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

 

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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?

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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.

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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).

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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?

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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

 

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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.

 

 

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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).

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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

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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.”

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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]

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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

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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]

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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.

 

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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]

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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]

 

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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])

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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]

 

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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.

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Jivarama’s Sketchbook

 

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Budai: the Transmission & Transformation of an Image

 

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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

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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.

 

• Thus have I heard what this Parinirvana Statue tells us in March 2008.

by Hojeong Choe

 

Parinirvana, Gilt bronze, pigment, lacquer, H. 15.3, L. 22.0, W. 8.0 (cm),
Gift of William B. Whitney, American Museum of Natural History (Cat. no. 70.0/6980)

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The reclining figure in the center is the historical founder of Buddhism, the Buddha Shakyamuni. He is leaning on his right side flanked by his attendant Ananda who is kneeling at the Buddha’s head. The Ananda figure is on a cloud-like platform rising from the left front corner of the bed throne. The same kind of platform also rises from its right front corner. This might have been the place where Kashapa, the oldest disciple of the Buddha, was kneeling at the Buddha’s feet.

This figure is associated with story of parinirvana of the Buddha, the last phase of the life story of the Buddha Shakyamuni. His sermon and the circumstances of this story are depicted in the Buddhist scripture called the Mahaparinirvana Sutra in Sanskrit, which is also called Mahaparinibbana Sutta in the Pali language. Mahaparinirvana literally means ‘great (maha) complete (pari) extinguishing (nirvana).’ This last event of Shakyamuni’s life story, Mahaparinirvana, takes place at the town called Kushinagar, located in the northeastern part of India in the region of Uttar Pradesh. There the Buddha passed into nirvana and his body was cremated.

This parinirvana scene has been the most popular theme to be depicted in various genres of the Buddhist art such as stone relief, wall painting, sculpture, hanging scroll, etc. in different regions of the world: Ajanta, Gandhara, Kushinagar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Sichuan, Tibet, Dunhuang, Korea, Japan as well as in New York. [Nirvana Art in Asia]

According to Akira Miyaji, an art historian whose special field is Indian art history, particularly Maitreya and Nirvana iconography in Gandharan art, depiction of nirvana scenes were generally horizontal and had an element of storytelling in Gandhara and Mathura. This kind of storytelling enabled ‘visual pilgrimage’ according to Miyaji. He also asserts that the mortuary customs of both Rome and India had influenced depiction of the last moment of the Buddha’s life story. This nirvana scene, however, started to be depicted vertically in Sarnath and no longer had a storytelling element. It was because the depiction of nirvana and enlightenment of the Buddha had more importance than other scenes of the Buddha’s life story by then. After Pala period, the time when Buddhism and Buddhist art declined in India, this nirvana scene also did not develop. However, outside of India, nirvana statue alone was very popular and there are many nirvana statues remaining in Sri Lanka, Thailand, etc.

While many other nirvana statues are on a large scale, this statue at the American Museum of Natural History (hereafter AMNH) is on a small scale. It might have been used as portable shrine. This statue might have been enshrined with his head pointing north as the Buddha Shakyamuni put his head toward north facing west according to the Buddhist scripture. This object is likely to have been enshrined at the home altar of ordinary people rather than court. The way that patterns of the bed throne are articulated shows that the statue is not high quality object.

The inscriptions support this hypothesis as well. The inscriptions are engraved on three sides along the small panels above the lotus petals. At first sight, these letters seem to be derived from 11th century Nepalese script among the various versions of Sanskrit letters. However, most of these letters are poorly written and do not indicate any mantra, names of donors or artisans.

Front/Back/Left/Right Inscriptions (Clockwise from Top Left to Bottom Left)

The front inscription between poorly inscribed floral patterns can be Romanized as ‘so nah ma – -.’ The inscriptions on back, left and right sides are as follow: ‘aum ra/ya/pa jha – – -’(back); ‘- ra/ya/pa jha – te ra’(left); ‘- – dr te ya/pa – -’(right) [Thanks to Prof. Somdev Vasudeva and Victor for their advice on inscription decipherment and Romanization.]

With the information from AMNH that this object is Tibetan piece, I have tried to decipher the inscriptions with Lantsa (Ranjhana) scripts at first. However, the letters were not correspondent to any of Lantsa scripts. This statue seems to be casted in China by the artist who does not read and know Sanskrit. If it were made by a court artisan, the inscriptions are likely to be written in correct Sanskrit. However, in this case, the inscription does not mean anything and is incorrect. To locate this statue on the map, it might have been made in main land China. Therefore, this statue would belong to Sino-Tibetan art, instead of Tibetan since it does not show orthodox Chinese or Tibetan element, but mixture of several different traditions. It seems to be appropriate to align this object on timeline between 17-19th century. And the color of lacquer shows Qing Dynasty taste.

The pattern of leaves which seem like sal tree leaves shows that artisan of the object knew and expressed the element of Indian Buddhist art tradition.
At the same time, the artisan used the Chinese traditional pattern of bat when filling the surface of the bed throne. The Chinese word for bat is fu. Fu is a homophone for happiness. Around 17th century, bats began to feature in auspicious pictures as a symbol of happiness. By the middle and late Qing Dynasty, auspicious bat motifs had had become widely used on architecture, textiles, embroidery, paintings, chinaware, furniture, and brick and stone carvings. This bat pattern also implies the chronological clue.

Then why was this object categorized as Tibetan object? The late Mr. William B. Whitney, a lawyer, has donated his collection to American Museum of Natural History in 1937 and it was named ‘Tibetan Lamaist Collection.’ His collection has been introduced in several books authored by Antoinette Gordon. According to the curator at AMNH, Mr. Whitney purchased Tibetan art objects via dealers in New York as well as from Art Exhibition at Macy’s. Among 910 objects donated to AMNH by Mr. Whitney in 1937, there are two more parinirvana statues. This object was understood not by its original context, but by the context of the contemporary collection.

The present condition of this object seems to be well reserving the original state. It consists of two parts: one is the bed throne including cloud-like platforms attached to it and the other one is the reclining Buddha figure. The figure has metal pins attached on the side that meets the bed frame. The pins were inserted into the bed frame and bent to secure the statue. On the other hand, there are several things missing and changed. From the uncomfortable position of the Buddha’s head suggests that there has been headrest or pillow under his right hand. As mentioned in the first paragraph, the cloud-like platform on the right side must have been a seat of Kashapa. Lacquer pigments have flaked off and the left rear leg had broken off and was reattached later. The material of the bed throne leg is iron, which cannot be cut or broken easily. It is possible that this object was buried underground and there had been huge exterior pressure by construction devices right before excavation.

In the context of the depiction of death of the religious founder’s can be comparable to Pieta by Michelangelo. This reclining posture appears in the European arts as well such as Etruscan Sarcophagus at Villa Giulia.

The last but not least thing that makes this object rare and interesting is the facial expression of the reclining Buddha. The smiling face does not seem like ordinary Buddha statues, but more like Milarepa. Further study of the route how the late Mr. Whitney purchased this object and the scrutiny of the other objects, which were purchased or excavated along with this object would enable to identify this object much clearer.

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This article is hypothetical based on the knowledge and information currently available.
The comments on the time period, artisan, nationality, inscription decipherment, etc. are welcome.

Last update: 2008-03-07

Bronze, Iron, Gilt, Lapis, Coral, Carnelian, and Turquoise Mirror
From The Collections of the American Museum of Natural History
70.2/386 purchased in 1947 from Count S Walewski, owner of Esoterica,
East 56th Street, New York City.

The mirror is very pretty. Across it measures nineteen centimeters and, being slightly concave, 2.2 centimeters deep at its center. The reverse is cloth-covered, lacking an inscription.It is one of an identical pair. The American Museum of Natural History has no information about its history prior to purchase, such as where it was made, or when, and we only can speculate about its intended use as it falls outside of recognizable categories. Note the decorative lapis lazuli, coral, turquoise, and carnelian, organized into patterns reminiscent of eight flowers, interspersed with eight dots, and the relief cloud-like or wave-like inner border, which make it fancier than mirrors worn by soldiers. Then look closely at the outer rim, to find four tiny places where a leather thong might have been attached, as though it had been worn. The elaborate loveliness of its style of construction reminds one of mirrors worn by oracles but one crucial, defining element is missing, an engraved Tibetan syllable in the middle of the mirror; therefore it could not have functioned as an oracle’s mirror. In short, with all the contradictory evidence, one hesitates to draw conclusions about the mirror’s past. Did it start out as one sort of mirror only to be altered? If so, why? The London auction house Spink was presented with a similiarly puzzling mirror only to conclude–rather than leave open the question–that it was indeed an oracle’s mirror; the rationale behind the conclusion was not provided. The 1995 catalogue features it on its cover. (link) The mirror would have been constructed by casting the outer brass ring, cutting it to sized, adding the wavy relief design, inlaying the stones from the reverse side of the brass ring, then lastly, placing the concave mirrored iron surface within the outer ring. With the absence of a provenance, one is left to contemplate the eccentric collector from whom the pair of mirrorss were purchased. In 1955 Walewski published “The System of Caucasian Yoga” based on esoteric teachings of Zoroastrianism. From the book’s preface: “His shop, Esoterica, was not only a famous New York connoisseurs’ landmark but the gateway of another world, in which magick, demons and talismans were as real as subways and neon signs. The Count firmly believed that he attracted these strange objects to him by a sort of higher magnetism of which he knew the workings; and his unrivalled collection seemed to prove his point.”

Compare to a mirror with a seed-syllable.
Photograph of an oracle wearing a mirror .
Photograph of a seated (horse was cropped) warrior wearing a mirror.

The first mention of mirrors in a Buddhist context was the gift of a mirror by the goddess of light, Prabhavati to Shakyamuni Buddha. The stainless mirror represented the “clear karmic past of previous lives”. Mirrors are one of eight auspicious substances in Tibetan Buddhism of Indic, pre-Buddhist origin–white mustard seeds, yogurt, precious medicine, durva grass, bilwa fruit, white conch, and vermilion powder, being the others. The ritual of pouring water over a mirror reflecting a sacred image, similiarly survived in Tibet (khrus gsol). The water which comes into contact with the reflected diety image is considered sacred.

The Tibetan word for mirror is melong. They were placed on shrines, usually in offering bowls; if used for divination called a thugs-kyi melong, a mirror of the mind; adorned the torsos of spirit-possessed oracles; employed in the consecration of thangkas; sprinkled with red sindhura powder for abisheka rituals; were worn front, back, and on the sides, over chain mail suits of the armor of warriors; attached to arrows symbolizing long life; and were symbols of the Dzogchen teachings.They are also to be found in book titles, such as the Crystal Mirror of Tenet Systems, a history of philosophy completed in 1802; or the Tibetan history, Clear Mirror: A Traditional Account of Tibet’s Golden Age by Sakypa Sonam Gyaltsen; or the Crystal Mirror of Obligations and Prohibitions, for governmental officials, authored by the regent of the Fifth Dalai Lama, Desi Sangye Gyatso; or the Mirror of Poetics, a 6th century work on writing poetry; or The Mirror of Mindfulness: The Cycle of the Four Bardos by Tsele Natsok Rangdrol; or The Mirror: Advice on the Presence of Awareness by Namkhai Norbu, a contempary Tibetan master. Mirrors were used as illustrative teaching devices by Zen as well as Tibetan masters.

In Songs of Naropa author Thrangu Rinpoche explains mirror-like wisdom thusly:”…is the basic purity
of or the transformation of anger. Due to not knowing our innate nature, there is an instinctive attachment to the belief in a ‘me’.
At the same time, there is an instinctive aversion towards that felt to be ‘not me’–the ‘other’. This clinging is very deep-rooted and
gives rise to intense fixation and manifold complexities. At the same time, there is always the possibility of the mirror-like wisdom.
The analogy here is that of a mirror: an image reflected in a mirror appears very distinctly, even though there is no ‘thing’ in the mirror.
It is empty of any substantial entity and yet visible. Once someone realizes the basic state and sees the empty nature of all things,
experience still takes place. Everthing is seen, but there is no attachment to these images as having any concrete substance. In this
way, there is no opportunity for anger to arise.” (p.147) Relative to the above is “melong yeshe” or mirror-like wisdom, “the unobstructed appearance of all qualities of existence and enlightenment,” as Thinley Norbu puts it in A Cascading Waterfall of Nectar (p.53) or equivalently, “always being unobstructed is mirrorlike wisdom” (p.280).

Below right, watch the video of the Sakya Trizin performing a long life ceremony for the Dalai Lama, for his 73rd year. The part of the ceremony featured displays a mirror atop a beribboned arrow, a dadar.

Above is Mandarava, a consort of the mythic figure
Padmasambhava, holding an arrow, called a dadar, topped with a
melong (just below the feather) and streaming yellow,
blue, red and white ribbons. She is associated with a long life
practice.

On the left is Dorje Yudronma, a worldly protector also
invoked for mirror divination. Dorje Yudronma
holding mirror in right hand and arrow in the left,
from a 19th century wall painting of a Drukpa
Kagyu temple in Bhutan. The image is from the
photographic collection of Francoise Pommaret.
Perhaps the translucence of the mirror is meant to indicate its
divinatory power.

The third patriarch of Hua-yen Buddhism, Fa-tsang, was a writer of philosophical works. As a Buddhist master, his demonstrations of philosophy for his royal patrons were paradoxical. He built a hall of mirrors in order to illustrate for the Empress Wu-Zetian the doctrine of mutual interpenetration of all things; in the room of mirrors the shrine and Buddha statue reflected infinitely. (Incidentally, in Hua-yen Buddhism the alaya-vijnana is called the great ocean mirror.)

Here is another story, this one of a magic mirror taken from “When a Woman Becomes a Religious Dynasty: The Samding Dorje Phagmo ” which concerns Kunga Sangmo, the second incarnation of the Samding Dorje Phagmo and the first reincarnation of Chokyi Dronma, who was a fifteenth century princess. Thangtong Gyalpo was one of her contemporaries. He is famous for having built iron chain bridges across the Brahmaputra River, one of which was used as recently as 1993. “Thangtong Gyalpo is said to have presented the young girl with a magic mirror that would become clearer and clearer the more it was wiped. This ritual item seems to epitomize her experience of being and becoming… In the narrative the mirror, along with the other gifts she recieved from Thangtong Gyalpo, seems an important metaphor that reflects the interaction among the girl, the master, and the community around them” (p.249).

Oracular practices and mirror divination were criminalized during the Cultural Revolution; oracles resumed practice around 1980, after the “more or less extraordinary reappearance of the mirrors” and, the Chinese legal reclassification of oracular
practices as “traditional custom”.

From the photographic collection of Harry Staunton at the
Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, taken in 1940 in Lhasa during
a prayer festival, the Monlam Chenmo. The soldiers wore mirrors
front, sides, and back of the torso. The purpose of the mirrors
was “to witness” (personal communication).

Video of the present Nechung Oracle, Thupten Ngodup,
by Maud Kristen. His oracular pronouncements are
used by the Tibetan government. Note the large decorated
mirror (thugs kyi melong) worn by the Oracle and
inscribed in its center with a syllable, the seed-syllable of a diety.

Regarding European history and the mirror, in antiquity we find the
myth of Narcissus as well as mirrors used
as symbols in the writings of Socrates and Seneca. Catoptromancy,
or divining the future with images in mirrors, was the subject of a
1932 book, La Catoptromancie grecque et ses derives; mirror divination
was practiced in the ancient Greek world. Catoptromancy is reported
through the nineteenth century in France.(The interested reader may
see p191 of The Mirror for specific instances.)

Hildegarde von Bingen, the twelfth century Christian mystic, wrote of God as analogous
to a mirror, “all works beyond age and time” contained therein. During the
thirteenth century encyclopedias were called specula, Latin for mirrors.
“In the Middle Ages, when the philosophical polarity between subject and
object did not exist ‘speculation’ was a consideration of a relationship between
two subjects like that between the mirror and what it reflects. This mode of
thought embraces all the visible world in that it resembles the invisible,
serving as a testing ground, providing clues with which man rises beyond
the known to the unknown…Saint Thomas Aquinas thusly linked ‘speculation’
to the speculum: ‘To see something by means of a mirror is to see a cause in
its effect wherein its likeness is reflected. From this we see that ‘ ‘speculation’ ‘
leads back to meditation.’ ” (The Mirror, p 113)

Bibliography

1. Ashencaen, Deborah. The Mirror of Mind: Art of Vajrayna Buddhism. Spink & Son, Ltd.,1995
2. Beer, Robert. Encyclopedia of Tibetan Symbols. Shambhala, 1999.
3.Giacomello, Orofino. “Divinations with Mirrors. Observations on a Simile Found in the Kalachakra Literature. in Tibetan Studies. Proceedings of the 6th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies. Fagernes, 1992. Vol 2 Edited by Per Kraerae.Published 1994 by the Institute for Comparativ Research in Human Cultures. Oslo.
4.Kapstein, Matthew. The Tibetans, Blackwell Publishing, 2006.
5.Diemberger, Hildegard. “Female Oracles in Modern Tibet” found in In Women in Tibet. Columbia University Press, 2005.
6.Melchoir-Bonnet, Sabine. The Mirror. Routledge, 2001.
7. Nebesky-Wojkowitz, Rene de. Oracles and Demons of Tibet: The Cult and Iconography of the Tibetan Protective Dieties.
Akademische Druck-u.Verlagsanstalt, 1975.
8. Norbu, Thinley. A Cascading Waterfall of Nectar. Shambhala, 2006.
9. Thrangu, Rinpoche. King of SamadhiL Commentaries on the Samadi Raja Sutra and the Song of Lodro Thaye. Rangjung Yeshe Publications, 1994.
10. Zwalf, W. Heritage of Tibet, British Museum Publicatons, 1981.

Boots (AMNH)

Meet the Boots (AMNH collection)

The legs of these lightweight boots are made of layers of cloth, insulated with what appears to be animal hair. The cloth layers are stitched in columns to firmly hold the insulation that is lining the boots in an upright position. The two main, vertical seams of the boots are located in the front and back of each of the boots. There are several horizontal seams connecting the upper leg of the boot to the base of the boot and the base of the boot to sole of the boot. The cowhide layered soles are about 2 cm thick and are connected to the cloth leg that is about 28 cm tall. The width of the boot is about 6 cm wide and 15 cm long. The boots do not have appear to have insoles of any sort, indicating that the foot may have rested directly on the cowhide sole. However, it is possible that there was a some sort of lining inserted at the bottom of the boot to make it more comfortable. The boots have fibrous threads woven through the sole, creating a ridged bottom for traction. Though the legs of the boots appear worn and damaged, the soles are slightly worn and fairly clean. 

The legs of the boots are dyed red and, while tan and red floral designs are embroidered around the top part of the blue base of the boots. Discoloration and fading suggest that boots may have been damaged by water, causing the dye to run and to be unevenly absorbed by the cowhide sole. 

Like other Tibetan boots, these can be worn on both feet and have the unique, upturned toe. However, the careful stitching and floral embroidery along with the brilliant dyes and barely worn soles indicate that these boots were not intended for every day use by a nomadic Tibetan. Rather, it seems that the short leg, light weight boots were intended for a member of the nobility. Given the small size and delicate trimming, the boot was probably intended for occasional use by a wealthy woman.

See more information about the materials used in making boots

The Sole of the Boot
 
The sole of the boot is generally 2-3 cm thick and is sewed from about 5-7 layers of cowhide. The sole of the boot is later attached to the leg of the boot. Traction is provided on the bottom of the sole by weaving a fibrous thread through the layers of cowhide. This uniformly stitched pattern creates a ridged bottom that allows the boot to grip its surface. The sole of the boot is sturdy and very thick, but bendable, offering protection and good ankle support in various terrains. The Tibetan boot is often characterized by the upturned toe. This feature gives added protection and firmness to the head of the foot. The Tibetan boot is devoid of a heel, therefore the cowhide sole functions like a platform, elevating the boot. [10] 

Lining and Insulation 

There are two general types of Tibetan boots, short leg and long leg. The short and long leg boots may be made of any material (cloth, canvas, corduroy, velvet, leather and felt) and most Tibetan boots are lined or padded, though some may be unlined. Tibetan boots are often lined or padded with layers of cloth, hay, fur, or hair (from the llama or goat) for insulation. The legs of corduroy boots are made of corduroy and lined on the inside with white cloth, (sometimes edged in red cloth). The legs of cloth boots are made of layers of cloth with goat hair insulation sewn in between the layers. Rockhill notes that, “the leg of the boot is usually lined with a very coarse woolen stuff, and no socks were worn on the feet.” [11] Depending on the material of the boot and the type of boot (short leg or long leg), the boot may be “bound tightly below the knee with a leather thong or long garter of wool.” [12] Garters are about 4.5 ft. long and 1 in. wide, the pattern on the garter is usually narrow, horizontal stripes, but, “some of them are beautifully fine and show great taste in the selection of colors.” [13] Typically, the seam of the boot runs down the back of the leg. 

Function and Purpose 

In central Tibet, the boots of men and women are the same and there is no distinction between the boot for the left and right foot. [14,15]Given the uneasy, nomadic lifestyle of many Tibetan tribes, it is possible that the lack of distinction between the boots allows the greatest utility for the footwear. Tibetans who were carrying everything needed to survive in an environment prone to sudden changes of weather needed a compact, versatile boot. Tibetan boots are suited for snow, but are also soft and breathable, so that they are good for walking. Previously discussed elements also contribute to the function of the boot. For example, a pair of long leg, ‘floppy’ felt boots, could be worn with a garter during harsh, cold wind or could be folded down during warmer weather. Similarly the unique, curved, pointed toe of typical Tibetan boots is appropriate for different types of environments. Rockhill once commented, “[Tibetans] can endure exposure without any apparent inconvenience…they put no clothes on children except in the coldest weather, allowing them to move about naked, or with only a pair of boots on.” [16] Even to an observer, the versatile boot seems to have a significant presence in the Tibetan way of life. 

Form and Style 

Tibetan boots are often richly decorated, compensating the simple, nomadic lifestyle. Some boots have elegant flowing lines and patterns where the seams are connected, and some materials for example, cloth and canvas allow for intricately embroidered and dyed designs. Exquisite workmanship and fine, decoratively embroidered patterns are characteristic of these boots. The elaborate designs often continue on the legs of the boots. [17] The extent of adornment on the boot is typically associated with wealth of the boots’ owner. For example, wealthy women frequently wear Chinese velvet boots, whose seams may be covered with colorful and intricate embroidery. [18] The Tibetan boots of “beautiful workmanship were probably obtained by barter.” [19] 

According to Rockhill, “the profession in which Tibetans excel is that of dyeing.” Tibetans almost exclusively use vegetable dyes and, “they know how to fix the colors so well that they are practically permanent.” [20] 


 

[10] The Early History of Felt by B. Laufer P. 8
[11] Notes on the Ethnology of Tibet by W.W. Rockhill P. 686
[12] Notes on the Ethnology of Tibet by W.W. Rockhill P. 686
[13] Notes on the Ethnology of Tibet by W.W. Rockhill P. 686
[14] [[http://en.tibettour.com.cn/geography/200412006420101601.htm%3C/span%3E%3Cspan|http://en.tibettour.com.cn/geography/200412006420101601.htm<span]] style=”FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: ‘Times New Roman’; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA”>
[15] Notes on the Ethnology of Tibet by W.W. Rockhill P. 687
[16] Notes on the Ethnology of Tibet by W.W. Rockhill P. 675
[17] [[http://www.kepu.net.cn/english/nationalityne/mong/200312050055.html%3C/span%3E%3Cspan|http://www.kepu.net.cn/english/nationalityne/mong/200312050055.html<span]] style=”FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: ‘Times New Roman’; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA”>
[18] Notes on the Ethnology of Tibet by W.W. Rockhill P. 687
[19] ‘Daktas’–People with a Tail in the East Bhutanese Himalaya by R. E. Cooper P. 6
[20] Notes on the Ethnology of Tibet by W.W. Rockhill P. 701

Some of the earliest seals were the cylinder seals of the Near East. Cylinder seals, made of stone and other materials, were rolled over clay to transfer a design onto the soft surface. The cylinder seal shown above is in the collection of the Musee du Louvre, Paris. For more information, see:
www.bu.edu/anep/LB.html
http://www.lacma.org/programs/ArtWorkMonthcylinderseal.aspx
http://home.nycap.rr.com/foxmob/cyl_seals.htm

On ancient seals from the Indus Valley see:
http://www.csuchico.edu/~cheinz/syllabi/asst001/fall97/2chd.htm
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ho/02/ssa/ho_49.40.1.htm

by Victoria Jonathan

Why did Western people become interested in Tibetan Buddhism and material culture at the turn of the last century? What is the history of the first contacts between America and Tibet? How were museum collections of Tibetan art built in the United States, and particularly in New York?

There are many historical answers to these questions, which are not exclusive of each other. Rather, the following elements are often intermingled in complex ways. Religious, scientific, spiritual, aesthetic and academic fields have been mobilized in the encounter between American and Tibetan civilizations:

– Christian missionaries were the first Westerners to enter Tibet. Their original goal was to evangelize Tibetan people. But as they stayed in the Himalayan region for years, they very often became acquainted with Tibetan culture and engaged in scholarly studies. Some of the missionaries collected Tibetan objects that were later brought to American museums. This is the case of Dr Albert Shelton, whose collection of Tibetan art was given to the Newark Museum; or of Dr Marx, whose objects were integrated in the collections of the American Museum of Natural History, like the Giant of Great Strength mask or the Bleeding Cup. Find out more about missionaries in Tibet.

– Explorers and botanists also have been to Tibet quite early, since the end of the 19th century. They often met with missionaries who were present there. While their interest was primarily scientific or personal, they provided the Western audience with some knowledge about Tibet through their travel accounts. Some of them collected objects, like Joseph Rock who had a collection of Tibetan masks. Find out more about early explorers of Tibet.

– At the end of the 19th century, in post Civil War America, spiritual movements inspired by Eastern religious traditions were created, such as theosophy. An interest for Tibetan Buddhism (or Lamaism) also developed between World War I and World War II, along the lines of theosophy. Some people, first attracted by theosophy and Tibetan spirituality in this time of crisis, became very involved in the promotion of Himalayan material culture, like Jacques Marchais. Find out more about theosophy.

– Another explanation for the exploration of Tibetan culture by Westerners can be found in the aesthetic interest for the primitive or the savage. The aesthetic interest for the primitive was at stake at the beginning of Modern Art, when its best representantives nourished a fascination for primitive masks. The primacy of aesthetic emotion is also the motivation for collectors who built museum collections of Tibetan art, such as Donald Rubin and the Rubin Museum of Art. The aesthetic interest in the savage is also well reflected in the captivating power of devil dances on Western audiences. Find out more about the aesthetic interest in the primitive and the savage.

– The history of the academic study of Tibet is tributary of these various contacts. Missionaries and explorers were also engaged in the academic study of Tibetan culture. The alliance of theory and practice seems to be a recurring outline: scholarship often went hand in hand with experience, through trips to the Himalayan region or collecting objects. For instance, Joseph Rock was an academic who traveled through Asia and collected a lot of Tibetan objects, especially Tibetan masks.

How have these contacts shaped our apprehension of Tibet today? To what extent did they contribute in creating or strengthening a “mythology” of Tibet? How does this mythology affect the exhibition of Tibetan material culture in museums today?

Tibet appears in Western imaginings as not only a place but also a myth. As Orville Schell puts it in Virtual Tibet: “One may debate, of course, whether any place on our increasingly small planet remains untouched by the homogenizing effects of jet travel and the global marketplace. What is not in question, however, is the yearning of disenchanted Westerners to believe in such places. Indeed, to acknowledge that such lands may no longer exist has seemed too bleak a thought for most of us in modern life to bear.” (p. 15)

A few patterns emerge from the Western encounter with Tibet, concentrated in an ambivalent attitude that expresses fear and contempt on the one hand, and romantic idealization on the other hand. Tibet often appears as a fantasy in Western conceptions, “a kind of sacred space within the desecrated wastes of the modern West” (Oldmeadow, p. 126). The popularity of James Hilton’s novel Lost Horizons (1933) and the utopia of Shangri-La, along with the success of travel accounts and the representation of Tibet in Hollywood cinema (like in Seven Years in Tibet and Kundun), prove the persistence of Tibet as a mythical other.

It is remarkable that the Western encounter with Tibet historically coincides with the rise of modernity in the West, through the affirmation of industrialization and capitalism, and the political and cultural crisis that accompanied it. It seems like the processes of mythologizing Tibet in turn reveals more about the crisis of Western civilization: “the most fundamental significance of Tibet in the modern world is as a living refutation of all those values and ideas which define modernity.” (Oldmeadow, p. 151)

References
Rick Fields, How the Swans Came to the Lake – A Narrative History of Buddhism in America, Boulder, Colorado: Shambhala, 1981
Ernst Gombrich, The Story of Art, Phaidon,1995 (1950)
Harry Oldmeadow, Journeys East – 20th Century Western Encounters with Eastern Religious Traditions, Bloomington, Ind.: World Wisdom, 2004
John MacGregor, Tibet – A Chronicle of Exploration, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970
Orville Schell, Virtual Tibet: Searching for Shangri-La from the Himalayas to Hollywood, New York: Metropolitan Books, 2000