An attempt to copy such an
image may be seen in a figure of Sakyamuni
from, most probably, a Tibetan monastery.4
It reproduces the type of ninth century
Buddha images from Kurkihar in Eastern
India, of the Devapala period. But the
arrest of plastic movement in this copy
conforms to the quality of the carved ex-
amples just referred to. While the Indian
examples were copied, assimilated and al-
most excelled at times by the Nepalese
sculptors, the latter were, at all times, the
masters among their fellow craftsmen in
Tibet. Indian traditions of painting also
reached Tibet through Nepal or from
Kashmir. Tibet, on the other hand, being
in direct contact with China, was increas-
ingly open to the impression made by Chi-
nese painting, and evolved from an Indian
iconography and a Chinese setting, a pic-
torial style of its own (Figs. 6-9).
In Nepal itself, palm leaf manuscripts and
their wooden covers date from the early
eleventh century.5 They could have been
painted in Eastern India-there is hardly a
difference in form and feeling. Earlier than
this, however, specifically "Himalayan"
transformations of the appearance of divin-
ities were found in Tun huang.6 In their
broadly spreading surface these plank-like
figures have a certain affinity with the low
reliefs of Western Tibet where they too
seem to have originated. Their Indian pro-
totypes of the eighth century appear stiff-
ened and distended. From the eleventh
century, however, the sequence of style in
Nepalese illuminations on palm leaf manu-
scripts and on their wooden covers takes an
unbroken though narrowing course in
dated examples into the fifteenth century.7
A scroll painting of a Vasudhara mandala
from Nepal, in the British Museum, is dated
15048 and equals the style of the painting of
the same subject in the present exhibition.
Another Nepalese scroll painting in the ex-
hibition of Mafijusri and Sarasvati is dated
15709and proves the continuity of the Indo-
Nepal tradition of painting stemming from
the Eastern Indian school under the Pala
and Sena dynasties. The Eastern Indian
school, after the twelfth century, resorbed
form idioms of Western Indian painting;
these too came to Nepal and comingled
with those that arrived directly from West-
ern and Northern India and, subsequently,
from the sphere of Mogul art. At this
period, as also before, Nepalese artists
worked in Tibet. They worked in Lhasa
(1659) for the fifth Dalai Lama and from
here two dated "Nepalese" scrolls (1661)
derive their wholly Tibetan style.10 This
was to remain an episode in Nepalese paint-
ing. In the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries the style of Nepalese scrolls
owes no other allegiance than to its
own past and to newly integrated Indian
idioms which connect painting in Nepal
with that of the Western Himalayan center
of Basohli. In Tibet, the stronghold of
Indian form in its Tibetan version was the
school of Guge in Western Tibet from the
eleventh to the seventeenth century. Under
the patronage of the kings of Guge a con-
tingent of seventy-five artists from Kashmir
arrived in Western Tibet and left a mark
in bronze and wood sculptures, but pri-
marily in wall paintings (Man naii).
To this solid basis of Indian form and
content, the early contacts with Chinese
art through the medium of its central
Asian resorption must have added new ele-
ments not only Chinese, but also Hellenistic.
The latter partly reinforced, through their
own amalgam with Indian tradition as
effected in the paintings of the oases of
33
central Asia, the Indian substratum. Resi-
dues of these early contacts (central Asian,
8th century) were carried on in a minor
group of Tibetan paintings, into the
eighteenth century. A renewed impact
of Chinese form elements was brought by
Chinese and Mongol artists to central and
south Tibet (Zalu, Nar t'an and Gyantse)
in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
and subsided in the fifteenth century.
The last but powerful incursion of In-
dian painting into Tibet in the early and
mid-seventeenth century is witnessed by
Taranatha, the Tibetan monk and scholar.
He describes in his autobiography the wall
paintings of Te Gtsun (1617-18) and P'un
tsogs glin.10 These paintings are preserved
and throw a new light on Indian painting
itself, on schools of which no trace is left
in India and which support the Mogul Em-
peror Akbar's appraisal of its excellence.
These paintings following several Indian
styles re-vitalized the sinuous, sensuous flex-
ible line and the impetuous movements
seen in some Tankas (Fig. 7). These qual-
ities, however, subsided for the school of
Eastern Tibet (Khams), steeped in Chinese
landscape and full of figured scenes, influ-
enced from the eighteenth century, the
whole of Tibetan painting.
The painters were monks and laymen.
The monks alone devised the composi-
tion of the paintings and drew the outlines.
The painter's concern was painting prop-
erly speaking, the filling of the outlines with
colour. The subtler the sensibility of the
painter the better did he know how to
harmonize the colours which iconographic
rules had assigned to each of the figures,
howx to modulate the strength of adjacent
colours by minute scrollwork covering
entire surfaces in darker tones of the same
colour or by golden tracery. It was the
concern of the monks who devised the
compositions and even drew the outlines
of the figures to build a visual equivalent
of their rapture in which the identity of
nirvana and samsara was revealed to them
and the reality of the Void was supported
by a precision of design.
In Nepal the paintings are called Prabha,
they "shine forth" the illumination that
brought them into being. In Tibet they
are distinguished as Tanka or scroll paint-
ings for they are painted on cloth and, when
not in use, are rolled up.12
Padmasambhava, the founder of Lama-
ism, and the Red Cap school (r N in ma
34
pa), who came to Tibet from Uddyana
(Kafiristan) about 770, is invoked as the
"body of external truth," the "adamantine
body," the "symbolic" and the "magic
body," who "manifested himself as the
master of the canonical sutra and of the
esoteric formulas (mantra)," who "reached
the extreme limit of knowledge, feigning to
learn (as others do), and who later learned
the potter's art and other crafts from Visva-
karman [the master of all work; god as
causa efficiens] and other masters."13 The
making of a world such as it was experienced
inwardly, had recourse to such corruptible
substances as clay or paint whose qualities
allowed its immediate presence in effect
and actual use. Artistic creation resolved
the paradoxical equation of samsara and
nirvana. Thus, it was that with the great
masters of the "adamantine way," the
Vajrayana, the responsibility was vested for
the conception and delineation of paint-
ings. Buston (1290-1364), who may be
compared to St. Thomas Aquinas, inspired,
directed the plan and himself drew the
outlines of the wall paintings in Zalu, in
central Tibet in the first half of the four-
teenth century, Tson K'a pa the reformer
(1417-1478) of the Yellow Cap (d Ge lugs
pa) school, dictated instructions for mural
paintings in rDsin ji which he had ordered
to be made according to the vision which
he had seen in a dream.14
The work of art as solution of the equa-
tion of nirvana and samsara is ultimately
real. But it is also only a phantom, a tem-
porary measure to be dispensed with. The
polarity of the work of art, being visibly
the Real while actually only an instrument
for a definite purpose brings about its
form or range of forms. This was deter-
mined in India, but forms have their own
life and works of art their history.
The pre-buddhistic constituents of Nepa-
lese and Tibetan form were contributed by
Himalayan art, that must have preceded
Buddhist art and continued to guide the
hands of the artists. The few post-life fig-
ures referred to are not in themselves sig-
nificant. But it is their unaccentuated, erect
balance in the vertical plane which seeps
through in Nepalese art and in Tibet -
thinning out the cohesion of modeled
shapes in some of the early miniatures from
Nepal - and which props up Nepalese
bronzes of the fifteenth century when their
Indian modelling was subsiding.
Sculpture in metal, generally of gilded
FIGURE 8. Descent of the Buddha at the VaisakaFestival. Tibetan Painting, 18th cent.

35
bronze, and discreetly enhanced by small
precious stones set in the chiseled jewelry
worn by the images, adds to its mainly
Indian character-a quality of omission. The
high frequency of plastic vibration is low-
ered, the viscous emergence of one curved
plane from the next appears more tenuous.
Three dimensional tensions are known
more by memory than they are expres-
sively formed in their urgency. The figures
are laid out, placid and assured, the fluidity
of their shapes supports a line of candour
and grace. With their leisured lyricism,
the generalisations of Nepalese sculpture
give moving versions of the primal vision.
They are the "primitives" of another's ma-
turity which they intensify by simplifying
its traits.
Similar features distinguish the treatment
of the images in Nepalese paintings. Here,
moreover, they are underscored by power-
ful and contrasting colours in the prabhas
of the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. A
strong Indian red, and indigo blue, pre-
dominate; white, yellow, salmon, green and
gold increase the compact glow of the sur-
face. The single images and figures are part
of it. Though they are rounded off by the
curves of their foreshortened and overlap-
ping limbs they stay within the opacity of
the colour surface. Its pattern is dictated
from the centre which is occupied by the
central image. Subsidiary images complete
the mandala at their appointed places.
The colour symbolism of the mandala
is complex. Its scheme is based on the
colours of the Buddhas. These colours,
white, blue, red, yellow and green refer to
the elemental plane and to the symbolic
colour of the particular element which is
associated with each of the Buddhas: the
element earth with Ratnasambhava; the
symbolic colour of earth being yellow;
the element fire with Amitabha, the sym-
bolic colour of the element fire is red.
Vairocana in the center of the mandala is
white. It is the colour of the Buddha who
is primus inter pares in the five-fold
Buddhahood. If however Avalokitesvara,
who emanates from Amitabha and is there-
fore red, is beheld as the highest Lord, his
colour is white.
The colours assigned to the Buddhas
carry with them not only the connotation
of the elements but also of the five funda-
mental evils in the nature of man. In this
respect, white - the colour of Vairocana -
is associated with delusion or total bewilder-
36
ment; blue, the colour of Aksobhya with
wrath, red with passion, yellow with pride
and green with jealousy. These psycho-
logical connotations accompany the colour
symbolism as undertones. They do not
express the Buddha nature in its pure light
and refractions. The pure light is refracted
as the deep blue of undifferentiated con-
sciousness, which is the colour of Aksobhya:
it is refracted as the red of Amitabha, the
Buddha of the Western direction where
the sun sets in a red glow.
The value of the colours meditatively ex-
perienced, is assessed as wholly benign or
as ambivalent. White is the colour of
wholly benign powers, yellow too, though
not always completely. It is the colour
of Bhrkuti Tara, the frowning goddess
whereas the ambivalence of red, blue and
green sustains the appearance of the peace-
ful, the fierce and the horrendous gods.
The prabha, originally of square format,
became a rectangle in the fourteenth cen-
tury. Its upper and lower margins, and also
the sides are filled with small rectangular
scenes filed in rows, where each has a story
to tell, an event to illustrate. They are di-
rectly or remotely connected with the
meaning of the central image which they
frame. These border rectangles subordinate
their vivid and hallowed spectacles to the
epiphany of the central image. They have
been taken from illustrated books into
the prabhas, where their speckled liveli-
ness sets off the large central vision. The
combination of the main, central composi-
tion with compartments of variegated bor-
der scenes is familiar to Indian painting
(ceiling of the Indrasabha cave, Ellora).
The appearance of the gods where they
take part in these scenes descends from
Indian art; the lesser, but far more copious,
actors belong to Nepal in their types and
execution. They are outlined with quick,
cursive brush strokes, summary in the se-
quence of their curves in which the brisk
and precise movements of the actors are
caught. The samsara is bound up in the
framing scenes with the timeless world of
the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas; five-fold
Buddhahood has its images near the upper
margin, while the donors are portrayed
near the lower margin. The canonical
types of the gods, the varied repertory
of human types meet here on the same level,
Yidams, donors, and the "seven jewels," in
adjacent compartments.
FIGURE 9. Ordination of a Saskya-paLama. Tibetan Painting, 18th cent.

37
 This organisation of the painted surface
of the prabha was taken over in western
and central Tibet where, particularly the
framing scenes show their change of domi-
cile until they disappear together with the
function of the prabhi as an illuminated
compact surface. But this came about in
the eighteenth century only with the final
ascendancy of the Chinese component in
Tibetan painting.
The main contribution of the Tibetan
tanka of the eighteenth century to the
world of art is the vision of the image
in cosmic space, above this mountain
girt, green earth, above the waters in
whose midst blooms the lotus of a new
birth and of the knowledge whence the
soaring vision springs. Not infrequently
a diminutive figure, the painter himself or
the donor is seated on this lotus of awaken-
ing in the central axis of the painting, in
one line with the central vision and part
of the cosmic scene, where the images are
laid out on the principle of the mandala.
While each image appears within the orbit
of its effulgence or surrounded by its
"sea of flames" it floats with all the other
images on one transparent sheet of vision
hung up in cosmic space. The earth below
with its mountains, brooks and valleys is
now alive with birds in flight and roaming
deer, and with movements and meetings of
men and gods of the lesser hierarchies.
Such scenes, together with their style of
presenting them, have come from Chinese
painting.
In certain types of tankas they fill their
entire extent. The series of paintings which
portray the successive incarnations of the
Lamas of Tashilunpo or the 84 Siddhas,
personalities whose myth unfolds on this
earth, are furthest removed from the scheme
of the mandala. The tanka representing the
ordination of a monk (Fig. 9) shows the
transition from the mandala scheme of
timeless manifestation, suspended in cosmic
space, to the composition of scenes enacted
on earth and engaging these figures in their
passing show.
The Nepalese type of the prabha,
whether painted in Nepal or in Tibet and
Tibetan tankas prior to the eighteenth cen-
tury, showed their surface saturated with
the presence of the gods who had been
conjured in inner vision and were made to
stay, shining forth in their colour within
lines that circumscribed their perfections.
The Tibetan tankas of the eighteenth cen-
tury project this vision into cosmic space
(Figs. 7, 8). Its symbolic colours comingle
with the hues of dawn and the sheen of day.15
Although this achievement rests on com-
plex foundations, it results in a type of
painting entirely its own. The grandiose
projection of the mandala or celestial vision
floating in a vertical plane in cosmic space
is upheld by the knowledge common to all
art of the "adamantine path" (vajravana)
of Buddhism in India, Nepal and Tibet, the
knowledge that the images of the gods "are
but symbols representing the various things
which occur on the path, such as the help-
ful impulses and the states attained by
their means."16

NOTES
1. G. Tucci, Tibetan Painted Scrolls, Rome, p. 287. gouache technique within outlines, first traced in charcoal
2. D. The Buddhist Art of Tibet and Nepal, and finally redrawn in Chinese ink. The paintings are
Barrett, mounted above and below on a strip of generally
Oriental Art, Vol. III, 1957, p. 93. indigo
blue, coarse cotton which is attached to a wooden rod,
3. A. H. Franke, Antiquities of IWesternt Tibet, Vol. I; at the top and also at the bottom of the scroll.
AMcmoir, Archacological Survey of India, 1914, P1. XXXII. Tankas are painted on fine cotton cloth, in the same
4. C. Pascalis, La Collection Musee Louis technique but with a wider range of colours and with
Tibetaine,
Finot, Hanoi, 1935, PI. V. gold. They are mounted on their four sides in Chinese silk
brocade which at times is more ancient than the painting.
5. A. Foucher. Etude sutr l'Icolnoraphie Bouddhiquc de The two narrow red and yellow silk strips between the
'lInde, Paris, 1900. Ms. Add. 1643 Cambridge University, painting and the patterned brocade signify the effulgence of
dated 1015. the painted vision.
6. Sir A. Stein, Serindia, IV, P1. LXXXVII. The not infrequent use of transfers assures correctness
of iconography, facilitates mass production and lessens the
7. S. Kramrisch, Nepalese Pailntizgs, Journal of the sensitivity of the line.
Indian Society of Oriental Art, I; 1933, pp. 129-147.
13. cf. Invocation translated by G. Tucci, op. cit. II pp.
8. Ibid., Pis. XXXIX and XL. 375-376.
9. Colour reproduction oii P1. I in J. I. S. O. A., 1, 1933 14. Ibid. p. 381.
and Note on a Painted Banner by P. C. Bagchi, pp. 1-4.
15. Coloristic values, of Chinese origin, are given to
10. Archaeological Survey of India. Aiinnal Report, subordinate parts of the picture, that is, to all those
1913-14, parts which, like the landscape itself, are not canonically
11. G. l'ucci, Tibetan Painted Scrolls, Vol. II, Figs. 62-74. determined. From the latter part of the nineteenth cen-
tury colours of Western manufacture are garish intruders.
12. Prabhas are painted on relatively coarse cotton cloth
or a priming of lime and glue, which is burnished. The 16. Sricakrasambhara Tantra, Tantrik Texts, Vol. VII,
colours are mineral and vegetable colours applied in p. 41.

38