Tibet: Treasures from the Roof of the World, a Cacophony in Three Acts
Compiler’s Note: Tibet: Treasures from the Roof of the World was a traveling exhibit from China that appeared in four U.S. museums—the Bowers Museum, Santa Ana, the Houston Museum of Natural History, the Rubin Museum of Art, New York, and the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco—from October 2003 to September 2005. The controversial exhibit sparked a dialogue about art and politics, but it was a dialogue in which the participants were not always listening to each other. This dialogue, or cacophony, is “reproduced” in part below. The compiler encourages readers to follow the available online links provided in the footnotes to learn more about the exhibit and the issues it raised about museums, politics and culture. (If the links provided do not automatically take you to the correct webpage, copy and paste the link into a new window.)

Act I: Objects
    
“Almost 200 exquisitely created sacred objects, all with great cultural significance, are making their first journey to the Western World. Tibet: Treasures From the Roof Of The World will offer a rare glimpse into a culture both opulent and deeply spiritual.” [1]

“Now, the Western world will get a firsthand look at the items used in lavish ceremonies and daily rituals at the Potala Palace by the Dalai Lamas and their courts… ‘We’ll see things here that Marco Polo might have seen when he went to Xanadu.'” [2]

“Consider a long, slender horn in silver with gilded trim. It is an arresting sight, and so is its stand, with a pair of full-figure skeletons wearing crowns with skull icons encircling them.” [3]

“Despite the exoticism of the culture to which they belong, the length of its history and the complexity of the Buddhist cosmology they describe, there’s a casual, hands-on quality to the ensemble. A deeply humane sensibility, and sometimes funky playfulness, runs through all of the Tibetan objects. [4]

“Chinese, Manchu and Tibetan inscriptions carved into this official seal [displayed in the exhibit] express the international stature and importance of the Fifth Dalai Lama. This importance is reflected in the Fifth Dalai Lama’s title, the ‘Buddha of Great Compassion in the West and Leader of the Buddhist Faith beneath the Sky.’ The Fifth Dalai Lama, also known as the Great Fifth, built the Potala Palace and served as both the secular ruler and spiritual teacher of Tibet, a dual role held by each subsequent Dalai Lama. [5]

“One of the earliest and most important works in the exhibition, this 12th or 13th century sculpture presents Mahakala, a protector deity worshipped by all Tibetan sects. Wearing a five-skull crown, he has three eyes wide open in enraged expression and his hair stands on end. The orange color of his hair and moustache refers to his function as a wrathful deity, one called upon to protect and defend.” [6]

“Festive occasions required formal jewelry. This necklace, made of gold, silver, turquoise and coral, was worn by a nobleman. It includes an amulet box, or g’au, which held a Buddhist charm thought to protect the wearer. [7]

Act II: Collisions

“‘From the Tibetan perspective, this is stolen art.'” [8]

“Officials at the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art in Santa Ana insist that their current exhibit, “Tibet: Treasures From the Roof of the World,” is about art, not politics…’It would be inappropriate…for us to take a political stance'” [9]

source:http://www.artnetwork.com/mandala/gallery.html

“Issue 1:
The censorship and treatment of Tibetan monks, their American representatives, an American Guest curator of the exhibit, and the exhibit’s docents.
A. On September 30, 2003, the imposition of last minute conditions by Bowers Museum Director, Anne Shih, on Ms. Nancy Fireman, Executive Director of Tibetan Living Communities, who was representing a group of Tibetan monks from Southern India. The monks had agreed through Nancy Fireman to a request by Bowers Museum to construct a Sand Mandala (painting) starting October 18, 2003. These last minute conditions included:
1. Prohibiting the Tibetan monks from displaying a portrait of His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama during the creation of the Sand Mandala (painting).
2. Telling the monks that they could not say they were Tibetan refugees visiting from India, but rather that they are from the US.
3. Prohibiting the monks from discussing their refugee status and from distributing literature about their organization, “Tibetan Living Communities,” based in Napa Valley, California, which works towards providing funds for Tibetan refugee settlements in India.
The above conditions led to their subsequent refusal to create the Sand Mandala for the Museum.” [10]

“The Dalai Lama himself didn’t oppose the exhibition. The Bowers Museum’s director, Peter C. Keller, explains, ‘He is for anything that promotes Tibetan culture.'” [11]

14th Dalai Lama; Source: www.namgyal.org

“The Bowers Museum…asked the Dalai Lama for permission to display the art. The Dalai Lama granted it, on condition that the Museum describe the art and its historical context fairly. At the same time, he noted that he hoped visitors would come to understand that the culture that produced it is under threat in Tibet.

Nonetheless, the Museum in some respects appears to be bowing to Chinese pressure to prevent the American public from understanding the true implications of the exhibit.” [12]

“To Bartholomew [a curator at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco], setting an altar to Tibet’s Nobel Prize-winning exiled leader in such proximity to artwork on loan from the Chinese government would be a slap in the face for the Chinese.

‘Politics and art need to be kept separate, she says. ‘The Chinese government would definitely close the show.'” [13]

“That Tibetan sacred art is ‘on loan’ to American museums from the Chinese government…the very government that for fifty years has methodically crushed Tibetan culture, only serves to legitimize the military occupation. It’s hard to imagine anyone not understanding the Tibetans who protest against the occupation of their country. It’s easy to sympathize with them when they criticize American museums for so sheepishly providing Beijing with legitimacy regarding its illegal occupation of Tibet. Obviously the Chinese government is exploiting Tibetan art for political gain.” [14]

“Smith sees the exhibit as a chance for the Tibetan diaspora ‘to see parts of their culture that, unless there were museums preserving it and museums exhibiting, would be unavailable’…Jeff Watt, another Rubin curator, urged protesters to set aside their differences and simply feel proud of the display of their heritage.” [15]

“Tethong responds angrily: ‘If Russia had won the cold war and taken over your country, then took the Declaration of Independence on a worldwide tour, how would he feel?'” [16]

“Peter Keller, the Bowers president, shakes his head: ‘I’ve never seen artifacts become this political, this sensitive.” [17]

Act III: Distances

“Transformed into fetishistic art objects unencumbered by explanatory texts, the artifacts lose much of their meaning and significance. It is little wonder that the protesters, many of them holding umbrellas imprinted with the flag of Tibet, chanted ‘shame, shame, shame’ on the street outside of the museum.” [18]

“As a whole, the show is approachable and user friendly…If they [the Tibetan objects] were people, they’d best be described as friendly: not flashy or imperious but a little rough around the edges and optimistic in their openness. This makes for a satisfying exhibition that’s surprisingly intimate, despite having traveled halfway around the world to get here.” [19]

“‘Let’s say your family suffers a home-invasion robbery,” the 56-year-old from Malibu said. ‘Then a museum negotiates with the robbers to display your things. You should be grateful because now you can look at your possessions?'” [20]

“As the exhibit comes to the San Francisco Bay Area…this writer notes that it illustrates how art is never simply an item pinned to a wall but is also an event, and as such enters into a larger cultural dialogue in community.” [21]

“‘What the Asian Art Museum is exhibiting is something the Chinese are using to camouflage their brutal suppression of Tibetan freedom.'” [22]

Chaos in Lhasa, 2008; Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23629811/

“[Getting the exhibition] was a monster coup for us,” he said. “It is the museum equivalent of winning the Super Bowl.” [23]

“In a letter to the Bowers, the Dalai Lama welcomed the exhibition for revealing the magnitude of Tibet’s artistic traditions. ‘Despite the wholesale destruction that has taken place in Tibet in recent decades,’ he wrote, ‘some works of art have survived. I hope that such efforts will contribute to saving Tibetan culture from disappearing for ever.'” [24]

” An imposing array of valuable cultural relics…prove that Tibet became part of China in the Yuan Dynasty and has remained under the administration of the central government of China since then.” [25]

“Xerab Nyima, a Tibetan scholar, said it is irrefutable that Tibet has not been separate from the motherland since it came under the rule of the Yuan Dynasty 700 years ago. However, the Dalai Lama and some people in the west still preach the independence of Tibet. It is ridiculous, he said.” [26]

Mao; Source: www.britannica.com

“Greater exposure to Tibet’s artistic glories will likely advance its cause as a rich culture and a people that deserves
better than forced rule and human-rights abuses at the hands of the Chinese.

Sourcehttp://tibet.hmns.org/

One facet of Tibetan culture that surely troubled Mao’s China was the inseparability of religion and art, and of religion and the political structure. This is abundantly evident in the exhibition.” [27]

Works Cited

Act I: Objects

[1] This description is from the home page of the exhibition at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. See http://www.asianart.com/exhibitions/bowers/index.html

[2] Associated Press, “Historic agreement brings Tibetan treasures to U.S.,” CNN Online, October 16, 2003. http://www.cnn.com/2003/TRAVEL/DESTINATIONS/10/12/tibetan.treasures.ap/

[3] Robert L. Pincus, “Bowers Museum scores rare ‘Treasures’,” The San Diego Union-Tribune, August 8, 2004. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20040808/news_1a8tibet.html

[4] David Pagel, “Tibet’s treasures seen on a human scale; An exhibition of jewelry, sculptures and everyday artifacts in Santa Ana is unpretentious yet impressive,” Los Angeles Times, October 31 2003. The article is accessible online through ProQuest.

[5] This description of one of the object’s in the museum and the two that follow it were used by the Houston Museum of Natural Science. See http://tibet.hmns.org/images/selections(t).pdf See also the home page of the exhibition at the Houston Museum of Natural Science: http://tibet.hmns.org/ The Houston Museum website includes downloadable images (under the heading “Press”) and all of the images that appear in Act I of this dialog are from this site. Also of interest is the descriptions of the Adult Education Programs offered by the museum in conjunction with the exhibition, especially the panel “Modern Tibet: The Legacy of the Past ad Challenges of the Future,” which included a discussion of Tibet’s contemporary political situation.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

Act II: Collisions

[8] This statement was made by Denis Cusack, “a board member of the Tibet Justice Center, which advocates an independent Tibet.” See Associated Press, “Historic agreement brings Tibetan treasures to U.S.,” CNN Online, October 16, 2003. http://www.cnn.com/2003/TRAVEL/DESTINATIONS/10/12/tibetan.treasures.ap/

[9] Daniel Yi, “Tibetan Exhibit is More Political Artifice than Art, Protesters Say,” Los Angeles Times, February 22, 2004. Available online through the website of the Canada Tibet Committee: http://www.tibet.ca/en/newsroom/wtn/archive/old?y=2004&m=2&p=22_2 The individual quoted in this citation is Rick Weinberg, the director of public relations and marketing for the Bowers Museum, Santa Ana.

[10] “Bowers Tibet Exhibit Update: Issues Raised by the Southern California Tibetan Community and Tibet Supporters with Suggested Corrective Action by Bowers Museum of Cultural Art,” Los Angeles Friends of Tibet website, http://www.latibet.org/Bowers/bowers-issue.htm The image of the monk creating a sand mandala is from http://www.artnetwork.com/mandala/gallery.html This sand mandala was made for the California Museum of Art in 2001.

[11] Robert L. Pincus, “Bowers Museum scores rare ‘Treasures’,” The San Diego Union-Tribune, August 8, 2004. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20040808/news_1a8tibet.html Peter C. Keller is the president of the Bowers Museum.

[12] “Tibetan Rights Group Calls Bowers Museum Exhibit Stolen Art,” Tibet Justice Center Website, http://www.tibetjustice.org/press/03.10.13-bowers.html

[13] Lisa Tsering, “Activists Blast SF Museum’s Exhibit of Tibetan Art,” Asian-American Village News, http://www.imdiversity.com/Villages/Asian/arts_culture_media/pns_tibet_art_0605.asp

[14] Mark Vallen, “Stolen Art & Cultural Destruction,” Mark Vallen’s “Art for a Change” Weblog, http://www.art-for-a-change.com/blog/2005/04/stolen-art-cultural-destruction.html This is a weblog by a working artist. He discusses the Tibet exhibit and compares it to an exhibition of Iraqi artifacts called The Gold of Nimrud: Treasures of Ancient Iraq.

[15] Sue Morrow Flanagan, “Treasures in cultural crossfire,” Financial Times (London), April 4, 2005. Online at http://www.tibet.ca/en/newsroom/wtn/archive/old?y=2005&m=4&p=4_4

[16] Ibid. Lhedon Tethong is executive director of Students for a Free Tibet.

[17] Ibid.

Act III: Distances

[18] Jennie Klein, “Being Mindful: West Coast Reflections on Buddhism and Art,” PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 27.1 (2005), pp. 82-90. Available online at http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/performing_arts_journal/v027/27.1klein.html [Access may be limited].

[19] David Pagel, “Tibet’s treasures seen on a human scale; An exhibition of jewelry, sculptures and everyday artifacts in Santa Ana is unpretentious yet impressive,” Los Angeles Times, October 31 2003. The article is accessible online through ProQuest.

[20] Daniel Yi, “Tibetan Exhibit is More Political Artifice than Art, Protesters Say,” Los Angeles Times, February 22, 2004. Available online through the website of the Canada Tibet Committee: http://www.tibet.ca/en/newsroom/wtn/archive/old?y=2004&m=2&p=22_2 The individual quoted is Tseten Phanucharas, one of the many people who protested the exhibition at the Bowers Museum.

[21] Gary Gach, “Note on San Francisco Venue,” http://www.asianart.com/exhibitions/bowers/note.html From the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco website.

[22] This comment was made by Topden Tsering, head of the Bay Area branch of the Tibetan Youth Congress. See Lisa Tsering, “Activists Blast SF Museum’s Exhibit of Tibetan Art,” Asian-American Village News, http://www.imdiversity.com/Villages/Asian/arts_culture_media/pns_tibet_art_0605.asp

[23] This comment was made by Rick Weinberg, the director of public relations and marketing for the Bowers Museum, Santa Ana. Daniel Yi, “Tibetan Exhibit is More Political Artifice than Art, Protesters Say,” Los Angeles Times, February 22, 2004. Available online through the website of the Canada Tibet Committee: http://www.tibet.ca/en/newsroom/wtn/archive/old?y=2004&m=2&p=22_2

[24] Sue Morrow Flanagan, “Treasures in cultural crossfire,” Financial Times (London), April 4, 2005. Online at http://www.tibet.ca/en/newsroom/wtn/archive/old?y=2005&m=4&p=4_4

[25] “Tibet Becomes Part of China 700 Years Ago,” Peoples Daily. http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200105/14/eng20010514_69926.html The “relics” mentioned in this quotation include many that were on display in the Tibet: Treasures from the Roof of the World Exhibit. The author of this article, however, is referring to an exhibition put on at the Sagya Monastery in Lhasa.

[26] Ibid.

[27] Robert L. Pincus, “Bowers Museum scores rare ‘Treasures’,” The San Diego Union-Tribune, August 8, 2004. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20040808/news_1a8tibet.html

Tibetan Art Collection of the Hahn Cultural Foundation

by Hojeong Choe

---

The Hahn Cultural Foundation was founded by Dr. Kwang-ho Hahn in 1992, when the foundation was registered to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Korea.
Dr. Hahn, a current Honorary Chairman of the museum, has begun collecting the curios in 1960s and…

Hwajeong Museum , Seoul, Korea

Online Exhibition website

Namio Egami (江上波夫, 1906-2002)

Kimiaki Tanaka (田中公明, 1955-)

The part of the collection can be also viewed on the Himalayan Art Resources website.[Hahn at HAR ]

Tibetan Silk Dancing Dress

Tibetan Silk Dancing Dress (American Museum of Natural History)

The Robe

The sleeves are identically decorated, each with three distinct horizontal patterns. Closest to the shoulder is a wide strip of dark grey silk brocaded with multi-color and metal dragons, clouds and various symbols. This is followed by a slimmer strip of bright red silk damask. After which is slightly wider strip of bright red, green, purple and pastel damask clouds diamonds sitting within squares. This marks the half-way point, at which the bright red silk damask pattern repeats, followed by a narrow strip of the dark grey silk brocaded pattern.



The pointed sleeves of robe are characteristic of a costume that would have been worn during a masked dance performance that would take place at a Tibetan Monastery. The sleeves would resemble normal sleeves, except that hanging triangular cloth allows them to undulate gracefully while dancers swing a gesture flamboyantly with their arms [1].The width across the sleeves is 168 cm (about 5.5 feet).


The upper part of the robe is quite plain because it is intended to be embellished by other parts of the dancing costume [2]. The body of dark grey silk is worn and threadbare, with holes and tarnished metallic threads. The costume is lined with dark red cotton.



A white silk ribbon, embroidered with houses, people, lotus flowers and trees and other domestic images emphasizes the waistline. The trimming leads to a very full skirt; the lower part of the robe is decorated with patterns resembling those on the sleeves. The length of the robe is 108 cm (about 3.5) and it flows out below the knees.

Symbols

Dragons

Chinese Dragons

The four-clawed dragon that appears on the skirt and part of each of the sleeves is, “normally associated with nobles and imperial officials from the Chinese court [7].” The dragon symbolizes good fortune, power and success. Scholars believe that this motif may have “found its way to Tibet through the gifts of silks and embroideries that the emperors of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) regularly sent to the monasteries[8].”

Gyatso, “In the Sacred Realm,” in Reynolds 1999. From the Sacred Realm, 171-179, “Symbols,” 254-261. (9 pp text)

Clouds

Silk Embroidered with Cloud Motif

Along the strip of dark grey silk, closest to the shoulder are multi-colored clouds. The cloud motif represents the whole universe or a part of the foundation of the universe. “In the Ch’ing dynasty this symbolism was quite obvious, especially on the dragon robes, where the cloud-studded upper part of the garment represented the canopy of the sky, supported on the world as indicated by the mountains and seas at the base of the robe. But even earlier when the actual decoration did not demonstrate this so clearly, the robe was thought to represent the all-encompassing sky [9].”The cosmic symbolism of the robe itself seems to indicate that the wearer has achieved qualities of the celestial by surpassing worldly existence and achieving purity of mind. One may notice that the representation of the cloud is similar to the omnipresent lotus flower motif.

Festive Dancing & Dress

The British Museum has an item that is similar this dress, donated by the Government of India (see below). The costume is from Tibet, during the late 19th or early 20th century. At this time, “most monasteries in Tibet had a collection of masks and elaborate silk costumes, which were brought out for performances during a variety of celebrations [18].” Examples of the types of festival at which this ceremonial dress would have been worn are Losar, the Tibetan New Year or Saka Dawa, the celebration of Buddha’s enlightenment. See the object biography of the Deer Mask for more examples of the masks and costumes associated with such festivals.

Silk Dancing Dress (The British Museum)

Saka Dawa Festival
In the Tibetan calendar, it is traditional for Tibetans to celebrate the day when, “Sakyamuni was born, achieved nirvana and passed away [19].” It is a long established custom among Tibetans to dress in their best clothing and “assemble at the Dragon King Pool behind the magnificent Potala Palace to celebrate this grand religious festival [20].” This practice has developed into a large gala during which Tibetans visit parks and pray for a good harvest. “During this festival, some people set up colorful tents; some prepare barley wine and butter tea, families resting beside the pool with great joy. Then young Tibetans dance in a circle while singing following the rhythm by stamping their feet [21].”

Tibetan New Year
Tibetans prepare for the important ceremonies which surround the New Year for weeks prior to the event. During their preparations, Tibetans infuse barley seeds in basins. On the eve of the holiday, a variety of foods are presented to images of Buddha. Traditionally, on the first day of the celebration, one family member is sent to take a barrel of water home from the river, the first barrel of water in the New Year is called auspicious water [22]. The second day signals the beginning of the social visits which friends and family make to one another. During the 3-5 days following, there is festive dancing, “at the squares or open grasslands with the accompaniment of guitars, cymbals, gongs and other musical instruments. Hand in hand, arm in arm, Tibetans dance in a circle while singing following the rhythm by stamping their feet. Children, on the other hand, will fire firecrackers. A happy, harmonious and auspicious festival atmosphere will pervade the whole area [23].”


Song and Dance


Each region of Tibet had its own, distinct style as well as songs and dances. “The most ancient songs are sung without any accompaniment and one can imagine them being sung high in the mountains as shepherds took care of the animals [24].”

Cham

Those dances performed at religious institutions follow different customs than those practiced by common folk. Religious dances customarily depict aspects of the Buddhist philosophy. “They can be amazingly spectacular, involving the use of masks, extremely colourful costumes, and the playing of horns, cymbals, and other traditional Tibetan instruments [25].” The elaborately decorated masks and color give the costume a striking overall appearance.

Ordinary Tibetan Dress

Back View of Chuba

Front View of Chuba

“In most areas the traditional dress for both men and women consists of the chuba, a long wrap-around cloth tied at the waist, with men tending to wear a shorter chuba with pantaloons. There are many distinctive variations in how the chuba is worn, each indicating the wearer’s area or a particular symbolic significance [26].”


[1] http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/aoa/s/silk_dancing_dress.aspx</span>
[2] IBID.
[7] http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/aoa/s/silk_dancing_dress.aspx
[8] IBID.
[9] The Symbolism of the Cloud Collar Motif by Schuyler Cammann P 5
[18] http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/aoa/s/silk_dancing_dress.aspx</span
[19] [[http://www.tibettravel.info/lhasa/lhasa-festivals.html%3C/span%3E%3C/span|http://www.tibettravel.info/lhasa/lhasa-festivals.html</span]]
[20] IBID.
[21] IBID.
[22] IBID.
[23, 24, 25, 26] http://www.rokpauk.org/tibcultureheritage.html

 

Chinese Cloud Collar with extra folliations, Johns Hopkins University Museum

Simple Chinese Cloud Collar, Johns Hopkins University Museum

Tibetan Bleeding Cup

---

What is it?

This object, which lives in a drawer in the American Museum of Natural History, is a hollowed out animal horn and was probably used in traditional Tibetan medicine for cupping. Although the AMNH labels it as a bleeding cup, my research indicates that it probably was not used to hold blood, though the process of cupping involves moving blood to certain identified areas of the body.

The most convincing evidence that this horn was used for cupping can be found in the image below, a plate from the book “Tibetan Medicine”.

“Plate No. 17
A Tibetan doctor’s medicine bag made of leather and silk brocade, where he keeps his medicines and instruments. Each powder is kept in a little leather bag with a bone label as shown. The bag in the Wellcome library is 9 inches high and the diameter at the bottom measures 10 inches. It contains fifty little bags with powders. Spoon for measuring medicines. Instruments for taking off a cataract. An ox’s horn used for cupping. Medicinal stone. A cow’s horn with a small hole at the tip, through which the doctor sucks blood from the diseased area. (Tibetan Medicine, 132)”

The small ox horn to the right of the medicine bag pictured closely resembles the AMNH’s horn. This horn was included in the medicine bag of a Tibetan doctor. Further evidence that this horn was not used for bleeding comes from the section on surgical instruments which describes another object used for bloodletting: “For removing bad blood and pus from affected parts of the body, a round copper bowl, 4 inches in diameter” (Tibetan Medicine, 84).

Common to these sytems of thought is a construction of the body as a microcosm of the natural universe. To this largely naturalisitc system of theory and practice, early Tibetan medical scholars added Buddhist notions of the mind or self, emotion, and the law of karma, developing a theoretical system in which the notion of a mental self (sems) was constituted as dominant over the objective, or grossly physical, body…Thus, Buddhist medicine posits that the self (the “ego”) is ultimately causal of all suffering, including that of ill health. Although body and mind are seen as fundamentally integreated in this sytem, it is the mind that problematized and seen as primary in faciliatating both health and ill health (The Transformation of Tibetan Medicine, 10).

Credit: Wellcome Library, London
Chart indicating good and bad bloodletting days and when to guard against demons. The chart also contains a sme ba, 9 figures symbolizing the elements in geomancy, in the center with the Chinese pa-kua, 8 trigrams, surrounded by 12 animals representing months and years. Below this, symbols of the 7 days of the week. 106 compartments containing an ornamental letter in each and written in dbu indicate bloodletting days. The protector deities, top, are Manjursri, the White Tara and Vajrapani, below them the 8 fortune signs and other symbols.
Collection: Asian Collection

---

The Importance of Horns

Horns have been used medicinally for millenia, most notably by the Chinese. “The horn of rhinoceros dries pus and purifies the blood; antelope’s horns is used in medicines that diarrhea; wild yak’s horn cures tumours and gives warmth to the body; the horn of argali (Asiatic wild sheep) protects against contagious diseases; wild sheep’s and Saigo antelope’s horn assist easy birth. Crocodile’s claws cure bone fever. Snail’s shell cures dropsy and stomach diseases” (Tibetan Medicine, 71)

---

How did this horn end up at the American Museum of Natural History? Possibilities…

While the specific circumstances of this object’s history are unavailable, it is interesting to note the acquisition dates, 1920-1953, that are listed in the object’s catalogue information. These dates correspond to the end of a period of significant missionary activity in Tibet, which played an important role in the growth of many museum’s Tibetan collections. The Newark Museum, which houses a prominent collection of Tibetan objects, was born from the work of the medical missionary Albert Shelton, who spent periods of several years living in Tibet with his wife and family. When Shelton met Dr. Edward Crane in 1910, a founding trustee of the Newark Museum, on his return voyage from a six year mission in Tibet, they became friends and he eventually sold his personal collection of Tibetan objects to the museum. Dr. Shelton was not the only missionary in Tibet during the time period.
Between 1928 and 1948 three more missionary collections, all from north-eastern Tibet were purchased, greatly enhancing the Museum’s holdings of ethnographic and ceremonial art. These were the Robert Ekvall collection, from the Kokonor nomad region, Amdo, 1928, the Carter D. Holton collection from Labrang, Amdo, 1936, and the Robert Roy Service collection, formed during trips to northeastern Tibet and acquired from Chinese traders in the border areas, 1948. Holton and his colleague, the Re. M.G. Griebenow, worked at the American-sponsored Christian and Missionary Alliance Mission at Labrang.

The American Museum of Natural History, in the catalogue information, lists the donor as “Marx”. Dr. Karl Marx was a missionary in Tibet at the end of the 19th century and while he is less well known that Dr. Albert Shelton, the ANMH’s Asian Ethnographic Collection website, which pictures their collection of objects, lists 167 other objects with the donor name “Marx” in the Tibetan collection. This includes medicine bags, a medicine spoon, etc.

---

 

Tibet and its visitors at the turn of the twentieth century

The route map of Captain W.J. Gill’s journey in Western China and Eastern Tibet

---

Issues in Tibetan medicine today

“Tibetan Medicine, already under pressure to modernize in the early 20th c. as a result of the 13th Dalai Lama’s efforts to centralize political power and authority, has become mired in these larger Chinese-Tibetan conflicts by virtue of its culturally significant and religiously salient position in Tibetan society” (pg 7)

• The Transformations of Tibetan Medicine

• Craig R. Janes
• Medical Anthropology Quarterly, New Series, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Mar., 1995), pp. 6-39
• Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological Association

BLEEDING CUP
ASIAN ETHNOGRAPHIC COLLECTION
Catalog No:
70.0/ 2107
Culture:
TIBETAN
Country:
TIBET
Material:
HORN
Dimensions:
L:9.3 W:5 H:3.6 [in CM]
Donor:
MARX
Accession No:
1920-53

I

http://skepticwiki.org/index.php/Life_of_St_Issa#Dr_Karl_Marx

spectacles or eye coverings

This is an image of the late 17th/early 18th century Tibetan visionary Terdag Lingpa as depicted in a fresco within the main temple of Mindroling monastery in Dranang valley of the Lhoka region, Central Tibet. This reproduction was published in a pamphlet form introduction and outline of Terdag Lingpa’s collected works by the branch of Mindroling in Dehra Dun, India. http://www.mindrolling.com/ The painting is credited to his younger brother, the great scholar and artist Lochen Dharmashri. Unfortunately, the inscription on the original painting is obscured. The inscription in the reproduction says simply, “An image of the Terton painted by Lochen Dharmashri.” Note the eyeglasses resting on Terdag Lingpa’s forehead. While it is not impossible that Terdag Lingpa had and wore spectacles, the presence of these eyeglasses is unusual and striking as compared with other portraits from the same historical context. Given the rarity of eyeglasses in Tibetan portraits, these eyeglasses are curious.

The history of eyeglasses in the Western world extends back to the 13th Century. Some thoughts on the history of eyeglasses in Europe.
There are many possible explanations for the presence of these eyeglasses. Did Terdag Lingpa wear them to aid his vision, as eyeglasses are conventionally worn? Are they not eyeglasses as we know them, but a ritual implement used in meditative exercises or to enhance visionary experiences? Are they a novelty or luxury item that the artist chose to include because they highlighted Terdga Lingpa’s elevated status? Were eyeglasses available or even common in Terdag Lingpa’s time, but not typically depicted in images of lamas — the most frequent subjects of portraits — perhaps since eyeglasses would be a sign of poor vision and therefore not flattering to the lama’s image?

There are other images of lamas wearing eye coverings of one variety or another. Here are some examples of eye coverings in depictions of Kagyu and Sakya lamas. These images, compiled by Jeff Watt in response to my query about eye coverings in Himalayan art, depict lamas identified as part of the Karma Kagyu, Drukpa Kagyu and Sakya lineages. The paintings and sculpture are approximately dated from 1500-1799. These images might indeed be of the same category as the eyeglasses in Lochen Dharmashri’s portrait of Terdag Lingpa, but they are markedly different in appearance. Terdag Lingpa’s resemble modern day eyeglasses far more than any of these other images. This makes me wonder whether the eyeglasses depicted in the Mindroling portrait might have been a gift from a foreign guest or patron, or a pilgrim who had traveled abroad and who delivered them to Terdag Lingpa.

According to China historian Milton Walter Meyer, eyeglasses were imported to China from Europe through Southeast Asia as early as the Tang. Meyer claims the by late Imperial times, spectacles were a common accoutrement of the literati. At certain points, eyeglasses were also a sign of prestige in Europe. It is possible that Terdag Lingpa’s eyeglasses came from China, and the fact that Lochen Dharmashri chose to include them in the portrait might suggest that they were a mark of prestige in the Tibetan context as well.

Bibliography

Illardi, Vincent. 2006 Renaissance Vision from Spectacles to Telescopes. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society.

— “Eyeglasses and Concave Lenses in Fifteenth-Century Florence and Milan,” Renaissance Quarterly, 29 (1976), 341-60.

— “Renaissance Florence: The Optical Capital of the World” Journal of European Economic History 22 (1993), 507-41.

Lindberg, David C. “Lenses and Eyeglasses” Dictionary of the Middle Ages vii. 538-41.

Meyer, Milton W. 1997. Asia: a concise history. Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Rosen, Edward. “The Invention of Eyeglasses,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 11 (1956), 13-46, 183-218.

A Bundle of Prayer Leaves

 

The object to scale next to a pencil

 

What does it look like? Smell like? Taste like?

This object is small, about 2 inches in diameter and thickness. There are approximately two-hundred and sixty individual sheets of Tibetan paper tied together with a piece of stiff sinew. The sinew is tied in a square knot. Some of the leaves are not stacked neatly; in some places up to five of the leaves and folded inside of each other. The object fits nicely in the palm. Each of the leaves is block-printed on Tibetan paper with the mantra Om Mani Padme Hum which repeats itself again and again around the circle. The object smells musty and brown mold is visible in a few places. The object is compact and sturdy and from my observations it appears that it was constructed in its present shape and form to serve a functional purpose rather than decorative; this is not an object to display though it may have been part of an object that did have aethestic value. I unfortunately did not taste the object, however if were able to scientifically “taste” the object by taking a sample of its fibers we might be able to further understand when exactly this object was made and from what plants the paper comes from.

---

 

What is it?

While it is only possible to speculate, after a fair amount of research and conversations, I have determined that this object may be a collection of individual prayer leaves that, rather than being placed as a unit inside the body of the prayer wheel, would be used individually at the top and bottom of the prayer wheel to lock in the scroll. I was finally able to determine this after finding a diagram of how to make a mani wheel in Lorne Ladner’s book Wheel of Great Compassion (see images below). He writes, “the instructions here conform to the method suggested by the Fourth Panchan Lama (link), which Lama Zopa Rinpoche has said is a correct method for filling mani wheels” (The Wheel of Great Compassion, 87).

Step two

Step one

Below, Lama Zopa Rinpoche has actually drawn a version of earth wheel, which is to be fitted on the bottom of the scroll. The second piece, the sky wheel, fits on the top. 

It is believed in Tibetan Buddhism that spinning the written form of Om Mani Padme Hum around a prayer wheel, otherwise known as a mani wheel, has the same effect as repeating the mantra out loud and thus the spinner can accrue merit . The prayer wheel is used as a meditation tool.

---

 

Considerations

However, the formal function of this object (or rather, the function of one of its elements, the prayer leaves) that I have named does not mean that this particular bundle of prayer leaves was used for that purpose. To determine where this object might have traveled before its current home on a numbered shelf in the Museum of Natural History in New York City, it is helpful to consider the tactile experience that I and others had when we were able to spend time with the object on February 28, 2008. Mostly notably, after twenty minutes of (gloved) handling of the object, where we counted the leaves and rifled through them to understand their motion and composition, the object degenerated quite a bit; the leaves, particularly those close to the top and bottom, were considerably more wrinkled and worn than when we first picked it up. This signifies that the object has not been handled by human hands very frequently, if at all, since it was constructed. This experience with the object might lead one to believe one of two things: that the object is fairly old and, while it may have been handled frequently by its original owner (or one of its owners), is now in a state of disintegration, or, that the object has always been stored away from human hands, possibly even inside a prayer wheel to take the place of the traditional scrolled mantra. This seems possible because the prayer leaves are pierced in their center and appear to have been compactly held together for a significant period of time; the ink on some of leaves is bleeding and smudged onto other leaves. What is nearly for certain is that these leaves were intended to be spun, either together in their current form or separately as the top and bottom pieces of more conventional prayer wheels, so that the mantra could accrue merit for its spinner.

Prayer Bundle Side View

 

---

---

What else spins?

I am not the first person to posit this question; in 1896 William Simpson published the book The Buddhist Praying Wheel after visiting Tibet. He first recounts his experience with the Buddhist praying wheel and then goes on to describe The Wheel-God in France; the Whirling Dervishes of Cairo, Egypt; the Ka’bah at Mekkah; the Japanese Wheel with Thunder Drums; Wheels with Charms attached, found in Swiss Lake-Dwellings; his list goes on. I have included images of other Tibetan Buddhist uses of the wheel or circle as well as a discussion of a few other examples that he gives.

Similiar object found in a bug-infested statue

Vajravarahi Abhibhava Mandala

Unknown Block-Printed Mantra from statue, AMNH Vajravarahi Abhibhava Mandala 14th c.

First, within Tibetan Buddhism We looked at the object above during the same time that we looked at the Bundle of Prayer Leaves at the American Museum of Natural History; it had been found inside a statue of the Buddha that had been taken apart due to bug infestation.

---

 

Whirling Dervishes, Turkey

Whirling Dervishes of the Mevlevi Order; Istanbul, Turkey

X. Theordore Barber, in his 1986 article in Dance Chronicle entitled, Four Interpretations of Mevlevi Dervish Dance, 1920-1929, writes:
“Few dances are as famous as the whirling of the Mevlevi dervishes. For many centuries, despite Orthodox Islam’s opposition to dance, some orders of dervishes, or mystics, have employed dance movements in their ceremonies. Each order, congregating in its lodge, or tekke, had its own unique movements meant to induce an ecstatic or trancelike state. In unison, the dervishes would do such things as sway back and forth, turn in a circle while holding each other, or jump at set intervals, all the while repeating the name of God (Allah). Musicians and even singers would often accompany these actions. Yet no dervish sect has fascinated the West more than the Mevlevis, who whirled like tops in the course of their rite.”

---

 

Ka’bah

Ka’bah; Mecca, Saudi Arabia

The Ka’bah is a cube-shaped building at the center of the al-Masjid al-Haram mosque in Mecca. It is considered the most holy place in Islam and during the Hajj, or yearly pilgramage, millions of pilgrams circumambulate around the Ka’bah.

Click here to watch the Youtube video “Inside Mecca, view of Kaaba” to see footage of the actual circling of the Ka’bah.

Deer Mask Biography

Stag Mask Portals

Cham Deer Chams Bon Influence Main

---

Biography of a Stag Mask

{a} Photo from the AMNH Collections Database China: Tibetan

Here is a deer mask.

It’s come a long way–100 years and some 7,000 miles–from its birthplace in Tibet to its current residence in New York City. Even so, it was created for education and entertainment and it maintains this same purpose today, if in a different way. This biography begins to tell its story. Moving in reverse, it traces the mask’s movement to the American Museum of Natural History from cultural Tibet.

As with the story of any object, the story of this particular mask stands as a point of intersection among countless other stories that crisscross time and space: monastic dance, the cataloging impulse, animal deities, religious conflict, art technology, ritual guises, and expeditions to Asia, to name a few. This preliminary project plucks a few of these strands and see which other strands they tug on.

---

 

Meet the Mask

The stag mask here is made of paper mache, with eyes of glass or possibly plastic. It is a mask meant to be worn over the entire head and measures approximately 18 inches long, 19 inches wide and 20 inches high, not including the antlers, which are about 18 inches long. Since it is made of paper mache, it is surprisingly light weig

{b} Click image to view larger

ht for its size. This is essential to its use, which is in vigorous, spinning dance. A red cloth collar is attached to the bottom of the mask in the front and back. The dancer would be able to see out of the open mouth, but the field of vision is quite limited .

The style of the mask is naturalistic, which contrasts with many other Tibetan monastic masks that look like animals. See, for example, the deer mask from Mongolia pictured on the right. (Click on the image for a larger photo) The third eye, the skull on the crown, and the gold flaming designs shaped like eyebrows and facial hair set this deer apart from earthly deer. The museum’s stag mask also has flame-like gold designs emanating from the corners of its mouth (pictured at above) but they are much more subdued . The red band around the mouth suggests gums as if the lips are drawn back in an expression characteristic of some deities. However, the deer’s teeth are small and relatively flat like an ordinary deer’s and there is no tongue curling upward as there often is in wrathful figures, such as the pictured Mongolian deer mask. For these reasons, it is not possible to say with certainty what exactly the mask was made to be used for: opera or monastic dance. However, the expedition field notes place the mask among masks generally associated with monastic dance rather than opera and the museum has hung an almost identical mask in a monastic dance mask display, which I discuss below.

Its Life as an Artifact ~1908-2008

Examining the mask, we can find some marks of its incarnation as a museum artifact. One antler has an identification tag tied to it; the opposite ear has the catalog number written inside. This mask stays in storage in a cabinet with other duplicate masks and otherwise not-displayed Buddhist objects. A nearly identical stag mask is hung in the Tibetan exhibi

Click photo to enlarge

t on the museum floors, pictured below. It is displayed with a collection of similar monastic dance masks. There is also yet another much smaller deer with a different look. This other deer is so naturalistic, it seems possible that it was originally used in opera rather than monastic dance, although the museum’s original catalog page (item 4426) indicates that it was “for devil worship”.

Especially since we have come to the wall first to look at the deer heads, the wall has a strange resemblance to a collection of hunting trophies. In a sense it is a wall of trophies. Explorers set out to do scientific study of Asian peoples and brought back objects to display their findings. Tibetan monasteries also store the masks by hanging them, but the impression is quite different. See the chapel pictured below, from a monastery in or around the city of Gyantse in 2005.

Click the image for more shots of the same room.

The dim lighting and the clustering of the fierce faces creates a disconcerting atmosphere. The masks seem more to be faces–viewers, than decapitated heads–the viewed. With displays like these, it is easy to see how Western explorers in Tibet considered the masks part of devil worship. The poor camera focus may serve to exaggerate the grotesqueness of the scene–a case of literal blurring contributing to epistemological

{c} Berthold Laufer

blurring! Please click on the image for more shots of the same room to get a better sense of what they look like in person. Nonetheless, the masks are intended to be grotesque. Lozang Jamspal has said that “the gonkhang and the images of protector deities in it are purposely made to have a fearsome appearance to scare wicked people. This way many crimes are prevented simply by a person’s fear of the protectors in the gonkhang,” (LaRocca, 44).

As we look inside the museum’s stag mask, we see evidence of its first collection and inscription in a catalog. Pasted near the bottom opening is label in Chinese characters indicating that the mask is a deer face (鹿面). This label matches the object’s designation in the expedition field notes, which were made by Berthold Laufer, pictured above, right. Laufer, born and educated in Germany, joined the American Museum of Natural History in 1898 and spent the rest of his life based in the United States. From 1903 to 1923, he made several expeditions to China. The stag mask was likely collected in the 1908-1910 Blackstone Expedition (Latourette, 45). Though Laufer became most known for his expertise on Chinese civilization, he was quite knowledgeable about Tibetan civilization as well, since his doctoral thesis was in-depth analysis of a Tibetan document (Latourette, 43). A biographer writing about Laufer shortly
after his death in 1934 described Laufer’s main concern and academic motivation in studying the people of the “Far East” as being, “these peoples before the destructive irruption of the Occident” (Latourette, 49). In this way, the museum’s collection of artifacts is a preservation project. Perhaps the religious use of the object has not fallen away after all, but rather been redirected. Could we consider a natural history museum a kind of humanist temple?

Creation and Use in Tibet ca. 1900

{d} A cham performance in Seattle, 2005

Generally, masks are made by first making a mold out of clay that has been mixed with yak glue. Once the mold is properly designed to represent the desired figure it is left on the monastery roof to dry in the sun for several days. Once the mold is dry and ready, the artist then uses a paintbrush to apply strips of cloth covered in glue. As one layer dries, another is applied (Pearlman, 76). This mask has the special feature of eyes made from plastic or glass. They appear to be embedded in the “flesh” of the mask, as if applied between layers of cloth.

The features of the mask are refined using metal tools heated over a fire (Ricard, 57). When the entire cloth form is dry and thick, the artist breaks the clay mold and scrapes residual clay from the cloth. For the finest touches, a cotton-clay mixture may be used to add facial details. Again, the mask dries for a few days on the monastery roof and finally receives its paint and whatever ornaments are appropriate. Finally, to protect the mask, the artist applies a layer of shellac (Pearlman, 76).

Actually donning a cham mask can be a bit involved and require two people. Masks may have straps, ties and protective padding to cushion the dancer’s chin and neck. In the image of the mask at right, you can see the tie and some of the protective cloth. The mask of this biography, however, does not show signs of holes for ties (Ricard, 57).

We can understand more about the creation and early life of the stag mask by examining the tradition of monastic dance in Tibet and the instances in which deer characters appear within this tradition. For an examination of a clay mask possibly used in cham, see the “Giant of Great Strength”.

---

Stag Mask Portals

Cham Deer Chams Bon Influence Main

 

---

References

LaRocca, Donald J. Warriors of the Himalayas: Rediscovering the Arms and Armor of Tibet. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
La Tourette, K.S. Biographical Memoir of Berthold Laufer 1874-1934. Washington: The National Academy of Sciences, 1938.
Pearlman, Ellen. Tibetan Sacred Dance: a Journey into the Religious and Folk Traditions. Rochester, VT : Inner Traditions, 2002.
Ricard, Matthieu. Monk Dancers of Tibet. Trans. Charles Hastings. Boston: Shambala, 2003.

Image Credits

{a} Photo from http://anthro.amnh.org/
{b} Photo from http://tibetanmaterialhistory.wikispaces.columbia.edu/Deer+mask+from+Mongolia
{c} Photo from http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/Jesup/fieldletters/Bios.html
{d} Photo from http://doppio-othercrap.buzznet.com/user/photos/tibetan-deer-dance/?id=1604553

Giant of Great Strength Mask : A Tentative Biography

by Victoria Jonathan

This Tibetan mask is kept in the reserves of the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH, New York City). There is very few information about it, which makes this biography highly hypothetical. This work hence leads us to discuss the possibility and relevance of such a project as an object (and particularly a mask) biography.

Giant of Great Strength Mask, Tibet

 

---

 

Owl mask

 

White Spirit mask

The Moravian mission in Ladakh in late 19th century

The only reliable information about this mask is that it has been acquired by the AMNH in 1920, and that it is part of a group of masks which share the same stylistic features and which were collected by missionary Dr. Karl Marx.

A research on Marx can help us speculate about the time when this mask was collected and the place where it was found. Dr. Marx was part of the Moravian mission in Tibet. He came to Leh (Ladakh) as a medical missionary in 1887, and participated in the creation of the mission’s first hospital there in 1888 {1}. Beside

Fire Robber mask

from his medical action, Marx seems to have had scientific interest in the culture of the region where he lived: he is the author of a History of Ladakh (“Three documents relating to the History of Ladakh” published in the Journal of the Asiatic Society

Mask

ofBengal, vol.LX, part I, Calcutta, 1891). He also partially translated the Book of the Kings of Ladakh {2}.

We can infer from Marx’s biography that the Giant of Great Strength mask was purchased by him
in Ladakh some time between 1886 and early 1900s. It was later acquired by the museum in 1920.

Black Devil mask

The mask is part of a group of nine masks kept at the AMNH. The eight other masks’ names are: owl mask, black devil mask, fire robber mask, white spirit mask, raven face mask, burning dorje mask, (blue) mask. How is this ensemble of masks coherent? Do these masks represent deities of a certain Tibetan pantheon? How do they interact together

Raven Face mask

?

Tibetan masks were mostly used in performances, masked dances such as Cham. But they could also serve as protective icons hung in an oratory. This ensemble of masks does not seem of very good quality compared to other Tibetan Buddhist

Burning Dorje mask

productions: their style is quite crude and rustic. Does that mean that they belonged to a small monastery that could not afford masks of better quality?

---

Physical description and possible meaning/affiliation of the mask

The Giant of Great Strength mask is made of clay and colored with black, red, light brown and white pigments. A cord is attached in the back. A blue silk cloth (probably from China) is attached to the mask by a thread. It is about 14 inches long, 10 inches wide, and 5 inches high, almost twice as big as a human face. The mask has a frightening aspect, produced by the combination of colors and the presence of scary elements such as skulls and flames. Its aspect comprises several elements of the Buddhist iconography.

The most used color is black (applied to the face, the pupils and around the white of the eyes). The red pigment enhances the face’s organs : eyes, mouth and tongue, nostrils, ears. This color also evokes blood. The light brown pigment is used to draw flames on eyebrows, cheeks, chin, lower and upper parts of the face (collar and crown). The white pigment is used on skulls, on the two pointing teeth and on the white of the eyes.

There are wrinkles on the nose, the cheeks and above the eyes and eyebrows, that could well be the expression of a face distorted by wrath. The eyes are set far apart, which enhances the frightening aspect of the mask.

Mask, Tibet (papier mache)

The mask has some characteristics typical of the Buddhist iconography of wrathful deities: its three eyes are topped by flames, the top of its head is surmounted by a crown of five skulls (in contrast with the crown of five leaves of the boddhisattvas) that recalls the destruction of the five passions, its open mouth shows bare fangs… Here is a picture of a Tibetan mask (from the collection of the Rubin Museum, New York City) of a different style, which still shares the same features, infering the Giant of Great Strength mask is part of a certain iconographic group of Tibetan masks.

These characteristics and the dark color of the mask recall the deity Mahakala (mGon po in Tibetan), a wrathful protective deity who was often the central deity represented in Cham rituals. But this mask could also well be a secondary deity assisting the principal deity in a ritual of Cham.

---

The function of the mask : an element of Cham ritual or a protective effigy?

The name Giant of Great Strength is mysterious, like the names of the other masks of the collection. It does not have any relevance in a Buddhist or Cham context. Maybe it was a character in a local myth or in a myth derived from the Bön religion, that was melted with Buddhist practice? However, the Giant of Great Strength mask could well be a transposition of Mahakala. Given the previous information, this mask could have been used in a Cham ritual, or as a protective effigy.

In Tibetan Civilization (1972), R.A. Stein defines the role of masks in Buddhism as a didactic one. Even though the ritual shall manifest the presence of deities through meditation, they remain invisible for laypeople. Masks are supposed to facilitate the manifestation of a deity. Their didactic role is notably displayed in masked dances (Cham). Mahakala is usually the principal deity in these danced masks. The Giant of Great Strength mask could have been used in Cham rituals. Therefore, does the mask represent a principal deity (like Mahakala) or an assisting deity ? How does it interact with the other masks of the collection in a Cham ritual ? Which monastery do they come from ? What type of Cham narrative were they used for ? These questions remain unanswered.

The Giant of Great Strength mask was possibly used in a Cham ritual. But Cham masks are usually made of wood or papier mâché (like the other mask from the Rubin Museum). This mask is on the contrary made of clay, and hence it seems too heavy to be worn by a monk dancer during a performance. The fact that the back of the mask has no holes for the eyes (but only a hole for the mouth) strengthens this idea, but it is reported that in some performances the dancers would hold the mask with two hands and look through the mouth. The Giant of Great Strength mask could otherwise have been a protective effigy, hung on the wall of a monastery or kept in a secret oratory (like a gonkhang) where deities reside – the blue silk cloth serving as a cover for the deity and its magic power. In Oracles and Deities of Tibet, René de Nebesky-Wojkowitz describes a gonkhang, “the holiest room of a temple” :
“The mgon khang is usually a dark room, lit only by a few butter-lamps burning in front of the images, which represent various chief dharmapalas and the particular guardian-deities of the monastery. Most of these images images are scarcely visible under the numerous ceremonial scarfs which have been draped over them. (…) The pillars of this chapel are decorated with masks, representing the angrily contorted faces of the various dharmapalas.” (p. 402).

---

The mask biography: a vain exercise?

Very few information could be gathered about this object. Is the Giant of Great Strength mask a derived form of Mahakala? Was it used during Cham dances? Or was it kept in a monastery as a protective effigy? The biography of the Giant of Great Strength mask mostly remains a mystery.

In The Way of the Masks (1979), Lévi-Strauss examines some masks from the Northwest Coast of Native North America. According to him, masks cannot be interpreted as separate objects. It is necessary to place them in their group of transformation to understand their signification. He proposes a methodology for the study of a group of masks which consists in the examination of their : aesthetic characteristics, technique of fabrication, use, benefits, related myths. There are three main dimensions of the mask : its plastic form, its semantic function (myth) and its ritual use. But this symbolic and imaginary ensemble remains subordinate to the social and economic infrastructures of a society. According to Lévi-Strauss’ structural perspective, the project of an object biography is nonsensical. A mask is not what it represents, but rather what it transforms, that is to say what it choses not to represent. A mask is the affirmation of a style, against the neighbor’s style. It is not possible to understand it independently of the other masks that it is not.

Thus, according to Lévi-Strauss, a mask cannot be studied as a sole object, it must be placed in the broader context of all the other masks that it does not represent. Still, if a “scientific” and exact approach of the Giant of Great Strength seems quite impossible, cannot we compare this mask with other relatively masks from the Himalayas and other parts of the world? Cannot we consider a relation between different masks other than semantic or ritual, like an aesthetic relation?

---

 

Monkey Mask, Nepal, 19th-20th century

Comparative perspective

The Giant of Great Strength mask can be replaced in the broader context of Himalayan masks. According to a few scholars (like Chazot or Murray), there are three main categories of Himalayan masks (but the frontiers between the three are quite porous):
– tribal masks or primitive-shamanic masks: they can represent the souls of ancestors, be used by shamans to practice divination and provoke a trance, or used as protective totems.
– village dance masks: they derive from local myths but often incorporate Hindu or Buddhist elements.
– monastery masks or classical masks: they are usually worn by Buddhists or Hindus in dance ceremonies.

Himalayan masks can be said to have a profoundly rooted international style: they resemble masks from other parts of the world, like Japan, Northwestern Native America, or Africa. There is a universality of the culture of masquerade.

Here is another mask from the Himalayan region. It is a tribal Monkey mask, made of wood and polychrome, probably from the turn of the 20th century. It is exhibited at the Rubin Museum of Art (New York City). This mask is from the Terai region, in southern Nepal, near the Indian border. It represents a monkey in a minimal style. The multi-layered pigments and the crack on its right side suggest that it has been often used and repaired. The Tharupeople from Terai have preserved a form of animism and shamanism. They use masks in theater performances that mix their local beliefs with cultural epics (like the Ramayana, in which monkeys have a special role).

Fang Mask, Gabon, 19th century

With its long face and very simple style, this Himalayan mask looks like an African mask, such as this Fang mask from the collection of the Musée du Quai Branly (Paris). Maybe, ultimately, the universality of masquerade invites us to a comparative perspective that in turn tells us more about us than we can tell about the masks. This is what Madanjeet Singh suggests in Himalayan Art(quoted from Murray’s article): « … these ageless images are undoubtedly the most fantastic and formidable art-link in the entire Himalaya. With these masks, we are presented with a radical departure from cultures and aesthetic more familiar to us. They provoke us emotionally and intellectually. And their examination offers both an occasion to develop intuitions about peoples, far distant and long ago, as well as insights about one’s self, here and now. »

Modigliani, Head, 1911

At the beginning of the 20th century, Western artists were quite fascinated with masks, and the ‘primitive’ culture of masquerade can be said to have had a great impact on the experiments of Modern Art. In pre-World War I Paris, Montparnasse artists were very influenced by their visits to the Musée de l’Homme, Paris’ equivalent of New York’s AMNH. African and Cambodian art inspired Modigliani’s sculptures.

African tribal masks were also very influential in Cubist experiments, which is obvious in some of Picasso’s works like Les demoiselles d’Avignon (MoMa, New York City). In The Story of Art, Gombrich evokes the role of tribal masks in Modern Art, as “a way out of the impasse of Western art” and a “search for expressiveness, structure and simplicity” (p. 563). In a paragraph about Picasso and Cubism, he writes : “{Picasso} began to study primitive art, to which Gauguin and perhaps also Matisse had drawn attention. We can imagine what he learned from these works: he learned how it is possible to build up an image of a face or an object out of a few very simple elements.” (p.573).

Picasso, Les demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907

 

---

 

Man Ray, Noire et blanche (Black and White), 1926

Another example of the fascination of Modern Art with primitive art can be found in this photograph by Man Ray. The photographer pairs the face of his model Kiki of Montparnasse with an African mask, creating a surprising and beautiful contrast between black and white, primitive and modern, representation and reality.

 

 

---

Notes

{1} “In April 1887 Dr. Karl Marx arrived in Leh to take over the hospital and clinic which were partly sponsored by the British Government. Dr. Karl Marx was the first trained missionary doctor to be sent to Ladakh.” in Tourism in Ladakh Himalaya, Prem Singh Jina, Indus Publishing, 1994 (p. 42).
{2} “Dr. Karl Marx (…) was able to acquire further, more detailed manuscripts of the Ladakh Chronicle {from the former King of Ladakh}. He found Schlagintweit’s version very unreliable when he compared it with the other texts, and begin work on an improved translation. Unfortunately he died when only a thord of his work had been printed. His manuscripts and the drafts of his translations of the second and third parts were sent to his brother in Germany.” in Recent Research on Ladakh 4 & 5, Henry Osmaston and Philip Denwood, Motilal Banarsidass, 1995 (p. 398).

---

---

References

Bird Isabella, Among the Tibetans, Oxford, 1894.
Chazot Eric, “The Masks of the Himalayas”, Orientations, October 1988.
Gombrich Ernst, The Story of Art, Phaidon,1995 (1950).
Lévi-Strauss Claude, La voie des masques, Plon, Paris, 1979.
Murray Thomas, “Demons and Deities – Masks of the Himalayas”, HALI n°2, 1995.
De Nebesky-Wojkowitz René, Oracles and Demons of Tibet – The Cult and Iconography of the Tibetan Protective Deities, ‘s Gravenhage, Mouton, 1956.
Stein R.A., La civilisation tibétaine, Paris, Dunod, 1962.

Special thanks to Isabelle Charleux, Isabelle Henrion-Dourcy and François Pannier for their insightful help.

Of Appendages and Anatomies: a Wall Hanging from a Tibetan Gon-khang

This large temple hanging, made of cloth, velvet, silk, thread and cord, measures some 13 feet by 4 feet (395 cm by 121 cm)—it most likely adorned the wall of a gon khang. Similar to another piece also in the collection of the American Museum of Natural History, it consists of a curtain of cutout fabric panels attached to a long banner, featuring a multifarious iconography of indigenous Tibetan motifs, including demons, fantastic beasts, and human heads, skulls and flayed skins. Such assemblies of what has been termed wrathful offerings “often take the form of long horizontal banners, with red brocade borders on the upper three sides and hanging silk valances along the bottom. In this form they are hung upon, or represent, the walls of protective deity chapels (Tib. mgon khang), and are used in sacrificial ceremonies (Tib. bskang rdzas) to appease the wrathful deities.” (1) Function thus suggests possible reasons for form: the gon_khang is the most sacred, secluded spot in a Tibetan temple or monastery, sometimes described as a chamber of horrors that conceals in its unfrequented precincts fearsome images of Tāntric divinities.(2) An early Western account reports:

mGon k’an, literally, means “the mGon po’s house”; the mGon po is the “Lord”, ie. the Yi dam, the protecting deity of the sect or convent …… Yi dam or mGon po, surrounded by the pageant of their terrible followers thus reside and receive their cult in the mGon k’an, mysterious shrines into which it is very difficult to be admitted. The doors giving access to them are low and narrow. …… The locks creak, the doors open. One has the impression of plunging headlong into bottomless night, into solidified darkness …… An elementary, chaotic, contradictory world, like the images formed in a feverish delirium. There is no cruelty or malice in their eyes, but the fury of monsters, exploding with the violence of a storm; you expect them not to speak but to howl like the wind, not to move with a wild animal’s agility but to hurl themselves about with a hurricane’s uncontrollable vehemence. The shrine proper is reached little by little, plodding and groping in the dark. All around, stuffed animals hang from the ceilings: dogs, yaks, horses, wolves …… terrific deities and gruesome offering [sic] of human skulls, eyes and entrails are traced out in thin golden lines. But in both cases the effect is equally obtained: the contrast of strong colours, black backgrounds, fiery images emerging from them in sudden epiphanies, represent in an extremely striking manner the atmosphere of tremendum pervading all the mGon k’an. (3)

The disquieting imagery of the gon khang is typical of Tibetan visual culture in general. The curtain of the wall hanging boasts, in particular, triads of human heads strung in a row; this symbol is most often found on the Tibetan tantric staff, or kha tvam ga (Skt. khatvanga). In Vajrayana Buddhism, the staff represents the union of Heruka Chakrasamvara with his consort, Vajravarahi, or the perfect state of the merging of great bliss and emptiness, ‘ultimate bodhicitta’. The crowning shaft is comprised of 2 impaled human heads, one freshly severed and the other in either a state of decay or maturation, and, above those, a dry, white skull. The first head may be red, and the decaying one blue or green, or the reverse may also be true. Reasons both somatic and symbolic have been offered to explain the colour scheme: red representing blood in a newly decapitated appendage, the latter only turning blue or green upon coagulation of the blood; the trauma of being severed indexes the blue or green colour of the head, which turns red when decomposition sets in; the fresh red head indicates the six heavens of the kamaloka(desire-god realms), the blue or green one signaling the death of desire and thus the eighteen heavens of the desire-less gods in realm of pure forms (rupaloka), and, finally, the white skull marks the move to the four highest, formless realms (arupaloka).(4)

The fleshless human skull is also a significant motif in its own right. Both as part of an entire skeleton and as an independent symbol, it is a prominent part of the wall hanging’s iconographic repertoire, as is the flayed human or animal skin, repeated several times throughout the length of the piece. These offerings to wrathful deities may represent, like some of those gods themselves, the defeat of the foes of Buddhism, the destroyers of dharma or the abusers of the Three Jewels (Skt. triratna); or they may be used as a seat by mahasiddhas, their in this case primary function being to serve as a reminder of the truths of impermanence, suffering, death, and the ultimate emptiness of existence within samsara. Here, the metaphorical deployment of the human body, in its flayed, dissected form, as an index of deeper, more fundamental realities, finds parallels in its reification as an object of knowledge in the West in the eighteenth century, when the rise of medical science trained a new curiosity on its inner workings. As one commentator remarks: “Analogies of dissection, specifically, functioned on two interrelated levels. The literal corporeal sense derived from the tactile cuts inflicted by actual instruments. Digging knives, invading scissors, sharp scalpels mercilessly probed to pry apart and distinguish muscle from bone. The figurative sense played upon the allusion to violent and adversarial jabbing. Such excavation stood for an investigative intellectual method that uncovered the duplicity of the world.” (5) The work of intrusion by medical instruments as an analytical system, in all its sensorial, hair-raising possibilities described above, certainly speaks to the efficacy of the graphic depiction of “quivering mound(s) of skin and flesh”, and “shimmering ocean(s) of blood and desire, and a glistening pile of broken and dry bones” (6), both as an evocation of the brutally decimated bodies of dharmic enemies, as well as the fugacity of material phenomena. The symbolic progression from fleshly head to barren skull as seen in the kha tvam ga, from a state of worldly involvement to transcendence, likewise operates as an analogous development from visible or superficial appearances to the occluded, invisible truth, from the secular world to the dark, sacred interior of the fugacity itself.

NOTES

1. Robert Beer, The Encyclopedia of Tibetan Symbols and Motifs (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1999), p. 315.
2. See M. N. Rajesh, Gompas in Traditional Tibetan Society (New Delhi: Decent Books, 2002), p. 96.
3. Giuseppe Tucci, Tibetan Painted Scrolls
4. Beer, p. 253-4.
5. Barbara Stafford, Body Criticism (Cambridge & London: The MIT Press, 1991), p. 47.
6. Beer, p. 315.

Louis Ho

Cabinet. Tibet, 19th century. Painted wood, H 39 in. (100.3 cm).
Mr. and Mrs. C. Suydam Cutting Bequest Funds and The Members’ Fund, Newark Museum.
Acc. No. 90.365

---

Tibetan Furniture

Tsarong family—one of the wealthiest families in Tibet—in their house in Lhasa, 1936-7. The Tsarong house was probably the only dwelling in Tibet with a room decorated with Western-style furniture. Rinchen Dolma Taring, the woman at left, sister of the wife of the man at right, emigrated to London, where she published “Daughter of Tibet” in 1970.

The wooden cabinet (Tib. chagam), above, in the collection of the Newark Museum, dates from the 19th century. [1] Cabinets as an item of furniture did not become popular in Tibet until the 18th, for reasons yet unclear – the centuries-old trade with China would surely have exposed Tibetans to Chinese examples – but the increased settlement and rising affluence of the local populace during the period have been adduced as possibilities. [2] Its physical heft and added expense of production ensured that the chagam was one of the few non-portable pieces in a domestic or monastic space; the more lavishly decorated pieces would not have been out of place in a wealthy, urban household like the one captured in the photograph above. [3] Tibetans, if they made a traditional living as nomadic or semi-nomadic herdsmen, required furniture that could move with them, like the ubiquitous storage chest, or gam, which served a variety of purposes, and the low table (chogtse), used for meals and tea-drinking, and which could be folded up and put aside afterward. Examples of both, in an outdoor setting, can be seen in the picture directly below. [4] In general, common Tibetan furniture items would also have included special desks for reading and writing (pegam); wooden altars or shrines (choshom) used to house Buddhist icons (in the photograph below [5]); yangam, for the yangbum, or wealth vases, believed to bring happiness and prosperity; and offering cabinets, torgam, for ritual oblations, often found in the gon-khang of a temple.

Three abbots and a lama from eastern Tibet, about 1930.

The physician (am-chi) of Gyantse, with his large cow-boy hat decorated with a golden plate, in front of his home altar. Those items that look like cushions, high above his head, are books wrapped in silk cloth. On the upper left side we see half of a colorful banner (thangka) with a painted image from the “Tibetan Book of the Dead.”

---

Chagams

 Wood for construction purposes was available in the highlands of the central Tibetan plateau (where the largest urban hubs, Lhasa and Shigatse, are located), but this was a local softwood referred to as chapa; it was the timber of the spruce, pine and fir trees found in the forests of the eastern province of Kham that was prized by furniture makers. [6] Most likely constructed from one of these quality hardwoods, the Newark chagam displays the frame-and-panel style typical of Tibetan cabinets: doors and – sometimes – sides are composed of discrete panels set into an enframing structure, creating a visual effect not unlike that of a coffered surface. Here, each of the four doors is hinged with wooden dowels, or connective pegs (above), which attach the top and bottom of the door to its frame, allowing it to swing open and shut. The doors were originally fastened around the central decorative brass loop by a metal plate (of the sort seen at right) and a lock, both now presumably lost. [7]

---

Tibetan Art & Tibetan Crafts

Gyantse. Tibetan woodpainters, shing tsonpo, decorating Tibetan tables, now in the Museum of Ethnography Munich.

Lavishly-decorated furniture pieces like the chagam were often the result of a special commission from an atelier, among the members of which could be counted a decorator, or tsönpa (above) [8], so designated to distinguish him from a painter of thangkas and murals (below). [9] The lively, winsome scenes depicted on the doors, so seldom encountered in the context of Tibetan art, lend it much of its visual appeal, especially for a Western viewership, where both institutional and private collections have tended to focus on objects with a religious or spiritual bent. As one commentator puts it: “In the western art world, the word ‘Tibetan’ has come to be directly associated with Buddhist scroll paintings – thangka – and statues … These religious and traditional items have already made inroads into the lucrative Asian antiques market as well as the public museum culture of the US and Europe.” [10] This bias, unsurprisingly, both informs and is influenced by similar trends in academia:

While Tibetan religious artwork has earned a prominent place in museum collections, exhibitions, and among Asian art scholars and even the fashionable public, Tibetan furniture has attracted comparatively little academic or amateur attention. The uncontested artistry and refinement inherent in the paintings and statuary of Tibetan religious expression are often strictly governed by scripture and treatise, not to mention tradition, in matters of composition, proportion, use of color and subject. In contrast, Tibetan furniture has long provided a much more liberated canvas for the artisan and artist alike, showcasing decorative motifs based not only on the religious, but also on the secular and natural. Perhaps for this reason, furniture and its decoration have often been overlooked and left largely untouched as an academic topic by art historians and Tibetologists. Nonetheless, these often ingeniously practical pieces offer a rare glimpse into the full range of Tibetan artistic expression, frequently boasting decoration that incorporates the aesthetics and motifs of other, more familiar media. [11]

As the above passage suggests, a distinction is or was made between the ‘high’ art forms of thangka and mural, with their appropriately religious subject matter, and ‘low’, decorative media, relegated to the adornment of objects of utility. Most discussions of Tibetan painting limit themselves to particular formats; the characterization, by one of the chief scholars in the field, of “three [main] types of Tibetan painting—thankas, illustrations for manuscripts and their covers, and murals” typifies the standard approach. [12] Although the juxtaposition of disparate stylistic modes and subject matter on the Newark cabinet is rather unrepresentative, what these paintings perhaps present is a complementary view on the normative discourse of, and on, Tibetan artistic traditions, even if they are characterized as no more than a “charming Tibetan genre style”, located on the peripheries of the established canon. [13]

However, the designation of the object as Tibetan is not without debate: it may well have been that it was produced in China by Chinese artists in a Tibetan style, rather than the other way round [14], an assumption made by both the Newark Museum and the present author. Especially in the case of Tibetan art, where cross-cultural currents with its neighbours have long flowed both ways, unproblematic demarcations based on geography and style can prove elusive:

The fact is, it is sometimes hard to tell the difference. If a Tibetan artist, working in China, uses a silk ground … that is adapted to Tibetan tastes from a Chinese model, which itself may have been inspired by Tibetan imagery, is it Tibetan or is it Chinese ? If, by contrast, an artist uses the cotton ground generally found in Tibet to paint … according to a Tibetan composition, but using brushwork we credit to Chinese painting, can we be sure it is (not) Tibetan? The artist’s ethnic identity, the place of production, materials, painting style, and largely unrecorded history of the evolution of compositions make it challenging to attribute some of these paintings with confidence. [15]

As such, the following discussion is presented as an exploration of possible visual sources, a truncated topography of the larger artistic universe that was inhabited by the makers of the Newark cabinet, and is less concerned with establishing definitive conclusions, a goal that remains at present beyond the scope of this project. In attempting to read the object, it is worth bearing in mind Roland Barthes’—oft-cited but valuable—declaration that the text is a “multidimensional space”, a “tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centers of culture.” [16]

The thirteenth Dalai Lama’s favored artist painting a tangka, 1937. His long earring identifies him as a lay official

---

First Panel: Tibet & Its Others

 The scenes, beginning clockwise from the upper left, have been identified as: Central Asians and Qing officials gambling and eating in the garden of a Lhasa nobleman (left); a Chinese gentleman hosting a party at which a magician is conjuring up coins and celestial beings; the Chinese patron and sage Hva-shang; and, lastly, frolicking horses in a Tibetan landscape. [17] The first of these is notable chiefly for the racialization of its figures: Central Asia, the region once known as Turkestan and today the Chinese province of Xinjiang, came under Tibetan sway from the eighth to ninth centuries. [18] The representation of foreigners, especially those of Indic or Sinic stock, occur frequently in Tibetan art – the latter here sporting the Manchu queue – but the ochre-tinted complexion, overt swarthiness and superior height of the standing figure attest to a rather different racial type, the sort of Caucasoid physiognomy witnessed in the murals of Bezeklik, for instance (below left) [19], as well as in the famous sketchbook of the Newari artist Jivarama, of which more will be said later (below right) [20]. Bezeklik, a complex of grottoes on the northern route of the Taklamakan desert, situated between the cities of Turfan and Loulan, was once resplendent with exquisite Buddhist wall paintings. The German explorer Albert von Le Coq [21] became the first European to visit it in 1904-5, whereupon he proceeded to systematically strip the caves of their painted treasures, a course of action that was to end in tragedy for these works of art during the Allied blitz of Berlin in World War II. What he took home with him to Germany was considered unusual indeed:

Continuing their advance along the corridor they next brought to light from beneath the sand fifteen giant-sized paintings of Buddhas of different periods. Other figures, shown kneeling before the Buddhas offering gifts [right], were of particular interest to von Le Coq since they depicted individuals of different nationalities. They included Indian princes, Brahmins, Persians – and one puzzling character with red hair, blue eyes and distinctly European features. [22]

---

Dunhuang: Chinese connections

The site of Dunhuang was an important stop along the Silk Road: it opened up into the Hexi Corridor, the main artery leading from the Gobi desert into the Central Plains proper, and its position at the geographical juncture of various cultures is reflected in the rich

 

Rows of small Buddhist cave-temples seen from the shrine of a colossal Buddha, in southern group of ‘Thousand Buddhas’ site, Tun-huang.

 

---

Central Asia & China

The figure of the hirsute Central Asian in his distinctive peaked hat (among other models) appears to have been based on real-life examples, eventually becoming a stock image in Chinese visual culture. Often pictured with their animals, frequently camels, which were their livelihood as well as main mode of transportation over the Silk Road, whither they came to trade with the Middle Kingdom, these foreigners were referred to using the umbrella term hu-ren (胡人), a designation for the various northern and western tribes beyond the pale of Chinese civilization. and has preserved some early depictions (above) of these peoples. [23] Numerous examples in the characteristic three-colour (sancai, 三彩) ware of the Tang Dynasty, produced during an era when the Silk Road was at its height, are also extant (right). This image of the Central Asian persisted well into later generations, as can be witnessed in the woodblock prints below, culled from an illustrated compendium of “Imperial Qing Pictures of Tributaries” produced during the reign of the Emperor Qianlong: the male figure is identified as a Kazakh chieftain (ha sa ke tou mu). [24]

---

Iconic Circuits

A useful concept to introduce at this point might be that of the iconic circuit. [25] Itself a borrowed term, Sinologist and art historian Craig Clunas deploys the idea as a means of describing movement and exchange within a “visual economy”: the different incarnations of a particular image or scene throughout a variety of media, the chief advantage of which is that, like “any sort of enquiry based broadly on a ‘visual culture’ paradigm”, it “sidesteps the painting/not-painting division and allows an engagement with the pictorial in whatever physical forms it is produced and however it is viewed and consumed.” [26] In what may be seen as an example of this sort of circulation, a group of Kazakhs are shown presenting horses to Qianlong (below), their physical and sartorial appearance recalling other like depictions. The painting was the work of the expatriate Jesuit priest, Giuseppe Castiglione, aka Lang Shining (郎世宁), who found favour at the Qing court and subsequently produced numerous depictions of local subjects in a style that introduced Western modes of verisimilitude into Chinese painting. His rendition signals perhaps a shift from one medium to another, from one register, printed matter intended for wider distribution and consumption, as printed books were, to another, elite painting issuing from the imperial atelier, and vice versa. Qianlong’s court was by all accounts a truly international affair: besides Castiglione, the ties between Beijing and Lhasa at this time—political, religious, artistic—was embodied in the person of the emperor’s preceptor, Rolpay Dorje, a Tibetan lama who wielded tremendous prestige and exerted great influence over his royal patron. [27]

 

---

Second Panel: Chinese New Year Prints

 The second panel (left) marks a departure from its brethren: its subject matter and style suggest that the artist was looking directly to Chinese woodblock prints for inspiration, and may indeed have been a replacement for an original door. [28] Similar scenes can be found in that genre commonly referred to as New Year pictures, or nian hua (年画), the earliest examples of which may be traced back to the Zhou Dynasty (841 – 256 BCE), when designs of animals like tigers were pasted onto the gates of domiciles as apotropaic talismans during the Lunar New Year. Two manuals attributed to the Song Dynasty statesman, scientist and polymath Shen Kuo (1031 – 1095 CE), the Bu Bi Tan (补笔谈) and Dong Jing Meng Hua Lu (东京梦华录), preserve early written records of such pictures, images of door gods, peach-wood amulets and the mythological demon-catcher Zhong Kui that, according to the author, were available in the marketplace during the festive period. [29] The late Qing prints below, hailing from the northern town of Yangliuqing, today a suburb of the city of Tianjin, depict the acquisition of wealth—a theme, signaling good fortune, that was common enough at New Year’s. The first features the phrase si fang jin bao (四方进宝) on the red plaque hanging above the altar, or ‘treasure enters from all four directions’; the second, zhen shi huo cai shen lai dao zha jia (真是活财神来到咱家), ‘a living god of wealth has indeed come to our home’. Like the chagam panel, these prints include the auspicious motifs of the visitation of deities, and the magical appearance or bestowal of riches (in the form of ingots and taels), the latter conspicuously aglow with enchanted luminescence or flames.

(Of limited interest might be a real-life example preserved in its original context at the Peabody Essex Museum: Yin Yu Tang (荫余堂) was the multi-generational dwelling of a prosperous merchant clan located in southern Anhui province, the stone and timber structure now transported to and re-erected in its entirety at the PEM. On a door within the complex survives a much faded woodblock print that, according to its description on the museum’s website, “depicts two plump boys, and reflects a desire for healthy sons to carry on their family line, a recurrent New Year theme …”
See http://www.pem.org/yinyutang/. Click on “Explore House”, and “Proceed”. Choose “Ornamentation”, then “Scene 15: New Year’s Poster (1800s)”, by either clicking on the little arrows to move forward, or skipping ahead by selecting a little transparent box under the title “Ornamentation”, in the top left-hand corner of the screen. [30])

---

Third Panel: Hva Shang

 The bottom pair of panels likewise present interesting studies. The one on the left portrays Hva Shang – whose name is a transliteration of the Chinese term for a monk, he-shang (和尚) – considered the Chinese patron of the 16 Arhats. Historical accounts tell us that he was sent by Tang emperor to extend an invitation to the Buddha Shakyamuni, but, the latter having already passed on, addressed himself to the arhats instead. Hva Shang is usually portrayed as a bald, portly figure, seated beneath or beside a flowering tree with a rosary in his right hand and an offering to the arhats in the left, and frequently surrounded by cavorting children and one or more Buddhist deities. [31] Giuseppi Tucci writes:

Hva šan is the Tibetan transcription of the Chinese Ho shang, which in its turn transcribes, through a Central Asian medium, the Sanskrit title: upādhyāya; this naturally recalls to our memory that Hva šan who, in the times of King K’ri sron lde btsan, while Padmasambhava’s schools introduced currents of Indian thought from India, carried into Tibet echoes of Chinese Buddhism.
But, while Tibetan literary tradition follows the Indian one or draws its inspiration from it, the artistic representation of this cycle is under Chinese influence. And in reality this influence has been so strong, that it is almost invariably to be found in the pictorial or plastic representations of the arhats; only a few exceptions being known to this rule. [32]

 

---

The Newark chagam departs little from this iconographic formula: the rosary, offering, and children, and even a couple of elephants are included. This last, though the last not typically part of the standard stock of attributes, finds a parallel in a Bhutanese painting, one of a set of 11 (below). [32] Unlike the elephants on the panel, which neither engage with the other figures nor seem be included in the main tableaux, cut off as they are by a line indicating a break in the landscape, the white elephant here, “carrying a dish of treasures, led by a turbaned mahout, offers a white conch on his trunk” to Hva Shang.

---

Jivarama’s Sketchbook

 

---

Budai: the Transmission & Transformation of an Image

 

---

It is chiefly in the treatment of the tree, however, that the artist seems to have exercised some creative license. The luxuriant canopy of small, almost identical blooms stretches across the full length of the compositional space at the top, forming a wall of floral foliage. A quick comparison with a Hva Shang scroll of Sakya lineage (left), dating to the 16th century, reveals how the present painting differs in this respect, the former allowing the person of the monk himself to dominate visually, the tree partially obscured by virtue of occupying the space behind him; another 18th century thangka (right) depicts two blooming shrubs which, again, remain pictorially subordinated in terms of size and interest, hardly allowed to detract from the chief figure. [27] The flowers on the Newark panel, in their lush, sumptuous patterning, approach the quality

---

1. See Valrae Reynolds, From the Sacred Realm: Treasures of Tibetan Art from the Newark Museum (Munich & New York: Prestel Verlag, 1999), p. 94, for a short discussion of the object.

2. Chris Buckley, Tibetan Furniture (Connecticut: Floating World Editions, 2005), p. 37.

3. Photograph by Frederick Spencer-Chapman, reproduced in Lobsang P. Lhalungpha (chronicle), Tibet, the Sacred Realm: Photographs 1880 – 1950 (New York: Aperture, Inc., 1983), p. 109. All accompanying captions are taken from their respective texts, as noted.

4. Photograph by Leslie Weir, reproduced in Tibet, the Sacred Realm, p. 102.

5. See Fosco Maraini, Prima Della Tempesta: Tibet 1937 e 1948 (Arcidosso, GR [Italy]: Shang-Shung Edizioni, 1990), plate. 48. Thanks to Dr. Ramon Prats of the Rubin Museum of Art for the translation of the text from the original Italian.

6. Luce Corona and Camilla Hulse Corona, “Tibetan Furniture: Construction, Form and Function” in Wooden Wonders: Tibetan Furniture in Secular and Religious Life, ed. David Kamansky (Pasedena & Chicago: Pacific Asia Museum & Serindia Publications, 2004), p. 25.

7. See Reynolds, p. 94.

8. See Isrun Engelhardt, ed, Tibet in 1938 – 1939, Photographs from the Ernst Schäfer Expedition to Tibet (Chicago: Serindia Publications Inc., 2007), plate 141, p. 229.

9. Photograph by C. Suydam Cutting, reproduced in Tibet, the Sacred Realm, p. 108. “The thirteenth Dalai Lama’s favored artist painting a tangka, 1937.

10. See Kabir Mansingh Heimsath, “Untitled Identities: Contemporary Art in Lhasa, Tibet”, Asianart.com, http://www.asianart.com/articles/heimsath/index.html.

11. Jonathan Bell, “Some Links Between Tibetan Furniture, Wall Mural and Thangka Painting”, in Kamansky, p. 61.

12. Pratapatidya Pal, Art of Tibet: a Catalogue of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art Collection (

13. Reynolds, p. 94.

14. Thanks to Prof. Gray Tuttle for pointing this out.

15. Rob Linrothe, Paradise and Plumage: Chinese Connections in Tibetan Arhat Painting (New York: Rubin Museum of Art, & Chicago: Serindia Publications, 2004), pp. 11-12.

16. Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author”, in Image, Music, Text (New York: Noonday Press, 1988), p. 146.

17. Reynolds, p. 94.

18. For a discussion of this history, and artistic similarities between the two regions, see Marilyn Rhie, “Seventh-Century Monumental Sculpture in the Tsang region” in Tibetan Art: Towards a Definition of Style, ed. Jane Casey Singer and Philip Denwood (London: Laurence King Publishing, 1997), pp. 38-51.

19. Reproduced in Rhie, p. 41. The mural, according to the text, is from Cave 20 at Bezeklik (Le Coq’s Temple 9).

20. The sketchbook is discussed, and reproduced in its entirety, in John Lowry’s “A Fifteenth Century Sketchbook (Preliminary Study)” in Essais sur l’art du Tibet, ed. Ariane MacDonald and Yoshiro Imaeda (Paris: Librairie d’Amérique et d’Orient, 1977), pp. 83-118. See p. 104 for the leaf in question.

21. See Albert von Le Coq’s account, Buried treasures of Chinese Turkestan: an Account of the Activities and Adventures of the Second and Third German Turfan Expeditions, trans. Anna Barwell (London, Allen & Unwin, 1928).

22. Peter Hopkirk, Foreign Devils on the Silk Road (Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1980), p. 126.

23. Li Xiao Bing 李肖冰, Zhongguo xiyu minzu fushi yanjiu 中国西域民族服饰研究 (Research into the costumes of China’s western regions) (Urumqi: Xinjiang renmin chubanshe, 1995), p. 225.

24. Liu Tuo 刘托 and Meng Bai 孟白, ed., Huang Qing zhigong tu 皇清职贡图 (Pictures of Imperial Qing tributaries), Qing dian banhua huikan 清殿版画汇刊, no. 9 (Beijing: Xueyuan chubanshe, 1998), fig. 58.

25. See Craig Clunas, Pictures and Visuality in Early Modern China (London: Reaktion Books, 1997), pp. 41-9, for a treatment of this idea.

26. Clunas, p. 48.

27. See Patricia Berger, Empire of Emptiness: Buddhist Art and Political Authority in Qing China (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2003), for a detailed examination of Dorje’s role, as well as Tibetan stylistic influences on Qing visual culture of the period.

28. Noted by Dr. Karl Debreczeny of the Rubin Museum of Art. His help in tracking down sources is particularly appreciated.

29. Junzhou Zhu’s 祝均宙 Preface in Qing mo nianhua huicui 清末年画汇萃 (Anthology of Late Qing New Year Pictures) (Beijing: Renmin yishu chubanshe, 2000), p. 7. The prints are reproduced as plates 55 and 56.

30. See also Nancy Berliner’s Yin Yu Tang: The Architecture and Daily Life of a Chinese House (Vermont: Tuttle Publishing, 2003).

31. Jeff Watt’s entry dated 6-98, “Arhat: Hvashang (patron)”, Himalayan Art Resources, http://www.himalayanart.org/search/set.cfm?setid=217&page=1.

32. Tucci …

32. See Terese Tse Bartholomew and John Johnston, ed., The Dragon’s Gift: The Sacred Arts of Bhutan (Chicago: Serindia Publications, 2008), pp. 182-7, for a discussion of the set. The catalogue accompanies the travelling exhibition.