Faith & Empire - Art and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism

FA I T H A N D E M PI R E

art and politics in tibetan buddhism

FA I T H A N D E M PI R E

art and politics in tibetan buddhism

Karl Debreczeny Ronald M. Davidson Brandon Dotson Xie Jisheng Tsangwang Gendun Tenpa Per K. Sørensen Bryan J. Cuevas Wen-shing Chou Johan Elverskog

r ubin museum of art new york

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Contents

Foreword Jorrit Britschgi 11

Acknowledgements 13

Map 17 chapter 1:

Faith and Empire: An Overview Karl Debreczeny 19

chapter 2:

Indic Roots of Political Imagery and Imaginaire Ronald M. Davidson 53

The Emanated Emperor and His Cosmopolitan Contradictions

chapter 3:

Brandon Dotson 69 chapter 4: Tibetan

Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhist Art in the Xixia Kingdom Xie Jisheng 83

chapter 5: Tibetan

Buddhism and Art in the Mongol Empire According to Tibetan Sources Tsangwang Gendun Tenpa 105

chapter 6:

In the Shadow of the Khan: Tibetan Buddhist Art and Political Legitimation in the Ming Dynasty Karl Debreczeny 125

chapter 7:

Rise of the Dalai Lamas: Political Inheritance through Reincarnation Per K. Sørensen 151

chapter 8:

The Politics of Magical Warfare Bryan J. Cuevas 171

chapter 9:

Bodhisattva Emperors of the Manchu Qing Dynasty Wen-shing Chou 191

chapter 10:

Maitreya, Shambhala, and the End of Buddhist Empire Johan Elverskog 213

Appendices 229

Bibliography 235

Index 255

Contributors 269

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Foreword

In Buddhist scriptures , the cakravartin (wheel-turning king) describes an ideal sovereign who

rules over the entire universe and does so in accordance with Buddhist law. The concept of the universal ruler, one legitimized by religious mandate and entitled to rule over the entire realm, offered a promising model for aspiring rulers throughout Asia—for those led by the Buddhist doctrine as well as those who saw an opportune model in it. Perhaps somewhat lesser known is the central role of Tibetan Buddhism as a source for universal sacral kingship for Tibet’s neighbors farther to the east. The exhibition Faith and Empire: Art and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism is the first of its kind to explore in depth Tibetan Buddhism’s dynamic political role in Asia.

Several aspects of Tibetan Buddhism seemed predestined to guide as a model, most notably the system of reincarnation as means to succession. Throughout history, many rulers claimed to be incarnations of bodhisattvas, from the Dalai Lamas to emperors in Beijing. This claim not only established a legitimation model that was hard to challenge but also propelled rulers above the sheer might of political alliances and powerful armies into the realm of the divine right to rule.

Tantric Buddhist traditions also offered a fascinating array of systems and practices that furthered the might of those in power. After the demise of the Tibetan Empire, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries masters of the tradition with knowledge of secretly transmitted sacred power played a crucial role in establishing, promoting, preserving, and legitimizing power. Through initiation and training in tantric traditions masters had gained access to secret knowledge and techniques. The system itself ascertained that only the select few invited to and instructed in its secret practices had access to it, ensuring power remained within established channels. Various techniques, such as sexual practices aimed at gaining internal power, are well known. More surprising are external practices that could be classified as “magic.” As Karl Debreczeny—the curator and editor of this publication—describes, rituals with the aim of destroying rival armies, along with their gods, were commonly used on battlefields. Magic spells, occult rituals, and powerful deities were summoned, such as the wrathful Great Black One, Mahākāla.

Finally, the art united in this catalog provided another way to consolidate power. Ritual implements opened up new channels of power through magic tantric techniques, whereby powerful deities were invoked to assist those who called upon them. Furthermore, images were created to establish and reinforce lineage and reincarnation models. Portraits of rulers as emanations of bodhisattvas are a particularly striking example. The religious art created under imperial patronage not only embodied Buddhist teachings but also expressed the aspirations and potency of the rulers who commissioned these objects. The imperial splendor of this art speaks a language of potency and power. Imperial courts made Tibetan icons and ritual implements from Chinese luxury materials such as silk, porcelain, and lacquer. Extraordinary examples include the eighth-century gilt-silver drinking vessels from the Tibetan Empire; a twelfth- to thirteenth-century wrathful icon made of silk and ornamented with tiny seed pearls; a gilt-bronze bodhisattva from the early

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fifteenth-century Ming court that measures over four feet tall and weighs 680 pounds; and an eight-foot wide Mongolian depiction of the final battle against the heretics and nonbelievers.

This publication unites a series of ten essays by a wide range of scholars working in disciplines such as history, art history, and religious studies, including contributions translated from Tibetan and Chinese.

These authors make the artworks and the concepts behind them accessible to a broader audience, enabling this volume to serve as a long-term educational tool. The Rubin Museum of Art is indebted to the authors as well as the supporters of this publication and the exhibition, including Fred Eychaner, Zhou Yu Quan, the Zhiguan Museum of Art, the Ellen Bayard Weedon Foundation, the E. Rhodes & Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, Christopher Fussner, the Thomas and Frances Blakemore Foundation, the Neil Kreitman Foundation, Yury Khokhlov, Margot and Tom Pritzker, Carlton Rochell and Kathleen Kalista, and John Eskenazi. We would also like to express our gratitude to the generous institutional and private lenders to the exhibition, who have shared their precious artworks with a wide audience.

Jorrit Britschgi Executive Director Rubin Museum of Art

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Acknowledgements

This project is first and foremost inspired by my studies with Professor Elliot Sperling

(1951 –2017). From his Sino-Tibetan Relations class to publications such as “Lama to the King of Xia” and “‘Orientalism’ and Aspects of Violence in the Tibetan Tradition,” Faith and Empire draws largely from Elliot’s teachings, applied to art history. In addition to building on his prodigious historical research and propensity for viewing Tibetan civilization through a political lens, my own methodology is inspired by Elliot’s, combining Tibetan and Chinese sources to arrive at more complex, nuanced understandings. To this I have added visual analysis as a third point of comparison to triangulate evidence in contextualizing objects. Elliot put most of his energy into training his students, and while he was not able to finish his much-anticipated books, I hope this volume helps carry the torch forward. Although this publication might raise some eyebrows as it runs counter to mainstream romanticized notions about Tibet and Buddhism, I hope it sheds light on Tibetans’ rich history and their prominence on the world stage—both things for which Elliot strove.

It goes without saying that exhibitions are made possible by the generosity of their many lenders.

For their contributions of objects to the exhibition and images for this catalog I would like to gratefully acknowledge Mike Hearn and the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Sonya Rhie Mace and the Cleveland Museum of Art; Nathalie Bazin, Valérie Zaleski, and the Musée national des arts asiatiques-Guimet; Jeff Durham and the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco; Jacki Elgar, Laura Weinstein, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the New York Public Library; Eric Lefebvre, Mael Bellec, and the Musée Cernuschi; Barry Till, Stephen Topfer, and the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria; Melissa Moy and the Harvard Art Museums; Julia White and the Berkeley Art Museum; Meg Ventrudo and the Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art; and private lenders Thomas, Margo, and David Pritzker; Yury Khokhlov; and Bruce Miller.

The exhibition and catalog were made possible with support from Fred Eychaner, Zhou Yu Quan, the Zhiguan Museum of Art, the Ellen Bayard Weedon Foundation, the E. Rhodes & Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, Christopher Fussner, the Thomas and Frances Blakemore Foundation, the Neil Kreitman Foundation, Yury Khokhlov, Margot and Tom Pritzker, Carlton Rochell and Kathleen Kalista, and John Eskenazi.

I would like to express appreciation to the contributing authors Ronald M. Davidson, Brandon Dotson, Xie Jisheng, Tsangwang Gendun Tenpa, Per K. Sørensen, Bryan J. Cuevas, Wen-shing Chou, and Johan Elverskog. Also thanks to the capable translators who helped make this diversity in scholarly representation possible: Eveline Washul, translating from Tibetan, and Michelle McCoy and Zhu Runxiao, for their translations from Chinese. I am pleased to include current research from scholars in a wide variety of fields and disciplines who take different approaches and bring a range of perspectives to this fascinating, complex material.

Special thanks to Pema Bhum of Latse Library for his continued support, especially his efforts in bringing Tibetan scholarship to this endeavor and vetting my translations. I owe the late venerable E. Gene 13

Smith (1936 –2010) and the entire Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center staff a great debt of gratitude for their tireless efforts to locate Tibetan texts and make them available to all. The Himalayan Art Resources (HAR) website was also an important resource in the development of this research.

For their suggestions and support at different stages of my research, I thank Terese Bartholomew, Pat Berger, Xiong Wenbin, Xie Jisheng, Luo Wenhua, Elena Pakhoutova, Christian Luczanits, Gray Tuttle, Donald Lopez, Wu Hung, Matthew Kapstein, Jenny Purtle, Wen-shing Chou, Anne Rose Kitagawa, Jeehee Hong, Ping Foong, Shih-shan Susan Huang, and Eveline Washul.

For their generosity in sharing images, or their help in obtaining them, I would like to thank Director Wang Xudong and the Dunhuang Research Institute; Mimi Gardner Gates; and Orna Tsultem.

Heartfelt thanks to everyone at the Rubin Museum of Art whose hard work made this exhibition and publication possible. My gratitude to Jorrit Britschgi for seeing value in this project and greenlighting it upon taking up the reigns of the Rubin Museum as director on December 1, 2017. For their perseverance, patience, and diligence thanks to publications manager Sarah Zabrodski, project manager and indexer Paddy Booz, designer Phil Kovacevich, copyeditor Carrie Wicks, cartographer Anandaroop Roy, curatorial assistants Lizzie Doorly and Amy Goudge, curatorial fellow William Dewey, interns Chukyi Kyaping and Kesang Lama, volunteer Neil Liebman, and Riga Sakya. Thanks also to the Collections Management team of Michelle Bennett, Lauren Thompson, Christina Johnson, Emily Nazarian, and Zachary Harper and exhibitions manager Amanda Dietz for their hard work on this complex international exhibition. And of course thanks to Shelley and Donald Rubin for having the vision to establish a museum of Himalayan art in the heart of our fair city.

Finally, the deepest gratitude to my wife and fellow intrepid, both Tibetological and gastronomical, Kristina Dy-Liacco, for her patience, understanding, and (gentle) admonitions over these many years.

The dissertation research that undergirds this project was made possible by financial support from the University of Chicago Century Fellowship (1997–2007); a US Department of Education FulbrightHays Fellowship (2003–2004); and a National Gallery of Art Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts Ittleson Fellowship (2004–2006).

Karl Debreczeny

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FA I T H A N D E M PI R E

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chapter 1

Faith and Empire: An Overview karl debreczeny

Religion’s role in politics has been a universal theme across times and cultures, evident from

the earliest archaeological records to the present day. This intersection of religion and politics is critical in understanding the spread and impact of Tibetan art across Asia from the ninth to the twentieth century.

At the heart of this dynamic is the force of religion to claim political power, both symbolically as a path to legitimation, in the form of sacral kingship, and literally as a tantric ritual technology to physical power, in the form of magic. To these perennial elements of religion’s role in the political realm, Tibet contributed reincarnation as a means of succession, first in its own courts and then in empires to the east. Images were a means of political authority, serving as embodiments of power.

Still, Buddhist involvement in politics is largely invisible in the popular view of the Dharma. This gap stems from Western perceptions of the tradition, which are mostly romanticized projections born from colonial encounters. In fact, Buddhism has been engaged as a political force since its early days, beginning in India (see chapter 2). In Tibet, religious and political authority became so intertwined as to be inseparable, and they were acknowledged as such. The notion that Buddhism is historically a religion of nonviolence is also a common misconception.1 To project this idea into the past is both ahistorical and misleading.

The objective of the book Faith and Empire: Art and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism and the exhibition of the same name is to reground Tibetan Buddhist art in its historical and global context and highlight a dynamic aspect of the tradition related to power, one that may run counter to popular perceptions, yet one that is critical to understanding this tradition’s importance on the world stage.

Religion and politics have long enjoyed a symbiotic relationship. Sacred art has served as both an active agent and primary medium of government propaganda. State sponsorship has allowed religious traditions to flourish and spread, resulting in the creation of many masterpieces. Court patronage played a central role in the support and spread of Buddhism throughout Asia. With the spread came the transmission of a complex visual culture that continued to develop as it adjusted to each cultural context, such as rule of China by the Mongol and Manchu empires. This provided fertile territory for the emergence of hybrid traditions, as the needs of patrons were turned into visual forms by local artists using imported models, with the works created taking on their own political significance.

Buddhism was especially attractive to conquest dynasties because it offered a model of universal sacral kingship that transcended ethnic and clan divisions and united disparate peoples. It also promised esoteric access to physical power that could be harnessed to expand empires. By the twelfth century, Tibetan Buddhist masters had become renowned across northern Asia as bestowers of this anointed rule and occult power. Prominent rulers such as Qubilai Khan (1215–1294) embraced this Buddhist path, and it is this political role that transported Tibetan Buddhism beyond its borders. In politics, this faith was a path to legitimation and a means to power; its rituals were potential weapons of war and its art a conduit.

Opposite: Detail of fig. 6.11

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Tibetan Empire From the seventh to the ninth century, Tibetans dramatically stepped onto the world stage for the first time in the form of the Tibetan Empire (ca. 608–866), one of the great military powers of Asia and the greatest military rival of China’s Tang dynasty (618–907). As we learn in chapter 2, both the concept of sacral kingship and the martial cult of wrathful deities were elements of Tantric Buddhism introduced from India; politics had always been at the center of what became known as Tibetan Buddhism.2 The Tibetan court had a cosmopolitan vision embracing many surrounding traditions, including a writing system inspired by Sanskrit, Buddhism introduced by monks from Khotan in Central Asia and scholars from India, Sasanian silver-working techniques by way of the Sogdians (see fig. 3.5), Greek medicine via Persia, and record keeping drawn from Tang China.3 Part of this internationalism resulted from Tibetan rule over portions of the Silk Road, an important economic artery where political symbolism manifested in religious art. As we will see in chapter 3, it is in this period that the Tibetan emperors became divine rulers (see figs. 2.6 and 3.2), regarded as emanations of the Buddhist deity, bodhisattva, and patron deity of Tibet, Avalokiteśvara (see fig. 3.1). This conflated identity became an important political symbol, especially with the later reunification of Tibet under the Dalai Lamas (see chapter 7), embedded in Tibetan national identity even to this day.

Some of the earliest surviving evidence of visual expressions of Tibetan political power in religious art dates to this period in the eighth century when the Tibetan Empire ruled over large Chinese populations in the Hexi area of Gansu, including Dunhuang, an important center of Buddhist cave temples and translation activity located in the Gobi Desert near the eastern end of the Silk Road. During the period of the Tibetan rule of Dunhuang (781–848), Tibetans patronized local workshops while introducing new visual forms into the local established traditions (see figs. 1.3 and 3.6). In 781, Tibetan Buddhism and art were still in their formative stages, as the first Tibetan monastery, Samyé, had been founded only two years earlier in 779, coinciding with the adoption of Buddhism as Tibet’s state religion. Thus, the scriptural translation and artistic activity at Dunhuang also had a significant impact on what was to become Tibetan Buddhism.

This period saw the appearance of Tibetan rulers in Chinese paintings that make political statements, such as an illustration from Dunhuang’s Cave 158 (fig. 1.1), one of the so-called nirvā a caves, in which the Tibetan emperor leads the monarchs of the Buddhist world in grieving for the passing of the Buddha.4 While this painting was vandalized in the 1970s during the Cultural Revolution, a photograph by the French scholar Paul Pelliot from the early twentieth century reveals this figure was labeled tsenpo, the Tibetan imperial dynastic title reserved for the emperor. An illustration from the Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa-sūtra from Cave 231 (fig. 1.2), a cave sponsored by the local Chinese Yin 陰 family and dated 839, depicts a lofty spiritual debate between the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, Mañjuśrī, and the famous lay-scholar Vimalakīrti. Yet the painting also lays bare the political relationship between the Tang and Tibetan empires: the Chinese emperor has lost his sword and is down to a single tassel of rank on his cap, while the Tibetan emperor is noticeably larger and raised on a dais, and his camp is armed to the teerh.5 The painting dates to shortly after this region—the Hexi Corridor—was ceded by the Tang to the Tibetan Empire in 822; this religious painting, commissioned by one of the leading local Chinese families at Dunhuang, makes a clear, dramatic statement about the political realities of the day.6 Not all paintings at Dunhuang under Tibetan rule were simply continuations of the same Chinese workshops from the High Tang. Tibetan religious and aesthetic interests began to assert themselves, and new visual models appeared alongside, or even combined with, Chinese ones (see fig. 3.6). These new forms can be recognized by figures with broad shoulders and narrow waists, framed by elliptical pastel-colored halos, and adorned with spired jewelry. Several dated examples from the early to mid-ninth century have been found at Dunhuang.7

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Faith and Empire: An Overview

Fig. 1.1 The Tibetan Emperor Leads Grieving Kings at the Death of the Buddha; Dunhuang Cave 158, Dunhuang, China; period of Tibetan rule, early 9th century, ca. 839.

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tang emperor

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Faith and Empire: An Overview

tibetan emperor

Fig. 1.2 Tang Emperor (left) and Tibetan Emperor (right) Face Off, detail from Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa-sūtra; Dunhuang Cave 231 (Yin 陰 Family Cave), Dunhuang, China; period of Tibetan rule, dated 839.

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Fig. 1.3 Vairocana, detail from Vairocana and the Eight Great Bodhisattvas; Anxi Yulin Cave 25, west wall, Dunhuang, China; period of Tibetan rule, ca. 822.

It has recently been suggested that Tibetan state patronage at Dunhuang can be found in Cave 25 of the nearby site of Yulin. This cave appears to be quite close to the “Treaty-Edict Temple” as described in ninth-century Tibetan documents found at Dunhuang. This temple was dedicated by the local Tibetan military government on the occasion of the signing of the Sino-Tibetan Peace Treaty of 822.8 While the style of the paintings is a combination of Chinese and the new aesthetic introduced under Tibetan rule, there is a clear unifying political theme, that of the cakravartin ruler. The cakravartin, or a universal “wheel-turning king,” represented a concept of sacral rule in India whereby conquest by a devout king was thought to spread Buddhism, thus giving the ruler divine sanction to expand his empire (see chapter 2).

This theme of sacrosanct rulership is stated in the Treaty Temple’s dedication, which is equated with building a divine palace, where the merit generated is dedicated to the Tibetan emperor “so that he can become a cakravartin ruler, exercising authority over the four continents and other kingdoms as well…”9 The painting of Vairocana and the Eight Great Bodhisattvas on the western wall of Yulin Cave 25 is based on distinct iconic models that emerged during Tibetan rule (fig. 1.3).10 By the late eighth

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Faith and Empire: An Overview

Fig. 1.4 Vairocana Depicted in Royal Boots and Robes of a Tibetan Emperor, detail from Vairocana and Eight Great Bodhisattvas; Bimda Temple, near Jyekundo, Qinghai Province; commissioned by monk-translator Yeshé Yang (d. 866) in 806; stone with clay infill; height: 59 in. (150 cm).

century, Vairocana became the center of a new Tibetan state cult in which the emperor was equated with the crowned Vairocana the Cosmic Ruler (see chapter 3).11 This visual program was drawn from the Mahāvairocana-abhisaṃbodhi (“The Enlightenment of the Great Vairocana”), a text central to the officially sanctioned esoteric Buddhism of the Tibetan Empire. Evidence, such as catalogs of imperial collections, suggests that the Tibetan court had a special interest in Vairocana.12 Indeed, at Samyé, Tibet’s first monastery, completed in 779, and a prominent court project of the period, esoteric Buddhism was first and foremost represented by Vairocana.13 It has been suggested that the Tibetan Empire was viewed as an extended Vairocana ma ala, and that sites such as Yulin Cave 25 were intended to ritually mark the inclusion of the recently conquered Hexi area into the ma ala of the empire, with this form of Vairocana in particular intended to represent the presence of the Tibetan emperor.14 Several surviving rock carvings in the northern Sino-Tibetan borderland (Qinghai and Gansu area), dated to the early ninth century, depict Vairocana and the Eight Great Bodhisattvas, drawing on the same visual models found in Yulin Cave 25. One such carving was even associated with the same peace negotiations of 822 and lists the names of both Tibetan and Chinese artists.15 Some of these carvings include visual expressions of this conflation of deity and ruler, with Vairocana depicted in the royal boots and robes of the Tibetan emperor (fig. 1.4).16 Similar Vairocana imagery merging deity and ruler is even found after the collapse of the Tibetan Empire in the eleventh and twelfth centuries (see fig. 3.4), with the prominently crowned deity dressed in boots and royal robes adorned with distinctive Sasanian roundels associated with Tibetan royal figures. As early as the ninth century, inscriptions on rock carvings at Drak Lhamo in this region of the

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Sino-Tibetan frontier referred to the Tibetan emperor as a bodhisattva.17 As vividly demonstrated by Brandon Dotson in chapter 3, images—especially sculpture—played an important part in both the imperial period and its memory, and the high-level patronage of Buddhism and its images during the imperial period was emulated by successor states as part of their claim to political legitimacy.

Even after the collapse of the Tibetan Empire, such was the impact of Tibetan rule on the area that into the eleventh century the Tibetan language continued to be used locally in eastern Central Asia as the medium of trade and diplomacy across a wide range of ethno-linguistic groups.18 Later kingdoms in this region of the Silk Road, such as the Tangut Xixia, inherited aspects of this cultural legacy.19 An emphasis on religious foundations for political legitimacy was further developed by successor states, such as the Gugé Kingdom (996– 1090), founded by a monk-king in western Tibet, and the founding of the Tsongkha Kingdom (1008–1104) by a monk-minister in the east; each kingdom claimed to be the rightful successor of the Tibetan Empire.

Tantra and the Prototype of Charismatic Religious Rule After the Tibetan Empire collapsed, there was a period of political fragmentation and chaos in Central Tibet, and the lack of a centralized political or religious authority gave rise to local tantric masters establishing their own authority.20 Tantric practices popular in this period were characterized by a more explicit incorporation of sexual and violent imagery. These aspects of Mahāyoga, called union and liberation (sbyor sgrol), are techniques of power: the sexual practices are aimed at power over the internal realm of the body, and the violent practices are targeted at power over the external realm.21 While the aggressive symbolism of these deities is presented primarily in terms of overcoming obstacles to liberation, these deities and practices were also expected to function for more mundane worldly ends, as can be seen in the second chapter of the Hevajra Tantra, which includes detailed descriptions of rituals to destroy an enemy army and even their gods.22 Magical warfare, and the charisma of its mastery, became an important part of political legitimacy in the Tibetan Buddhist world.23 As institutional Buddhism began to regain its footing in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the image of the Tibetan emperor as a bodhisattva transformed into a potent religiopolitical symbol. The first to effectively appropriate this symbol of legitimacy by declaring himself a reincarnation of the Tibetan emperor was Lama Shang Tsöndrü Drakpa (1123–1194) (fig. 1.5).24 Directly involving himself in political and military affairs, Lama Shang is himself a fascinating study in the political and martial employment of Vajrayāna (Tantric) Buddhism during the late twelfth century. Lama Shang ruled territory, enforced secular law, and conflated religious action with royal prerogative.25 He even sent his own students into battle as part of their religious practice.26 He characterized such actions as for the benefit of sentient beings, the bodhisattva ideal converted to political action in establishing order over chaos: “My warfare was in the service of the Teaching; not for a single moment did I do it for my own personal interest.”27 This bellicose behavior was not without controversy among Tibetan leaders, even among his own Kagyü order, and the First Karmapa himself was dispatched in an attempt to rein in Lama Shang’s behavior.28 Equipped not only with conventional weapons, Lama Shang also employed a ritualized warfare of magic spells, aided by powerful protector deities such as Śrī Devī and Mahākāla (see chapter 8 and fig. 8.3).29 Interestingly, Lama Shang’s own small Kagyü monastic suborder, the Tsalpa, had direct ties to the Tangut court, the next political polity to rise to prominence. The Tangut imperial preceptor, Tishri Repa Sherab Sengé (1164–1236), while ethnically a Tangut, trained with Lama Shang.30 Lama Shang’s tutelage helped lay the foundations for the Tangut imperial preceptor’s involvement with the cult of the wrathful protector deity Mahākāla as a means for worldly power.

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Faith and Empire: An Overview

Fig. 1.5 Lama Shang Tsöndru Drakpa (1123–1194); Tibet; 14th century; bronze; 4¼ x 3¾ x 2¾ in. (10.8 x 9.53 x 6.99 cm); Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art, New York; 85.04.0650.

Published: Lipton and Ragnubs 1996, cat. 21; Sørensen and Hazod 2007, fig. 4.

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Tangut Kingdom of Xixia The Tangut court of Xixia (1038–1227), a small but powerful multiethnic kingdom along the Silk Road, established many of the imperial practices of Tibetan Buddhism and art later emulated by larger regimes, especially the Mongol Empire.31 Tibetan and Chinese religious and artistic traditions were integrated through Tangut patronage, creating a new visual model of sacral rule that included both political and artistic forms. These later became characteristic of imperial engagement with Tibetan Buddhism, continuing into the early twentieth century.

The Tangut Empire of Xixia, an expansionist state between Tibet and China on the Silk Road, included large Tibetan and Chinese subject populations. The Tanguts drew heavily on Chinese models in establishing their own imperial culture, including governmental administration and a writing system.

However, with the fall of the Northern Song dynasty in 1127, coupled with the dynamic revival of Buddhist activity in Tibet in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the Tanguts turned increasingly west to the Tibetan realm for guidance. Shortly after the incorporation of Tsongkha territories into Xixia, the custom of a Tibetan Buddhist monk serving as imperial preceptor at the Tangut court was established. Indeed, the Tanguts seemed engaged with all the major religious centers in Central Tibet, especially those of the Sakya and Kagyü orders.32 Buddhism served the state in legitimization and engendered lavish imperial patronage, with the Tangut emperors presenting themselves as sacral cakravartin rulers. Among the northern nomads, the Tangut emperors were known as the Buddha Khan (Burqan Khan).33 The Tanguts employed a self-conscious multicultural strategy, editing texts in three languages at once: Tangut, Chinese, and Tibetan. In their art, one also sees a mixing of both Chinese and Tibetan iconographic and stylistic traditions to meet the Tangut patron’s particular needs. This blending is evident in objects excavated from Tangut sites such as Khara Khoto, as well as caves dating to their rule of Dunhuang, which the Tanguts absorbed in 1036. One hallmark of the Tangut court was lavish silk images, such as cut silk (kesi 缂丝; btags sku) (see figs. 4.7 and 4.11), a technique developed in Central Asia and adopted by the Tangut court for the making of Tibetan Buddhist icons. The Tanguts were the source of many such imperial court practices integrating Tibetan Buddhist imagery with Chinese media and artistic techniques that would be emulated for centuries. The continued debate in distinguishing Tangut Xixia and Mongol Yuan objects, especially in silk, speaks to the close relationship between these two court traditions and the continuity of this visual production from the twelfth into the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.34 The printed icon of a wrathful deity excavated from the Tangut site of Khara Khoto bears invocations that make its political role clear (fig. 1.6). On the right, it reads: “Long Life to the Emperor!”; and on the left: “Peace to the People, Grandeur to the State!”35 The wrathful deity Mahākāla became a special focus of Tangut imperial Buddhism. Mahākāla is a powerful Buddhist protector deity, a manifestation of divine wrath used in removing obstacles, and considered especially effective in military applications. For instance, one Tibetan Buddhist cleric who is tied to the Tangut imperial line, Tsami Lotsawa (fl. twelfth century), is linked to at least sixteen texts on Mahākāla, including one called The Instructions of Śrī Mahākāla: The Usurpation of Government—a short “how-to” work on overthrowing a state and taking power.36 The Tangut Roots of Mongol Engagement with Tibetan Buddhism Mongol interests in Tibetan Buddhism can be traced to their potent encounter with the fierce deity Mahākāla through their military campaign against the Tangut Empire of Xixia in the early 1200s.37 By the time of the Mongol invasion, Tibetan clerics served as imperial preceptors at the Xixia court, where Mahākāla was a focus of Tangut court Buddhism. Chinggis (Genghis) Khan first laid siege to the Tangut

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Faith and Empire: An Overview

Fig. 1.6 Wrathful Deity (Acala or Vighnāntaka); excavated at Khara Khoto, China, Tangut State of Xixia; early 13th century; xylograph; 25¼ x 16⅜ in. (64 x 41.5 cm); entered the Hermitage in 1933, transferred from the State Russian Museum; The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg; -2537.

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capital in 1210. According to Tibetan texts, when Lama Shang’s student Tishriī Repa, the Tangut’s Tibetan court chaplain, summoned Mahākāla (see fig. 8.3) to the battlefield, the dams the Mongols were using to flood the city burst, sweeping away Mongol troops and forcing Chinggis to withdraw.38 This account of their unusual military setback through effective religious ritual no doubt caught Mongol attention. Later, the Buddhist model of cakravartin sacral rule and the cult of the wrathful protector deity Mahākāla, both ministered by Tibetan clerics, were adopted by the Mongolian state.

Mongol Empire The Mongols established the largest contiguous empire in world history, covering most of Eurasia from the Pacific Ocean to the eastern Mediterranean. The Mongols conquered most of Asia in the thirteenth century, thereby bringing Tibetan visual culture to the Chinese heartland. Qubilai Khan declared his dynasty the Great Yuan, based on a Chinese model, within the larger Mongol Empire, with Qubilai at the center as Great Khan.39 The Mongols relied heavily on peoples from other areas of the empire, such as the Uighurs, Tanguts, and Tibetans. While the Mongol Empire was known for a policy of religious tolerance among its peoples, as well as generous patronage across a broad spectrum of religions, Qubilai singled out Tibetan Buddhism among the faiths competing for court attention. Evidence suggests that Mongol interests in Tibetan Buddhism lay in both a model of sacred rulership that allowed them to unite an empire across ethnic and clan divides, and the corresponding esoteric means to physical power—ritual magic—that could be harnessed to serve the Mongol imperium. Their interest in Tibetan Buddhism was actually quite practical, even utilitarian.

Tibetans as Imperial Preceptors Patronage of various Tibetan lamas and schools was initially divided among different Mongol appanages, including territorial fiefs (Sakya to Köten Khan, Phakmodru to Hülegü, Tsalpa to Qubilai, and the Karma Kagyü to Ariq-Böke), and their monasteries flourished as never before.40 Tibetan Buddhism prevailed in many parts of the Mongol Empire, including the early Mongol Ilkhans in Persia.41 Long before the founding of the Yuan, Köten Khan summoned one of the great Tibetan scholars of the time, Sakya Pa ita (1182–1251) (see fig. 5.2), and had him escorted, along with his two nephews as hostages, to the Mongol court as representative of Tibetan interests. Two years later, when Möngke Khan (r. 1251–1259) gave the former Tangut territory to Qubilai, he also took possession of Sakya Pa ita’s nephews, one of whom was the Tibetan cleric Phakpa (1235–1280) (see figs. 5.3–5.5).

In 1260, Qubilai declared himself Great Khan, leading to civil war and the fragmentation of the Mongol Empire, with Qubilai maintaining control of Asia. Phakpa initiated Qubilai into Tibetan Buddhist rites, and in turn Qubilai, as an offering to his lama, granted Phakpa suzerainty of Tibet. Not dispensing with realpolitik, however, Mongols militarily occupied Tibet, with Sakya authority dependent on Mongolian garrisons. Later, when Qubilai Khan declared the founding of the Yuan dynasty, he made Phakpa imperial preceptor, the highest religious authority in the land. As part of his investiture, he had the crystal seal of the Tangut emperor re-created for Phakpa, likely in emulation of Tangut court ritual.42 This action gave symbolic weight to the Mongols as conscious inheritors of the Tanguts in a patron-priest relationship with the Tibetans. Phakpa also developed a new script based on Tibetan, called Phakpa script (see chapter 5), to phonetically render all the disparate languages of Qubilai’s empire; it was employed on official documents and insignia, such as seals and passports (see fig. 5.6). Significantly, Qubilai Khan also had

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Phakpa tutor his heir apparent, Jingim (Zhenjin 真金, 1243–1285).43 It has recently been suggested that some of these key political moments—as understood by later Tibetans—were depicted in two portraits of Phakpa: the initiation of Qubilai Khan and his granting of Tibet to Phakpa as part of offerings in 1264 (see fig. 5.4) and Phakpa being appointed imperial preceptor by Qubilai Khan around 1270 (figs. 1.7 and 5.5).44 In the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria painting, note Qubilai Khan and his wife, Chabi, herself known for her devotion to Tibetan Buddhism and Phakpa in particular, are depicted smaller, to Phakpa’s left, and her hands are clasped in reverence. Observe the meticulous care in the depiction of Qubilai and Chabi, with her hat topped with a peacock feather. A Chinese official holding his tablet of office and paying homage in the bottom corner is likely one of Qubilai Khan’s close Chinese court advisors, such as Liu Bingzhong 劉秉忠 (1216–1274), upon whom Qubilai depended greatly in his early career. In 1264, while Liu Bingzhong was a monk, he was ordered to wear appropriate robes at court and even marry.45 The court sponsored memorial halls for Phakpa throughout the empire, and in 1324, eleven painted portraits of Phakpa were distributed to the provinces so clay statues could be modeled for worship.46 Until the fall of the dynasty in 1368, it became Yuan practice to appoint Tibetans as imperial precep-

Fig. 1.7 Detail of Qubilai Khan Naming Phakpa (1235–1280) Imperial Preceptor ca. 1270 (fig. 5.5); attributed to Khyentsé Chenmo (fl. 1450s–1490s); Tibet; late 15th–16th century; pigments on cloth; 32¼ x 20 in. (82.6 x 50.8 cm); Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, British Columbia; gift of Mrs. W. W. Ritchie, 1965.068.001.

tors. This relationship between the Mongol emperor Qubilai and his Tibetan chaplain Phakpa, often characterized as a patron-priest relationship, became a model that subsequent imperial courts and Tibetans would invoke for centuries to come.

Mahākāla as State Protector The fierce deity Mahākāla was made protector of the Mongol Empire and became a focus of the Mongol state (figs. 1.8 and 5.8).47 Applications of Mahākāla in service of the Mongolian military machine are well attested in historical sources, and in recognition, many temples and images dedicated to Mahākāla were built throughout the empire. The Mongols attributed many victories to the summoning of Mahākāla. For instance, when the Mongol army first marched south, the Chinese petitioned the Chinese martial god Zhenwu 真武 to deliver them from the Mongol onslaught. The god purportedly responded that he had to hide from the Great Black God leading the Mongol army. The Chinese cities surrendered.48 Most famously, in 1275 Qubilai asked Phakpa for Mahākāla to intervene against the Southern Song, which his greatest general Banyan (Bayan; 1236–1295) could not conquer. The Nepalese artist Anige constructed a temple south of Beijing at Zhuozhou 涿州 with its statue facing south, and soon after the Song

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Fig. 1.8 Mahākāla; Tibet or China; dated 1292; lithographic limestone, partially gilded and polychromed; 18½ x 11¼ in. (47 x 28.5 cm); Musée national des arts asiatiques–Guimet, Paris; gift of L. Fournier; MA 5181.

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capital fell. When the former emperor of Song and his courtiers were brought north, they were astonished to see the image of Mahākāla just as they had seen him among the Mongol troops. These accounts of the Southern Song collapse are recorded in both Chinese and Tibetan sources.49 This sculpture of the Tibetan protector used to conquer the Song became a potent symbol of both Qubilai’s rule and the Yuan imperial lineage. This association was so strong that even four centuries later, in 1635, the Manchus, lacking the proper bloodlines, traced their own spiritual ancestry to Qubilai Khan as the rightful inheritors of his Yuan legacy and installed this statue of Mahākāla in their own imperial shrine. While this famous statue disappeared with the fall of the Qing dynasty, an Indic stone sculpture dated to the same period (1292), preserved in the Musée Guimet in Paris (see fig. 1.8), records in its inscription that the donor was a close disciple of the Imperial Preceptor Phakpa, who enjoyed the protection of Qubilai Khan: As for this sculpture, in order to spread the precious teachings of the Buddha far and wide and endure for a long time; to pacify obstacles to the lives of all the great patrons and priests; and to destroy all enemies, the one called Atsara Pakshi (“the learned master/magician”), who is close attendant and protected by the kindness of the dharmarāja called Phakpa, eminent guru and second Buddha of [this] degenerate age, and [protected by] that widely renowned great khan called Qubilai, king who rules nearly all of the world, acted as patron. The master artist unrivaled in this field of knowledge, called Könchok Kyap, having served, successfully accomplished it in the Water Male Dragon Year (1292). May you enjoy great prosperity!50 It is likely that this “learned master/magician” was none other than Qubilai Khan’s primary Mahākāla ritual specialist, the Tibetan monk Dampa (1230–1303), who was recognized as an emanation of Mahākāla on earth, credited with aiding many Mongol military victories through his summoning of Mahākāla.51 Indeed, many of the feats attributed to Mahākāla cited above come from Dampa’s Chinese biography, which asserts, “This is proof of how he aided the state.”52 This sculpture thus embodies the religiopolitical relationship at the heart of Tibetan involvement at the Mongol court, and it is likely Dampa who is depicted as a swarthy monk attending below Phakpa (see fig. 5.5) in audience with Qubilai Khan, thus re-creating this troika of religiopolitical power evoked in the sculpture’s inscription.

A prominent Mongolian patron of this imperial Mahākāla tradition was Grand Princess Sengge Ragi (ca. 1283–1332), most famously known as a collector of Chinese art and often touted in Chinese art-historical discourse as a heavily sinified Mongol who took on the identity of a Chinese literatus.53 Princess Sengge was also an avid patron of Tibetan Buddhism, the state Mahākāla cult, Protect the Nation Temple 護國寺, and Dampa in particular, indicating she did not give up her Mongolian identity; rather her behavior suggests the existence of a Mongolian elite that could move skillfully among the diverse cultural circles that composed their multiethnic empire.54 The Nepalese Head of Imperial Workshops: Anige A special appreciation and dispensation for craftsmen under Mongol rule, first established by Chinggis Khan, continued under Qubilai, and the arts flourished under Mongolian patronage. Phakpa recommended a young Nepalese artist named Anige 阿尼哥 (1244–1306) for service at the Mongol court. Anige so impressed Qubilai Khan that he quickly rose to supervisor-in-chief of all artisans at court. He was commissioned to produce a variety of buddhas and stūpas in the imperial capitals of Shangdu and Dadu (Beijing), steel dharma wheels— the symbol of the cakravartin universal ruler—to use as imperial standards, and portraits in silk of Qubilai

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Fig. 1.9 Lacquer Bodhisattva; China; 13th century; lacquer, cloth, traces of blue, gold, and green paint, and gold leaf; 231⁄16 x 171⁄16 x 11⅝ in. (58.5 x 43.3 x 29.5 cm); Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; purchase—Charles Lang Freer Endowment, F1945.4.

and Chabi for the imperial temple. Anige’s most visible imprints on the Chinese landscape are two majestic white stūpas, one in the imperial capital Beijing, built in 1279 (see fig. 5.7), and the other on Mañjuśrī’s sacred mountain of Wutai shan (Mount Wutai), completed in 1301 (see fig. 9.1). Many of these Yuan works have been lost, and no piece has yet been reliably attributed to Anige.55 Other surviving objects, however, bear a distinct Nepalese aesthetic, made in Chinese luxury mediums newly employed for the creation of Tibetan Buddhist images during the Yuan, including dry lacquer (fig. 1.9).56 Chinese sources tend to broadly describe this new imperial idiom as fan xiang 梵像, which might be rendered as “Indic images,” seeming to conflate the Indian, Nepalese, Tibetan, and Tangut modes that informed it (fig. 1.10).

Silk: Vajrabhairava (ca. 1328–1329) Tibetan Buddhist icons lushly produced in the same silk technique popular in the Tangut court, kesi, became a signature of Mongol imperial court production. An exquisite example is the monumental ma ala

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Fig. 1.10 Porcelain Bodhisattva; Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Province, China; Yuan dynasty, 14th century; porcelain; height: 1615⁄16 in. (42.9 cm); The Field Museum, Chicago; 119332.

in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (see fig. 5.9). Its large scale is consistent with records of Yuan imperial commissions.57 Political intrigue surrounded the Mongol imperial figures who are depicted in this artwork (see figs. 5.10 and 5.11), and their stories and titles are fascinating aids in helping us contextualize this magnificent object. “King” Tuq-Temür, the son of a Tangut empress, came to power as the result of a coup d’etat in 1328. His older brother, here named “Prince” Qoshila, only reigned briefly, from February 27 to August 30, 1329. Tuq-Temür’s entourage assassinated him out of fear of his military strength and the resulting Chaghatayid Khanate influence on the Yuan dynasty.58 Tuq-Temür was then re-enthroned, but he died of disease three years later. The titles in the Tibetan cartouches in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s silk suggest that at the time of its production “King” Tuq-Temür was already named Khan, which had occurred in September 1328, but “Prince” Qoshila had not yet been enthroned, an event that took place in February 1329. These titles therefore place the silk’s design—if not creation—to late 1328 or early 1329. For more on this fascinating textile, see chapter 5.

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Fig. 1.11 U avijayā, Patron Minister Yang (Rinchen kyab); Feilaifeng飞来峰, niche 84, Hangzhou; ca. 1282–1292; stone.

Stone: Feilaifeng (1282–1292) After the Mongols conquered and absorbed the Tanguts in 1227, members of the Tangut clergy continued to be employed under the Mongols. The Tangut’s versatility—being adept at Tibetan and Chinese linguistic, doctrinal, and artistic traditions—was no doubt valued by the Mongols in both forging and implementing the political and religious policies of their own empire, which followed several Tangut precedents.

The most prominent example is the notorious Minister Yang Lianzhenjia 楊璉真伽 (Rinchen Kyab; d. 1291), who was made head of the Bureau of Religious Affairs of Southeast China in 1277. His sponsorship reflected a focus on subduing newly conquered territories by building stūpas and reestablishing former Buddhist monuments, including some on the sites of Daoist temples, former Song palaces, and even imperial tombs. His activities in the Hangzhou area included commissioning stone sculptural niches carved directly into the local landscape at Feilaifeng 飞来峰, dating to about 1282 to 1292. The statues vary from being completely Chinese in appearance, such as the famous reclining Budai Maitreya, to deities clearly

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Fig. 1.12 Frontispiece of Achamo pusa jing 阿差末菩薩經, vol. 6, from the Qisha Canon 磧砂藏; Suzhou, China; Yuan dynasty, ca. 1301; xylograph on paper, frontispiece (open): 11⅞ x 17⅝ in. (30.3 cm x 44.8 cm); New York Public Library, Spencer Collection; 4053.

Published: Edgren 1993, fig. 10.

Fig. 1.13 Frontispiece of Achamo pusa jing 阿差末菩薩經, vol. 2, from the Qisha Canon 磧砂藏; illustrator Chen Sheng 陳昇; Suzhou, China; Yuan dynasty, ca. 1301; xylograph on paper; frontispiece (open): 11⅞ x 17⅝ in. (30.3 cm x 44.8 cm); New York Public Library, Spencer Collection; 3870.

Published: Edgren 1993, fig. 6.

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based on Tibetan artistic models, which were dominant in both the Tangut and Mongol courts, such as the majestic U ī avijayā (fig. 1.11).59 Many of these thirteenth-century images are a fusion of the two traditions, featuring Tibetan iconography like five-leaf crowns sitting atop rounded Chinese faces.

Printing: Qisha Canon (ca. 1302) Further evidence of Mongol court adaptation and the continuation of Tangut practice was the enormous undertaking of printing the Tangut edition of the Buddhist canon (ca. 1301–1302) in Hangzhou, one of China’s largest and most important printing centers. The frontispiece designs were repurposed for other printing projects, such as the massive Qisha Canon 磧砂藏 (ca. 1302), sponsored by the aforementioned Tangut Minister Yang and overseen by the Tangut Guan Zhuba 管主八 (Bka’ ’gyur pa) (figs. 1.12 and 1.13).60 These productions incorporated many translations of Tibetan texts, such as Phakpa’s advice to Qubilai’s son, the crown prince. However, many of the Tibetan texts added into the Chinese Buddhist canon during the Yuan dynasty were either translated by Tanguts serving in the Mongol administration, such as Shaluoba 沙囉巴 (Shes rab dpal; 1259–1314), or had already been translated under the former Tangut Kingdom of Xixia.61 Nine of the ten known frontispieces made for the Qisha Canon show a distinct mixing of Tibetan and Chinese imagery and are similar to both the 1302 Tangut canon and extant Tangut xylographs.62 These frontispieces were separate blocks and could have been printed with any number of texts, so their woodblocks would have worn out quite quickly and required re-carving many times, making it difficult to date the printings or say which ones are original.63 Nonetheless, they appear to be faithful representatives of the early fourteenth-century images, some of them even preserving the names of the original Chinese illustrator Chen Sheng 陳昇 (see fig. 1.13)

Fig. 1.14 Juyongguan 居庸关 stūpa gate, 1345.

and carver Chen Ning 陳寧.

Architecture: Juyongguan (1345) Even as late as 1345, over a century after the fall of Xixia, Tangut script is found on politically significant geo-religious monuments such as the Juyongguan 居庸关 stūpa gate to the north of Beijing (fig. 1.14). It was constructed on the order of the last Mongol emperor and supervised by the Tibetan cleric Namkha Sengé. Such gates were used to mark the cardinal directions in delineating the sacred space of a city, similar

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Fig. 1.15 Avalokiteśvara Padmapā i; China; Ming dynasty, Yongle reign mark (1403–1424); height: 8½ in. (21.5 cm); gilt brass; Potala Lima Lhakhang, Lhasa, inv. no. 973; photo: Ulrich von Schroeder, 1993.

Published: Ulrich von Schroeder 2001. Buddhist Sculptures in Tibet. Vol. 2, Tibet and China, p. 353, pls. 353A–B. Hong Kong: Visual Dharma Publications.

to those found in depictions of the divine realm of a deity’s palace (ma ala). A number of the various inscriptions in Sanskrit, Tibetan, Mongolian Square script (Phakpa script), Chinese, Tangut, and Uighur lining the walls of the gate declare Qubilai Khan as an emanation of Mañjuśrī, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, establishing the sacral nature of his rulership and empire. There has been debate about whether Qubilai was regarded as Mañjuśrī in his own lifetime.64 But there is evidence of contemporary Tibetans questioning the validity of this identification, suggesting he was recognized as Mañjuśrī; they essentially argued, “If he is a bodhisattva, why does he need to use violence and intimidation?”65 Regardless, Qubilai Khan’s image as Mañjuśrī became especially significant when the Manchus conquered China in 1644 and declared themselves Qubilai’s spiritual and political inheritors as emanations of the same deity.66

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Chinese Ming Dynasty Even after the Mongol Yuan dynasty collapsed and the Chinese reclaimed their land, establishing the native Ming dynasty (1368–1644), the Chinese court continued to follow Mongol precedents for an imperial Buddhist vocabulary symbolic of divine rule. By this time, Qubilai Khan’s model of rulership was recognized across Asia; the early Ming rulers employed the accepted language of power to declare their authority.67 This has not been the traditional understanding of the Ming, who are said to have expended a great deal of energy to reassert an ethnic Chinese identity in the wake of Mongol rule. Yet Tibetan Buddhism continued as a faith of the powerful within the inner court.

A lot of Tibetan Buddhist art was created in the Ming imperial workshops, both for internal court use and as diplomatic gifts (figs. 1.15, 1.17, 6.3, and 6.15).

Engagement with Tibetan Buddhism was a defining aspect of imperial identity for the first half of the Ming.68 The Yongle emperor (r. 1403–1424) was the Ming ruler who most famously engaged with Tibetan Buddhism. As a prince, he was well versed in the ways of the previous regime and was known to the Tibetans before coming to power. However, Yongle was not the crown prince; he had seized the throne from his nephew, thus his reign fell under a cloud of doubt. As part of a strategy to underline his right to rule, Yongle invited the Karmapa, who served as the final Tibetan preceptor to the Mongols before the collapse of the Yuan, to come to the Ming court to perform mortuary rituals for his deceased parents (figs.

1.16 and 6.1). He even suggested re-creating the relationship between Qubilai and Phakpa in the Karmapa and himself. After the Karmapa’s visit, Yongle indeed styled himself a cakravartin universal ruler. The pro-

Fig. 1.16 Detail of Fifth Karmapa (1384–1415) Initiating the Yongle Emperor (r. 1403–1424) as Sacral Ruler (fig. 6.1); 18th century; pigments on cotton; 39⅜ x 23⅝ in. (100 x 60 cm); Private Collection.

duction of Tibetan Buddhist art at court reached its apex under Yongle, most famously in the elegant gilt bronzes bearing his reign mark (see figs. 1.15 and 6.3). The Chinese luxury medium of silk textiles also continued to be a staple of Ming imperial court production of Tibetan icons (see figs. 6.4 and 6.5).

The Yongle emperor was by no means the most ardent Ming ruler in his adoration of Tibetan Buddhism. Emperor Wuzong 武宗 (r. 1506–1521) was an enthusiastic, zealous patron. He studied Tibetan language, dressed as a Tibetan monk, kept many Tibetan monks around him, and built a Tibetan Buddhist temple in the Forbidden City. He even declared himself an emanation of the Karmapa lamas, which was not well received by the Tibetans.

Opposite: Fig. 1.17 Bodhisattva (see fig. 6.15); Qutansi, Qinghai Province, China; Ming dynasty, Yongle reign mark (1403–1424); gilt bronze; 53½ x 26 x 17¾ in. (136 x 66 x 45 cm); Musée Cernuschi, Paris; M.C. 5173.

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41

Eunuchs were important conduits between the Ming imperial court, Tibetan patriarchs, and artistic production, since they served as personal attendants to the emperor, envoys to Tibetan patriarchs, and managers of the court ateliers. Their influence is reflected in their private temples in the capital as well as imperially sponsored monasteries, whose construction they oversaw on the Sino-Tibetan border. Such temples can be viewed as sites of political propagation and cultural negotiation, both in the capital and as projections of Ming imperial power into contested borderlands, conveyed through a mixture of Chinese imperial architecture and an international Buddhist visual vocabulary (figs. 1.17 and 6.15). In the border regions, these temples were part of a larger strategy to gain a foothold along the Ming-Amdo frontier. The locally venerated Tibetan Buddhist leaders of these temples also performed diplomatic functions, such as negotiating disputes between the Ming and the Mongols, with whom Tibetans would soon have an increasingly significant relationship.69 Second Conversion of the Mongols In the late sixteenth century, the Mongols underwent a second, more deeply rooted conversion to Tibetan Buddhism, a conversion so thorough that the religion became essential to Mongolian identity. This historical turning point in Inner Asian politics had far-reaching consequences for generations (see chapter 10). Tibetan Buddhism became a cultural and political rallying point for the fractured Mongols and Inner Asian groups, once again aiding in empire building. From this point until the modern period, the Mongols played a key role in the politics of Tibet, Tibetan relations with China, and imperial interest in Tibetan Buddhism. Indeed, the lingua franca among these cultures was often Mongolian.

Although Tibetan Buddhism was important for the Mongolian imperial elite in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when the Mongols returned to the steppe their connections to the Dharma waned.

Yet one ambitious leader, Altan Khan (1507–1582), saw promoting Tibetan Buddhism as a strategy to overcome the tradition of primogeniture and thereby legitimate his power.70 To these ends, Altan Khan invited a number of Tibetan teachers to proselytize among his people, including a famous monk of the relatively new Geluk monastic order, Sönam Gyatso (1543–1588). Altan Khan was so impressed with the monk that he gave him the title Dalai Lama (“Oceanic Guru”), retroactively known as the Third Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama in turn declared Altan Khan to be a reincarnation of Qubilai Khan, tremendously boosting Altan’s status among the Mongols.71 The next (fourth) incarnation of the Dalai Lama was then recognized in the grandson of Altan Khan, a shrewd political move that bound the Mongols closely to Geluk interests. The Mongols became fiercely loyal to the Geluk order and were instrumental in establishing the Dalai Lama’s political rule over Tibet in the seventeenth century. Repeated Mongolian incursions, however, were not welcomed by many Tibetans, which resulted in a cottage industry of ritual war-magic specialists known as Mongol-repellers (see chapter 8).

Rise of the Dalai Lamas (1642–1959) The system of succession through reincarnation became an important means of political legitimacy in Tibet. It is no better exemplified than by the Dalai Lamas, who came fully to power by Mongol military support in 1642, becoming the first theocratic rulers of a unified Tibet, which had been fractured since the collapse of the Tibetan Empire eight centuries earlier. As discussed in chapter 7, an important part of the Fifth Dalai Lama’s (1617–1682) claim to power was promoting himself as an emanation of Avalokiteśvara, thus conflating himself with the first Tibetan emperor and positioning the Dalai Lamas as the rightful inheritors of the Tibetan Empire (see figs. 7.2 and 7.5). The Dalai Lamas and their regents widely

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publicized this connection through text and image, making it a major theological underpinning of the government, which ruled Tibet until 1959.

In the Fifth Dalai Lama’s History of Tibet, written the year after he came to power in 1643, the Tibetan imperial period is described as a golden age, the time of the establishment of Buddhism in Tibet by a series of divine religious kings, who were in fact bodhisattvas incarnate (see chapters 3 and 7). By identifying himself as an incarnation of the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara, the Dalai Lama employed a language of divine inheritance, the succession of past glorious empires through the mechanism of reincarnation.72 This choice was politically charged, because the founder of the Tibetan Empire, Songtsen Gampo (ca. 605–649), was by the eleventh century also considered Avalokiteśvara’s emanation, visually expressed by the small Buddha Amitābha’s head peeking out of the emperor’s turban (see figs. 3.2 and 3.7). To reinforce this association, the Dalai Lama built his own massive seat of power on the same hill overlooking Lhasa, Red Hill (Marpori), where the palace of the Tibetan emperors of old once stood. He named it Potala after the earthly abode of Avalokiteśvara (see fig. 7.8).

Another visual means by which the Fifth Dalai Lama and his government promoted this connection was with images of his previous incarnations, through large murals in his palace and series of thangka paintings. One such series includes a painting of Songtsen Gampo framed by the Dalai Lama’s own hand and footprints, making a direct visual statement about their conflated identities and, by extension, the Dalai Lama’s political authority (see figs. 7.2 and 7.5).73 The next emperors to rule China, the Manchus, also employed this unique form of Tibetan theological statecraft. Indeed, early instances of the Manchu emperors being referred to as the Mañjugho a emperors (’jam dbyangs gong ma) are found in letters from the Fifth Dalai Lama to the Qing founder, Hong Taiji, in the 1640s and 1650s, the timing of which suggests a political subtext: “Tibet is ruled by Avalokiteśvara (me) in the west, and China is ruled by Mañjuśrī (you) in the east, separate but equal.”74 These words correspond to the Buddhist tradition of linking specific deities to specific regions: China with Mañjuśrī, Tibet with Avalokiteśvara, and Mongolia with Vajrapā i—together known as protectors of the three lineages.

Manchu Qing Dynasty Like the Mongols, the Manchus conquered China from north of the Great Wall, adopting Tibetan Buddhism as a means of political legitimacy to rule their vast multiethnic empire. During their Qing dynasty (1644–1911), Tibetan Buddhism was once again an official religion of the empire. Under the Manchus, the visual language of Buddhist imperial rule was further refined and the concepts of sacral legitimacy given a finer point, with a special focus on the cult of Mañjuśrī (see fig. 6.3). The Manchu emperors, lacking the proper bloodlines to the Mongol ruling house, traced their own spiritual ancestry to Qubilai Khan through the Tibetan succession mechanism of reincarnation. By promoting themselves as emanations of Mañjuśrī, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, they declared themselves Qubilai Khan reborn, rightful inheritors of his Yuan legacy. This Manchu inheritance of Qubilai’s realm was propagated through the production of religious art (see chapter 9).

This identity was especially significant because the incorporation of the Mongols into the Qing dynasty was critical to the Manchu state’s survival; both the Chinggisid lineage of Qubilai Khan and Tibetan Buddhism were powerful symbols in the Mongol political vocabulary of the seventeenth century.75 This was but one of several mutually reinforcing strategies aimed at various subject and neighboring peoples in establishing and solidifying the Manchu Empire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The

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rulers adopted certain personae to transform themselves into the representatives of those peoples, whether Chinese or Mongol, Confucian or Buddhist, legitimizing their position and appropriating those cultures by masking their image as outsiders who had in fact conquered them.76 In 1635, shortly before the Manchus completed their conquest of China, the first Qing emperor, Hong Taiji (r. 1626–1643), changed his people’s ethnonym from Jurchen to Manju (Manzu 满族), an etymology that seems to have been engineered from Mañjuśrī.77 While both Tibetan and Mongol sources made the Manchu-Mañjuśrī connection as early as Hong Taiji’s reign, more than any other Manchu ruler it was the Qianlong emperor (r. 1736–1795) who realized the potential of patronizing Tibetan Buddhism, evidenced by the incredible volume of Tibetan Buddhist images produced by his imperial workshops. Some of the most politically pointed images included paintings depicting Qianlong as an emanation of Mañjuśrī and by extension Qubilai Khan (fig. 1.18). They bear the traditional Tibetan iconography of a book and sword at his shoulders, visually marking him as Mañjuśrī, as well as Tibetan inscriptions that unequivocally declare him as “the sagacious Mañjuśrī, the great being who manifests as lord of men, king of the dharma, may he be steadfast on the vajra throne . . .”78 The Italian Jesuit court painter Giuseppe Castiglione (1688–1766) realistically painted Qianlong’s unmistakable visage. In his lap Qianlong holds the golden wheel of the sacral cakravartin ruler.

The Qianlong emperor’s court chaplain, Changkya Rölpai Dorjé (1717–1786) (see fig. 9.2), had a guiding hand in the formation of this Sino-Tibetan imperial Buddhist art that came to symbolize Manchu rulership. From childhood, Rölpai Dorjé was educated with the imperial princes, and together they studied Buddhist scripture as well as Chinese, Mongolian, Manchu, and Tibetan. This close contact between a monk and emperor from such an early age was unprecedented. Rölpai Dorjé’s incarnation lineage was carefully crafted to reflect the notion that the patron-priest relationship between Qubilai and Phakpa was reborn, quite literally, in Qianlong and himself.79 In 1745, Rölpai Dorjé initiated Qianlong into the rites of a divinely anointed sovereign (cakravartin), just as Phakpa had done for Qubilai. Later, when Rölpai Dorjé translated Phakpa’s biography into Mongolian in 1753, he drew a direct parallel between the two acts, ruminating that he and the emperor had been connected through many lifetimes, and he stated directly that Qubilai was the predecessor of Qianlong in the Mañjuśrī incarnation lineage.80 A Tatar (Mongol) official told the British diplomat Lord Macartney during his 1793 embassy that the Qianlong emperor was an incarnation of Qubilai Khan, suggesting this association was well known.81 Rölpai Dorjé became Qianlong’s religious teacher and close political confidant, helping the emperor craft a policy toward Tibet and Mongolia that underscored the Manchu inheritance of Qubilai’s realm, both politically and symbolically, through the production of religious art. Rölpai Dorjé produced the definitive iconographic guides for artists, established a workshop of thangka painting in Beijing, and oversaw the production of Buddhist images in the imperial workshops (see figs. 1.18, 9.3, and 9.9–9.15). These images were carefully presented during Qianlong’s reign in the Chinese court, using the power of symbols to bolster Manchu legitimacy as the successor to the Yuan Empire. Rölpai Dorjé’s role in the production of Tibetan Buddhist images is particularly interesting in light of their politically symbolic position in the Qing court and his own function in that same context as an incarnation, a living object of legitimization.

Opposite: Fig. 1.18 The Qianlong Emperor as Mañjuśrī, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom; face painted by Giuseppe Castiglione (Lang Shining) (1688–1766), imperial workshop, China; Qing dynasty, Qianlong reign, mid-18th century; ink, color, and gold on silk; 44¾ x 255⁄16 in. (113.6 x 64.3 cm); Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; purchase—Charles Lang Freer Endowment and funds provided by an anonymous donor; F2000.4.

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Faith and Empire: An Overview

45

46

Later Aspirations for the Revival of a Mongol Empire Aspirations for the revival of the former glories of the Mongol Empire were grounded in a Buddhist framework. The famous artist and first Jebdzundamba incarnation, Zanabazar (1635–1723)—Mongolia’s first incarnate lama, leader of Mongolian Buddhism, and direct descendant of Chinggis Khan—became a focus of these aspirations for the eastern (Khalkha) Mongols (see fig. 10.2).82 The Jebdzundambas were seen as emanations of the bodhisattva Vajrapā i, patron deity of Mongolia, and central to Khalkha Mongolian identity. In Mongolia, Zanabazar was initially recognized as the incarnation of an important, controversial Tibetan hierarch, Tāranātha (1575–1634), whose Jonang tradition had been banned by the Fifth Dalai Lama after the civil war, in part for his deployment of magical warfare against the Ganden Phodrang government and its Mongolian allies at the behest of his patron. When Zanabazar arrived in Central Tibet, the Dalai and Panchen Lamas welcomed him as the rebirth of an important Geluk figure, Jamyang Chöjé (1379–1449), founder of Drepung Monastery. This identification then supplanted the Jonang identity in the Geluk narrative, effectively co-opting his lineage. It seems that during Zanabazar’s ten years of training at Tashilhunpo Monastery, he was exposed to Newari sculptors who were then working for the Panchen Lama.83 When Zanabazar returned to Mongolia, he brought with him fifty religious specialists, establishing Geluk traditions at his new monastic capital at Urga (present-day Ulaanbaatar).84 In his biographies there are no references to art or sculpture before his trip to Central Tibet, but upon his return he began to make remarkable sculptures (figs. 1.19 and 10.3). A standing bodhisattva Maitreya sculpture closely resembles a famous statue made by Zanabazar for the annual Maitreya Festival procession, which he established in Urga (see fig. 10.4). The Maitreya statue is therefore an object of public veneration. Zanabazar’s Nepalese-inspired Maitreya compositions are characterized by a soft sleekness of form broken by a subtle asymmetrical linear pattern of cords and sashes. The gentle contrapposto pose, accentuated by the flare of the hem of his clinging drapery, the tiny antelope skin draped over his left shoulder, the unusually tall pile of hair to accommodate the stūpa on his head, and the distinctive articulation of the lotus flower on which he stands are all hallmarks of Zanabazar’s design. Maitreya, the Buddha of the Future, is a special object of worship among the Mongols, his advent ushering in a new age and perhaps a return to the glory of the Mongol Empire.

The Mongols, however, were not united. Galdan Khan (b. 1644, r. 1678–1697), ruler of the western (Zünghar) Mongols, challenged the Manchus for domination of Inner Asia, positioning himself as defender of the Dalai Lama’s interests. He saw the rising status of Zanabazar as a threat to the Dalai Lama’s supremacy among the Mongols.85 Galdan led his Zünghar Mongols to attack the Khalkha, plundering and burning temples and images, including Erdeni Zuu, the first monastery in Mongolia.

Unable to repel these Mongols, Zanabazar convinced the Khalkha nobility to submit to the Manchus for protection, thus surrendering the dream of an independent Khalkha Mongol state led by the incarnate lama. When the Zünghars were eventually defeated and absorbed into the Qing state, Zünghar prisoners revealed the Fifth Dalai Lama’s long-concealed death, shattering the Tibetan regent’s authority. The Manchu Kangxi emperor and Zanabazar had had a close relationship. But when the second Jebdzundamba was implicated in a rebellion against the Qing, the Manchus forbade later incarnations

Opposite: Fig. 1.19 Standing Bodhisattva Maitreya (see fig. 10.3); attributed to Zanabazar (1635–1723); Mongolia; second half of 17th century; gilt bronze with blue pigment in the hair and traces of other pigments in the eyes and mouth; 249⁄16 x 87⁄16 x 7⅝ in. (62.4 x 21.5 x 19.4 cm); weight: 28 lb. (12.7 kg); Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum; gift of John West; 1963.5.

47

to be found among the Mongols. The Manchus seemed to fear joining Chinggisid political power with religious authority, with reincarnation providing the link.

After the Qing Empire absorbed the Mongols, a different Buddhist rhetoric was employed to serve the Manchu state. By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it was especially focused on the cults of the future buddha, Maitreya, and the apocalyptic myth of the kingdom of Shambhala (see chapter 10).

Shambhala is believed to be a hidden land where the kings are guardians of the Kālacakratantra, which contains a prophecy of a future holy war. At the end of this world cycle, when barbarians have taken over the earth, the last king of Shambhala will ride forth with his armies to destroy the nonbelievers, ushering in a new golden age. It became the goal of Mongols to be reborn in Shambhala to fight in that epic battle.

Special Kālacakra temples were built, with large paintings near the entrances depicting Shambhala and the battle (see fig. 10.5). In these temples, monks performed rituals to speed the coming of this new Buddhist age. When various rebellions from Muslims, Christians, and others threatened the Qing, this Shambhala myth was used to mobilize Mongols to aid the failing Qing state.86 Conclusion Tibetan Buddhism’s dynamic political role acted as a major catalyst in moving the religion beyond Tibet’s borders to the Tangut, Mongol, Chinese, and Manchu empires, where its art helped greatly in claiming power, both symbolic and literal. Grounding Tibetan Buddhism and art in their historical contexts reveals that such political aspects of the tradition are essential to understanding their active, important position in world history. With Buddhism came the transmission of a complex visual milieu that continued to develop as it adapted to each cultural context, taking on its own political significance. In this overview, more than a millennium is painted with too broad a brush; the purpose of this study has been to trace these political patterns over time and space and across cultures while acknowledging there is still much more to say. Other examples abound, such as the monk-ruler Yeshé Ö (947–1024) of the kingdom of Gugé (996–1090) in post-imperial western Tibet, as well as Raven-Headed Mahākāla’s role in the founding narrative of Bhutan, to name just a couple.

A focus on religion’s relationship to power is but one way to understand Tibet’s historical and artistic place on the world stage; there are certainly others. It does effectively reveal a complex cultural negotiation, navigated by multiple stakeholders, where the arts played a key role and flourished, enriched on all sides by a creative dialogue between Tibetan, Tangut, Mongolian, Chinese, and Manchu traditions, negating any simplistic model of conflict and submission.

The objective here is not to suggest that the Mongolian, Chinese, or Manchu empires were idealized Buddhist kingdoms but rather that the deployment of religious rhetoric was central to their respective claims to legitimacy, with religious ritual being one of several means to establish and maintain power. This was not the only system employed by these regimes; their claims of universal rule ran parallel to other systems of political legitimation, such as the Confucian concept of the Mandate of Heaven. It was also not a cynical manipulation of religion. To limit motivations in the court patronage of Tibetan Buddhism to power politics is to limit our own view, as religious faith and political acumen are not mutually exclusive.

Indeed, the Tibetan religiopolitical system at the center of this study depends on a belief in reincarnation and the efficacy of ritual magic. The modern Sino-Tibetan political situation is no longer governed by this system and is therefore an entirely different chapter in history. Nevertheless, a Chinese official’s recent suggestion that President Xi Jinping is considered a living Buddhist deity consciously draws on this past.87

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notes 1

See Sperling 2001b; Faure 2009, 93–99; Stiller 2018; FitzHerbert, forthcoming; Sinclair 2014; Dalton 2011; Jerryson and Juergensmeyer 2010; Farrer 2016.

This chapter is largely drawn from my dissertation (Debreczeny 2007). Thanks to Gray Tuttle and Donald Lopez for their useful suggestions in refining this sprawling overview.

19 Beckwith 1987b, 3–11.

20 Dalton 2011, 126–43; Yamamoto 2012, 4–13.

21 van Schaik 2015, 66.

22 Samuel 2002, 7.

23 FitzHerbert, forthcoming.

24 Sørensen and Hazod 2007 37, 30–39.

2

Samuel 2000 and 2002; and on the similar political role of Esoteric Buddhism in contemporaneous Tang China, see Goble 2016.

3

Beckwith 1987a; Dotson 2018; van Schaik 2015; Sørensen 2015.

27 Sørensen and Hazod 2007, 36–39; Jackson 1994; Yamamoto 2012, 223–34; Martin 2001.

4

Pelliot 1914; Sha Wutian 2013, 206–47, suggests Sogdian patronage of Cave 158 and a dating of about 839.

28 Roerich 1976, 479–80; Jackson 1994, 64; Yamamoto 2012, 76–77, 246–54.

5

See also the Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa-sūtra painting in the British Museum (1919,0101,0.57).

6

Similar political messages can be seen in other Dunhuang wall paintings, such as the military procession in Cave 156, celebrating the local Chinese general Zhang Yichao’s expulsion of the Tibetan military governor in 848. Wang 2018, 122–38.

7

For example, Bhai ajyaguru, painted by the monk Palyang, dated 836 (British Museum, 1919,0101,0.32).

8

Kapstein (2004 and 2009) identified Anxi Yunlin Cave 25 as the Treaty-Edict Temple, but he has reconsidered this identification more recently (2014), nevertheless maintaining that they must be closely related, with Yunlin Cave 25 being either a prototype or a copy of the temple described in the Treaty-Edict Temple document. I would suggest that both might relate to a series of such temples that ritually marked the inclusion of territory into the Tibetan Empire; Xie Jisheng and Huang Weizhong 2007; Sha Wutian 2013 and 2016; Wang 2018, 89–111. On dating issues of Yulin Cave 25, see Sha Wutian 2013, 355–82.

9

Kapstein 2009, 47.

10 Wang 2018, 89; Sha Wutian 2013, 470–92. See also Vairocana and the Eight Great Bodhisattvas in the British Museum (1919,0101,0.50).

11 Kapstein 2000, 65; Wang 2018, 51–121.

12 Kapstein 2000, 61–63.

13 Kapstein 2000, 60–61.

14 Kapstein 2000, 65, and 2009, 53.

15 Heller 1999, 37, 49, and 1994a.

16 Heller 1999, 49, 1994a and 1994b.

17 Heller 1997b: 385–90, Shawo Khacham 2015; Gugong bowuyuan 2006; Zhang Changhong, forthcoming.

25 Yamamoto 2015.

26 Jackson 1994, 63; Sørenson 2007, 38.

29 Sørensen and Hazod 2007, 38; Yamamoto 2012, 226–30.

30 Sperling 1987 and 2004a; Davidson 2005, 334; Yamamoto 2012, 220–21. For his biography see Ldan ma ’jam dbyangs tshul khrims 1997b, vol. 2, 155.

31 Beckwith 1987b, 3–11.

32 These included Sakya, Tsurphu (Karma Kagyü), Tsal Gungthang, and Drigung monasteries, also later adopted by the various Mongolian khans and princes.

See Sørensen and Hazod 2007, 367–76.

33 Atwood 2004b, 48.

34 For instance, an image in the beautiful kesi 缂丝 (cut silk) thangka of Acala was published as being from the Tangut Xia dynasty (1038–1227) in the groundbreaking exhibition When Silk Was Gold (Watt and Wardwell 1997, 92). The major Guggenheim Museum exhibition China 5,000 Years (Rodgers 1998, fig. 85) dated the same work as a Yuan thirteenth-to-fourteenth-century piece. For more Tibetological evidence on this kesi and a related portrait of Lama Shang, see Sørensen 2007, 353–80, who dates the original work to the early thirteenth century, about 1210. Broeskamp 2009; Henss 2014, fig. 292; and Noth 2015, 181, all argue for a fourteenth-century (Yuan) date. Gendun Tenpa (see chapter 5 of this volume) argues for an earlier Tangut origin, based in part on his identification of the patron as being from Tsongkha, which was absorbed into Xixia by this time. On this patron and dating about 1210, also see Sørensen 2007, 367–68.

35 Piotrovsky 1993, 168–69; Heller 2001, 221, 228; Elikhina 2015. This figure has been variously identified as Mahākāla, Vighnāntaka, Mahābala, and Acala. The Sanskrit mantra at top appears to be “Hum Chandra maharosana hum,” Acala’s mantra, confirming his identity. Thanks to Elena Pakhoutova for her reading of the Sanskrit.

18 van Schaik 2015, 67–68.

49

36 Sperling 1994, 803–4n30, 819–20.

58 Atwood 2004b, 166, 608–9.

37 Sperling 1987, 1994, 2004a.

59 Linrothe 2009; Xie Jisheng 2014; Lai Tianbing 2015.

38 Sperling 1987, 31–50; Sperling 2004a, 10, 18.

60 Chia 2016, 188–89; Huang 2014; Dunnell 2011; Khokhlov 2016.

39 Brook et al. 2018, 33.

40 Brook et al. 2018, 28, 42–43; Everding 2002; Sperling 1990.

61 Franke 1985; Chia 2016.

41 Sperling 1990; Atwood 2004b, 50.

63 Chia 2016, 194. Therefore, the date of the colophon for the text also cannot be assumed to be that of the frontispiece; ibid. It has been suggested that the New York Public Library printings date to about 1850, but little evidence is provided for this dating. See Edgren 1993. Much of the early Ming Hongwu Southern Canon (ca. 1372–1403) was essentially facsimile recuts of the Qisha Canon, and copies of the Qisha Canon were still issued until the late sixteenth century. Chia 2016, 199, 206.

42 Sperling 1987, 37.

43 Hoog 2013, 328–37.

44 Jackson 2016, 155, 158, figs. 6.25 and 6.28.

45 It is unclear if this order was ever carried out. Atwood 2004b, 338–39.

46 Atwood 2004b, 50; Franke 1981, 310.

47 Wang Yao 1994; Charleux 2008; Debreczeny 2014.

48 Nian Chang, chap. 22; Shen Weirong 2004, 204; Franke 1984, 161–62.

49 For example, Nian Chang, chap. 22; Liu Guan’s (柳貫; 1270–1342) Huguosi beiming 護國寺碑銘 (“Temple for the Protection of the Nation Stele Inscription”), dated 1318; and the Rgya bod yig tshang, 287. See Franke 1984, 161–62, 175, 158; Sperling 1991; Shen Weirong 2004, 204.

62 Chia 2016, 193; Huang 2014.

64 Tuttle 2011, 3–5; and Debreczeny 2011, 22–23.

65 These included the famous Ürgyenpa (1229/1230–1309).

Bsod nams ’od zer 1976, 174; and Rta mgrin tshe dbang 1997, 242.

66 Farquhar 1978, 12; Bentor 1995, 31–54.

67 Robinson 2008 and 2016; Debreczeny 2016.

68 Robinson 2008, 405.

50 Debreczeny 2019; Stoddard 1985, 278; Beguin 1990, 52–56.

69 Sperling 2001a.

51 Debreczeny 2019.

71 Rossabi 1995, 38–39; Wallace 2010, 92.

52 Nian Chang, chap. 22; Shen Weirong 2004, 204; Franke 1984, 161–62.

72 Ishihama Yumiko 2015; 2005; 1993, 38–56.

53 See Chen Yunru 2016; Watt 2010, 17–19, 226; Fu Shen 1990, 55–80. Sengge Ragi (Tib: Seng ge rab rgyas; Ch: Xiangelaji 祥哥剌吉; ca. 1283–1332) was sister of Külüg Khan (r. 1307–1311) and Buyantu Khan (r. 1311–1320).

Her daughter Budashiri is depicted in the famous Metropolitan Museum of Art silk tapestry ma ala, dating around 1228–1229. See fig. 5.11 in this volume.

54 Franke 1996, 50n112. Other collaborative projects between Princess Sengge and Dampa are found in the petitions to grant amnesties for imprisoned officials as part of Buddhist observances. Franke 1996, 50, 62, citing the Yuanshi 26, 590.

70 Elverskog 2006, 107–8, 111–12.

73 See Selig Brown 2004, 49, plate 15.

74 Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, 1993. The first letter (pp. 91–93) is undated (ca. 1640s?), and a second letter (pp. 168–71) is dated to 1655.

75 Elverskog 2006.

76 Wu Hung 1995, 28; and Rawski and Rawson 2006, 248–51.

77 Wang Junzhong 2003, 80–134.

78 ’jam dpal rnon po mi’i rje bor/ rol pa’i bdag chen chos kyi rgyal/ rdo rje’i khri la zhabs brtan cing/ bzhed don lhun grub skal ba bzang/. Debreczeny 2011, 38–39.

55 For instance, Jing 1994 attributes to Anige the famous portraits of Qubilai and Chabi in the National Palace Museum, and Kossak 1998, 144–46, attributes the famous Green Tārā in the Cleveland Museum (1970.156), but both without clear evidence. On the continuing debate about various attributions to Anige, see Weldon 2010 and Henss 2011.

79 Debreczeny 2011, 35, 57.

56 Karmay 1975, 20, pl. 11; Leidy 2008, 238; Watt 2010, 103, 106, fig. 137; Lee and Ho 1968, fig. 24.

83 Bareja-Starzyńska 2015, 86; and Smith 1969b, 6, 76; Smith 2001b.

57 While this is the only surviving complete example, this particular commission is not recorded. Watt and Wardwell 1997, 60–61, 95–99; Watt 2010, 110–14.

84 Among the specialists he brought back, one painter is mentioned but no sculptors. Bareja-Starzyńska 2015, 86, 122.

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Faith and Empire: An Overview

80 Debreczeny 2011, 35–36; Smith 1969b, 6; Uspensky 2002, 221, 225.

81 Hevia 1995; Uspensky 2002.

82 For a recent translation of his biography, see BarejaStarzyńska 2015.

85 Atwood 2004b, 193–94; Bareja-Starzyńska 2015, 73.

86 B lka 2003.

87 See “Xi Jinping’s Latest Tag: Living Buddhist Deity, Chinese Official Says,” Reuters, March 8, 2018, https:// www.reuters.com/article/us-china-parliament-xi-

boddhisatva/xi-jinpings-latest-tag-living-buddhistdeity-chinese-official-says-idUSKCN1GK0V6. This statement occurred at the same time term limits were removed, paving the way for Xi Jinping to serve as president for life.

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chapter 2

Indic Roots of Political Imagery and Imaginaire ronald m. davidson

A great curiosity of Indian Buddhism is the perception that it was an egalitarian, ecu-

menical, virtually communist collective, which found its social role enshrined in an elegant protest against the ruthless hierarchy of Brahmanical Hinduism. This imaginary Buddhism served the purposes of English intellectuals, Boston Brahmins, and anticolonial Indian elites—to name but a few of its eager clients. Yet the real story of Indian Buddhism is not its apolitical social-protest stance but its consistent engagement with both small republics and royal courts.

Echoing the Buddha’s own relations with royalty, later Indian Buddhist communities had complicated relationships with those in power. While Buddhist orders enjoyed a privileged status under Aśoka, subsequent kings rarely recognized this position, and Buddhist clerics articulated their wariness of capricious power, as kings had the potential to incur evil karma.1 Simultaneously, scriptural authors reinterpreted older Indian ideals into models of kingship encoded with Buddhist values: common cause, self-discipline, meritmaking, and nonviolence. The Buddha was recast in the early medieval period as the intertwined icon of both spiritual and worldly political authority, especially in Buddhist Tantrism.

Following their Indian predecessors, Tibetan monks and lay lamas in the early periods—from the eighth century to the time of the Mongol intrusion (ca. 1244)—exercised a spectrum of interactions with Tibetan emperors, noble clans, and warlords. By the twelfth century, a subset of Tibetan religious figures— the treasure revealers (tertön)—employed forms of Indian and Tibetan religious mythos to weave together a promotional narrative of the early Tibetan emperors, whose absence was felt after the collapse of the empire around 850. Treasure revealers envisioned the line of emperors as descendants of the Buddha’s own clan and incarnations of great bodhisattvas, so the treasure texts (terma) became the encryption of the Buddha’s lineage in the territory of Tibet.

Indian Monks and Kingship Early Buddhist communities had no overall organization, even if the ideology of the monks’ community of the four directions (cāturdiśabhikṣusaṃgha) is suggestive of a common culture. Each monastery or nunnery was theoretically self-governing but with formal and informal ties to other monasteries observing the same rule (vinaya). Monasteries were therefore greatly dependent on local environments, and Buddhists tended to bond with merchants and craft guilds in the immediate neighborhood, rather than with royalty and the aristocracy. Śākyamuni was depicted as having close relationships with his royal contemporaries Pasenadi of Kosala and Bimbisāra of Magadha. For most of their history, however, Buddhist communities maintained a wary stance toward actual political power. The Rājantepurappavesana-sutta in the Aṅguttaranikāya includes a list of ten dangers of being too closely involved with the royal court.2 A monk becomes suspect when the

Opposite: Detail of fig. 2.7

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queen may smile at him, or with a royal pregnancy, or when a gem is missing, or with a secret policy leak, or during generational problems, or with ministerial promotions and demotions, or with bad planning in warfare, as the attractions of money, women, and power create potential lures. The Śīlasaṃyuktasūtra affirms, “There is no such thing as being beloved in the house of kings!” (nāsti rājakule priyaḥ).3 The possibility of catastrophic royal judgment is enforced in the story of Supu pacandra in chapter 31 of the Samādhirājasūtra. Despite misgivings, the handsome preacher Supu pacandra accepts an invitation to teach Opposite, left: Fig. 2.1 Agni, God of Fire; Tibet; 15th century; mineral pigments on cloth, embroidered textile mount; object size: 17½ x 6⅜ in.

(44.4 x 16.1 cm); painting size: 6¼ x 5¼ in. (15.9 x 13.3 cm); Rubin Museum of Art; C2004.4.1 (HAR 65270).

Published: Van Alphen 2014, 218–19.

Opposite, right: Fig. 2.2 Yak a General Anila; Tibet; 15th century; mineral pigments on cloth, embroidered textile mount; object size: 18⅜ x 6⅜ in.

(46.6 x 16.1 cm); painting size: 6¼ x 5¼ in. (15.9 x 13.3 cm); Rubin Museum of Art; C2004.4.2 (HAR 65272).

Above: Fig. 2.3 Detail of fig. 2.2

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the ladies of the inner apartments. In a fit of jealousy, the king orders Supu pacandra’s limbs cut off and his corpse left on the road. Fear of royal judgment is one of the standard eight great dangers from which either the goddess Tārā or the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara saves the petitioner.

Ideologically, Indian Buddhists envisioned several different models of kingship, aligning Buddhist narratives with them. Foremost was the image of the Universal Emperor (cakravartin), a pan-Indian royal ideal.4 The most influential cakravartin narrative for Tibetans appears in their favorite hagiography of the Buddha, the Lalitavistara. The bodhisattva, born into his final birth with the thirty-two marks and eighty characteristics of the “highest of person,” takes one of two directions. If he remains a householder, he becomes a cakravartin with universal dominion; if he renounces, he becomes a buddha. The text affirms that cakravartins do not inherently have the bodhisattva’s marks—only those who are bodhisattvas in their final birth do.5 However, the cakravartin is identified by the appearance of the seven precious items ubiquitous in Tibetan art, illustrated in the lower embroidered fields of the pair of thangkas of Agni and Anila (figs. 2.1 and 2.2): the wheel or cakra (center), the elephant Bodhi (lower left), the horse Bālāhaka (lower right), the jewel or ratna (above), the woman (upper right), the citizen (upper left), and the minister (lower center) (fig. 2.3).6 In the Lalitavistara, prior to his elevation as cakravartin, an anointed king sits praying on the roof of his palace, on the fifteenth of the month, surrounded by the women of his royal apartments. Suddenly a divine wheel—with a thousand spokes, including hub and rim, golden and with gold ornaments, the height of seven palm trees—appears in space in the eastern direction. Astonished, the king declares that he has heard of these things happening to one becoming a cakravartin. He calls out to the wheel as if it were a divinity: “O Lord, may you, this divine, precious wheel, revolve in accordance with virtue, not with vice!”7 The cakravartin then decides to test the wheel. With his army—infantry, cavalry, chariots, elephant corps—he follows as the wheel travels through space into the eastern, then southern, then western, then northern directions, as far as the encircling ocean. Wherever the wheel goes, kings offer gold and their kingdoms to the cakravartin, requesting that he stay. He admonishes them to rule according to virtue and departs with his wheel to return home.

A precious elephant named Bodhi next appears; the animal is pure white and covered with gold ornaments. The cakravartin tests the elephant by mounting it and flying through the air around the continent before returning to his palace, eager to govern. Then the precious horse named Bālāhaka (“Bactrian”) appears, blue-black with gold ornaments, a braided mane, and collected muzzle. The cakravartin tests the horse by mounting it and flying through the air as before. The precious gem appears as well—a deep blue vaiḍūrya with eight facets—illuminating with its light the entire royal quarters. At night, the cakravartin tests the gem by placing it at the crown of a banner staff; it illuminates the entire army, shedding light for some five miles in every direction, so people think the sun has risen. The precious woman appears miraculously, from a correct kṣatriya family. She is not too tall or short, fat or thin, dark or light; she is beautiful and well-mannered, naturally emitting the fragrance of lotus and sandal, and she is pleasant to touch like kacilindika cloth. The precious citizen appears miraculously, being learned, distinguished, and intelligent.

With his divine vision he can see ownerless treasures for five miles in every direction, and he makes them a part of the king’s treasury. Finally, the precious minister appears; he is also learned, distinguished, and intelligent. At the moment when the cakravartin thinks of military deployment, the minister assembles the army. With his thousand heroic sons overcoming all opposition, the cakravartin rules the entire earth without recourse to punishment or weapons.

The description of the cakravartin in the Lalitavistara is curiously generic and anonymous, with only the elephant and horse meriting personal names. We are not told that this imminent cakravartin is more

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virtuous than other kings: his primary attributes are ritual not personal. He is properly anointed, prays on the fifteenth, and wishes for virtue. In part because of his anonymity, there is no backstory—no previous embodiment, no extraordinary self-sacrifice, no Buddhist rationale for his selection—which is unlike other cakravartins in Buddhist literature, such as Mahāsudarśana.8 The emblems of dominion appear of their own accord, and he acts on them, having heard of this situation before. The anonymity may work in favor of the myth—if the cakravartin remains unnamed, then any anointed ruler can aspire to this position.

Historically, such a detailed statement of anonymous authority is relatively rare. It builds on prior descriptions of the precious wheel, but even the Lalitavistara translations into Chinese do not contain the extended description.9 Instead, the version in the received Sanskrit text and Tibetan translation seems related to depictions in the Dīrghāgama and Madhyamāgama texts and elsewhere.10 Indeed, the description is disconnected from the rest of the bodhisattva’s narrative and seems like a textual fragment, or pericope, that may be inserted into a story as needed; a textual descendant of this section was later translated into Chinese as a separate text.11 The Lalitavistara cakravartin communicates a Buddhist view, in which the Buddha could have been the universal conqueror but chose not to. Accordingly, the cakravartin is inferior to the Buddha, despite the inconceivable merit attributed to them both. Yet the seven precious items also possess magical powers—they operate autonomously from the cakravartin and provide benefits that he must investigate. If he is about to die, the wheel slips from its position in the sky before the palace door, the elephant and others disappear, and the cakravartin no longer enjoys his authority. In Buddhist narratives, typically the cakravartin then sees the signs, abandons his royal existence, and becomes a renunciate for the short life left to him. Like the Buddha renouncing his cakravartin potential, the cakravartin ultimately follows the Buddha’s example: they are both separated and joined by their decisions about their lives in the world. Throughout Buddhist history, the cakravartin has therefore acted as an imaginary other to the Buddha’s renunciation— the path not taken, the life not lived.

The second model of Buddhist divine kingship is entirely different, although the two models are occasionally merged in later literature. This version involves the myth of Mahāsammata, the lawgiver who represents a mythological refurbishment of the old Indian republics’ selection of their leaders.12 The myth works with the cosmological idea of the dissolution of the world system up to the level of the gods of the pure abodes (śuddhāvāsakāyika) and its subsequent re-creation. Following the dissolution, the gods begin to exhaust their good karma and are born into a lower plane, but one in which their bodies are self-luminous.

They become greedy for a naturally forming sweet earthly essence, which once eaten causes their bodies to become coarser and lose their natural light, so the sun and moon emerge to illuminate the day and night.

Several episodes of personal greed followed by individual pride occur one after another, leading to coarser physicality that eventually yields the growing of rice, the building of housing, and the division of land into property. Each stage accelerates the loss of both freedom and divinity; each is accorded lamentations about the reduction of fortunes by the beings grown increasingly dependent on food, clothing, housing, and care for the body. Finally, crime—theft of another’s grain—precipitates a common understanding for the need of rulership and law. The people select the least greedy, least proud person to lead them, offering him onesixth of their produce, and he is entitled Mahāsammata: “decided by consensus.” Ultimately, it is the lineage of Mahāsammata from which the Śākya king Śuddhodana and his son, Siddhārtha Gautama (the Buddha), are descended. The popularity of this narrative is evidenced by its distribution throughout the Buddhist canon—whether in Pali, Sanskrit, or in a translated language—with versions found in all three baskets of the Tripiṭaka and many translated into Tibetan.13

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Some specific issues are evident. First, this is an entirely different model of rule (kṣatra). The Mahāsammata legend is that of human greed and pride, with the election of the most restrained and virtuous person as the ruler. He is primus inter pares, the first among equals idealized in modern polities. Unlike the cakravartin in the Lalitavistara, Mahāsammata is primarily identified by his virtuous attributes, which yield his physical attractiveness. His lineage is no different from others since he has neither family nor caste—as a god, he is miraculously born. He has only his virtue, but it generates a lineage that becomes the source of the warrior caste in general and the Buddha’s own family in particular. Śākyamuni’s lineage therefore conveys a lesson on the exercise of personal virtue and the rule of law. This legend is framed as the loss of a golden age, but it is clear that the authors decry the loss of behavioral restraint—the central meaning of the term vinaya—as the primary problem.

Tantric Buddhist Kingship With the sixth-century fragmentation of classical India, magical thinking became accentuated in Indian public life. Buddhists and non-Buddhists became fascinated with all kinds of magicians, who had been a minor part of the Indian landscape since before the written texts of the Vedas, which acknowledge their presence and the conflict between Indra, the king of the gods, and Śambara, the grand magician of the

Opposite: Fig. 2.4 Acala, the Immovable One; Tibet; 14th century; gilt copper alloy; 10⅝ x 10¼ x 4 in. (26.9 x 26 x 10.1 cm); Rubin Museum of Art; C2005.16.24 (HAR 65447).

Published: Lauf 1978, no. 25.

Above: Fig. 2.5 Vidyādhara; Temple 2 at Nālandā; 9th century; stone.

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demigods opposing him.14 Śambara became one source for the multiarmed divinities that form part of the canonical iconography, and we see traces of a magical divinity in the Hevajra of the Ming dynasty, although other elements have also contributed to Hevajra iconography (see fig. 6.4).

The most important connection with magicians is the inclusion of the vidyādharas, the sorcerers, as the ritual model for the esoteric bodhisattvas. Vidyādharas appear in Indian lore from an early period and are featured in the Jātakas as a literary foil: sorcerers cannot escape death, but those who follow the Dharma can. By the late fifth century, vidyādharas are found as a paradigm for the bodhisattva, and by the seventh century, achieving the state of the vidyādhara-cakravartin, emperor of the vidyādharas, became a model for advancement on the Buddhist path. This development signals that the ritual means to become a sorcerer— one who is marked by the obtainment of a magical sword—represent a significant source for Buddhist tantric lore, imported in part from Jain traditions. The folk contribution—and ultimately the Buddhist one—is that the bodhisattva becomes, through various kinds of rituals, the vidyādhara-cakravartin.

Two works of art in the exhibition Faith and Empire: Art and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism reveal Indian vidyādhara iconography: the silk tapestry and the statue of Acala, “the Immovable,” whose name was first attached to a Krodharāja (angry king) and then became intermittently identified with wrathful figures associated with various buddhas and bodhisattvas (see figs. 2.4 and 4.7). Of the two, the statue of Acala from the Rubin Museum of Art most clearly exemplifies its vidyādhara iconography, as the figure wields the magical sword (khadga) and is poised for flight. Compared to the stone image from the ninth-century Temple 2 at Nālandā (fig. 2.5), the flying, sword-wielding vidyādhara has been adapted to later iconographic requirements. Eventually, the vidyādhara’s sword was reinterpreted in line with the sword found in the hand of the bodhisattva Mañjuśrī, which cuts the Gordian knot of ignorance (see fig. 6.3). The Acala figures and the Nālandā vidyādhara are represented in a flying pose, with their legs awkwardly bent: the vidyādhara’s other great attribute is the ability to suspend the force of gravity and fly.

The other cakravartin is that of the U ī acakravartin, which is extolled in the most complete early tantric system, the U ī a rites. It was eventually superseded by the Vajro ī a systems of the eighth century, the texts of which have been mislabeled in scholarship as Vajraśekhara. The Vajro ī a category includes most of the important eighth-century Indian tantras, so the earlier works became sidelined in most Buddhist practice.

The U ī acakravartin is first and foremost the Buddha, whose uṣṇīṣa is one of his thirty-two marks, identifying the coronal dome on top of the Buddha’s head with a designation otherwise signifying the kingly turban, also called the uṣṇīṣa. In the early tantras, the uṣṇīṣa is the most important source of the Buddha’s miracles, in some measure displacing the ūrṇakośa, the circle of hair between the Buddha’s eyebrows, which was the previous source of miraculous events. In the Dhāraṇīsaṃgraha of Atikū a—the earliest uṣṇīṣa text and the second-longest medieval tantra—the moment of the Buddha’s dominion over all others in the world system is signaled by his emitting from his uṣṇīṣa the supernatural person of Tejorāśi-bodhisattva.15 This bodhisattva’s mantra suppresses those of all the others, including Avalokiteśvara, who begs the Buddha for a counterspell, which he receives. The message was that the uṣṇīṣa was the source of the Buddha’s superior power, and it becomes the ideological support to the earlier iconographical practice of placing the Buddha, or another figure, in the turban or on the head of a bodhisattva statue; we later see this trope in Tibet in the iconography of Songtsen Gampo (ca. 605–649) (see for example figs. 2.6, 3.2, and 3.7).

Themes of royal dominion are specifically applied in the ma ala, which is an idealization and sanctification of the architecture of royal authority (see fig. 5.9).16 In the center, in his palace, the Buddha is the Opposite: Fig. 2.6 Songtsen Gampo (ca. 605–649); Tibet; late 18th century; metal; height: 8⅝ in. (22 cm); Pritzker Collection; HAR 11044.

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ruler of the ma ala, surrounded by the Buddha families (kula) in the directions and the gods in the intermediate directions. A coronation ceremony (abhiṣeka) provides an introduction into the ma ala, and it is derived from those employed for kings, using all the standard regalia of office—the scepter (vajra), the crown (mukuṭa), and the vase (kalaśa) being the most important. With his change of status, the initiatory candidate receives a name appropriate to the aristocratic Buddha family into which she or he is initiated. The signa of royalty are typically invoked in the initiation, particularly the central questions of lineage, metaphors of familial relationships (kula), bonds of fealty, and oaths of secrecy—foundational items in Indian royal practice.

This subtle identification of the Buddha or vidyādhara as an imagined cakravartin—eroding the distinction between secular and sacred power—means the Buddha assumes some of the attributes of regal power and realpolitik. Therein lies the elevation of malignant deities, the so-called wrathful deities, to the status of buddhas. Early on, the Buddhist tradition made every effort to convert deities to Buddhist partisans, especially in the case of the yakṣa tree spirits, such as Vajrapā i or Hārītī. Their conversion meant they no longer required blood sacrifices—generally given to this class of spirits, both then and now—but this conversion came with an understanding, explicit in some scriptures like the Āṭāṇāṭikasūtra, that more spirits, demons, and ghouls remained outside the Buddhist fold. As a consequence, the dispensation of the Buddha needed constant protection.

Vajrapā i, being the general of the Guhyaka class of yakṣas (guhyakasenāpati), assumed ideologically the position of the primary guardian of the Buddha, and iconographically the ability to appear in whatever mode elicited a sense of power. Among the Indo-Greeks at Ha a, for example, his fifth-century image was—until it was destroyed—the best-surviving example of the Herakles Epitrapezios type, popular among Indo-Greeks in the Hellenistic period.17 In India, artists represented Vajrapā i as an angry (krodha) deity, exemplified by a magnificent eighth-century sculpture of Vajrapā i from Kashmir (fig. 2.7). He holds a real weapon-sized vajra in his left hand, while his right hand wields a daṇḍa, the emblematic rod of legal punishment. He thus expresses the iconicity of state violence, whether to maintain civic order (daṇḍa) or ward off external threats (vajra).

A great curiosity of Tantric Buddhism was its elevation of this type of deity to the same position as the Buddha. From the seventh century onward, such village, tribal, and sectarian iconographical deities proliferated. All were equipped with weapons (praharaṇa) of every kind and employed as tamers of those difficult to tame (durdantadamaka). Some were emulations of the local gods who had been swept up by Śaivism, like Bhairava and possibly Hevajra, while others were figures of tribal origin, such as Heruka. Still others were from the magical subculture, as in the case of Śamvara. In some instances, their conversion to Buddhism was effected by myths of magical battles, reflecting the real atmosphere of increasing hostility toward Buddhism and other minority traditions in the early medieval world. While their belligerent visages were consistently interpreted in Buddhist texts as symbolic, spiritual, and psychological, the iconography left little doubt that—in a time of need—these deities could resurrect their bellicose origins.

The tantric inflection of the Indian Buddhist political imaginaire was thus something of a disparate assembly of partially overlapping ideals. Whereas the cakravartin represented the separation of the secular and sacred—for the Buddha could not be both—the vidyādhara-cakravartin was a man for all seasons: magician, buddha, sorcerer, overlord, terrifying divinity, benign visage, inspiring paradox. This figure Opposite: Fig. 2.7 Vajrapā i; Kashmir, India; 8th century; bronze with silver overlay and opaque watercolor; object height: 8⅝ in. (22 cm); object base width: 5 in. (12.8 cm); The Cleveland Museum of Art; purchase from the J.H. Wade Fund; 1971.14.

Published: Archives of Asian Art 1972/1973, fig. 14; Pal 1973, fig. 16; Reedy 1997, fig. K49; Ghose 1998, cat. 30; Pal 2003, cat. 59; Linrothe 2014, figs. 1.62–1.63.

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invoked both worldly power (laukikasiddhi) and supermundane authority (lokottarasiddhi). His was the accomplishment of dominion (aiśvarya) over the ma ala, with its tiered families in the directions, its wealth of supporting divinities, and its extension into the past, present, and future.

Tibetan Incorporations By the time Tibetans became interested in Buddhism, they had long indigenous traditions of kingship, detailed by Giuseppe Tucci, Rolf Stein, and others. None were Buddhist in origin, even if they later received something of a Buddhist patina. Rather, they represented the Tibetan and Central Asian understanding of a military hero who also stands as the chief priest—descended from a grand ancestral realm in the sky, inhabited by deities—and is capable of traversing the obscure, dangerous paths between this world and the next.

As much shaman and magician as hero, warrior, and astute politician, the Tibetan emperors restricted the influx of tantric literature and finally prohibited further translations in the proclamation of the Sgra ’byor bam po gnyis pa reformulation of 814.18 Even then, it is clear from the surviving epigraphs and documents that the Tibetan emperors were clothed in the language of the new Indian religion, even if the clothing did not always fit.19 With the collapse of the imperial dynasty in the mid-ninth century, Tibetans went through a period of uncertainty, lawlessness, and soul-searching, with local clan chieftains assuming power and authority, competing with remnants of the dynasty. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, the indigenous composition of Buddhist texts—and apocryphal Buddhist scriptures—gained speed, and the lore of the ancient Tibetan emperors began to be included in the narratives developed in this new nationalist-religious literature, which most often posed itself as a buried or hidden treasure (gter) constituting the personal testaments of these monarchs. In the process, the assimilation of Buddhism, in Matthew Kapstein’s diction—or perhaps from another direction, the creative integration of both Tibetan and Indian Buddhist themes—resulted in new genres of texts.20 The treasure literature on the emperors was among the most successful. Surprisingly, the early treasure literature was focused on the emperors rather than Padmasambhava.

We can detect differences among representations of the emperors in the inscriptions they left, the inscriptions about them, and the later Buddhist recasting of their personas. In the inscriptions, the emperors are often described making oaths or vows. In some instances, these vows are about treaties, a royal iteration of the larger Tibetan practice exemplified in decisions of law.21 In other inscriptions, the emperors take oaths to uphold the new Tibetan Buddhism. The wealth of nomenclature concerning such oaths and vows in Old Tibetan is intriguing, though some of the semantic nuance about these terms remains elusive.

The pragmatics of the vows is decidedly un-Buddhist, even when it is for Buddhist purposes. For example, in the Samyé pillar, attributed to Tri Songdetsen (742–ca. 800), he commits later generations to the maintenance of Buddhist shrines and traditions.22 In the East Inscription of the Zhwa’i Lhakhang, emperor Tri Desongtsen (d. 815) equally commits all his queens, princes, and ministers to his oath. The issue of multigenerational oaths—couched in the manner of a lineal commitment—is the narrative of the Karchung inscription, reaffirming that oath of the line.23 The fundamental authority of the oath or vow, along with the commitment to ancestral and lineal tradition, demonstrates that emperors command religious activity but are subordinate only to their lineal commitments, so the transcendental religious activity of the Buddha is accepted and bestowed as an imperial favor on all.24 The emperor’s position is affirmed in a series of rituals, like the kula (sku bla) ceremony, used to secure the relationship of vassals to the imperial person.25 When we compare the dynastic language against that found in the description of kings in such Indian

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Buddhist texts as the Suvarṇabhāsottamasūtra, we see that in nomenclature, diction, and ideology, the royal person is represented differently.26 In Buddhist India, he is the son of the gods (devaputra) because he suppresses evil beings and follows the Dharma, generally an extension of rājadharma in many Indian sources.27 Fernanda Pirie has observed that there is little evidence that Tibetan emperors invoked the ideology of karma and its consequences in legal practice.28 Conversely in India, “The monarch of this present life is sustained by the gods to demonstrate the fruit of maturation of moral deeds, both good and bad.”29 By the tenth to the eleventh century, the early Tibetan emperors were more integrated into a Buddhist ideological universe, but it was still partial. As Sam van Schaik and Lewis Doney have discussed in the case of Tri Songdetsen, the emperors began to be embedded in narratives that featured Buddhist themes—such as the preaching of the Bhadracaripraṇidhāna—invoking the journey of Sudhana in the Gaṇḍavyūha.30 The “Dharma that Fell from the Sky” fragment, introduced by Hugh E. Richardson and treated by several others, features Tri Songdetsen’s embrace of the Buddhist faith with echoes of Buddhist language on the positive benefits of a well-managed kingdom.31 Other competing stories sometimes provided themes ultimately employed by Buddhists, which is especially true of narratives associated with saving the dead or travels through the death realms, notably in the “Cycle of Birth and Death,” which also appropriates the Sudhana legend.32 The full maturation of the literary personas of the emperors, however, only arrived with the works of the eleventh to thirteenth century—especially the treasure literature—in which the three emperors Songtsen Gampo, Tri Songdetsen, and Ralpachen are portrayed as the embodiments of the three protector bodhisattvas of the three families: Avalokiteśvara, Mañjuśrī, and Vajrapā i, respectively.33 This transformation, first hinted at in the Testament of Wa, was brought to fruition in the Pillar Testament (Bka’ chems ka khol ma), the Compendium of Maṇis (Maṇi bka’ ’bum), and its echoing texts, such as the fourteenth-century Mirror Illuminating the Royal Genealogies.34 The anonymous author of the Pillar Testament took the most dramatic step; his late twelfth-century revelation is anachronistically attributed to the early eleventh-century Indian scholar Atiśa. The text successfully transposes the former emperors into an entirely Buddhist universe, with Buddhist vocabulary, literary tropes, and nomenclature. The imperial dynasty is revealed as the Tibetan extension of the Śākya line—the ethnos of the Buddha—so the person of the emperor is the descendant of the lawgiver in India (Mahāsammata) and a relative of the founder of contemporary Buddhism.35 The Pillar Testament also fuses the earlier ritual interest in the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara with the appeal to the archetype of the first emperor, Songtsen Gampo.36 In an episode involving monks from the oasis city of Khotan, Songtsen Gampo is revealed as the Bodhisattva of Compassion; dismantling his turban, he reveals the head of the bodhisattva on top of his own.37 This sculptural and literary trope is illustrated in the papier-mâché mask, gold-leaf statue, and nineteenth-century thangka of Songtsen Gampo, all of which echo the statue of that emperor in the Jokhang in Lhasa (see figs. 3.7, 2.6, and 3.2).

Martin Mills has noted that the retelling of this Avalokiteśvara-revelation episode in the Compendium of Maṇis is a definitive moment in the ritual and mythological afterlife of Songtsen Gampo.38 It secures his position as the Buddhist divine ancestor of the imperial line: the emperor constructed many temples in seventhcentury Tibet, engaged in gruesome legal decisions, and oversaw the installation of statuary said to be from the time of the Buddha. Mills’s points are certainly true, but the Pillar Testament provides another mythological moment that demonstrates the complicated relationship of later Tibetans to their iconic emperor.

Early in the Pillar Testament, Avalokiteśvara takes the vow to rescue all beings and not seek personal peace in nirvā a; if he fails in this vow, his head will split apart—a trope familiar to readers of Indian texts.39

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Facing the infinity of beings and their consistent sinful actions, Avalokiteśvara finally decides to seek out personal peace; in accordance with his vow, his head bursts into many pieces. Amitābha comes and puts him back together, again charging him to fulfill his bodhisattva vow, and he places his own head on top of Avalokiteśvara’s, thus yielding the eleven-headed iconography (see fig. 3.1).

As far as I can tell, this episode is not Indian, and it is not part of the Kāraṇḍavyūha, which is understood to be the source of most Avalokiteśvara mythology and his six-syllable mantra oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ, even though the Pillar Testament identifies the Kāraṇḍavyūha as one of its sources. In distinction, the Kāraṇḍavyūha describes Avalokiteśvara as having eleven heads as part of his subtle body that works for the welfare of all beings, allowing him to enter the lowest hell (avīci).40 “O son of good family, just as a cakravartin enters in a divine grove made of jewels with his great providence, even thus Avalokiteśvara bodhisattva, the great being, enters into this lowest hell, without his body changing in the least.”41 This description is based in part on the fifth-century iconography of Avalokiteśvara with eleven heads, already seen in the Ekadaśamukhadhāraṇī.

Instead of simply viewing the Bodhisattva of Compassion as a glorious savior in his own right, the author of the Pillar Testament views Avalokiteśvara as a literally broken bodhisattva—one who abandons his vow, splits into parts, and must be pieced back together by Amitābha. Seeing the identification of Songtsen Gampo with the Bodhisattva of Compassion in this way, the reader may understand that the failure of the dynastic line, and the imperium begun by Songtsen Gampo, was also a broken vow. The iconography of the emperor with another head under his turban not only represents his divine otherness but also signifies a fragmented imperial body, one that can still be rescued by divine intervention. It was the divine intervention of the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara—incarnated in Songtsen Gampo and present in the Jowo statue of Avalokiteśvara in Lhasa—that represented the imperial protection of Tibet in the real absence of the imperium he founded.

notes Lalitavistara description. The canonical translations into Tibetan may be seen in Mahāvyutpatti, nos.

3621–3628; there is no general (senāpati/dmag-dpon) in that list, although there is a general identified elsewhere in the Mahāvyutpatti, no. 3686.

1

Zimmerman 2006.

2

Aṅguttaranikāya, vol. 5, 81–83.

3

Śīlasaṃyuktasūtra, verse 17b.

4

Armelin 1975.

5

Lalitavistara, 106.4–7. While observing the bodhisattva: anena mahārāja dvātriṃśattamena mahāpuruṣalakṣaṇena samanvāgataḥ sarvārthasiddhaḥ kumāraḥ / na ca mahārāja cakravartinām evaṃvidhāni lakṣaṇāni bhavanti / bodhisattvānāṃ ca tādṛśāni lakṣaṇāni bhavanti //

7

Lalitavistara, 14.19. pravartayasva bhaṭṭa divyaṃ cakraratnaṃ dharmeṇa mādharmeṇa.

8

Dīrghāgama, T.1.1.21b15–22c15, Madhyamāgama, T.26.1.512a3–513a26; see Matsumura 1988, xxx–lvii.

9

We may note there is a tendency in later Tibetan iconography to conflate the identity of some figures among the seven. The figure in the lower center, sometimes deemed to be a general, is by Indian reckoning a minister (pariṇāyaka), an executive in ancient India who exercised both civil and military functions (saṃdhivigraha); in this latter office he assembles the army for the cakravartin. His identification is distinct from that of the citizen (gṛhapati, on the upper left), the one who ferrets out treasure for the cakravartin, as is clear from the

Cf. Lalitavistara narratives in Chinese, T.186.3.500a8–11; T.187.3.543a20, 561a19–21.

10 Beyond the āgama citations in note 7, see Dàlóutànjīng 大樓炭經, T.23.1.290b14–291b28; Qǐshìjīng 起世 經, T.24.1.317a19–319b5; Qĭshì yīnbĕnjīng 起世因本 經, T.25.372b8–374c2; Saṃyuktāgama, T.99.2.194a29– 195a6; Ekottarikāgama, T.125.2.731c20–23; Xiūxíng bĕnqĭjīng 修行本起經, T.184.3.462c13–463a10; Bodhisattvagocaropāyaviṣayavikurvāṇanirdeśa, T.272.9.330b10–331c15; Zuìshèng wèn púsà shìzhù chúgòu duànjiéjīng 最勝問菩薩十住除垢斷結 經, T.309.10.1030b9–c8; Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra,

6

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T.374.12.438a7–c6; Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra, T.375.12.679b24–680a26; Púsà cóng dōushùtiān jiàngshén mŭtāi shuō guăngpŭ jīng 菩薩從兜 術天降神母胎説廣普經, T.384.12.1030a8–25; Saddharmasmṛtyupasthāna, T.721.17.8c3– 10b24; Mahāvastu, vol. 1, 108.7–109.16; Mūlasarvāstivādavinayavastu, Bhaiṣajyavastu, vol. 3, parts 1.31.16–36.21. The Bhaiṣajyavastu does not finish the description of the seven, leaving the gṛhapati and the pariṇāyaka aside; the same situation is reflected in the Tibetan (D 1, vol. kha, fols. 137a5–139b6) and the Chinese (T.1448.24.46b6–c22).

24 yab smyes kyi lugs bzhin, Richardson 1985, 38–39. ’jig rten la ’das pa’i chos bzang po brnyes nas |. kun la bka’ drin du byin no, Richardson 1985, 40–41.

25 Hill 2015.

26 Devendrasamaya-parivarta in Nobel 1937, 131–45.

27 Lévi 1934.

28 Pirie 2017, 415.

29 sukṛtaduṣkṛtānāṃ hi karmāṇāṃ dṛṣṭadhārmikaḥ | vipākaphaladarśanārthaṃ devai rājā adhiṣṭhitaḥ || Suvarṇabhāsottama, chap. 12, verse 16.

11 Fóshuō lúnwáng qībǎojīng 佛説輪王七寶經, T.38.

30 Van Schaik and Doney 2007.

12 Important primary sources are the Aggaññasutta in the Dīghanikāya, III.80–98; Dīghāgama, T.1.1.36b24–39a20; Madhyamāgama, T.26.1.673b3–677a7; Mahāvastu, I.338–48; Samghabhedavastu I.6–35. See Davidson 2003; Reynolds 1972.

31 Richardson 1998, 74–81; Kapstein 2000, 56–58.

13 Davidson 2003.

35 Bka’ chems ka khol ma, 75–77; Davidson 2003.

14 Davidson 2017.

36 Van Schaik 2006.

15 Dhāraṇīsaṃgraha, T.901.18.790a23–c19.

37 Bka’ chems ka khol ma, 304.

16 Davidson 2002.

38 Mills 2012.

17 Schwab 1998.

39 Bka’ chems ka khol ma, 7–9.

18 Panglung 1994.

40 Karaṇḍavyūha, 262.31, 290.15.

19 Doney 2013; 2015.

41 Kāraṇḍavyūha, 262.2–4: yathā kulaputra rājā cakravartī divyaratnamayodyāne praviśati mahatyā cakravartirājyasamṛddhyā, evam eva kulaputra avalokiteśvaro bodhisattvo mahāsattvas tasminn avīcau mahānarake praviśati | na ca punas tasya kāyo ’nyathābhāvaṁ gacchati.

20 Kapstein 2000.

21 Stein 1988; Imaeda 2000; Pirie 2015.

22 Richardson 1985, 28–29.

23 Richardson 1985, 74–81.

32 Imaeda 1981, 2007; Dotson 2016.

33 Skt. trikulanātha; Tib. rigs gsum mgon po.

34 Sørensen 1994.

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chapter 3

The Emanated Emperor and His Cosmopolitan Contradictions brandon dotson

Removing his turban, Emperor Songtsen Gampo touched his head to the heart of the statue of his personal deity and shed tears of ardour and faith. He said, “O noble one! Pray look with mercy upon the dejected beings roaming about in the three realms!” In a state of intense prayer, the king was dissolved into light and absorbed into the heart of the self-originated statue of eleven-faced Avalokiteshvara.1 So goes one of the more memorable scenes in the fourteenth-century Mirror Illuminat-

ing the Royal Genealogies, the most popular and influential of Tibet’s Buddhist histories. This scene, found in similar histories going back to the twelfth century, also includes the dissolution of Songtsen Gampo’s Chinese and Nepalese wives into his right and left shoulders, respectively, so they too dissolve with him into the image of Chenrezik (Skt. Avalokite vara) (p. 68 and fig. 3.1). The remaining queens and councilors are left dumbfounded by this amazing display, and it falls to the emperor’s erudite councilor Thönmi Sambhota to explain to the bystanders—and the reading or listening audience, ourselves included—that the emperor had been an emanation of the bodhisattva Chenrezik.

The episode reflects a signal development in a centuries-long process by which Tibetan religious memory transformed Songtsen Gampo (ca. 605–649) (fig. 3.2), a great conquering emperor, into a Buddhist king subsumed into the emanational nexus of Chenrezik, the patron bodhisattva of Tibet. The same emanational nexus would embrace countless other Tibetan leaders, with the Dalai Lamas being only the most recent and widely known among them. Songtsen Gampo’s merging with the statue of Chenrezik does more, however, than convey the identity of the cosmic bodhisattva and the emanated emperor. It also emphasizes the centrality of images and material culture in performing and ensuring this emanational nexus. Similar to the way in which the bodhisattva Chenrezik emanated the emperor Songtsen Gampo, the two are now merged, embodied in the same image. Within the larger picture of the history of Tibetan kingship, this scene is highly emblematic of a process by which lives lived were refigured in religious memory. It also exemplifies a parallel process by which the material culture of Buddhism (e.g., images and the temples that house them) came to support and to some extent supplant the material culture of empire (e.g., emperors and their courts). This movement was already under way in the earliest Tibetan written, iconographic, and architectural sources from the period of the Tibetan Empire (ca. 608–866) and has continued throughout Tibetan history to the present day.

The Mirror Illuminating the Royal Genealogies relates the history of Buddhism in India and Tibet in part by telling stories about statues (fig. 3.3). The famed Jowo statue in the Lhasa Jokhang is but one

Opposite: Detail of fig. 3.1

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Fig. 3.1 Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara in the Tradition of King Songtsen Gampo; Central Tibet; 13th century; pigments on cloth; 20 x 17¾ in. (50.8 x 45.1 cm); Rubin Museum of Art; C2003.50.5 (HAR 271).

Published: Rhie and Thurman 1999, cat. 154.

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The Emanated Emperor and His Cosmopolitan Contradictions

Fig. 3.2 Songtsen Gampo (ca. 605–649), from a Set of The Previous Lives of the Dalai Lamas; Tibet; 19th century; painted xylograph; 29¼ x 18⅜ in. (74.3 x 46.7 cm); Rubin Museum of Art; C2004.38.1.

Published: Debreczeny 2011, fig. 33.

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example, and its episode is dwarfed by the tale of the Snake-Heart Sandalwood statue, that of the Four Self-Originated Brother statues, and of course that of the creation of the eleven-faced Chenrezik statue into which Songtsen Gampo dissolved.2 Following divine advice, Songtsen Gampo instructed that the latter statue be created as “an image of myself.”3 That this “likeness” was created with eleven faces and one thousand arms nicely conveys the point that the emperor is Chenrezik.

The commissioning of the statue was a direct response to the ill omens auguring the initial failure to build the Jokhang Temple atop the Plain of Milk Lake in Lhasa, and it was intended to counter the opposition posed by Tibet’s indigenous demonic forces. Indeed, it was the successful completion of the statue that cleared the way for the construction of the Jokhang to house it, followed by the erection of twelve more temples to pin down the unruly body of the demoness who, according to the geomantic wisdom of the Chinese princess Wencheng, constituted the land of Tibet.4 This story is one of the central founding myths of Tibetan Buddhism, and at its heart lies the statue into which Songtsen Gampo would dissolve. Although the story of Songtsen Gampo’s dissolution into the statue of the eleven-faced Chenrezik may date to over four hundred years after his death, and although it may participate in widespread beliefs surrounding the importance of images and relics in Buddhism, it also trades on Tibetan ideas concerning the royal dead. Songtsen Gampo, like most Tibetan emperors, was buried in a massive trapezoidal mound in Chongyé in southern Tibet. The funeral and interment took place two years after his death, as was customary.5 For the later emperors Tri Songdetsen (742–ca. 800) and Tri Desongtsen (r. ca. 802–815), the royal funeral likely also marked the occasion for the erection of the still-extant stone pillars on which brief eulogies to their lives and reigns were inscribed.

The eulogies typically end with the bestowal of a posthumous name, which can be read as marking a rite of passage from emperor to ancestor.6 In contemporary and later Tibetan sources we find indications that these ancestors, housed within massive, mountain-like tombs, continued to radiate benefits throughout the realm and required periodic ritual attention.7 These royal bodies, though inaccessible to their subjects—or perhaps in large part due to their concealment—constituted ritual centers and palladia for the land of Tibet.

The eulogies carved on the funerary steles of emperors Tri Songdetsen and Tri Desongtsen align both men with the royal ancestor who descended from the heavens to rule humankind. This same motif of the first royal ancestor’s descent from heaven appears in the Lhasa Treaty Inscription of 822/823, as well as many other sources, making it something like the official representation of the Tibetan emperor’s divinity. The two emperors’ identities as gods—or as men descended from a divine ancestor—are signaled by their titles.

The father Tri Songdetsen is “the god, the emperor” (lha tsenpo) and “the sacred god, the emperor” (trulgyi lha tsenpo); his son Tri Desongtsen is “the son of gods, the emperor” (lhasé tsenpo). In other inscriptions and early Tibetan manuscripts, including Tibet’s great chronicle epic, the Old Tibetan Chronicle, the titles “god” and “son of gods” occur side by side in reference to the same emperor, without any explanation of the apparent contradiction. In a similar spirit of adding new titles and monikers alongside old ones rather than replacing them, the inscription eulogizing Tri Songdetsen glorifies him as a “great religious king” or dharmarāja (chögyal chenpo) and bestows on him the name “Sacred God, Great Awakening” (trulgyi lha jangchup chenpo).8 Thus both the living emperor moving about his realm and the refigured ancestor resting in his tomb radiate a veritable arsenal of ecumenical and all-encompassing blessings that is effectively indexed by the ruler’s multiple identities as a world-ordering god, son of gods, dharmarāja, and so on.

Opposite: Fig. 3.3 Bodhisattva (see p. 16); Tibet; 8th–9th century (by owner attribution); copper alloy with gilding; height: 17¾ in. (45 cm); Yury Khokhlov Collection.

Published: Khokhlov 2013, 2016, figs. 2–4, 13–14, 18–19.

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The “likeness” of Songtsen Gampo and the image of the eleven-faced Chenrezik echo a widespread Buddhist artistic practice of drawing an explicit analogy between the ruler and a buddha, bodhisattva, or other deity. This practice was particularly prominent in the eighth to the tenth century when Chinese, Korean, and Japanese monarchs all traded on the imagery of the Avataṃsakasūtra and the Brahma’s Net Sūtra and the figure of the Buddha Vairocana to underpin their claims as universal Buddhist sovereigns.

Here the Buddha Vairocana and the ruler merged in an analogy of all-pervading presence and dominion.

Tibet embraced a similar, though not quite identical, tradition that also emphasized the figure of the cosmic Buddha Vairocana (or Mahāvairocana), at the center of his ma ala, which linked him with the Tibetan emperor.9 This particular connection was communicated in portraiture that blurred the line between the Tibetan emperor and Mahāvairocana by depicting the latter in Tibetan royal garments (fig. 3.4).10 A similar statement of the essential identity of the emperor and the Buddha Vairocana may have also been communicated by the enthronement of Vairocana as a central image at Tri Songdetsen’s royal monastery of Samyé in southern Tibet, as well as by the architecture of the temple complex itself.11 These developments can be dated to the eighth and ninth centuries in Tibet, and they informed the burgeoning cult of Avalokiteśvara in the ninth and tenth centuries at Dunhuang and elsewhere.12 The memory, the continued use in some quarters of the analogy between the Tibetan emperor and Vairocana, and the coalescence of the cult of Chenrezik as Tibet’s patron bodhisattva in the eleventh through thirteenth centuries eventually accounted for the contours of the narrative of Songtsen Gampo’s dissolution into the eleven-faced Chenrezik statue. In this way, the emanational nexus of ruler and cosmic bodhisattva (Chenrezik) built on the representational nexus of ruler and cosmic Buddha (Mahāvairocana).

By drawing an analogy between the Tibetan emperor and the Buddha Vairocana, Tibet participated in a pan-regional tradition of royal representation whose claims and assumptions Tibet’s neighbors could readily understand. It was a Buddhist twist on a breed of Central Eurasian cosmopolitanism that already saw Tibet borrowing bureaucratic, religious, technological, artistic, divinatory, and astrological techniques from its neighbors. Among the institutions that demonstrate this trend is the Tibetan royal hunt, which appears to belong to the tradition of the Central Eurasian royal hunt, involving hundreds of people from all strata of society. In a performative event that required military logistics and organization, people rounded thousands of game animals into a small area for the emperor, his guests, and his councilors to kill with bows and arrows.13 The appeal of the royal hunt to rulers across Eurasia is clear. As a spectacular form of royal theater and a microcosm of a well-ordered society, it demonstrated the ruler’s ability to command large numbers of men, and it offered him an arena in which to perform his dominion over the natural world while also providing his subjects with protection and sustenance.14 The same cosmopolitan trends that refigured the Tibetan emperor as the Buddha Vairocana and presented him as an exemplary hunter also account for the presence of extraordinary gilded silver cups, bowls, jugs, and rhytons in imperial Tibet (fig. 3.5).15 Popular tradition associates a horse- or camel-headed jug in the Lhasa Jokhang with Songtsen Gampo. While this jug may date to a hundred or more years later than the emperor, the existence of it and similar objects in imperial Tibet offers a window into Tibetan court culture and its links with other Eurasian courts. The objects could have been gifts from foreign dignitaries or they could be the work of Sogdian, Persian, Chinese, Turk, or Tibetan artisans employed by the Tibetan court.16 Indeed, this gilding technique and the associated metalware, replete with its motifs of dancing and Opposite: Fig. 3.4 Vairocana in Tibetan Royal Robes; Tibet; 11th century; bronze; height: 16⅛ in. (41 cm); Pritzker Collection; HAR 58339.

Published: Pal 2003, fig. 110; Luczanits 2013, fig. 8.

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Fig. 3.5 Vase, Beaker, and Rhyton; Central Asia or Tibet; possibly early 8th century; silver with gilding; vase height: 9 in. (22.9 cm); beaker height and diameter: 4 in. (10.2 cm); rhyton height: 12 in. (30.5 cm); The Cleveland Museum of Art; vase: purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund, 1988.67.1; beaker: The Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund, 1988.67.2; rhyton: gift of Mrs. Clara Taplin Rankin, 1988.67.3; Published: CMA 1989, cats. 231–33; Carter 1991, 190; Czuma 1993, figs. 1–2; Christman 1994, 406; Carter 1998, figs. 1–3c; Heller 1999, figs. 3, 13–14; Heller 2002, figs. 33–34, 46; Heller 2007a, 56, 60; Heller 2013, figs. 11–12; Akasoy, Burnett, and Yoeli-Tlalim 2016, pls. 4.9–11; Bellezza 2018, fig. 12.

drinking culture, centaurs, and grapevines, had already been transmitted to China around the time of the fall of the Sasanian Empire in the mid-seventh century.

On the one hand, such pieces may simply be prestigious, exotic objects of the type so often prized by royal courts. On the other hand, the presence of Tibetan inscriptions on many of these drinking vessels, which typically mention their owners or the weight of the object, or both, suggest they were not merely ornamental. Banquets and oaths were central to the court culture of the Tibetan Empire, as is evident from the many oaths and banqueting scenes in the Old Tibetan Chronicle and the ubiquity of oaths in legal and administrative processes. Sharing beer or wine at formal occasions not only demonstrated the extent of commensality but also served to solemnize oaths, confirm decisions, and ratify relationships of power.17 There are also indications that objects of this type accompanied the Tibetan emperor in his tomb, though these claims belong to the literary tradition, and the looting of the royal tombs after the fall of the empire may have left few such valuable objects in situ were these tombs ever to be properly excavated.18

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Artisans were but one of many groups that traveled with the Tibetan emperor and his court. Moving every winter and summer, the court constituted a mobile center rather than a fixed capital, which enabled the emperor to be present for his subjects while also creating opportunities for aristocratic clans to play host for a season at a time.19 Comprising the royal guard, legal officials, ritual specialists, and many others, the emperor’s court was distinct from the central political council and from the many regional political councils at which Tibet’s councilors and military officials made legal and administrative decisions. Among the many prestigious objects that traveled with this mobile court was, apparently, a massive collection of Buddhist texts resulting from the large-scale translation project initiated in all likelihood by Tri Songdetsen.20 These holdings were recorded in three successive catalogues, each taking its name from the court site where it was completed.21 Two of these catalogs survive, and they constitute important snapshots of the state of royally sponsored Buddhism in the first half of the ninth century.22 The catalogs of Tibetan Buddhist texts and commentaries constitute more than updated progress reports on the project of translating Indian Buddhist texts into Tibetan. They also attest to the movement of these texts across Tibetan space and their sojourns with the emperor at different sites in Central Tibet.

This points to the importance of books in the material culture of Buddhism and their utility for imperial ends. Besides the translation project, the Tibetan emperors also participated in large-scale sūtra-copying projects that traded on the power of sūtras to protect the emperor and the realm, ensure success at war, and protect one’s life from illness and untimely death.

Most of the sūtra-copying activity was based in Dunhuang, a Silk Road entrepôt famous for its sculptors and scribes. After this area fell to the Tibetans in about 786, generations of its largely Chinese inhabitants learned to speak and write Tibetan, were subjected to Tibetan laws, and were overseen by Tibetan officials. The cultural, linguistic, and religious impact of Tibetan culture in Dunhuang far outlived the Tibetan occupation, which came to an end in 848 but left a formidable legacy in administrative, diplomatic, scriptural, and artistic production (fig. 3.6).23 During the Tibetan occupation, hundreds of scribes and editors, most of them Chinese, copied sūtras in Chinese and Tibetan. Chief among them was the Tibetan translation of the longest of the Perfection of Wisdom Sūtras in one hundred thousand lines and the longest Chinese Perfection of Wisdom Sūtra, the Mahāprajñāpāramitāsūtra. Eight copies of the former and three of the latter were commissioned as a gift

for the Tibetan emperor in the year 826, as were thousands of copies, in both Chinese and Tibetan, of the short Aparimitāyurnāma-mahāyānasūtra, which is concerned with long life and protection. In addition to its employment of hundreds of scribes and editors from Dunhuang, Guazhou, and elsewhere, the project involved administrators, tax officials, and other bureaucrats to oversee its execution. The project ran for over ten years, and it may have never come to a successful completion.24 Both of the sūtras chosen for this royal gift proclaim their ability to sanctify the place where they are commissioned, copied, and kept, and it is likely that such claims motivated their selection. The Aparimitāyurnāma-mahāyānasūtra, dedicated to Aparimitāyus or Amitāyus, the Buddha of Limitless Life, may have been chosen to help the emperor in a time of illness and to ensure his long life.25 In this way, the tal-

ismanic power of these sūtras helped to sanctify and protect the emperor and his realm. Moreover, the texts that traveled with the emperor in his court performed ritual services parallel to those associated with the emperor himself, namely of radiating blessings and ensuring the well-being of Tibet.

The alignment of similar life-giving technologies—the emperor and the sūtra—contrasts somewhat with the coexistence of ostensibly irresolvable and contradictory representations of the Tibetan emperor described above. For instance, how can the Tibetan emperor be analogous to the Buddha Vairocana on

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the one hand and act as the leader of the royal hunt on the other? Tibetans were certainly aware of the multiplicity of royal representations, but they did not seem troubled by any ostensive contradictions. One ninth- or tenth-century Dunhuang manuscript, for example, presents three theories of the Tibetan emperor’s origin one after another. In the first, he is a god who rules other gods known as the masang and the cha; in the second, he is descended from a race of flesh-eating demons; and in the third, he comes from a genealogy of gods similar to the one described in royal inscriptions and the Old Tibetan Chronicle. At the end of the text, the author states plainly that it is unclear which theory is correct.26 This multiplicity of representations, where none is valued over another, is not simply a case of clashing epistemic biases or people requiring a form of Buddhist pure vision to see Tibet’s history in the prescribed way so as to not dwell on contradictions. Rather, it appears to highlight the ability of royalty to wield or inhabit multivalent and often contradictory representations simultaneously as a means of communicating universal dominion. That the Tibetan emperor may be a buddha, a hunter, a god, a son of gods, and also a demon only demonstrates that the technologies and beliefs surrounding kingship are notoriously promiscuous. Indeed, it is from its promiscuity and contradictions that Tibetan kingship draws much of its power, its communicative force, and its claims to universal sovereignty. In this context, the topos of emanation, and the refiguring of the Tibetan emperor as an emanation of Chenrezik, enters the picture as more than just another identity to be added to the emperor’s multiple identities. Its ability to expand and dissolve an emanational nexus that embraces different forms of Chenrezik, different emanated sovereigns like Songtsen Gampo, and different images enthroned in their temples also provides a cosmology that can encompass the polyvalence of the representational nexus of the Tibetan emperor in all its glorious contradictions.

The utility of the topos of emanation for encompassing and smoothing over the many contradictions of the Tibetan kingship is perhaps most apparent in another famous episode narrated in the Mirror Illuminating the Royal Genealogies. Here, a voice from the sky exhorts two Khotanese monks to go to the land of Tibet where Chenrezik has emanated as the Tibetan emperor. Arriving there, however, the two monks encounter heaps of mutilated corpses, which a Tibetan passerby tells them are the victims of Songtsen Gampo’s draconian laws. Disheartened, and concluding that Chenrezik must be a demon, they turn back to Khotan, but Songtsen Gampo senses their decision and has them brought into his presence.

He removes his turban to reveal the head of Amitābha protruding from his own—as it does as the topmost head of the eleven-faced Chenrezik—and confirms that he is Chenrezik (fig. 3.7). Stunning the two monks with this act of self-revelation, the emanated emperor then reconciles the apparent contradiction between his dual appearance as a punitive monarch and an emanated bodhisattva emperor: the corpses were emanational manifestations created by Songtsen Gampo to tame his unruly Tibetan subjects. Snapping his fingers, the corpses disappear “like a vanishing rainbow.”27 Besides being fantastic theater and contributing to a long-standing attempt to reconcile Buddhist kingship with the necessity of law, punishment, and war, this story is a colorful instantiation of Songtsen Gampo’s performance of emanated bodhisattva kingship.28 Additionally, it brings us further into the mimetic expansion and contraction of emanations, wherein the king’s activities—here, capital punishment—can dissolve in the way that Songtsen Gampo himself dissolves into the image of Chenrezik. The message for the Khotanese monks also applies for anyone else who might object to the Tibetan emperor’s

Opposite: Fig. 3.6 Deities of the Padmakula Ma ala; Dunhuang, China; period of Tibetan rule (ca. 781–848); pigments on silk; 35¼ x 25⅝ in. (89.6 x 60 cm); Mission of Paul Pelliot, 1906–1908; Musée national des arts asiatiques–Guimet, Paris; EO 1131.

Published: Feugere 1989, fig. 2; Singer 1994, 112; Giès 1995, pl. 80; Russell-Smith 2003, fig. 10; Russell-Smith 2005, pl. 53.

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role as a lawgiver, hunter, or military leader: these are emanational displays, motivated by the compassion of Chenrezik. Although the corpses disappeared, the statues fortunately remain, as do many other objects associated with Tibet’s emperors—from their books to drinking vessels to tombs. It is through these objects that we can commune with the polyvalent character of the Tibetan emperor and appreciate the ingenuity of his emergence as an emanation of Chenrezik.

notes 1

See Sørensen 1994, 336; Taylor and Yuthok 1996, 213.

13 Dotson 2013.

2

On the centrality of these statues, their histories, and their temples, see Ehrhard 2004 and Sørensen 2007.

14 Allsen 2006.

3

See Sørensen 1994, 266–67; Taylor and Yuthok 1996, 169.

4

On this myth and the temples involved, see Sørensen and Hazod 2005, 202–15, and Mills 2007.

5

See Haarh 1969, 422–24.

6

On the process by which Tibetans refigured their emperors through acts of naming and renaming, see Dotson 2015.

7

See, for example, Haarh 1969, 390–425. A similar logic of presence and absence and of death and regeneration motivated the erection of the funerary stūpa of the Fifth Dalai Lama in the seventeenth century as the “Single Ornament of the World”; see Schaeffer 2006.

8

Doney 2013, 72–78.

9

On Mahāvairocana at the center of the Ma ala of the Eight Great Bodhisattvas, on the influence of the Vajraśekharasūtra, and on the Tibetan context of the analogy with the ruler, see Wang 2018, 51–121. See also Heller 2007.

10 Richardson 1990; Heller 1994b; Heller 1997a.

15 For further examples of such objects, some inscribed, see Heller 2013.

16 On this point, see Carter 1998; Heller 2003; and Henss 2014, vol. 1, 77–79.

17 On oaths and “cup rites,” see Walter 2009, 182–85.

18 Haarh 1969, 355; Hazod 2016.

19 Dotson 2009, 43–46.

20 On this massive translation project and its history, see Scherrer-Schaub 2002.

21 Dotson 2007, 5n17.

22 See Halkias 2004 and Herrmann-Pfandt 2008.

23 Takeuchi 2004.

24 Dotson 2013–14.

25 Iwao 2012.

26 Karmay 1998b, 285–86.

27 See Sørensen 1994, 303–6; Taylor and Yuthok 1996, 188–92.

28 For an extended discussion drawing on various sources, see Mills 2012.

11 See Kapstein 2000, 58–65.

12 On the rise to prominence of the cult of Avalokiteśvara in Tibet and Dunhuang, see Van Schaik 2006; Wang 2018, 138–55.

Opposite: Fig. 3.7 Mask of Songtsen Gampo (ca. 605–649); Tibet or neighboring region; ca. 19th century; papier-mâché, polychrome, leather ties; 15⅜ x 9½ x 5⅝ in. (39.1 x 24.1 x 14.3 cm); Bruce Miller Collection.

Published: Rubin Museum 2015, 17.

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chapter 4

Tibetan Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhist Art in the Xixia Kingdom xie jisheng Translated by Michelle McCoy1

The Tangut kingdom of Xixia , a small but significant power founded in 1038 astride the Silk

Road, inherited aspects of the Tibetan Empire’s cultural legacy in the east and established many of the imperial practices of Tibetan Buddhism and art at its court. The Tanguts, known in Tibetan as Minyak, played a crucial role during a pivotal period in the transmission of Tantric Buddhism, straddling both the early and later diffusions. Especially important are their roles in the reseeding of Buddhism westward in Central Tibet in the aftermath of the collapse of the Tibetan Empire and in the transmission of Tibetan Buddhism and its artistic forms farther eastward.

Tibetan and Chinese religious and artistic traditions were integrated through Tangut patronage.

The Tanguts employed a self-conscious multicultural strategy, and Chinese translations of Tibetan texts produced by the Tanguts continued to be influential for centuries. Their art mixed Chinese and Tibetan iconographies as well as stylistic traditions to meet the Tangut patron’s particular needs. Buddhism served the state in legitimization and engendered lavish imperial patronage, with the Tangut emperors presenting themselves as sacral universal rulers. These religious, political, and artistic forms became characteristic of imperial engagement with Tibetan Buddhism emulated by larger regimes, such as the Mongol Empire, which absorbed the Tanguts in 1227.

Early Tibetan and Tangut Relations: Before the Establishment of the Xixia State The connection between Xixia and Tibetan Buddhism was longstanding. Due to their close territorial and ethnic relationship, the Tibetan and Tangut peoples shared a lot of history and culture. When the Tibetan Empire weakened during the suppression of Buddhism under Emperor Langdarma (r. 838–842), concern with northeastern Tibet necessarily diminished. The Tangut people, so intimately related in culture and ethnicity with the Tibetans, stepped in to fill this void, replacing the Tibetan Empire as the Buddhist cultural center of the vast northeastern section of the Tibetan Plateau. Fleeing fighting and the suppression of Buddhism—or at least the loss of state patronage—monks and the laity of Central Tibet (Ü-Tsang) escaped to eastern Tibet (Dokham) to live among the Tanguts, study Buddhist teachings, and engage in religious activities. Eastern Tibet thus became a center of Buddhist propagation in the tenth and eleventh centuries, as well as an important source for the reseeding of monastic Buddhism in Central Tibet.

An example is the great teacher Lachen Gongpa Rabsal (952–1036). He came from Tsongkha Dekang and, according to tradition, studied with a Minyak guru. When Lachen was stationed at Dentik (Dan tig; 丹迪寺), ten people from Central Tibet arrived to study the Dharma at Dentik Monastery, and among

Opposite: Detail of fig. 4.7

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them was Lumé Tsultrim Sherab (tenth century). After 975, Lumé and the others completed their studies and returned one by one to Central Tibet, where they accepted many disciples. Once there, they established monasteries, ordained monks, and created their own lineages. These early Central Tibetan monasteries, dating to about 1100, became important in the history of Tibetan art.

For almost a hundred years, the transmission of Buddhism was interrupted in Central Tibet. Virtually all the monasteries and icons were destroyed. If not for the preservation of Buddhist culture in eastern Tibet, Buddhism would have revived far more slowly in Central Tibet. Lumé and the other monks who traveled to eastern Tibet brought its local Buddhist culture, including its art, back to Central Tibet.

Notably, this local Tangut Buddhist art retained features transmitted from eastern India, including the early Pala style and the late Gupta manner it embraced, as well as the Gandharan- and Khotanese-influenced styles of the Chinese heartland. The transformation tableau (bianxiang 變相) depicting the Eight Great Stūpas in Cave 76 at Dunhuang (tenth century) is an example of this early Pala influence (fig. 4.1). To a significant extent, Xixia art mediated the Central Asian characteristics that appear in Tibetan art around the eleventh century.

Tibetan Buddhism was more widespread and more popular in Xixia than previously thought; throughout the area of Xixia activity, we still find evidence of Tibetan Buddhism’s impact on Tangut culture. These traces suggest multiple connections between Tibetan and Xixia art, and they link Xixia, the Chinese heartland, and Tibet. We may thus regard the murals in Central Tibetan monasteries from around the eleventh century as resulting from the influence of Xixia art. Examples include the polychrome Heavenly King sculptures at Drölma Lhakhang in Chushur County, Lhasa; the polychrome sculptures of Śākyamuni and the Eight Great Bodhisattvas at Keru Lhakhang in Dranang (Gra nang) County; and the murals of the Buddhas of the Ten Directions at Drathang Monastery. It should be emphasized, however, that the term Xixia art, as used above, is a general concept and not a coherent artistic current, because the mutual influences we perceive among the art of the Chinese heartland, Tibet, and Xixia occurred during the First Diffusion of Buddhism, before the founding of the Xixia state in 1038.

Tibetan Buddhism and Its Art After the Establishment of the Xixia State The declaration of the Great Xia state in 1038 by Li Yuanhao 李元昊 (Jingzong, 1003–1048) occurred only after many struggles. One could say the Xixia Kingdom grew from the cracks between great powers, after its people experienced displacement, migration, and endless wars. Under these conditions, the Tangut people sought a religion that could relieve spiritual tribulation and worldly pressures. This characteristic of Xixia society produced remarkable qualities within Xixia Buddhism, namely its great practicality and inclusivity.

This form of Buddhism did not favor any particular school or doctrine over another. The printed frontispiece Xixia Translating the Sūtras 西夏譯經圖, which shows large-scale Xixia scriptural translation activities, expresses that Xixia rulers did not wish to establish an independent Buddhist system but rather embraced both Chinese and Tibetan Buddhism, with an emphasis on ritual practice.

Shortly after the founding of the Xixia state, conflict arose with the leader of the local Tibetans in the Kokonor area, Gyalsé (Ch. Gusiluo 唃廝羅; 997–1065), a self-styled successor (tsenpo) to the Tibetan Empire in the east, known in Chinese sources as the Qingtang 青唐 (1008–1104) and by Tibetans as the Tsongkha Kingdom.2 The two sides were embroiled in endless conflict, and both Tsongkha and the Song dynasty attacked the Xixia. Through strategic marriage alliances, Tsongkha-Xixia relations improved, which led to a century of peace and a good political and social environment for Xixia-Tibetan cultural interaction. This situation proved especially favorable for the transmission of Tibetan Buddhism, which flourished under Tsongkha.3

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Fig. 4.1 Eight Great Stūpas; Dunhuang Cave 76; Dunhuang, Gansu Province, China; 10th century.

Thus, even before the founding of the Xixia Kingdom, Tibetan Buddhism had already been transmitted to the Tanguts. In fact, the relationship between Xixia and Tibet was even closer than is often realized.4 As early as 1036, around the time of Xixia’s conquest of Guazhou 瓜州 and Shazhou 沙州, the populations along the Zhangye River 張掖河 already commonly spoke Tibetan. The Xia Kingdom chapter of the Song Dynastic History, Songshi: Xiaguo zhuan 宋史• 夏國傳, states the Xixia founder “was knowledgeable about Buddhism and fluent in the Tibetan and Chinese scripts” before he commissioned the invention of a Tangut script. Therefore, there is no doubt that the founder of Xixia was already connected to Tibetan Buddhism in his early years.5 The popularity of Tibetan Buddhism in the Xixia Kingdom after its founding was the continuation of an even earlier Tangut-Tibetan relationship. Thus, when we analyze Xixia art in Tibetan modes, we must not rigidly date it to the period after Karma Kagyü and the Sakya monks established relations with the Xixia court. Instead, we must consider the earlier relationship, contacts between early to midXixia and Tsongkha, and even direct contact between the Xixia and northwestern Indian regions such as Kashmir. For example, when the First Karmapa Düsum Khyenpa’s disciple Tsangpa Tashi (d. 1218) arrived in Xixia around 1189, Indian, Kashmiri, and Tibetan monks were already living there and translating sūtras.6 The illustrations of the printed Tripiṭaka of the Xixia period affirm the abovementioned points.

Generally, in Tangut-language scripture, texts translated from Chinese date from an earlier period, and those translated from Tibetan date from a later period. However, the appearance of printed images in Tibetan modes is complex; they can be found in both Tangut- and Chinese-language scripture. For

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Fig. 4.2 Prajñāpāramitā, from the Fo shuo sheng fo mu bore boluomi duo jing 佛说圣佛母般若波罗蜜多经; commissioned by the Tangut emperor in 1167; xylographic print on paper.

instance, the earliest extant Xixia printed image in a Central Tibetan Pala style is the frontispiece to the Chinese-language Sheng guan zizai dabei xin zong chi gongneng yi jing lu 聖觀自在大悲心總持功能依 經錄 (Skt. Mahākāruṇika-nāma-ārya-avalokiteśvaradhāraṇī Anuśaṁsasahitasūtrātsaṁgṛhītā; Tib. ’Phags pa spyan ras gzigs dbang phyug thugs rje chen po’i gzungs phan yon mdor bsdus pa zhes bya ba), dated 1141. It was followed by the Chinese-language Fo shuo sheng fo mu bore boluomi duo jing 佛說聖佛母般若波羅蜜多 經 (Skt. Bhagavatī-prajñāpāramitā-hṛdaya), commissioned by the Tangut emperor in 1167, with xylographic illustrations showing a typical Pala style.7 In these images, the mandorla of Prajñāpāramitā (fig. 4.2) is stylistically identical to the contemporaneous mandorlas depicted in the murals of Drathang Monastery and in the Bezeklik Caves.8 Even more strikingly, the headgear of the bodhisattvas surrounding the main icon is thoroughly consistent in style with the depictions in Drathang and with the later ones in Shalu Monastery and Cave 465 at Dunhuang. The composition of the image, with bodhisattvas facing the main icon in a three-quarter pose, is largely consistent with those of the murals in Drathang and on the ceiling of Cave 465 (fig. 4.3). These illustrations prove that Tibetan-style printed imagery already existed in the Xixia Kingdom before it established contact with Tibetan Buddhist sects in 1167.9 Later Xixia State Xixia contact with various schools of Tibetan Buddhism further developed during the latter period of the state, during the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. During this time, the Xixia Kingdom experienced economic deterioration and social discord due to years of military conflict with the Chinese Song (960–1279) and Khitan Liao (916–1125) empires and the increasing Mongolian threat from north of the Gobi Desert. To pacify internal fears and consolidate its rule, the Xixia rulers adopted Buddhism as a national religion and a theoretical justification for their legitimacy. They placed special emphasis on

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Fig. 4.3 Dunhuang Cave 465; Dunhuang, Gansu Province, China; Xixia period, 12th–13th century.

Vajrayāna Buddhism for its focus on expedient practice, lineage, and ritual.

As Xixia royalty became increasingly devout, they enthusiastically participated in Buddhist activities, elevating the status of Buddhist monks and establishing new official positions for them such as state preceptor 國師 and imperial preceptor 帝師. When the Karma Kagyü guru was venerated as imperial preceptor after entering Xixia by 1189, the Xixia bestowed on him the black hat unique to Tangut royalty in accord with the imperial preceptor system.10 As mentioned above, Tsangpa Tashi, disciple of the First Karmapa, arrived in Xixia and was given the titles of state preceptor and imperial preceptor. He spread the Dharma in locations around the Xixia Kingdom for at least twenty years, and he died in [Xixia] Liangzhou. Another Xixia imperial preceptor was Tishri Repa (1164–1236), who belonged to the lineage of the Barom Kagyü; he lived in Xixia for twenty-seven years.

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Cave 465 at Dunhuang, created under these conditions of intercultural exchange, is the earliest extant Vajrayāna Buddhist cave in China (see fig. 4.3). Its ceiling depicts the five directional buddhas of the Vajra realm, including Buddha Tejaprabha 熾盛光佛, and the four cave walls comprise a nearly complete representation of all the major deities of the different Tibetan Buddhist schools, including the entire set of eighty-four mahāsiddhas. The overall program of Cave 465 is a perfect interpretation of the theoretical system and lineage structure of Tantric Buddhism, and it can be seen as the earliest evidence for the Tanguts’ importation of the complete iconography of East Indian Vajrayāna. Among extant Xixia thangkas are many depictions of Acala (see figs. 4.7 and 5.1). This image originates in early Central Tibetan monasteries, where Acala served as guardian of Tantric Buddhist halls. Along with Hayagrīva, they protected the ritual precinct of the ma ala, as in Cave 29 at the Yulin grottoes and Cave 7 at the Eastern Thousand Buddha Caves complex.

The Origins and Significance of Tibetan-Inspired Tangut Painting Although Xixia art was influenced by Tibetan Buddhist art, it followed its own developmental path. The people of Xixia had a profound understanding of Chinese culture and were good at borrowing features from diverse regional civilizations to create something new. Building on Chinese woodblock printing technology, the Xixia created the first movable type and left an important historical legacy through the printing industry.11 Chinese kesi textile art, popular during the Tang (618–907) and Song (960–1279) dynasties, was mainly used to depict themes such as birds and flowers; similarly, Uighurs used Western Asian brocade techniques primarily for tapestry decoration. The Xixia people incorporated these skills and technologies to create thangkas (figs. 4.7 and 4.11). After the fall of Xixia in 1227, kesi thangka techniques were transmitted to the Mongol Yuan, where they shone once again. The kesi thangkas in the collection of the Potala Palace that depict Acala (see fig. 5.1) and Gungthang Lama Shang reflect the Xixia legacy, as does the Acala kesi thangka in the Cleveland Museum (fig. 4.7). The weaving method in some of these works, such as the Acala in Lhasa (see fig. 5.1), may indicate the influence of the Western Asian Persian gold-thread brocade technique, known as nasij.

OBJECT ENTRIES Buddha Dīpaṃkara: The Legacy of the Tibetan Empire on the Silk Road Translated by Michelle McCoy As previously discussed, the Tanguts inherited the legacy of the Tibetan Empire in the Hexi area of the Silk Road, including Dunhuang, of which this painting is an excellent example. Buddha Dīpa kara sits with legs intertwined on a double-layered throne of upturned lotus petals (fig. 4.4), which in turn is placed on a Taihu stone pedestal popularly seen in paintings beginning in the late Tang dynasty (eighth to ninth century). In the center of the offering table is an incense burner; on either side of it are pieces of what appear to be coral standing upright in shallow plates. The multiple folds of Dīpa kara’s robe originate in the Gandharan style, and the

Opposite: Fig. 4.4 Buddha Dīpa kara (Tib: Mar me mdzad; Ch: Randengfo 燃灯佛/Dingguangfo 锭光佛); possibly from the Dunhuang Library Cave (Cave 17), Gansu Province, China; late 9th to early 10th century; line and color infill on treated silk; Framed: 38¼ x 60½ in. (97.2 x 153.7 cm); Pritzker Collection.

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empty space near the top of his curls influenced later Buddhist images of the Khitan Liao, Jurchen Jin (1115– 1234), and even the Ming (1368–1644) dynasties. In early depictions from Chinese cultural regions, Dīpa kara often makes the tarjanī or teaching (dharmacakra) mudrās, and seated renditions appear rather late. Here, he is seated, with his forefingers and thumbs touching, and the remaining four fingers interlocked. This is the Amitābha meditation mudrā (Mituo dingyin 彌陀定印) found in Chinese cultural regions. In Tibetan areas, the four fingers are open flat, while the thumbs intersect in the dhyāna mudrā.

The late Tang to the Five Dynasties was a period of tremendous transformation in Chinese Buddhist art history. Narrative images gradually became iconic, and there was mutual borrowing of the icon forms from different Buddhist sources. Although this painting depicts Dīpa kara, the Amitābha mudrā indicates that the central deity possesses characteristics of Amitābha Buddha of the Pure Land School, and his red robe reflects Amitābha’s red body. Of the two attendant bodhisattvas standing beneath him, the one holding the blue-stemmed red lotus may represent Avalokiteśvara. Although he does not hold a distinguishing object, the one to his left may be Mahāsthāmaprāpta. Together the three figures form their own kind of the Three Saints of the West. Also, the two figures kneeling on open lotus blossoms in the foreground evoke Amitābha’s Pure Land. In Buddhist art from Chinese regions of the Tang period and before, Dīpa kara, Śākyamuni, and Maitreya were grouped along a vertical temporal axis as buddhas of the three worlds. After the tenth century, Bhai ajyaguru, Śākyamuni, and Amitābha gradually became grouped along a horizontal spatial axis as buddhas of the three worlds. This painting uses Amitābha symbols to depict Dīpa kara, perhaps as a reflection of this transition. In front of the two bodhisattvas are two pairs of attendant monks.

The pair on his left comprises one old and one young monk, perhaps Mahākāśyapa and Ananda.

Importantly, the inscriptions on this painting bear similarities to those on the Baosheng Rulai 寶勝如來 painting in the collection of the Musée Guimet (fig. 4.5), including the double-line border framing the inscriptions and the wording and brush technique of the Chinese characters yongwei 永為 and gongyang 供養.

The Tibetan inscription uses the print script (uchen) frequently seen in Tibetan imperial-period materials from Dunhuang, with archaic orthographic characteristics.12 Through the orthography, we can affirm that the two paintings were produced in roughly the same period, during the second half of the ninth century or early tenth century, the period of the Guiyi Military Regime 歸義軍 (848–1036). This period came after local Chinese wrested control of the Hexi Corridor from the Tibetans in 848 following the collapse of the Tibetan Empire, but before the Tangut state of Xixia took over in 1036. The similarities of the two paintings suggest this Dīpa kara painting originally came from the Dunhuang Library Cave.

At the upper-left corner of the painting, there is a vertical rectangular box. The Tibetan inscription written inside bears similarities to the form of the inscription in the Maitreya tableau in Yulin Cave 25. The upper section of the inscription in the Pritzker painting is preserved perfectly. Its transcription reads: §//de bzhīn gshegs pa dgra’ bcom pa’i yang dag par rdzogs pa’i sangs rgyas mar mye mdzad la’o//

Opposite: Fig. 4.5 Baosheng Rulai 宝胜如来 (“A Travelling Monk Carrying a Load of Scrolls in the Basket on His Back”); Dunhuang Cave 17, Gansu Province, China; late 9th to early 10th century; ink and colors on silk; 32¼ x 21⅝ in. (82 x 55 cm); Mission of Paul Pelliot, 1906–1908; Musée des arts asiatiques–Guimet, Paris; EO 1141.

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§// skye ba thams chad du mchod // The lower section of the Tibetan inscription is lost, but by comparing it with the painting’s Chinese text, which should originally have read Randengfo yongwei gongyang [燃燈]佛永為供養, “In eternal offering to [Dīpa kara] Buddha,” the Tibetan inscription can be reconstructed as “All sentient beings eternally offer to the perfectly purified Tathāgata and fruit of arhatship Buddha Dīpa kara.”

The back side of the painting also contains a Tibetan inscription, divided into upper and lower sections. The upper section is a Tibetan transcription of a dhāra ī scripture incantation written in cursive script (umé), which reads:

ཨཱོཾ་ས་རྦ་བྱོད་[བུདྷ་]སྭཱ་ཧཱ། ། Aom sarva byod swAhA

ཡེ་དྷཱ་རྨཱ་ཧེ་ཏུ་པྲ་བྷ་བཱ་ཧེ་ཏུན་ཏེ་ Ye dha rma he tu pra bha bA he tun te

ཥཱན་ཏ་ཐཱ་ག་ཏོ་ཧྱ་བ་དདྷ་དོ། དེ་ཥཱ་ཉ་ཙ་ ShAn ta thA ga to hya ba dad ha do/ de ShA nya tsa 13 The first line Āoṃ sarva byod swāhā can be rendered as ōṃ sa rba byod (byid) swā hā, which is the sarvavidya dhāraṇī, one of three dhāra īs used in consecration rituals (rab gnas) for thangkas from the eleventh to thirteenth century. The lines Yedhārmāhetuprabhavāhetunte and ṣāntathāgatohyavaddhado deṣāňaca should be a corruption or variant of the famous Ye dhammā, yedhammā hetuppabhavā tesaṃ hetuṃ tathāgato āha. The lower portion in cursive script comprises four lines: bzod pa bka’ thub dam pa bzod pa ni mya ngan ’das pa mchog ces sangs rgyas gsungs rab tu…… zhan…… cha……

This may be rendered as “The Buddha preaches, ‘Forbearance is the supreme right practice; it is extraordinary nirvā a.’”

This section of scripture comes from the second volume of the Prātimokṣasūtra (Tib. So sor thar ba’i mdo; Ch. 別解脫經).14 The lines that may have initially originated in the Bodhicaryāvatāra 入菩提行 are reconstructed below on the basis of the Prātimokṣasūtra, with the missing letters supplied in brackets: bzod pa bka’ thub dam pa bzod pa ni [//] mya ngan ’das pa mchog ces sangs rgyas gsungs [//] rab tu [byung ba] zhan [la gnod pa dang// gzhan la ’tshe ba dge sbyong ma yin no] “The Buddha preaches, ‘Forbearance is the supreme right practice; it is extraordinary nirvā a.’

As for monks who deride and disgrace others, who obstruct and hinder others, they are no śramaṇa.”

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The cursive umé inscription on the back of the painting clearly dates from a different period than the print uchen script. It was likely written sometime after the painting’s creation, probably between the eleventh and thirteenth century, which is roughly the period of Tangut rule at Dunhuang. Thangka paintings from this period were often inscribed on the back with the three-word dhāra ī om ya’ hum in Chinese or Tibetan in cinnabar red. Here, lines from the Prātimokṣasūtra or Bodhicaryāvatāra were inscribed instead.15 Gandhara, located in present-day Afghanistan, and the Kashmir region were Buddhism’s major points of entry into China, by way of the Silk Road. Their iconographic traditions are related to the transmission of the Buddha-carita-saṃgrāha 佛本行集經, which belongs to the miracle stories and narratives of the Buddha’s life or past lives (Jātakas). These were popular during the early era of transmission and served to highlight the Buddha’s divinity. Among them was Buddha Dīpa kara foretelling Śākyamuni’s birth. The goal of worshipping this past buddha, Dīpa kara, was to proclaim the advent of Buddha Śākyamuni. Wall paintings in the early cave centers of the Silk Road, such as Kizil (fourth to eighth century), often featured scenes of Dīpa kara’s prophecy.

As Buddhism evolved, and the so-called decline of the Dharma approached, the Buddha’s nirvā a and the coming of Maitreya became popular subjects (see chapter 10). Due to changes in Buddhist traditions, vertically aligned buddhas of the three worlds flourished. This representation reflected the understanding of temporal sequence. Examples include the Buddhas of the Three Eras in the Binyang Cave at Longmen in Henan province.

During the period of Tibetan rule at Dunhuang (781–848), Dīpa kara emerged as the past buddha in the buddha grouping of the three eras and was closely related to Śākyamuni’s nirvā a. For example, in Dunhuang Cave 158, Dīpa kara joins a reclining nirvā a buddha and a Maitreya seated with legs pendant; together they represent the three eras. Dīpa kara, however, retains the early standing posture.

Cross-legged seated triads featuring the buddhas of the three

Fig. 4.6 Cave 9; Zhongshan Grottoes; Song dynasty, 12th century.

eras emerged only after roughly the late-middle Tang (eighth to ninth century), while Dīpa kara with the Amitābha meditation mudrā, which we see here, came even later, a result of the overlaying and transference of iconographies during the late Tang and Five Dynasties.

From the shape of the cartouches used for the Tibetan inscriptions, it is clear that around the tenth century the Tibetan language was in widespread use at Dunhuang. Through the connections maintained between Dunhuang and Tibet via Khotan or the Silk Road, the worship of Dīpa kara may have also influenced the iconographic programs of contemporary temples in Tibet, including the temples of Drathang, Samyé, and the Jokhang, all of whose main halls contain a second-story three worlds triad containing Dīpa kara. Supporting this possibility is the impressive evidence found in Cave 9 of the Zhongshan cave complex (Song dynasty). Here, the Dīpa kara statue of the three worlds triad closely resembles the same image found in the Pritzker collection (fig. 4.6).

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If we consider the four monks and four bodhisattvas in the lower portion of the painting and compare them with other Dunhuang silk paintings, the dress and headgear on the bodhisattvas and monks demonstrate the linear brush method of the Khotanese school of Yuchi Yiseng 尉遲乙僧 and the Tang metropolitan painter Wu Daozi 吳道子.

Acala/Trailokyavijaya in Silk: A Tangut Synthesis of Tang Esoteric and Tibetan Tantric Traditions Translated by Zhu Runxiao The fierce Wisdom Kings 明王 (Dharmapāla) are wrathful manifestations of buddhas or bodhisattvas used in dharma preaching (fig. 4.7). With the Five Dhyāni Buddhas, each has his corresponding wrathful form; together they are called the Five Great Wisdom Kings 五大明王. The wrathful form of the central Buddha Mahāvairocana is Acala. Mahāvairocana is usually regarded as the main Buddha of the Five Dhyāni Buddhas; equally, Acala is considered to be the leader of the Five Great Wisdom Kings, and he is able to subjugate all demons. The wrathful form of Ak obhya (East) is Trailokyavijaya, who can subdue Maheśvara.

Ku ali Vidyārāja, the wrathful form of Ratnasambhava (South), is able to subdue Skandha-māra, the five demons of the aggregates. Yamāntaka, the wrathful form of Amitābha (West), is able to conquer the eight demons of afflictions. Amoghasiddhi’s (North) wrathful form is Vajrayak a, who can conquer demons. In Tang esoteric and Shingon Buddhism, the Five Great Wisdom Kings are the most popular wrathful deities.

Their popularity during the eleventh to thirteenth century extended to the Khitan Liao, Tangut Xixia, and Mongol Yuan.

During this period, Acala is generally used to represent the entire group of the Five Great Wisdom Kings. The favored version appears to combine two different iconographic systems. In the early transmission of Buddhism to the Hexi area, the image of Acala originated from the Tang esoteric and Shingon traditions; standing on top of a rock, Acala’s whole body is encircled by flames, with the right hand holding up a sword vertically and the left hand gripping a noose. Sometimes, eight young attendants surround him. In the later dissemination of Buddhism, the image of Acala blended Tibetan Buddhist iconographic elements and also included the fusion of Hindu elements. This latter style resulted in part from Atiśa’s missionary journey to Tibet (1042–1054). Since then, Acala’s iconography shows his right hand holding a sword over his head, while his left hand, in a threatening (tarjani) mudrā, grips a noose to the chest; his legs are usually spread, sometimes with the right leg forward and the left knee on the ground (see fig. 2.4).

During the later dissemination period, Acala and Hayagrīva from the Tibetan tradition replaced the original guardians in the temple gate. From the eleventh to thirteenth century, Tibetan Buddhist monasteries often displayed these two deities on the sides of their main gates, along with the common combination of Śākyamuni, two disciples, and eight bodhisattvas in the Mahāvīra Hall. A similar placement is found in many Tangut caves, such as Yulin Cave 29. From the late Tangut to early Mongol-Yuan period (twelfth to thirteenth century), Acala appears, to a greater extent, as a protector of the ma ala.

Acala was also important in the early cult of wrathful deities (see chapter 2). Military applications of Acala’s propitiation rituals included subjugating evil men, immobilizing enemy armies, and protecting one’s

Opposite: Fig. 4.7 Acala, King of the Wrathful Ones; Inner Mongolia, Tangut Xia, Khara Khoto (1032–1227); early 13th century; silk and pearls; 40¼ x 29⅛ in. (102.3 x 74 cm); The Cleveland Museum of Art; purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund; 1992.72.

Published: Watt and Wardell 1997, cat. 24 and fig. 17.

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1.

Acala/Trailokyavijaya 2.

Ratnasambhava 3.

Mahāvaironcana 4. Ak obhya 5.

Amitābha 6. Amoghasiddhi 7. Acala 8.

Vajrapā i 9–13. Five Offering Goddesses Eight Auspicious Symbols: A. Jewel B. Golden Fish C. Endless Knot D. Dharma Wheel E. Canopy F. Lotus G. Treasure Vase H. Conch I. Victory Banner Seven Jewels of the Cakravartin Ruler: J. Sword (General) K. Eight Blessing Wheel L. Jewel M. Horse N. Minister O. Queen P. Elephant

Fig. 4.8 Diagram of fig. 4.7

own troops with his mantra. For instance, Acala was important to Amoghavajra (705–774), a politically active monk at the Tang court, who is recorded as translating at least six texts dedicated to that deity; he likely employed related rituals against the Tibetan military as they closed in on the Tang Chinese capital of Chang’an in 765.16 In this silk image, the main figure is an example of combined Tang esoteric and Tibetan traditions.

The central deity (1 in fig. 4.8) is blue and wears snakes as a necklace, armlets, and anklets. He holds a vajra-hilt sword over his head with the right hand, and the left hand grips a noose in front of him in the threatening (tarjanī) mudrā. These features echo the characteristics of Acala. On the top register of the painting, there are Five Dhyāni Buddhas, from left to right: (2) Ratnasambhava (South); (3) Mahāvairocana (Central); (4) Ak obhya (East); (5) Amitābha (West); and (6) Amoghasiddhi (North). Two of the buddhas still have tiny seed pearls woven into their ūrṇā and uṣṇīṣa (fig. 4.9). Notably, the central Buddha above the main figure is Ak obhya (fig. 4.9), while Mahāvaironcana has been moved to the right of Ak obhya,

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Left: Fig. 4.9 Blue Ak obhya Making the Earth-Touching Gesture, Central Buddha above the Main Figure (detail of fig. 4.7).

Right: Fig. 4.10 Blue Ak obhya Making the Earth-Touching Gesture in the Crown of the Main Figure (detail of fig. 4.7).

making the six-element mudrā. This arrangement of buddhas suggests that the main deity is the wrathful form of Ak obhya, Trailokyavijaya, not Acala. The buddha in the crown of the main figure (fig. 4.10) is blue Ak obhya making the earth-touching mudrā, not white Mahāvairocana making the six-elements mudrā.

Furthermore, underneath the feet of the Wisdom King are two figures, not one. In the Tang esoteric tradition, Trailokyavijaya is often associated with Maheśvara and Pārvatī. Therefore, we can assume that the two figures here are blue Pārvatī under the right foot and white Ganesha—either Maheśvara himself or the son of Maheśvara and Pārvatī—under the left.

Two other thangkas can be compared to this image. The first is the Xixia handscroll painting of Acala from the Hermitage Museum (X2375).17 Second is an Acala silk tapestry in the Potala Palace collection (see fig. 5.1). In both paintings, Acala is depicted in a partial kneeling position; at the top register, the Five Dhyāni Buddhas are aligned. Corresponding to Acala is Mahāvairocana at the center, making the six-elements mudrā. During this particular period, Acala and Trailokyavijaya were often interchangeable, as were substitutions among Ak obhya, Śākyamuni, and Mahāvairocana.

The thangka’s composition presents the main deity on a reddish background, which seems to simplify and magnify the compositional framework of the East Indian Pala style. Additionally, it relates to color emphasis in eleventh-century Uighur paintings. Meanwhile, the central frame and the lines that divide the marginal decorations appear to be related to traditional roof structural framing and three-dimensional rock

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patterns in Dunhuang wall paintings, though they are different from the rocks depicted in thangka paintings from the same period.

The mounting of the thangka seems to imitate Song and Jin period (twelfth to thirteenth century) Chinese handscroll painting. The trapezoidal shape is made for rolling the scroll on a dowel. The margins of the thangka are decorated with sixteen circles of interconnected vines and flowers, a popular pattern used in the Song, Tangut, and Yuan periods. Within these circles are painted the Seven Treasures on the lower half and the Eight Auspicious Symbols on the upper half (fig. 4.8), two popular themes during the Xixia period.

In particular, the Seven Treasures of the monarch reflect a belief in the cakravartin universal ruler (see chapter 2) during the eleventh century in Central Asia and along the Silk Road. The seven images are often seen in Tangut cave paintings, such as in Yunlin Cave 3.

The Eight Auspicious Symbols appeared after the Seven Treasures, around the thirteenth century, when they began to be seen alongside the Seven Treasures in Buddhist art during the Xixia and Yuan periods. After the fourteenth century, the Eight Auspicious Symbols slowly replaced the Seven Treasures in popularity, extending to different forms, including architectural decorations. The ma alas on the Juyongguan gate (see fig. 1.14) in Beijing include good examples of the fourteenth-century Eight Auspicious Symbols.

Since the eleventh century, silk tapestry, damask fabric, and other materials were used to make Buddhist art, including thangka hanging scrolls. The representation of flowers and vines in silk tapestries and damask also influenced the making of thangkas. The edge of this thangka has a decorative pattern of connected pearls as a framing structure, which is an example of the Central Asian Sogdian influence on Tangut art.

Green Tārā Translated by Zhu Runxiao The Sanskrit word Tārā comes from its root tār, which literally means “across” (the sea). Tārā began to appear in the Mahāyanā Buddhist pantheon around the sixth century. From the eighth to the twelfth century, Tārā had already become an essential deity in Mahāyanā Buddhism, where she took on many different forms. Green Tārā is considered the earliest and most important deity in Tibetan Buddhism.

In this small silk thangka, Tārā is depicted seated on a lotus throne with her right leg extended outward (fig. 4.11). Her right hand is down in a boon-granting (varada) mudrā, and her left hand is at chest height in the discussion (vitarka) mudrā. Green Tārā has eight different emanations, called Tārā Savioress from the Eight Fears. Two of her forms are Ekajatā (Rol gcig ma) and Mārīcī (’Od zer can ma), who are represented by the two flowers at either shoulder.

This slit-silk tapestry (kesi 緙絲) of Green Tārā is a typical example of Xixia silk tapestry and can be compared to one excavated from Khara Khoto 黑水城, now in the Hermitage Museum (X2362).18 The overall palette of this Green Tārā tapestry is slightly faded. The green silhouette of Tārā appears to have a slight yellowish quality, which is different from the usual vivid color found in Song and Yuan silk tapestries from the Jiangnan area on China’s southeast coast; it is closer to the northwest aesthetic of Xixia. The entire thangka also tends to Opposite: Fig. 4.11 Green Tārā; former kingdom of Xixia, Tangut Empire, China; early 13th century; slit-silk tapestry (kesi); 17¼ x 12 in. (43.8 x 30.5 cm); Asian Art Museum of San Francisco; museum purchase, City Arts Trust Fund; 1992.59.

Published: Weidner 1994, cat. 10, pl. 5; Henss 1997, fig. 2; Dehejia 1999, fig. 57; Bartholomew 2003, 67; Sullivan 2015, fig. 18.

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have a late Xixia or Yuan period stylistic approach. The deity’s hair is rolled up high with strands falling down like waves, over which she wears a large five-leaf crown. Her facial features are subtle and fine; decorations include large earrings, a necklace, armlets, and bracelets. A red silk scarf hangs casually from her left forearm and rests across her lap. The patterned leggings that she wears are also typical bodhisattva-style clothes from the Central Asian Kashmir region (ninth to eleventh century). The red accents on the palms of her hands and arches of her feet reflect the influence of the East Indian Pala style.

The throne design warrants close attention. Instead of resting her right foot on a small lotus stool, Tārā employs a sumeru throne 須彌座 covered by a hanging drapery, a reference to the axial mountain in Buddhism. The sumeru throne, though originating in India, is a special feature of Chinese Buddhist art and was used widely during the Xixia and Yuan periods.

The mounting of the slit-silk tapestry thangka is a vertical trapezoid. The separating strip (geshui 隔水) used to split up different sections and the background are full of scrolling patterned vines and flowers. An important aspect of Xixia and Yuan stylistic features is the blue lotus and Aśoka flower (無憂花; Saraca asoca). We see similar patterns of plants and flowers in Shalu Monastery (early fourteenth century) and Beijing’s Juyongguan (1345). During the thirteenth century, the use of this curling pattern became standard practice in thangka painting to fill in the space behind the halo of the main deity.

The framing style of this silk tapestry is crucial for further research and discussion on the formation of early thangkas. The yellow, red, and blue tricolor mounting on the edge of the thangka evolved into red and yellow mounting in later thangkas. It is often called yellow rainbow (Tib.’ja’ ser) and red rainbow (Tib. ’ja’ dmar), representing the light of the head or body nimbuses of buddhas and bodhisattvas.

Khara Khoto Wall Painting Fragment Translated by Zhu Runxiao This roughly 22 cm square fragment suggests that the original wall painting was not large (fig. 4.12), perhaps similar to the wall painting above the three buddha shrine that Pyotr Kozlov (1862–1935) discovered at the ruins near Khara Khoto. This mural fragment could also have been unearthed from another nearby ruin buried in the sand at Lücheng 绿城.

From its body and gesture, the figure in this fragment should be an attendant bodhisattva. The front of his crown has an emanation of Amitābha. The left hand holds a lotus, and the right hand may have once rested on the right knee, now lost. This figure can be identified as Padmapā i Avalokiteśvara. Avalokiteśvara as an attendant bodhisattva is a common theme in Khara Khoto paintings. The main deity is most often Amitābha, Buddha of the West; usually Avalokiteśvara stands on one side and Mahāsthāmaprāpta stands on the other. Together they are a popular grouping called the Three Saints of the West.

In Chinese and Tibetan traditions, slight differences appear in their representation. In an Amitābha thangka from the Khara Khoto area, neither of the attendant bodhisattvas, including Avalokiteśvara, has a buddha emanation on his head. This format can be seen in examples such as the Three Saints of the West thangka from the Hermitage Museum (X2345) and the fragment of Padmapā i (X2353).19 However, the Chinese-style scroll painting of the same subject matter from the same period does have Amitābha’s emanation on the front of Avalokiteśvara’s crown. Generally speaking, the way Amitābha’s emanation appeared on Avalokiteśvara’s head comes from the Central Asian and Kashmir regions. During the ninth to eleventh century, Avalokiteśvara’s images, ranging from Central Asia to the Silk Road to the Hexi corridor, often had

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Fig. 4.12 Fragment of a Wall Painting with Padmapā i Avalokiteśvara; Khara Khoto, Inner Mongolia; Tangut Xia period or Yuan dynasty, ca. 13th century; pigments on gesso ground; 8⅜ x 8⅞ in. (21.3 x 22.5 cm); Harvard Art Museums/ Arthur M. Sackler Museum; First Fogg Expedition to China (1923–1924); 1924.67.3.

Published: Linrothe 1996, fig. 21.

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Amitābha’s emanation, yet the buddha emanation did not appear in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century thangka paintings.

Based on this evidence, this fragment has some stylistic differences from Khara Khoto painting. As a wall painting, the source of the preparatory drawing (fenben 粉本) appears to be a bit earlier than the thangkas excavated at Khara Khoto. The bodhisattva from this fragment has his hair rolled up high, and the buddha emanation above his forehead combined with the other four leaves form a large five-leaf crown on his head. The reddish color on the deity’s body decoration, the necklace, earrings, armlets, and palms, together with the warm color tone of the whole picture, demonstrate a strong East Indian Pala stylistic influence. At the same time, the grass-green-colored scrolling pattern of the aureole behind the main deity and the silhouette of the figure in the painting both indicate a local painting tradition during the thirteenth century.

Conclusion The Tanguts played a crucial role during a pivotal period in the transmission of Tantric Buddhism, which straddled both the early and later transmissions of Buddhism to Tibet. Moreover, they played a vital role in the development and transmission of Tibetan Buddhism and its artistic forms eastward toward China.

Tibetan art had a decisive effect on the formation of a specifically Xixia painting style, and analyzing Tibetan-Tangut painting helps us understand it. It also helps us observe how Tibetan painting changed as an art form when introduced into different cultural contexts.

The Xixia people’s attitude toward and understanding of Tibetan Buddhism and Tibetan painting greatly influenced the Mongols. The broad dissemination of Tibetan painting during the Yuan dynasty followed from the directly inherited joint legacy of the Xixia and the Tibetan empires. In Yuan painting, one discovers many Xixia elements. The periods after the Yuan and Ming dynasties experienced large-scale exchanges in Sino-Tibetan art. Although these later exchanges involved many political factors, the role of Xixia art cannot be underestimated. This is particularly evident in the illustrations in the Buddhist Tripiṭaka printed during the Yuan (see figs. 1.12 and 1.13), which are a natural extension of the Xixia-period print illustration style. The rock-carved icons at Feilaifeng in Hangzhou, sponsored by the Tangut Yanglian Zhenjia (see fig. 1.11), are also a clear expression of Tibetan Buddhist art in China mediated by the Tanguts. It was the Xixia people who, by virtue of their devotion to Tibetan art, combined it with Chinese art, thereby building the bridge over which Tibetan art entered the Chinese heartland—a prelude to the unprecedented scale of exchange between Chinese and Tibetan art during the Yuan.

notes 1

Editor’s note: The first half of this chapter is largely drawn from Xie Jisheng’s previous publication: Xie Jisheng 2001. Due to space limitations, parts have been extracted or summarized. The second half of the chapter comprises new object entries by Xie Jisheng, translated by Michelle McCoy and Zhu Runxiao.

2

Du Jianlu 1995, 136–51.

3

For instance, see Li Yuan 1989.

4

Shi Jinbo 1988, 51.

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5

Wang Zhong 1962. Also, see Bai Bin 1984, 23.

6

Luo Zhao 1983; Van der Kuijp 1993, 188–97, 341–51; and Dunnell 1992.

7

This illustration is found in volume TK–128. The postscript/colophon includes an engraving date: 天盛十九 年歲次丁亥五月初九日.

8

Shi Jinbo et al. 1994–97.

9

For images, please see Karmay 1975, 36, pls. 16–22.

Tibetan Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhist Art in the Xixia Kingdom

10 Editor’s note: The author suggests that according to records in such sources as the Lho rong Chos ’byung, Xixia is the true origin of the Karmapa’s black hat, but space constraints prevent elaboration here. See Xie Jisheng, forthcoming.

11 See Niu Dasheng 2004. In the Shanzuigou Cave of Helanshan Mountain, print materials in movable type were discovered. In 2000, I participated in the archaeological excavation.

12 The vowel ī, written in reverse, can be used for dating.

Me in Mar me mdzad is modified by ya and rendered as mye, and the unaspirated cad in thams cad (Tib. everything) is rendered as the aspirated chad.

13 Special thanks are due to Khyung dar 窮達 of the Tibet Daily 西藏日报 agency, who identified this inscription and transcribed it into print (uchen) script. This dhāraṇī may be collected in the Chinese Mimi cang tuoluoni ji 秘密藏陀羅尼集 or the Tibetan gzungs bsdus, but the source has not yet been conclusively identified. Also, special thanks are due to Dr. Liao

Yang of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, who identified the inscriptions as the three parts of dhāra ī used in consecration rituals (rab gnas) for thangkas.

14 In this scripture, Śākyamuni preaches the fundamental doctrine of the four roots of restraint (’dul ba rtsa ba’i lung), known in Tibetan as So sor thar ba’i mdo and appearing in the Kagyur manuscript (la dwags shel mkhar du bzhugs pa’i bka’ ’gyur bris ma).

15 See the Bie jietuo jing 別解脫經, catalogued by Skal bzang bstan ’dzin rgya mtsho in the vinaya section of the Bka’ ’gyur klog skabs dran gsor bris pa/, vol. 1, 11–692, TBRC Resource ID P2CZ6619.

16 Goble 2016.

17 See Piotrovsky 1993, cat. 31, 170–71.

18 See Piotrovsky 1993, cat. 19, 140–41.

19 See Piotrovsky 1993, cat. 45, 196–97, and cat. 17, 138.

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chapter 5

Tibetan Buddhism and Art in the Mongol Empire According to Tibetan Sources tsangwang gendun tenpa Translated by Eveline Washul1

In the thirteenth century , the Mongol Empire spread rapidly to conquer most of Eurasia,

bringing Tibetan art and religious practice to the Chinese heartland and beyond. Qubilai Khan declared his empire in East Asia the “Great Yuan” on a Chinese dynastic model, where various peoples such as the Tibetans, Tanguts, and Uighurs played a prominent role. While the Mongol Empire was known for generous patronage across a spectrum of religions, Qubilai Khan singled out Tibetan Buddhism among the faiths competing for court attention. In turn, Tibetan patriarchs supported the Mongol imperial project, providing legitimacy to their rule by anointing the khans as universal sacral rulers, as well as furnishing ritual power to expand the empire. While most accounts of the Mongol Yuan and its art rely heavily—if not exclusively—on Chinese sources, this chapter reflects the perspective of Tibetan sources. While Tibetan accounts may deviate at times from the established narrative of the Mongol Empire (see chapter 1), they also shed new light on the role played by the creation of Tibetan Buddhist art under Mongol rule.

Tangut Artistic and Religious Influence on the Mongol Empire Mongolian interest in Tibetan Buddhism did not rise from a vacuum, and Tangut artistic and religious practice had a profound influence on Yuan imperial court culture (see chapter 4). In particular, Tangut silk tapestry (kesi 缂丝) thangkas had a great impact on Tibetan areas and deeply influenced the later art of the Mongol Empire. Indeed, the Mongols followed the art of the Tangut Xixia (1038–1227) so closely that Tangut works are often identified as originating from the Mongol Yuan dynasty. For instance, the workmanship of two silk tapestry thangkas of Blue Acala (mi g.yo sngon po) (fig. 5.1) and Gungthang Lama Shang (1123–1194) in the Tibet Museum, Lhasa, are among the exquisite works of the Tangut dynasty but have often been misidentified as creations of the Yuan.

During the period of Tibet’s fragmentation, the Tsongkha and Tangut kings invited and made offerings to many translators and masters from Central Tibet. In doing so they furthered the development of Tibetan Buddhism in their own lands and established priest-patron relationships. The Tsongkha king, Tritönchen, invited to his realm masters such as the Nepalese Pamtingpa, Shama Lotsawa Senggyal, and Gyijang Lotsawa.2 The Tangut king invited and made offerings to Pa ita Sumati Kirti, Drogön Tishri Repa (1164–1236), and Tsangpa Dungkhurwa Wangchuk Tashi.3 Gradually, Tangut strength and power became so great that they absorbed Tsongkha. The Tibetan kingdom of Tsongkha (1008–1104) had positioned itself as the inheritor of the Tibetan Empire’s political legacy in the east. Once the Xixia absorbed Tsongkha in the early twelfth century, Tibetans rose to

Opposite: Detail of fig. 5.5

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increasing prominence at the Xixia court. Broadly speaking, Tsongkha art combined a continuing legacy of the ancient Tibetan Empire and Tangut artisanship.

Prior to the Mongol dynasty, the Kagyü branches from Tibet—Tsalpa, Karma Kamtsang, Barom, and Drigung—established priest-patron relationships with the Tangut dynasty, as did the Sakya. The front of a silk tapestry thangka of Krodha Acala illustrates this development (see fig. 5.1). The Tibetan inscription reads, “To the great master, Jetsün Khön Drakpa Gyaltsen, the Khampa student Jang Tsöndrüdrak makes [this image as] an offering.” The Khampa student mentioned here—Jang Tsöndrüdrak—came from Tsongkha, which was by then conquered by the Tanguts, and studied under the Sakya patriarch Khön Jetsün Drakpa Gyaltsen. As the colophon of Jetsün Drakpa Gyaltsen’s work Precious Rosary of Religious Practice (Chos spyod rin chen phreng ba) confirms: “The Sakya upāsaka (lay practitioner) Drakpa Gyaltsen received a request from Tsongkha’s Jangtön bhikṣu (fully ordained monk) Tsöndrüdrak, by which [this was] perceptively written after the foremost meritorious one.”4 The colophon clearly indicates this text was written upon the request of the same student, Jang Tsöndrüdrak.

I believe this thangka was commissioned during Jetsün Drakpa Gyaltsen’s lifetime (1147–1216) and given to him in person, as reflected in the word “offered,” which appears in the inscription. Moreover, the abovementioned text dates to 1210, giving a rough time frame for the association of patron and recipient, as well as the commissioning of this image.5 Thus while previous scholars date this silk tapestry thangka to the Mongol dynastic period, I believe it to be earlier, with the artisanship coming from Tangut-conquered Tsongkha or Tangut Gha (Mi nyag gha).6 Furthermore, from the above evidence we know the Sakyapa had established a priest-patron relationship with the Tangut king prior to forming one with the Mongol dynasty. According to Amnyé Ngawang Kunga Sönam (1597–1659/1660): “Phakpa said that in general the Tangut king offered my ancestors silk tapestry canopies (bla bre) [so lavish that they hung low enough to be] able to be grasped by deer antlers.

Because of this, the Mongol khan sent people to examine Sakya, and having confirmed it, the khan was moved to become his disciple.”7 This text reveals that Drogön Phakpa told Köten (Goden) Khan about the history of the Tangut kings making great offerings of silk tapestries to his ancestors. The khan, doubting this, ordered people to go inspect Sakya and confirmed that the description was as Phakpa said. Based on this documentation, we know that a relationship had been established between Sakya and the Tangut king since the lifetime of Jetsün Drakpa Gyaltsen.

The circumstances described above show that the reasons Tangut artisanship spread so powerfully into Tibetan lands fit with the aforementioned historical context of Tangut absorption of Tsongkha and the establishment of priest-patron relations between the Tangut court and Tibetan Buddhist hierarchs.

Additionally, we see that the Mongol dynasty’s establishment of a priest-patron relationship with the Sakyapa did not happen by chance. It resulted from conditions brought about by the priest-patron relationship—reinforced by political contacts—previously formed between the Tangut kings and the Sakyapa.

The Priest-Patron Relationship between Tibet and the Mongol Dynasty8 When Mongolia dispatched its armies to conquer the Tangut Gha, Khotan, Jang, and others, Tibetan lamas were present as preceptor-officiants (mchod gnas) of the kings and ministers in these kingdoms. Owing to the respect accorded to lamas by the subjects of all the kingdoms, the Mongols began to regard Tibetan lamas with importance. Sumpa Yeshé Paljor (1704–1788) writes that Chinggis (Genghis) Khan arrived in Tibet in 1206 and ruled Tibet’s entire center except for the Tangut realm.9 In 1216, Chinggis Khan sent armies to the many Tangut lands and forcefully conquered them.10 At this time, a great lama with his

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Fig. 5.1 Blue Acala (mi g.yo sngon po); offered by the fully ordained monk of Tsongkha, Jang Tsöndrüdrak to Jetsün Drakpa Gyaltsen (1147–1216); Tangut Kingdom of Xixia; early 13th century (ca. 1210); cut silk (kesi 缂丝); 63 x 29⅞ in. (160 x 76 cm); Potala Palace/Tibet Museum, Lhasa.

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retinue from Tibet had been made a preceptor-officiant in the Tangut lands and had even become the lama of the Tangut king and prince. As a result, the Mongol dynasty invited the preceptor-officiant of the Tanguts, Tsangpa Dungkhurwa Wangchuk Tashi of the Tsalpa Kagyü, and his retinue of Tibetan lamas to Mongol lands to establish a priest-patron relationship. According to some sources, in 1227—the same year the Tangut capital was conquered—Tsangpa Dungkhurwa Wangchuk Tashi gave teachings to Chinggis, and the khan issued an edict granting privileges to monks.11 Thereafter, each of the Mongol khans established priest-patron relations with major lamas of the various religious schools of Tibet. In 1233, Güyüg, the eldest son of Ögedei and older brother of Köten, sat on the throne for six months.12 Later, Köten established a relationship with Sakya Pa ita (1182–1251) of the Sakyapa (fig. 5.2).13 Möngke Khan—the eldest son of Tolui and his queen Sorqaqtani Beki—previously had a priest-patron relationship with the Drigungpa.

Tolui and Sorqaqtani Beki’s third son, Qubilai, had relations with the Tsal Gungthangpa at an earlier time. Their fourth son, Ariq-Böke, was connected to the Karmapa. The fifth son, Hülegü, had deep ties with the Drigungpa. It is said Hülegü was a khan without an appanage, thus he was sent west to seek a kingdom, which became known to Tibetans as the Western Mongols (stod Hor) and in the West as the Il-Khanate in the Middle East.14 In 1234, Köten was enthroned as king. Five years later, the Sakya, Drigung, Karma, and Phakmodru schools became contentious toward one another as they sought alliances with different Mongol kings.15 Sumpa Yeshé Paljor writes, “In 1240, the Mongol general, Chigya Dorta, went to Central Tibet and destroyed Retreng Monastery and Gyal Temple and killed over five hundred sotön, such as laypeople, monks, and others.”16 In 1243, the Mongol khan Ögedei invited the Tsalpa and issued an edict.17 One year later, Sakya Pa ita and his nephews, Drogön Phakpa (1235–1280) and Chakna Dorjé (1239–1267), arrived in Mongol lands (fig. 5.3).18 Sakya Pa ita and the Mongol khan Köten met in 1247, and four years later, in 1251, both of them passed away. Möngke ascended the throne the following year. Later Tibetan sources state that in 1253 Phakpa became preceptor-officiant of the Mongols and ruler over Tibet in general.19 In 1254, the Second Karmapa, Karma Pakshi, was invited as a preceptor-officiant of Qubilai, a prince of the Mongol Empire.

Möngke Khan, ruler of the Mongol Empire, issued the first Tibetan edict to Phakpa. Möngke’s younger brother, Qubilai, was enthroned in 1260. As the preceptor-officiant, Phakpa bestowed an esoteric mantra initiation, for which he was given the three regions of Tibet (bod chol kha gsum) (fig. 5.4).

Möngke Khan passed away in the Tangut capital of Mentsé (Yinchuan) that same year. Karma Pakshi and Phakpa engaged in a competition of magical signs of realization; in spite of being thrown into fire, water, and an abyss, an unharmed Karma Pakshi exhibited intermediate signs of realization.20 In 1270, Phakpa created the Mongol Square script, and Qubilai appointed Phakpa as imperial preceptor (ti shri; Ch. di shi), bestowing on him an edict and a crystal seal (fig. 5.5).21 More than fifteen Sakya lamas served as imperial preceptors in the Mongol Yuan dynasty (see appendix 1). These lamas had a genuine effect on the society of that period, as well as a strong, direct influence on the Mongol dynasty’s religiopolitical policies. The Mongol khans, having adopted the priest-patron relationship, established countless temples and stūpas in the imperial capital, Beijing, and other areas of that period.

Opposite: Fig. 5.2 Sakya Pa ita (1182–1251); Tibet; 15th century; copper alloy with gilding; height: 8¼ in. (21 cm); Yury Khokhlov Collection.

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The Phakpa Script and Its Influence According to some Tibetan documents, Phakpa created the Mongol Square script in 1270 (fig. 5.6). The Lineage of Sakya (Sa skya pa’i gdung rabs) states, “In the year of the male iron horse (1270), at the time of another initiation, the king bestowed a six-cornered crystal seal based on that of the Tangut Gyagö king (Mi nyag rgya rgod rgyal po), a special edict, and the title of imperial preceptor to Phakpa, the son of Indian gods on the earth below the heavens, an emanation of the Buddha, the script creator, the pacifier of the kingdom, the master of the five sciences.”22 In 1271, Qubilai announced a decree recognizing the Mongol Square script invented by Phakpa as the official script of the empire. The decree also used this new script.

All ministers, great and minor, had to study it. Furthermore, Qubilai ordered that from that day forth the Mongol Square script was to be referred to as the “Mongol script,” not the “Phakpa script.” He also proclaimed that lay subjects who studied the script would be exempt from taxes for one year.

The Mongol script was then engraved on the khan’s imperial tablets, imperial messages, official documents, seals, stele, decrees, tablet signs found at the entrances of buildings (sgo byang), passports (see fig. 5.6), embroidered cloth, porcelain utensils (dkar sder), white pottery (rdza dkar), and most other objects used by the government. In addition, in place of secret Chinese documents, secrets were kept by transcribing Mongol speech in the Mongol Square script. Up until the present day in Tibetan and Mongol lands, the custom endures of engraving the Mongol Square script on both sides of the main entrance to monasteries and temples.

The Construction of Images and Sacred Objects at the Imperial Capital of Shangdu According to Tibetan archives, the palace city of Shangdu, founded in 1256 by Möngke Khan, was the old capital before Qubilai moved it to Beijing. This capital appears to have first been called Kaipinghur, as “Kaipinghur” is written in some of the colophons of Phakpa’s collected works dated 1261 to 1263.23 In 1263, the name of the capital was changed to Shangdu 上都.24 To the northwest of Shangdu, a temple named Daqianyuansi 大乾元寺 was built. The designers and general overseers of the temple were Phakpa, Ga Anyen Dampa, Minyak Sherap Yeshé, and the Nepalese artisan Anige. Anige primarily built the temple’s images and sacred objects, and Phakpa established a translation college to translate Chinese, Uighur, and Sanskrit into Tibetan and Mongol scripts.25 The teeth, alms bowl, and other objects of the Buddha arrived from India and Myanmar (Burma) to be propitiated as the main sacred objects of this temple. Later, many masters from far and wide resided there. Chim Jampaiyang, the great adept Ürgyenpa (1229/1230–1309), and many other eminent masters came to Daqianyuansi from Tibet, constructed images and sacred objects, and conducted valuable religiopolitical activities. Accordingly, Shangdu became a center for the Mongol dynasty’s rule.

Anige and the White Stūpa of Beijing At the age of eighteen, the Nepalese artist Anige (1243/44–1306), who played a prominent role in Qubilai Khan’s court, went to Tibet. Interestingly, Anige does not seem to be mentioned in Phakpa’s writings or other Tibetan sources from his lifetime. The details of his life are known primarily through his Chinese epitaph stele.26 Anige’s birthplace is said to be Yumbu City in Nepal, which may be Yerang (Patan, in the Kathmandu Valley). Among Nepalese experts, however, no one seems to know for certain. In the Fifth Dalai Lama’s Catalog of the Lhasa Jokhang, Pönchen Shakya Sangpo (d. 1280) invited Anige to Tibet, and Opposite: Fig. 5.3 Chögyal Phakpa (1235–1280); Tibet; 16th century; copper alloy with silver and copper inlays; height: 7⅝ in. (19.5 cm); Yury Khokhlov Collection.

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Fig. 5.4 Initiation of Qubilai Khan and Offering Rule of Tibet to Phakpa (1235–1280) in 1264; Tibet; ca. 16th–17th century; pigments on cloth; 24¼ x 15⅛ in. (61.5 x 38.4 cm); Rubin Museum of Art; C2002.3.2 (HAR 65046).

Published: Debreczeny 2011, fig. 5; Jackson 2016, figs. 6.25, 7.37.

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Fig. 5.5 Qubilai Khan Naming Phakpa (1235–1280) Imperial Preceptor, ca. 1269–1270; attributed to Khyentsé Chenmo (fl. 1450s–1490s); Tibet; late 15th–16th century; pigments on cloth; 32¼ x 20 in. (82.6 x 50.8 cm); Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, British Columbia; gift of Mrs. W. W. Ritchie; 1965.068.001.

Published: Till 1989, cat. 1; Fisher 1997, pl. 155; Jackson 2016, figs. 6.28, 7.4.

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Fig. 5.6 Safe Conduct Pass (paiza) with Inscription in Mongolian Square Script (“Phakpa Script”); China; Yuan dynasty, late 13th century; iron with silver inlay; 7⅛ x 4½ in. (18.1 x 11.4 cm); Metropolitan Museum of Art; 1993.256.

Published: Leidy, Siu, and Watt 1997, 9; Komaroff and Carboni 2002, fig. 69; Watt 2010, fig. 13; Bulliet et al. 2011, 305; Rossabi 2012, fig. 9.

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he constructed the decorative throne-back surrounding the Lhasa Jowo statue (drug ’gyogs rgyab yol). It is therefore likely that Anige did indeed come at the request of Pönchen Shakya Sangpo.

In 1260, Pönchen Shakya Sangpo invited eighty Nepalese sculptors to construct the Sakya Serkhang Chenmo and the decorative throne-back of the Jowo statue in Lhasa’s Jokhang Temple. During this time, Phakpa came from China to Tibet and met Anige. Phakpa saw that although Anige was young, he was bright and skilled in the arts, so Phakpa brought him along on his travels. I believe this historical account is accurate because in 1260, when Anige came to Tibet, Phakpa was still residing in Beijing, as is apparent from the colophon of his Elucidation of the Great Vehicle (Thegs pa chen po gsal ba).27 Furthermore, as most Tibetan historical accounts agree, artists created the statue of the Buddha, sacred thangkas and murals, and gold scriptures at Sakya Monastery’s Golden-Roofed Temple (Gser thog gtsug lag khang) in 1262. The chronology of events reveals the following: in 1265, Phakpa arrived in Tibet, and in 1269, upon returning to Mongolia, it appears that he brought Anige with him. It is said that Anige took monastic vows with Phakpa at that time, and I surmise his Tibetan monastic name was Könchok Kyap (Dkon mchog skyabs), the artist named on the famous sculpture of Mahākāla dated 1292 in the Musée Guimet (see fig. 1.8). The Chronicle of China and Tibet (Rgya bod yig tshang chen mo) mentions a master artist, “sprul pa’i lha bzo,” as found on this same Mahākāla sculpture, and many scholars think it is a reference to Anige.28 However, I have not seen evidence from historical sources, and thus it is not yet possible to accurately determine this attribution.

While living in China in 1278, Anige gave up his monastic vows—under the orders of Qubilai Khan—and took up a householder’s life. It was not unusual for Tibetans to continue to use their monastic names after returning to lay life. He had Nepalese, Mongolian, and Chinese wives, among others, and many sons, including Asengé. Anige also had several famous Chinese disciples, including Likyön (Liu Yuan 劉元). He passed away at the age of sixty-two, and his tomb resides in Beijing’s Fragrant Hills (Spos ri; 香山). A summary of Anige’s

Fig. 5.7 White Stūpa; built by Nepalese artist Anige; Beijing; 1279.

life is carved on the face of the Duke of Liangguo Stele 凉国 公碑, from which we know most of the details of his life.

According to Changkya Rölpai Dorjé’s Catalog of the White Stūpa at the Western Gate of the Great Kingdom, Prosperous Faith (Rgyal khab chen po’i nub sgo’i mchod rten dkar po’i dkar chag dad pa rgyas byed ces bya ba bzhugs so; 1753), a stūpa from the time of the Liao dynasty (907–1125) stood at the ruins of the White Stūpa of Beijing (fig. 5.7). After it was completely ruined, during the eighth year of the Great Mongol Yuan dynasty, it was rebuilt.29 Based on the accounts in the Catalog of the Stūpa and the Yuan History 元史, the reconstruction took place between 1271 and 1279.30 In 1279, this stūpa was built primarily under the supervision of the Tibetan Imperial Preceptor Rinchen Gyaltsen (1238–1279), and Anige took on the responsibility of general design and surveying. The monastery of the White Stūpa was named Da Shengshou Wan’an Monastery 大圣寿万安寺 (The Great Temple of Sacred

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Longevity and Myriad Peace). It is said that the monastery was 160,000 square meters in size. In 1288, after the completion of the monastery, Qubilai himself came and stayed for the founding ceremony. Even though Imperial Preceptor Rinchen Gyaltsen had prepared to construct sacred objects here, the khan did not grant him permission. Instead, the space became the private monastery of the Mongol royal family. At that time, it was not only the largest, most splendid monastery in Beijing but also the site where many treatises and teachings of the Buddha were translated into Sanskrit, Tibetan, Chinese, Mongolian, and Uighur.

In 1302, Anige and Ga Anyen Dampa constructed another white stūpa at Mount Wutai. In other major projects, the Mongol khans created eight Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in Beijing for the purpose of securing their borderlands and for promoting their priest-patron relationships. The design and sacred objects of these monasteries were mostly built by Anige and his disciples. Phakpa, Karma Pakshi, Ga Anyen Dampa, Imperial Preceptor Rinchen Gyaltsen and the thirteen imperial preceptors, Minyak Sherap Yeshé, Chim Jampaiyang, and the great adept Urgyen performed ceremonies and practices for the benefit of others at these monasteries. The Mongols’ actions—displays of power, influence, and faith—promoted the spread of the Tibetan Buddhist religion throughout Mongolia and China.

The Juchu Temple and the Dharma Protector Mahākāla Mahākāla, a fierce Buddhist deity, protector of the Mongol Yuan, and special focus of the state cult, was often invoked to help Mongolian military objectives (fig. 5.8). The important temple of Juchu, built by the Nepalese artisan Anige, was primarily devoted to this deity. The history of Juchu Temple is found in Taktsang Paljor Sangpo’s A Series of Wise Sayings from Many Dynasties, A Rosary of Pleasing Jewels (Rgyal rabs mang po’i legs bshad rnam grangs yid ’dzin nor bu’i phreng ba bzhugs; 15th century) and Chronicle of China and Tibet (1434). According to both texts: The king said to the lama (Phakpa): Now this [general] Bayan, what if I send him to Mentsé?

[Phakpa said]: He [Bayan] is capable. I will carry out my means and circumstances for accomplishment and give instructions to the Nepalese artisan Anige to build the Juchu Temple and statues of Mahākāla and his retinue. I will consecrate it myself. I will have the face of Mahākāla looking towards Mentsé. I will appoint the master Dampa Kunga as Dharmapāla Adept (Chos skyong sgrub pa). Grant Bayan the title of Chingsang and its seal and also send as his companion the Chinese master called Tangchui Pingche.31 Some scholars say that the Mentsé region of this period refers to Hangzhou. According to the modern Chinese scholar Chen Qingying, Qubilai said, “I order you (Ga Anyen Dampa) to reside at Wutaishan’s Takdeling Monastery. There a stūpa will be built where you will carry out esoteric practices and many religious activities, and make offerings at a temple to Mahākāla and his retinue.”32 Then Phakpa commissioned Anige to construct images of the deity and his retinue. The command for Dampa to carry out religious practices there was not typical for the propagation of religion. Rather, such actions were meant to actively and directly support the Yuan military in its annihilation of the Southern Song.33 Some Tibetan monastic abbatial lineages say that the Yuan court’s Mahākāla ritual specialist, Ga Anyen Dampa (ca. 1230–1303), established 108 Mahākāla temples in Tibet, Mongolia, and China following the orders of Phakpa. In actuality, I believe that when the Mongol khans conquered other lands, it was common for them to create special long-life ritual sites and monasteries to overcome obstacles and achieve their religiopolitical goals. Juchu Temple was one of these sites.

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Fig. 5.8 Pañjaranātha Mahākāla; Tibet; 14th century; steatite with color and gilding; height: 7 in. (17.9 cm); Metropolitan Museum of Art; gift of Florence and Herbert Irving, 2015; 2015.500.4.18.

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The Silk Tapestry Vajrabhairava Maṇḍala The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Vajrabhairava ma ala is one of the few silk tapestry thangkas that can be dated with relative certainty (fig. 5.9). Although I have not seen it in person, according to the descriptions of others, this thangka is 96 ½ inches (245 cm) long and 82 ¼ inches (209 cm) wide.34 The subject of this thangka is a ma ala of forty-nine Vajrabhairava deities. While previous articles identify it as a Vajrabhairava ma ala, none describe in detail the appearance of the forty-nine deities, the tantra it corresponds to, or how it was commissioned, so I will enumerate this information here.

This silk tapestry ma ala of forty-nine Vajrabhairava deities was made according to Phakpa’s Sādhana of the Forty-Nine Vajrabhairavas (’Jigs byed lha zhe dgu ma’i sgrub thabs). This work was included in the root text written by the Indian master Lalitavajra. In Tibet, however, Phakpa wrote the text, and the Ra (Rwa) tradition of the great translator Dorjé Drakpa (1016–1128?) had a greater influence on Sakya and Kagyü adherents respectively.

The subject of the silk tapestry is the forty-nine Vajrabhairava deities and is similar to the content in Phakpa’s aforementioned sādhana text. At the edges of the ma ala are eight charnel grounds and four doors facing in the four directions of the ma ala: east is white, south is yellow, west is red, and north is green.

The platform of the deity is red, and within the inner square of the ma ala are eight vessels. Four skull cups (kapala) decorate it, and in the central nine-squared grid we see the abode of forty-nine deities. In the center is the Vajrabhairava of the Sakya tradition, with nine faces, sixteen arms, and a body black in color. The rest of the retinue is also black; all have the face of a buffalo, a single face and two arms—with both arms grasping the center of the chest—and an erect penis. They are poised with the right leg bent and the left leg outstretched.35 Along the top of the ma ala is the previous lineage of lamas, who are the transmission lamas of the forty-nine Vajrabhairavas. Located in the four directions, a Black Kri a Yamāri (Gshin rje gshed nag po) is at the top-right corner; at the top left is a compacted Vajrabhairava (’Jigs byed bsdus pa); at the bottom right is a three-faced, six-armed Vajrabhairava; and at the bottom left is Rakta Yamāri. The tantras for these deities follow the Sakya tradition. Detailed treatments of them are located in the sādhana and rituals written

by Phakpa and his Sakya disciples.

Additionally, at the bottom of the thangka are images of the patrons, two Mongol khans (fig. 5.10) and two queens (fig. 5.11). These figures and the aforementioned lineage of lamas are the main historical personages related to this Vajrabhairava ma ala silk tapestry, which are as follows. In Phakpa’s Sādhana of the Forty-Nine Vajrabhairavas, the lineage includes Mañjuśrī, Jñāna āki ī, the master Lalitavajra, the greater Amoghavajra, the lesser Amogha, Gyo Öchung, Tsang Yangdakbar and his son Yangdak Dorjé, Ngok Dorgyal, Sewa Döndrup Yeshé, Khamtön Shakya Dorjé, and the master Sanggyé Bum. The lineage continues with Phakpa. The Record of Teachings of Amnyé Ngawang Kunga Sönam (A mye ngag dbang kun dga’ bsod nams kyi gsan yig) lists the lineage after Phakpa as Shang Könchokpal, Drakphukpa (also called the cave-dweller; Brag phug pa), Donyö Gyaltsen, the master Düldzin, the great scholar Changsengwa, Sharchen Yeshé Gyaltsen, Kunga Sangpo, the regent Kunga Wangchuk, Yongdzin Könchokpal, Salo, Ngorchen Könlün, Kunga Rinchen, and Söwang.36 Based on the Mongol history of this period, however, I believe the lineage of lamas of this tantra in Beijing after Phakpa is not as it appears in the Record of Teachings of Amnyé Ngawang Kunga Sönam. Instead, I believe that from Phakpa it continued on through Imperial Preceptor Kunga Lodrö Gyaltsen (1299–1327), Opposite: Fig. 5.9 Ma ala of Forty-Nine Deity Vajrabhairava; China; Yuan dynasty, ca. 1329; silk tapestry (kesi 缂丝); 96⅝ x 825/16 in. (245.4 x 209 cm); Metropolitan Museum of Art; purchase, Lila Acheson Wallace gift, 1992; 1992.54.

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Fig. 5.10 “King” Tuq-Temür (Emperor Wenzong 文宗皇帝; r. 1328, 1329–1332) and “Prince” Koshila (Emperor Mingzong 明宗皇帝; r. 1328–1329) (detail of fig. 5.9).

Imperial Preceptor Wangchuk Gyaltsen (d. 1325), Imperial Preceptor Kunga Lekpai Jungné Gyaltsen (1307– 1329), and Imperial Preceptor Rinchen Tashi (1329).

Imperial Preceptor Rinchen Tashi was appointed to this position in 1329, which is probably the same year the Vajrabhairava ma ala silk tapestry was completed. As such, I believe the lineage of lamas represented on the tapestry should follow the aforementioned lineage of lamas, ending with the five Yuan imperial preceptors.

The names of the two khans and queens at the bottom of the tapestry were once inscribed in both Tibetan and Chinese, but now only the Tibetan remains. The Tibetan inscription on the left reads “King Tuq-Temür” (Rgyal po thug the mur; Tugh Temür/Toq Temür), known in Chinese as Emperor Wenzong 文宗皇帝 (r. 1328/29–1332). The name inscription on the right is “Prince Koshila” (Rgyal bu ko shi la; Qoshila/Ko sha la), known in Chinese as Emperor Mingzong 明宗皇帝 (r. 1328–139). The name of the queen on the left is written in Tibetan as “Chieftainness Babucha” (Dpon mo ’Bha bu cha), known in

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Tibetan Buddhism and Art in the Mongol Empire According to Tibetan Sources

Fig. 5.11 “Chieftainness” Babucha (巴不沙皇后; d. 1330) and “Chieftainness” Bhudashri (Budashiri; 1307–1340) (detail of fig. 5.9).

Chinese as Empress Babusha 巴不沙皇后 or 八不沙皇后. She was the queen of King Koshila and died in 1330. According to common lore, Queen Babusha was killed by the treachery of Queen Bhudashri. The name of the queen on the right is written in Tibetan as “Chieftainness Bhudashri” (Dpon mo Bhu dha shri; Budashiri). She was the queen of King Tuq-Temür and lived from 1307 to 1340.

According to the Yuan Dynastic History 元史, Tuq-Temür and Koshila were brothers, both the sons of the Mongol khan Qayshan (武宗海山皇帝; Külüg Khan; r. 1307–1311). In 1328, after the death of the Mongol King Asujiba (A su’u ji bha), Prince Koshila should have been enthroned. At that time, however, Prince Koshila was in northern Mongolia, and his younger brother Tuq-Temür was thus enthroned in his place. In 1329, unable to withstand the pressure and power of his elder brother Koshila, King Tuq-Temür gave Koshila the throne. Yet within a short period, it is said that loyalists of Tuq-Temür covertly killed King Koshila. Following his death, the younger brother Tuq-Temür regained the throne, and in 1332 he suddenly passed away.

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From examining this context, I believe the Vajrabhairava ma ala silk tapestry was created in 1329. The Yuan Dynastic History states that Koshila was the elder brother of Tuq-Temür, and the history is clear about Tuq-Temür being unable to keep the throne. He gave it to Koshila due to their serious disagreement over regal inheritance, and thus “Prince Koshila” is written in Tibetan on this silk tapestry. If it had been after Koshila was enthroned, there would have been no reason to write “Prince.” Furthermore, it was widely known that Queen Bhudashri killed Koshila’s queen Babusha. In 1332, Queen Bhudashri was still alive, so it is reasonable to assume she would not have permitted the depiction of Queen Babusha, who had become her enemy.

Because of these factors, I believe the Vajrabhairava ma ala silk tapestry was produced in early 1329.

Conclusion In 1358, during the unrest of the farmers’ revolt, the Shangdu palace was burned down. The teeth, stone alms bowl, and sacred relics of the Buddha were plundered from the main temple. Ten years later, the khan fled to Mongolia, and the dynasty of the Mongol emperors came to an end. While the Yuan was a relatively short-lived dynasty, Qubilai Khan’s example of rulership created a model that would be emulated by emperors and khans for centuries to come. Tibetan Buddhism was thus established at the center of imperial models of sacral legitimacy, and its images became symbols of that power.

notes 1

Editor’s note: Due to space limitations and accessibility issues for general readers, this text has been shortened and heavily edited. Hopefully Gendun Tenpa will publish his original Tibetan text in its entirety.

2

Zha ma tsan tri 2013, 7–8.

3

Rta tshag tshe dbang rgyal 1994, 224.

4

Grags pa rgyal mtshan 2007, vol. 5, 241. The colophon is undated.

5

Sørensen and Hazod 2007, 367–68.

6

Xie Jisheng 2002.

7

A mye ngag dbang kun dga’ bsod nams 2012, vol. 4, 123.

8

Editor’s note: Premodern Tibetan historical sources simply say “Hor rgyal” (Mongol kingdom/dynasty); only modern (post-communist) Tibetan texts distinguish the Yuan dynasty from the larger Mongol Empire. Thus the distinction is not clearly drawn here.

9

Sum pa ye shes dpal ’jor 1992, 848.

10 Sum pa ye shes dpal ’jor 1992; Dung dkar blo bzang ‘phrin las 2002; Tshe tan zhabs drung 1982.

11 Dung dkar blo bzang ’phrin las 2002, 2286.

12 Tshe tan zhabs drung 1982, 185.

13 The inscription on this sculpture (fig. 5.2) reads: sa skya paṇ ḍi ta la na mo// 14 Stag tshang dpal ’byor bzang po 2009, vol. 3, 183.

15 Sum pa ye shes dpal ’jor 1992, 852.

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16 Sum pa ye shes dpal ’jor 1992, 852. The term sotön (so ston) appears in many historical texts, but its meaning is thus far unknown.

17 ’Jam dbyangs bzhad pa 1716, 8.

18 The inscription on this sculpture (fig. 5.3) reads: ’gro ba’i mgon po chos rgyal ’phags pa’i zhabs kyi padmo la/ bdag rdo rje tshe dbang ’khor bcas phyag ‘tshal zhing skyabs su mchi’o // dge ba ’di yis pha mas gtso byas sems can thams cad myur tu sangs rgyas thob par byin gyis brlab du gsol // mangalam// “I, Dorjé Tsewang, together with my disciples, bow down to and take refuge at the lotus feet of the Protector of Beings and Dharmarāja Phakpa. Through this virtuous act, I pray for blessings so that all sentient beings, beginning with my parents, quickly obtain Buddhahood. May it be auspicious!”

19 A mye ngag dbang kun dga’ bsod nams 2012, vol.

4, 129. According to Sumpa Yeshe (Sum pa ye shes dpal ’jor 1992, 853) Phakpa was given the thirteen myriarchies of Tibet in 1253.

20 ’Jam dbyangs bzhad pa 1716, 8.

21 Tshe tan zhabs drung 1982, 190.

22 A mye ngag dbang kun dga’ bsod nams 2012, vol. 4, 178.

23 ’Gro mgon chos rgyal Phags pa 2007, vol. 2, 104, 132; ’Gro mgon chos rgyal Phags pa 2007, vol. 4, 222, 336.

24 Dung dkar blo bzang ‘phrin las 2002, 322.

25 For instance, the entry of the Sandalwood Buddha text (Tsan dan jo bo) into the Tengyur (commentaries of the Buddhist canon) occurred around when the

Tibetan Buddhism and Art in the Mongol Empire According to Tibetan Sources

Uighur translator Omchang translated it from Chinese to Uighur. I believe this text was one that Danasi or Minyak Sherap Yeshé translated from Uighur to Tibetan at Daqianyuansi.

26 The earliest mention of Anige in Tibetan texts comes from the fifteenth century in Taktsang Paljor Sangpo’s works Chronicle of China and Tibet (Rgya bod yig tshang chen mo; dated 1434) and A Series of Wise Sayings from Many Dynasties: A Rosary of Pleasing Jewels (Rgyal rabs mang po’i legs bshad rnam grangs yid ’dzin nor bu’i phreng ba bzhugs; 15th century), where Anige is written as “Energa” (E ner dga’). In the Fifth Dalai Lama’s Catalog of the Lhasa Jokhang (Lha ldan gtsug lag khang gi dkar chag; 1654), his name is written as “Anika” (A ni ka). It appears as “Anyiko” (A nyi ko) and “Anyike” (A nyi ke) in Tseten Zhapdrung’s Compilation of Chronological Treatises (bstan rtsis kun btus; 1982). Yuan Chinese sources record the name as “Anige 阿尼哥,” and based on this Chinese rendering, Nepalese scholars believe his name would have been “Araniko.”

27 ’Gro mgon chos rgyal Phags pa 2007, vol. 4, 105–9.

28 Stag tshang dpal ‘byor bzang po, 1434.

Beijing was built in 1348 by the Nepalese artisan Anige, but he died in 1306. See Tshe tan zhabs drung 1982.

31 Stag tshang dpal ‘byor bzang po 1434, 201. Also in Stag tshang dpal ‘byor bzang po 2007, 145.

32 Chen Qingying 2006.

33 Chen Qingying 2006, 300–302. In regards to names and places, I have an alternate theory: the Ju River corresponds to today’s Datong River (大通河), placing Juchu Temple somewhere close to Liangzhou (Gansu Province), where it was built to suppress the lands of the former Tangut Kingdom (Mi nyag gha), called Mentsé. However, space restrictions prevent going into detail here.

34 Xiong Wenbin 2003, 274.

35 This is mostly from ’Gro mgon chos rgyal Phags pa 2007, vol. 3, 88–100.

36 A mye ngag dbang kun dga’ bsod nams 2012, vol. 3, 183. I would like to note that Karl Debreczeny of the Rubin Museum and Pema Bhum of Latse Library provided the clarification of Tibetan and English names for the kings and queens mentioned in this section.

29 Lcang skya rol ba’i rdo rje 2015, vol. Ja., 283–84.

30 Tseten Zhapdrung’s Compilation of Chronological Treatises states erroneously that the White Stūpa of

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chapter 6

In the Shadow of the Khan: Tibetan Buddhist Art and Political Legitimation in the Ming Dynasty karl debreczeny

Even after the collapse of the Mongol Empire, when the Chinese reclaimed their land and

established the native Ming dynasty, the Chinese court continued to follow Mongol precedents for an imperial Buddhist vocabulary symbolic of divine rule. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, most of Eurasia had come under Mongol rule, and during the early Ming the Chinggisid world continued to span much of the continent.1 Thus political legitimacy was not only a domestic issue but concerned multiple audiences. By following aspects of Qubilai Khan’s model of rulership, early Ming rulers employed the accepted language of power in declaring their authority.2 This interpretation deviates from the traditional understanding of the Ming, as the founder used a domestic political rhetoric that emphasized reasserting an ethnic Chinese identity in the wake of Mongol rule.3 In the realm of religion and politics, Tibetan Buddhism continued as a faith of the powerful within the inner court. A great deal of Tibetan Buddhist art was created in Ming imperial workshops, both for internal court use and as part of complex diplomatic exchanges with Tibetan hierarchs, a projection of what we might today call soft power.

Ming Imperial Interests in Tibetan Buddhism The first official expression of Ming interest in Tibetan Buddhism came only a few years after the Ming dynasty was founded, when in 1375 the first Ming emperor Taizu of the Hongwu 洪武 period (1368–1398) sent a letter of praise to the Fourth Karmapa Rölpai Dorjé (1340–1383), who had held one of the highest positions at the former Mongol Yuan court. The Hongwu emperor, formerly a monk under the previous Yuan system, would have been familiar with the Tibetan preceptor’s role.4 Indeed, there was continuity in the Tibetan patriarchs who served both the late Yuan and early Ming courts.5 The Yongle Emperor It was the Ming founder’s fourth son, Ming Chengzu (1360–1424), commonly known by his reign title Yongle 永樂 (r. 1402–1424), who became the first Ming emperor to establish significant ties with Tibetan patriarchs, and he was probably a believer in Tibetan Buddhism. Recent research reveals that the Yongle emperor consciously modeled a wide range of his policies on those of Qubilai Khan, and this approach extended to his engagement with Tibetans.6 As an imperial prince, he was granted the former Mongol capital in Beijing, and the Yongle emperor is known in Tibetan sources, such as The Blue Annals, as Ye Wang, “The Prince of Yan” 燕, his previous title as prince of the Beijing area. This name suggests that Yongle, although he was not the crown prince, was already well acquainted with Tibetans, and they with him, during his early career in Beijing before he seized the throne in 1402.7

Opposite: Detail of fig. 6.4

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The Visit of the Fifth Karmapa As part of a strategy to underline his right to rule, Yongle invited the Fifth Karmapa, Deshin Shekpa (1384– 1415), to the early Ming capital of Nanjing in 1407 (fig. 6.1). The Karmapa taught Yongle’s courtiers and several members of his family, including Empress Xu 徐,while he stayed in Nanjing for almost a year.8 In dealing with the Karmapa, Yongle deliberately drew parallels in his own actions to Qubilai Khan’s relationship with his Tibetan imperial preceptor, Phakpa, during the founding of the previous Yuan dynasty. Yongle also bestowed on the Karmapa the same title Qubilai had bestowed on Phakpa, Dabao fawang 大寶法 王, or “Great Precious King of the Dharma,” when the former declared himself Great Khan. According to Tibetan sources, Yongle expressed an interest in re-creating their priest-patron relationship, and he proposed sending troops into Tibet to install the Karmapa as the temporal ruler and forcibly convert all monasteries to his order, which the Karmapa similarly declined.9 Yongle’s offer can be seen as something of a trope, as it parallels Qubilai’s proposition to Phakpa, as does the Karmapa’s declining this proffer in favor of religious plurality.10 Chinese sources do not mention this event, as the Karmapa turning down the emperor’s wish to project Ming power into Tibet is not the type of incident to be recorded in official dynastic histories.

The Karmapas were of particular interest to Yongle as they held a high position in the waning years of the Mongol court, and by this time they were the primary transmitters of sacral kingship.11 Yongle thus invited the Fifth Karmapa to court in 1403, barely a year after he came to power, and received various initiations. After the Karmapa’s visit, Yongle styled himself as a cakravartin ruler. Some Tibetan sources obligingly describe Yongle as a cakravartin king after these events, specifically an iron-wheel bālacakravartin: “one who turns the wheel of the doctrine by force.”12 In a later portrait of the Karmapa, this relationship is codified: Yongle receives consecration as a sacral ruler, with a mirror reflecting his visage, while water is poured on his reflection from a ritual vessel (see figs. 6.1 and 1.16). This painting reproduces the official Yongle portrait almost exactly, copies of which survive in Lhasa.

A famous visual manifestation of Yongle’s engagement with Tibetan Buddhism is a monumental 163-foot-long handscroll, which records a series of miraculous occurrences in forty-nine narrative scenes (fig.

6.2). These events took place during memorial services performed by the Fifth Karmapa in 1407 at Nanjing’s largest imperially sponsored temple, Lingusi 靈谷寺, for Emperor Taizu and Empress Ma 馬.13 This painting can be viewed as containing a political motive, as rumors circulated of Chengzu’s possible Mongol or Korean ancestry after he seized the throne from his nephew with assistance from Mongol cavalry in 1402. The manner in which Yongle came to power put a cloud over his reign, and he worried about the image of his own legitimacy. This handscroll had a clear political agenda in confirming his right to rule, and it used strategies similar to those employed by the Mongol court to project power across Asia, such as multilingual inscriptions in Chinese, Persian, Tay, Tibetan, and Mongolian.14 The later portrait of the Fifth Karmapa directly references this painting and features the distinctive architecture of Lingusi (see fig. 6.1). Such images made in Ming workshops and sent to Tibet had a profound effect on the development of Tibetan art.15 Bronzes A fully mature Sino-Tibetan artistic synthesis in the early years of the fifteenth century provides visual evidence of the continuity from the Mongol Yuan in the artistic production of the Ming imperial atelier. It is most famously exemplified by the bronzes of the Yongle period (1403–1424) (figs. 6.3 and 1.15). Here, we

Opposite: Fig. 6.1 Fifth Karmapa (1384–1415) Initiating the Yongle Emperor (r. 1403–1424) as Sacral Ruler; 18th century; pigments on cotton; 39⅜ x 23⅝ in. (100 x 60 cm); Private Collection.

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127

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In the Shadow of the Khan: Tibetan Buddhist Art and Political Legitimation in the Ming Dynasty

Fig. 6.2 Detail of Yongle Handscroll, “Delivering the Soul of Ming Taizu,” with inscriptions in Chinese, Persian, Tay, Tibetan, and Mongolian; China; Ming dynasty, 1407; ink and color on silk; 26 in. x 163 ft. (66 cm x 49.68 m); Tibet Museum, Lhasa.

129

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see a fusion of the Nepalese sensuousness of form highlighted by the warmth of mercury-gilding combined with a Chinese aesthetic in the fall of drapery and an air of refinement emphasized by a jeweler’s precision in ornamentation. Such richness of detail and visual complexity in the ornamentation lies at the heart of the imperial splendor conveyed by these objects. A form of serial production using modules may have enabled the mass production of such images by a relatively small number of specialists familiar with the complex Sino-Tibetan visual idiom and iconography.16 These specialists would have overseen a larger workshop of artisans.17 This modular approach to Ming court workshop production in wall paintings has already been well documented.18 Silk Icons An emphasis on sculpture and silk textiles in the early Ming also follows Mongol imperial precedent.19 Indeed, some of the most impressive Ming productions of Tibetan Buddhist icons are woven silk thangkas, such as a remarkably intricate silk embroidery of Hevajra (fig. 6.4).20 Its formal graphic clarity expresses a vibrant sense of power. This luxury silk object also served political ends as a diplomatic gift and document of imperial legitimacy.

According to an extensive Tibetan dedicatory inscription on the back of the object (see appendix 2), this ornate silk image was gifted to the Tibetan lama Shākya Yeshé (d. 1435) in recognition of his visit to the emperor. Shākya Yeshé was the third of three main Tibetan patriarchs received by Yongle. After acquiring repeated invitations, the renowned scholar Tsongkhapa (1357–1419) sent his close disciple Shākya Yeshé in his stead; the disciple first arrived at the Ming court in Nanjing in 1415. In recognition of his services, he received the court title Great State Preceptor 大國師 that year.21 When Shākya Yeshé returned to Tibet in 1416, he was accompanied by Chinese envoys carrying gifts of images, such as a set of sixteen arhat statues made of white sandalwood, and a set of the 1410 printing of the Tibetan canon.22 Later, in 1434, Shākya Yeshé was himself invited to court by the Xuande emperor, and he received the more prestigious title Great Compassionate King of the Dharma 大慈法王.

Shākya Yeshé’s many biographies do not seem to mention the gift of this textile. Comparing Shākya Yeshé’s biography to the inscription, we see the verses of praise on the back of the textile are more in accord with the earlier title bestowed by Yongle in 1415, and they do not reference the more illustrious title awarded on his second trip to the Ming court in 1434. While the parallels in the text to his titles are not straightforward, the inscription suggests he likely received this textile before 1434.23 Shākya Yeshé is depicted in the top-right corner (see p. 124), recognizable by his distinctive black paneled Five-Buddha hat, a gift from Yongle upon his departure in 1416. The representation can be compared to an inscribed silk kesi portrait of the lama (fig. 6.5). This famous portrait, bearing his later title King of the Dharma, was not an imperial order, as is commonly assumed, but rather commissioned about 1434 to 1443 by Shākya Yeshé’s students, Amogha and Sönam Sherab, who traveled to the Ming court to serve as his envoys.24 There are several similar examples of Shākya Yeshé appearing at the top of Ming silk textiles, such as a Vajrabhairava in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1993.15), which has also been attributed to the Yongle period and may well have been produced by the same workshop as the Hevajra silk.25 It is therefore likely that the silk Hevajra was gifted during the Yongle reign, possibly during one of the subsequent missions of Shākya Yeshé’s students to the Ming court, as recorded in 1417, 1419, and 1423.26 Opposite: Fig. 6.3 īk a-Mañjuśrī; China; Ming dynasty, Yongle reign mark (1403–1424); gilt brass, lost-wax casting; 7½ x 4¾ x 3½ in. (19.1 x 12.1 x 8.9 cm); Metropolitan Museum of Art; Rogers Fund, 2001; 2001.59.

Published: Watt and Leidy 2005, pl. 25; Leidy and Strahan 2010, cat. 37; Khokhlov 2016, fig. 53.

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Opposite: Fig. 6.4 Hevajra; China; Ming dynasty, Yongle period, ca. 1417–1423; silk embroidery; 51⅝ x 32 in. (131 x 81 cm), Pritzker Collection.

Published: Heller 2008; Heller 2009.

Above: Fig. 6.5 Shākya Yeshé (d. 1435); commissioned by his students Amogha and Sönam Sherab; China; Ming dynasty, ca. 1434–1443; silk embroidered thangka; 42¾ x 24¾ in. (108.5 x 63 cm); Tibet Museum, Lhasa.

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The choice of subject matter for this gift is quite telling. While Hevajra practice is not emphasized in Shākya Yeshé’s biographies, the deity played a prominent role in the early Ming, stemming from its central position in the Yuan court. Hevajra was an essential initiation given to the Mongol emperors as part of their sacral investiture, and it was a prerequisite for the form of Mahākāla practice at the heart of the Yuan state cult (see figs. 1.8, 5.8, and 6.6). Yongle followed these Yuan precedents in his own initiation as a sacral cakravartin ruler, receiving Hevajra initiation from each of the three main Tibetan hierarchs who visited the court. He thus received both a blessing and a kind of consensus about his legitimacy as a sacral ruler from the three major leaders of the time. The theme of this gift is as much about court interests—and marking Yongle’s initiation and legitimacy as a sacral cakravartin ruler—as it is about Shākya Yeshé. Within this context, the transmission lineage recorded on the back of this court-made object confirms Shākya Yeshé as a legitimate holder of this tradition, thus authenticating Yongle’s initiation and consecration. The verses of praise for the holders of the transmission lineage make this clear. The inscription ends with the following: Homage to Shākya, representative [of Tsongkhapa] . . .

Homage to he who came into the presence of the Dharmarāja!

Homage to he who gave me, King of Merit [this Hevajra empowerment]!27 Yongle’s consecrated status as a universal sacral ruler is therefore confirmed through the bestowal of such an object.

Painting As discussed in chapter 5, the form of Mahākāla, who is closely associated with the Hevajra Tantra just described, was a centerpiece of Mongol imperial Buddhism and the most potent symbol of Tibetan esoteric power in the Yuan pantheon. An impressive painting of the same form of the protector deity is readily identified as a Ming work by the softening of the deity’s wrathful aspects, especially notable in his welcoming face (see fig. 6.6). The cloth modestly draped over the naked corpse on which he stands is also characteristic of other Ming Tibetan Buddhist works (see fig. 6.14).28 In addition, the highly ornate decorative patterns in the background and especially the painted floral border framing the canvas are specific details found on dated Ming works of the second half of the fifteenth century, particularly from the Chenghua 成化 reign (1465–1487). Moreover, recent pigment analysis confirms this assessment, as staple mineral pigments in Tibetan works, such as malachite and azurite, are absent, and the deep blue-black of the deity was probably achieved through the use of indigo.29 Printing Perhaps the most significant Yongle production for the Tibetan cultural world was the massive imperially commissioned 1410 printing of the Tibetan canon (Kangyur) in Tibetan and Chinese in Hangzhou.30 While there had been earlier printings of individual texts, this was the first time the Tibetan canon was printed, increasing its ability to be reproduced and disseminated. These printings were bestowed on temples and monasteries throughout the Tibetan Buddhist world; one was gifted to the head of the Sakya order in 1414

Opposite: Fig. 6.6 Pañjaranātha Mahākāla; China; Ming dynasty, late 15th century; distemper on cotton, mounted with silk brocade; 62½ x 48 in. (158.8 x 121.9 cm); Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, William Sturgis Bigelow Collection; 12.47 (HAR 87211).

Published: Nagoya/Boston Museum of Fine Arts 2002, cat. 33; Linrothe and Watt 2004, fig. 2.16.

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and another to Shākya Yeshé in 1416. It was described as “a wonderful set of the Kangyur (Tripiṭaka) printed for the first time in China, printed in vermillion ink and its covers’ faces written in gold letters.”31 Such volumes were bound in luxurious red lacquer book covers made of white sandalwood and ornamented with incised decorations of the eight auspicious symbols inlaid with gold, with the text’s name engraved in Tibetan and Chinese on the underside of the top cover (fig. 6.7).32 Porcelain Porcelain was another Chinese luxury medium in which Tibetan-inspired objects continued to be produced in the imperial kilns of Jingdezhen. Rather than a focus on figural forms as produced under the Mongols (see fig. 1.10), in the Ming we find more utilitarian vessels. Extremely simple, elegant forms, such as an ewer shaped like a monk’s cap, were based on Yuan prototypes (fig. 6.8). This ewer reveals a subtle incised decoration and an invocation in Tibetan under a transparent glaze.33 Other porcelain pieces follow classic Tibetan ritual implements, such as a stemmed altar bowl, where the same invocation is written in Tibetan in cobalt blue as a decorative motif (fig. 6.9).

Beyond these well-publicized projects and famous objects is the 1413 missive scroll, which Yongle sent to the Fifth Karmapa, describing the eunuch admiral Zhenghe’s 政和 (1371–1433) voyage to Sri Lanka and capture of the Buddha’s tooth relic.34 In the scroll the emperor also details his own visionary experiences, which clearly extend past the bounds of what was required in diplomacy.35 Zhengde Emperor While discussions of Ming court interest in Tibetan Buddhism tend to be limited to the Yongle emperor, he was by no means the most extreme among Ming rulers in his adoration of Tibetan Buddhism. Tibetan art continued to receive court patronage, especially under emperors Xuande (1426–1435) and Chenghua (1465– 1487), but Emperor Wuzong 武宗 of the Zhengde 正德 period (1506–1521) was an enthusiastic patron of Tibetan Buddhism who took his zeal to a level few had dared. According to the Wuzong waiji 武宗外纪, “At that time the emperor studied Tibetan scripture and converted to that religion. He dressed as a Tibetan monk and practiced the Dharma at court.”36 He was also proficient in the Tibetan language, kept many Tibetan monks around him, and built a Tibetan Buddhist temple in the Forbidden City. This horrified Confucian officials, who had to compete with the monks for the emperor’s ear. Much of this information is omitted from the official accounts of his reign, which simply state that he was an ineffectual ruler “not interested in culture.”37 According to Tibetan sources, Wuzong adopted the Tibetan name Rinchen Palden and—incredibly— went so far as to style himself as a reincarnation of the Seventh Karmapa (1454–1506).38 Far from wishful thinking on the part of Tibetans, this assertion, along with the mission of the eunuch envoy who carried these tidings, was not well received by the Karmapa’s court.39 Ming Chinese sources also confirm that beginning in 1510 Wuzong used the title Great Rejoicing King of the Dharma 大慶法王 to refer to himself.40 Thus the Tibetan name “Great Rejoicing King of the Dharma Rinchen Palden 領占班丹 of Protect the Nation Safeguard Peace Temple 大護國保安寺”41—found on thangkas with Zhengde reign dates—appears to refer to none other than the emperor himself, and the occasion for their creation was his birthday (fig. 6.10).42 Interestingly, the accompanying Tibetan inscription on this example dated 1512 is a phonetic transcription of the Chinese rather than a translation, indicating a Chinese context for this painting.43 Other extant Tibetan Buddhist paintings, rituals, temple constructions, and so on also date to several emperors’ birthdays, suggesting Tibetan Buddhism was an important part of the emperor’s personal sphere.44 Moreover, the close ties between Tibetan Buddhism and the imperial family were well known by the populace in the

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Fig. 6.7 Book Covers for the Bhadrakalpika Sūtra with the Eight Auspicious Symbols, from the Yongle edition of the Kangyur (1410); China; Ming dynasty, Yongle period (1403–1424), ca. 1410; red lacquer with incised decoration inlaid with gold (qiangjin); each cover: 28½ x 10½ x 1¼ in. (72.4 x 26.7 x 3.2 cm); Metropolitan Museum of Art; gift of Florence and Herbert Irving, 2015; 2015.500.1.52a, b.

Published: Watt and Leidy 2005, pl. 22.

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Fig. 6.8 Ewer in the Shape of a Tibetan Monk’s Cap; China; Ming dynasty; early 15th century; porcelain with incised hidden or anhua decoration under transparent glaze (Jingdezhen ware); height: 8 in. (20.3 cm); Metropolitan Museum of Art; gift of Stanley Herzman, in memory of Adele Herzman, 1991; 1991.253.36.

Published: Valenstein 1992, fig. 58; Watt and Leidy 2005, pl. 5; Leidy 2015, fig. 21; Metropolitan Museum of Art 2017, 70–71.

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Fig. 6.9 Altar Bowl with Tibetan Inscription; China; Ming dynasty, Xuande period (1426–1435); porcelain painted with cobalt blue and with incised decoration under transparent glaze (Jingdezhen ware); diameter: 6⅝ in. (16.8 cm); Metropolitan Museum of Art; gift of Mrs. Stanley Herzman, 1984; 1984.483.1.

Published: Valenstein 1984, 70; Valenstein 1988, 157, 303; Watt and Leidy 2005, pl. 6; Leidy 2015, fig. 21.3.

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capital.45 Given this imperial context, one must wonder about the rough quality and peculiar visual idiom of this painting and similar ones.46 It is unlikely they were produced in the Ming court atelier or by professional Tibetan artists; rather, this painting was probably from the hand of a Chinese amateur artist at one of the Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in Beijing connected to Wuzong, such as the one named in the inscription.

Dare we even speculate that it could be the amateur hand of Wuzong himself? As we can see, demand for Tibetan objects within the Ming court was strong, and the impetus for their creation multivariate.

A more polished painting from a similar context that subtly integrates Tibetan imagery into Chinese visual modes is a martial figure charging on his dapple-gray steed (fig. 6.11).47 The swirling pastel-colored auspicious clouds of pale pink, yellow, and orange that frame the composition are a common trope in Ming Buddhist painting, as observed in the Yongle handscroll and Ming wall paintings (see fig. 6.2). The martial depiction of the armored god, his retinue of stately celestial officials, and the gleeful demonic warriors are drawn from Chinese divine martial imagery. The deity that floats at the top center, however, clearly comes from Tibetan models. The sword in his right hand, the mongoose vomiting jewels in his left hand, and his dark color identify the central figure as Kubera, one of the Eight Masters of Horses and guardian-general of the southeast in the retinue of Vaiśrava a, a wealth god, war god, and guardian king popular in both the Tibetan and Chinese pantheons.48 It is quite likely that this Kubera was once part of a stately, imposing set of nine paintings, flanking a work similar in size, style, and subject matter to the Vaiśrava a in the Nelson-Atkins Museum.49 This painting, with an identical inscription to the previous Zhengde painting (see fig. 6.10) and dated a few years later to 1516, was also created on the Zhengde emperor’s birthday. This martial theme of the guardian Vaiśrava a and his eight horseman-generals—known for intervening in battles since the Tang dynasty50—joined Zhengde’s adoration of Tibetan Buddhism with another one of the emperor’s assumed identities, general Zhu Shou 朱壽, seemingly inspired by the warrior-ruler Yongle.51 Indeed, the following year in 1517 the emperor went north of Juyong Pass in the guise of this general to see action against the Mongols raiding on the frontier, which Ming forces seemed powerless to repel. Taken together, Zhengde’s interests and actions imply a wish to revive the imperial model of his predecessors Qubilai and Yongle in the martial universal ruler.52 Eunuchs Moving beyond the emperor, eunuchs were also important conduits between the creation of art at court and its support of Tibetan Buddhism. The intersecting layers of the eunuch bureaucracy at the Ming court made this possible, as eunuchs were both the controllers of the imperial construction apparatus, the Ministry of Works, and the official imperial envoys to the Tibetan patriarchs. The eunuchs were thus in close contact with the Tibetan clerics at court and often became their personal patrons; they used their positions overseeing court artists to create Tibetan Buddhist images. Many examples of eunuch patronage abound, from private temples—such as Fahaisi 法海寺 (1443), with integrated Chinese and Tibetan iconographic programs designed to tend to their needs in the afterlife53—to individual objects that bear dedicatory inscriptions of individual eunuchs (fig. 6.12).54 Interest among the Chinese Upper Class Interest in Tibetan Buddhism also extended beyond the court, and Tibetan images were fashionable among the upper-class devotees of Buddhism.55 A compelling example of private Chinese patronage of Tibetan images in the Ming is the commissioning of The Marvelous Images, Names, Sūtra, and Dhāraṇī of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas 諸佛菩薩妙相名號經咒, printed in 1431 in Beijing (fig. 6.13).56 It is a woodblock

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Fig. 6.10 Vajrabhairava; China; Ming dynasty, Zhengde reign (1506–1521), dated 1512; ink and color on silk; 51 x 39 in. (129.5 x 99 cm); University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; gift of James and Dorothy Cahill; 1982.13.

Published: Weidner 1994, fig. 11; Weidner 2009a, fig. 8; Weidner 2009b, fig. 1; Debreczeny 2016, pl. 17.5.

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Fig. 6.11 Kubera; China; Ming dynasty, ca. 1516; pigments on cotton; 47⅝ x 38¼ in. (121 x 97.2 cm); Musée national des arts asiatiques–Guimet, Paris; MA 1636.

Published: Béguin 1989, 106–107; Rhie and Thurman 1991, cat 45; Béguin 1995, 316; Rhie and Thurman 1996, 162–63; Weidner 2008, fig. 9; Weidner 2009b, fig. 15.

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Fig. 6.12 The Buddha’s Disciple Ananda Commissioned by the Eunuch Jiao Ning; China; Ming dynasty, Zhengde reign (1506–1521), dated 1514; gilded bronze; 9½ x 2½ x 3½ in. (24.1 x 6.4 x 8.9 cm); Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, The Avery Brundage Collection; B70S8.

collection of popular texts and illustrations as conveyed by the Fifth Karmapa. Although there are colophons in Chinese, Lantsa (Sanskrit), Tibetan, and Mongolian, the primary language of the text is Chinese, suggesting a Chinese patron. Interestingly, the Mongolian language was still considered a vital language in Beijing in the 1430s. Regarding Chinese interest in Tibetan images, it is also worth noting that in the colophon the patron specifically expresses his desire for the illustrations to appear in the Tibetan style.57 Projecting Imperial Power beyond Beijing The monastery of Qutansi 瞿曇寺 (Drotsang Dorjé Chang), founded in 1392 in modern-day Qinghai Province on the northwest Ming frontier, reflects an early Ming court interest in Tibetan Buddhism. An examination of local Tibetan chronicles and Chinese imperial records reveals that Qutansi was dependent

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on the Ming court’s support and protection. In turn, its patronage was part of a larger Ming Sino-Tibetan border strategy to establish an alliance between the local authorities and the imperial court.58 If one maps where Ming garrisons end, it’s clear that a network of such court-supported temples took over.59 The early Ming court repeatedly sent high-ranking eunuchs, such as the Director of Imperial Accoutrements, to participate in the construction of Qutansi, no doubt accompanied by teams of high-ranking master craftsmen from the imperial atelier. Qutansi is Chinese in architecture, with a mixed Chinese and Tibetan painting and statuary program.60 While some wall paintings appear Tibetan in both style and iconography, Chinese painters’ hands are revealed in many small details. For instance, the skull crown of Mahākāla is painted in the same manner as those found in Chinese temples, strung together through the eye sockets (fig. 6.14). Loincloths placed modestly on figures are also characteristic of Chinese production of Tibetan Buddhist imagery (see fig. 6.6). These elements indicate that painters of the Ming imperial atelier could work in both Tibetan and Chinese idioms, depending on the context and needs of the patron.

A brief account of the casting of a gilt-bronze Buddha—the main image in the central hall of Baoguangdian 寶光殿—appears in the bilingual Imperial Bestowal of Qutansi’s Golden Buddha Image Stele 御制瞿曇寺金佛像碑, dated 1418. In this text, Yongle projects himself as a universal sacral king ruling over his kingdom, evoking the image of King Indrabhūti of O iyāna, the Indian historical model of devout rule (see chapter 2). Enhancing the aura of piety in the emperor’s act is a story familiar to the making of sacral images across traditions, designed to increase the efficacy of the image: Though the artisans worked for a long time they could not complete it, until one day when they went out for food, leaving the workshop deserted, the divine body manifested itself. This frightened and amazed everyone and was seen as a magical manifestation of the powers by the buddhas and bodhisattvas, thus completing the work in a single casting.61 At that time, the requisite markers of miraculous events in the Tibetan tradition were observed: a sweet smell of otherworldly incense was enjoyed and auspicious light spread. This sculpture was thus known as miraculously self-arisen (rang ’byung), a special class of sacred images within the Tibetan tradition. This statue was then sent west as a gift to the Tibetan abbot.

Qutansi was once well appointed with such gilt bronzes produced at the Ming court, as evidenced by a surviving near-life-sized bodhisattva with a Yongle reign mark (1403–1424), one of the Eight Great Bodhisattvas that once flanked a central triad, now in the Qinghai Provincial Museum. These bronzes were recorded as created in imperial workshops and sent west, implying a larger pattern for other statuary. A similar 4½-foot-tall sculpture in the Cernuschi Museum with an identical trilingual reign mark in Chinese, Sanskrit, and Tibetan, otherwise uncommon to Yongle bronzes, probably comes from Qutansi or one of the other early Ming temples built along the northern Sino-Tibetan frontier (figs. 6.15 and 1.17).62 Such temples can be viewed as sites of political propagation, a projection of Ming imperial power into contested borderlands conveyed through a mixture of Chinese imperial architecture and an international Buddhist visual vocabulary—all part of an attempt to gain a foothold along the Ming-Amdo frontier.

Conclusion Ming engagement with Tibetan Buddhism was built on a firm foundation of Mongolian precedents in order for the early Ming emperors to project themselves as rulers on the Inner Asian model, molded in

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Fig. 6.13 The Fifth Karmapa (1384–1415), folio 7 from The Marvelous Images, Names, Sūtra, and Dhāraṇī of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas (Zhufopusa miaoxiang minghao jingzhou 諸佛菩薩妙相名號經咒); Beijing, China; printed in 1431; ink on paper; 10¼ x 6½ in. (26 x 16.5 cm); Musée national des arts asiatiques–Guimet, Paris; BG46348.

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Above: Fig. 6.14 Pañjaranātha Mahākāla; south wall, west door wall, Qutandian, Qutansi 瞿曇寺, Ledu County, Qinghai Province, China.

Opposite: Fig. 6.15 Bodhisattva (see fig. 1.17); Qutansi, Qinghai Province, China; Ming dynasty, Yongle reign mark (1403–1424); gilt bronze; 53½ x 26 x 17¾ in. (136 x 66 x 45 cm); Musée Cernuschi, Paris; M.C. 5173.

Published: Béguin 2000, 144–45; Béguin 2005, 9; Foljambe 2008, 90n193; Colomban et al. 2012, fig. 2; Clunas and Harrison-Hall 2014, fig. 205; Debreczeny 2016, pl. 17.15.

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the image of Qubilai Khan. From the evidence presented here, it is clear that involvement with Tibetan Buddhism was a defining aspect of imperial identity for the first half of the Ming dynasty.63 The sheer volume of Tibetan Buddhist images produced in Yongle’s court is staggering and testifies to Yongle’s investment in this tradition, perhaps only rivaled by the Manchu Qianlong emperor in the eighteenth century (see chapter 9).

Many other aspects of Mongol policy, however, were not followed, such as the adoption of Tibetan Buddhism as an official state religion, the appointment of Tibetan imperial preceptors, the inclusion of Tibet in the Ming realms, or the garrisoning of imperial troops in Tibet.64 Moreover, unlike Mongol rule, Tibetan Buddhism was not consistently supported during the Ming. When the Tibet-crazed Zhengde emperor died without an heir in 1521 and a cousin raised far from the capital ascended the throne, it marked an important shift in both the identity of the imperial family and the orientation of the Ming court away from Qubilai’s model of rule.65 Under the succeeding Daoist Jiajing emperor (r. 1521–1567), Buddhism underwent active suppression, temples were destroyed or converted, and Tibetan Buddhists were ejected from imperial institutions. While imperial interest was rekindled soon after by Wanli 萬歷 (r. 1573–1620), a second massive conversion of the Mongols to Tibetan Buddhism in the late sixteenth century replaced waning Ming interests, soon to be revived on a grand scale by the Manchus.66

notes 1

Robinson 2008, 8, 11. This continuation of the Chinggisid world into the early fifteenth century is perhaps most famously represented by Tamerlane/ Temür (d. 1405) in the West.

2

Robinson 2008 and 2016; Debreczeny 2016; Clunas, Harrison-Hall, and Luk 2016.

3

Dardess 1983; Robinson 2016.

4

Hongwu patronized several Tibetan lamas and their monastic projects, including Qutansi’s founder Sangyé Tashi (Ch. Lama Sanluo 剌麻三囉; d. 1414) in Qinghai Province. See Sperling 2001a.

5

the border of southwestern Yunnan and northern Myanmar, based on the Burmese script. Daniels 2012.

15 See Debreczeny 2007, 104–7; Jackson 2009, 96–97; and Debreczeny 2012, 118–19, 258–63.

16 Noth 2015, 164–65.

17 Noth 2015, 164–65.

18 Qin Lingyun 1958; Fong and Watt 1996, 329; Ledderose 2000; Debreczeny 2007, 128.

19 Watt and Leidy 2005, 15.

20 See Heller 2008 and 2009 for detailed descriptions.

For instance, the head of the Sakya order, Kunga Tashi Gyaltsen (1349–1424), played an important political role in both Yuan and Ming court connections with Gyantsé.

21 Sperling 1983, 149–51, 187–88.

6

Robinson 2008 and 2016; Clunas, Harrison-Hall, and Luk 2016.

7

Sperling 1983, 74–76.

24 Laba Pingcuo 2012, 67–73, 88–91; Xiong Wenbin 2014, 158; Jia Yang and Wang Mingxing 2000, fig. 55; Weidner 2009.

8

Tsai 2001, 84.

9

Sperling 1983.

10 Sperling 1983.

11 Sperling 2004a.

12 Sperling 1983, 140, emphasis mine.

13 Luo Wenhua 1995; Berger 2001; Jia Yang and Wang Mingxing 2000, 94–137; Daniels 2012; Whitfield 2014.

14 Tay is a language of the mÄng2 Maaw2 state on

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22 Tshe dbang rin chen 1995, 82, 84.

23 Heller 2008 and 2009.

25 Heller 2008, 67, and 2009, 299–300. Also see Henss 1997; and HAR 4479 at www.himalayanart.org/search/ set.cfm?setID=4479.

26 Shākya Yeshé’s envoys to the Ming court were his students Amogha and Sönam Sherab, who both received the title State Preceptor. According to the inscription at the bottom of the textile, these students commissioned not only the famous Shākya Yeshé portrait but also silk kesi images of Kālacakra, Chakrasa vara, Hevajra, Vajrabhairava, and Mahācakra. Laba Pingcuo 2012, 90; Xiong Wenbin

In the Shadow of the Khan: Tibetan Buddhist Art and Political Legitimation in the Ming Dynasty

2014, 159. Another of his students, Zhönnu Pal, also served the Ming court.

27 Bsod rgyal is short for bsod nams kyi rgyal po (“king of merit”) or bsod nams stobs kyi rgyal po (“king of the strength of merit”), an epithet of kings and rulers.

28 Previously, this work had been identified as Central Tibetan, sixteenth century. See Nagoya/Boston Museum of Fine Arts 2002, 104.

29 The analyzed blue areas did not have any high levels of elements normally associated with inorganic blues, such as copper for azurite. The absence of elements thus points toward the likely use of an organic blue, such as indigo. Thanks to Jacki Elgar, Hsin-Chen Tsai, and Michiko Adachi of the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), Boston, conservation department for including this pigment analysis as part of their conservation work and sharing their results. An unusual bright orange underlayer (analysis by XRF suggests mercury [vermillion], arsenic [orpiment], and lead white) is also found in both the Chenghua MFA painting (06.1901), dated 1479, and this Mahākāla painting (12.47).

30 Karmay 1975, 50–54; Imaeda 1977, 23–51; Harrison 1996, 70–94; Schaeffer 2009, 145.

31 Phur lcog ngag dbang byams ba 1989, 51.

32 Watt and Leidy 2005, 55–57; Clunas and Harrison-Hall 2014, 230–31.

42 Richardson 1975. Weidner 2009a, 32.

43 Chinese: 大明正德七年九月二十四日大護國保 安寺大慶法王領占班丹發心造. Tibetan [badly abraded]: ta’i ming dzing de’i zhi nyan chyi’u yas zh ********[damaged] bsa’i ta’i khing hwa wang rin chen dpal ldan hwa zin **.

44 Robinson 2008, 377. Quite a few paintings, such as the Musée Guimet Hevajra (MA 4838), dated 1474, are similarly dated to the Chenghua emperor’s birthday.

Weidner 2009a, 15.

45 Robinson 2008, 405.

46 See Weidner 2009a and 2009b.

47 Beguin 1989, 106–7, no. 38; Weidner 2008; Rhie and Thurman 1991, 162–63, cat. 45.

48 See for instance Musée Guimet (MA 5160); Rhie and Thurman 1991, 160–61; and Nelson-Atkins Museum (79-54).

49 Also observed by Weidner 2008, 89–90, and 2009b, 324.

50 Goble 2012, 162–70.

51 Weidner 2008, 97–98; Twitchett and Mote 1988, 414– 22.

52 Robinson 2008, 400–406.

53 Debreczeny 2003, 2007, and 2016.

33 Invocation of the protective goddess Mahāśri: “Daytime is auspicious, and nighttime is auspicious; Noon is auspicious, and auspicious are day and night; May there be auspiciousness due to the three jewels.”

Watt and Leidy 2005, 34–36, 84.

54 Thorp 1988, no. 52; McLoughlin 2014, 44.

34 Xizang zizhiqu wenwu guanli weiyuan hui 1981; Sperling 2011.

58 Sperling 2001.

35 Sperling 2011.

36 是时上诵习番经, 心皈其教. 尝被番僧服, 演法内 厂. Mao Qiling 毛奇龄 (1623–1716), Ming Wuzong wai ji 明武宗外纪.

37 See Goodrich 1976, 307–15; Twitchett and Mote 1988, 403–39; Robinson 2008, 405.

55 Weidner 1994, 59–60.

56 Karmay 1975; Xiong Wenbin 2015.

57 Karmay 1975.

59 Tuttle 2011.

60 Debreczeny 2003, 2007, 2016; Xie Jisheng and Liao Yang 2006b.

61 Xie Zuo 1998, 86–89.

62 Debreczeny 2016, 160.

63 Robinson 2008, 405.

38 Richardson 1959, 6–8; appendix B, 16–17.

64 Sperling 1980a, 1982, 1983.

39 Sperling 1980a.

65 Robinson 2008, 370, 409–10.

40 Weidner 2009a, 34–35; Linrothe 2015, 44, citing Toh 2004, 189–93.

66 Wylie 1979, 338; Elverskog 2011.

41 Huang Hao 1993, 8–9.

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The prevailing assumption that religion and politics are antithetical categories seems to be dis-

proved in a Tibetan context, where they never were antipodes. They were seen as two sides of the same coin, mutually indispensable and constantly nurturing or supplementing one another. Are we to assume that this incessant cross-fertilization was due to Tibet’s unusual historical and social understanding, the very nature of governance, and the idiosyncratic exercise of authority that nurtured this alliance of opposites? Despite strong tensions in their interaction, the fruitful alliance between religion and politics was more the rule than the exception.

Faith and empire building in Tibet were companions from the beginning. Following the collapse of the Tibetan Empire in the mid-ninth century, eight hundred years passed before Tibetans again proved capable of establishing a government that united a considerable part of its huge territory. The establishment of a unique Buddhist government (1642–1959), known as Ganden Phodrang, was now headed by a divine throne—often described as a form of sacral kingship or theocracy—ruled by a figurehead, a living bodhisattva manifested in the body of the Dalai Lama.1 This high-ranking religious incarnate was considered a human embodiment of Avalokiteśvara, the Patron Deity of Compassion (see fig. 3.1), in which the destiny and survival—indeed the raison d’être—of the country was directly invested.

In approaching the Dalai Lamas and the rise of their government, which ideologically was founded on the most prominent reincarnation institution in Tibet’s history, this essay will focus on the key figure of the entire institution, the Great Fifth Dalai Lama (1617–1682) (fig. 7.1). It highlights two aspects, without which the ascent of the first proper post-imperial nation-building cannot be adequately understood. First, there is an outline that delineates the twin systems of religion and politics as an unparalleled ruling system of governance;2 the essay also attempts, in greater detail, to unveil the divine origin of the Dalai Lama institution.

Second, there is a brief overview of the period prior to the Dalai Lama’s unification (1642), characterized by political instability due to the absence of a proper nation-state. This overview will be narrated by following the vicissitude of the Ārya Lokeśvara statue, one of Tibet’s most precious objects.

A Tibetan Paradigm Extraordinaire Shifting Identities: Emperor/Bodhisattva/Incarnate The phenomenon of incarnation as a religiopolitical institution has a long history in Tibet. With the establishment of Buddhism as a state religion in 779, the sacred nature of the Tibetan emperors, or tsenpo (btsan po), gradually underwent a number of major ideological transformations. Now that they were equipped

Opposite: Detail of fig. 7.5

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with a new Buddhist royal identity, the emperors moved away from being regarded as divine ancestral beings of celestial origin, endowed with supernatural properties (see chapter 3).

The ideological tide of cultural renewal that swept across Asia following the Buddhist conquest of Tibet’s neighbors transformed Tibet itself for good. The kings now were seen as wheel-turning monarchs (cakravartin) committed to the royal role model of India par excellence, the pious Aśoka-style Buddhist emperor or ruler (dharmarāja) (see chapter 2). A basic shift in their core identity proved necessary: the successive tsenpo now were addressed as physical embodiments of a variety of bodhisattvas and later even buddhas, among others as manifestations of Avalokiteśvara or Lokeśvara (“Lord of the World”), the paramount bodhisattva who throughout the Buddhist world embodies the altruistic compassion of all buddhas, also known as the Great Compassionate One (Mahākaru ika). Further support came from a number of early Mahāyāna scriptures dedicated to the magic feats of Buddha Amitābha and his spiritual bodhisattva “son,” such as the Lotus Sūtra, the Sukhāvatīvyūha-sūtra, and not least the Kāraṇḍavyūha-sūtra, all of which shaped the ideological foundation for Avalokiteśvara’s popularity. This renown was also enhanced by the widely circulated six-syllable formula (oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ), the most powerful and popular mantric formula known to all Tibetans, considered the salvific quintessence (paramahṛdaya) of the deity.3 The figure commonly acknowledged as the founder of the Tibetan dynasty (ca. 629–842), Songtsen Gampo (ca. 605–649) (fig 7.2), was retrospectively regarded as a manifestation of this bodhisattva—an ascription already pioneered in the late dynastic period but fully championed in a series of early elevenththrough twelfth-century largely legendary biographies, or testamentary narratives, such as Bka’ chems Ka khol ma and Ma ṇi bka’ ’bum, dedicated to the king as a manifestation of the deity. These mythographic narratives heralded the beginning of what would become part of the country’s national myth, cherished by all Tibetans until this very day as part of their national identity. The narratives propagated Tibet as Avalokiteśvara’s destined “field of conversion” (buddhakṣetra), its origin exclusively ascribed to his altruistic workings and soteriological agenda, portraying the Patron Deity as the father or genitor of the Tibetan nation and people. The vita corpus of the founding king mentioned above showcased a grand, concerted Buddhist vision—a sort of master plan for a future nation-building—that soon gained universal acclaim and approval in all corners of the society. Now Avalokiteśvara was staged to embody the destiny of Tibet as reflected in the phrase that the deity was regarded as “the divine legacy or destiny” (lha skal, lit. “share”) of Tibet.4 It is small wonder that the institution of the Dalai Lamas, rigorously bolstered by the Fifth Dalai Lama personally, strategically tapped into these national legacies by placing it at the center of their own constitutive narrative. In retrospect, this accounts for the overriding role the founding king played in Tibetan history, later expediently emulated by the Fifth Dalai Lama, a strategy that ensured both historical heroes a lasting place in the heart and mind of Tibetans.5 A Proliferation of Embodiments and Incarnations A popular literary genre in Tibet was the illustrative collections of Jātakas, or birth stories, which narrate the Buddha’s multiple former preexistences in time and space, and are supported by a myriad of large edificatory murals and thangkas depicting them. In most of these tales, Buddha Śākyamuni, as an enlightened being driven by compassion, sets an example of ideal conduct in the human world throughout his many Opposite: Fig. 7.1 Scenes from The Life of The Fifth Dalai Lama (1617–1682); Tibet; 18th century; pigments on cloth; 33⅜ x 20⅞ in. (84.8 x 53 cm); Rubin Museum of Art; C2003.9.2 (HAR 65275).

Published: Brauen 2005, fig. 46; Mullin 2007, fig. 34; Debreczeny 2011, fig. 32; Jackson 2012, fig. 3.25; Van Alphen 2014, 134–36; Gyatso 2015, fig. 2.4; Arthur 2016, fig. 5.

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Fig. 7.2 Tibetan Emperor Songsten Gampo (ca. 605–649) Framed by the Fifth Dalai Lama’s (1617–1682) Hand and Footprints; Tibet; late 17th century; distemper on cloth; 30⅛ x 19½ in. (76.5 x 49.5 cm); Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, Brussels; ver. 338.

Published: Selig Brown 2004, pl. 17; Lambrecht 2006, 109.

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rebirths in order to liberate people fettered to sa sāra, an engagement considered the noblest commitment along the Mahāyāna soteriological path. From the thirteenth century onwards, religious masters and historical figures, all considered emanation bodies, tulku (sprul sku) or “enlightened beings,” invaded every corner of Tibetan religious life, institutions, and religious seats to emulate within their own real human existence the same noble commitment: the Mahāyāna ideal of a transcendent bodhisattva.

In its most elaborated form, these human-induced emanations eventually became an integral part of a lineage scheme. It was constructed to work two ways: regressively—a current tulku claimed to be an individual from the past who was part of a series of former preexistences; and progressively—the tulku claimed to be living in successive bodies aligned in an entire lineage of successive reincarnates (sku phreng, lit. “human rosaries”). Tibetans already systematically cultivated and crafted such lineage schemes in the twelfth century.

The first documentation appears within the Karmapa school, where its hierarch established such a lineage, though the phenomenon of consciously regulating one’s life in successive bodies can be traced further back in time.6 Such emanational personalities were anchored in the society by assuming multiple roles, mainly by functioning as influential hierarchs of established monastic seats, often with considerable political power.

By the sixteenth century, the institutional regulation of inheritance through lineages of incarnates had become the guiding principle and model in governing most of the country’s religious seats. It also extended to the families of tulkus, who often served as managers of land and estates.

The universal appeal and long history in Tibet of the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara meant that leading hierarchs from the religious schools—Kadampa, Karmapa, Sakyapa, Drigungpa, Drukpa, and later Gelukpa, among others—unanimously or successively rivaled one another in laying claim to embody or represent the tutelary Patron Deity. Staking claim to be the earthly representation of Avalokiteśvara was therefore not the exclusive privilege of the Dalai Lama institution, though it reached its political pinnacle in his person and lineage. Such assertions were usually never contested, since Avalokiteśvara was indeed capable of manifesting himself in many forms.7 In some corners, the proclivity to assume a new identity or additional identities by way of a (re)incarnation status, a cornerstone of spiritual and social prestige, inflated dramatically and turned into an entire “other body” industry. Tibet’s religious life was increasingly flooded by a bewildering number of both authorized and assumed personalities asserting that they were the true emanational figures.8 Bridging Religion and Politics The intersection of religion and politics is a principle of rule documented in Tibet for at least a millennium and emblematic of Tibetan politics from the eleventh to the seventeenth century. From the outset, the two concepts were constantly interacting and being negotiated, viewed as distinct in some moments and in unison in others. Yet the inherent tension was to influence the fate of local dynasties and regional governorships and to inform ruling monastic polities, which were headed by the aforementioned lineage succession of ruling incarnates.

From the beginning, the institutional history of Buddhism in Tibet has shown the presence, power, and—to varying degrees—the coalescence of faith and empire. The ruling system of the Gugé dynasty (tenth to eleventh century) in western Tibet, for example, displayed a royal rule that derived from the moribund Central Tibetan dynasty, whose emperors had been considered bodhisattvas; some Gugé rulers retained this attribute. The dynasty’s second king, Yeshé Ö (Ye-shes ’Od; ca. 947–1024 or 959–1040), ordained and equipped with divine properties, commanded his realm strictly according to Buddhist principles. Yet the most important antecedent, copiously referred to by the Dalai Lama court to exemplify a

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model for relationships and governance, was the idealized connection between the Mongol Yuan rulers and the Sakya hierarchs in the thirteenth century. This connection was particularly emphasized in the seventeenth century, when the Mongols helped secure Geluk power.

The principle of the dual law (lugs gnyis) exercised during this period—the law of the Dharma and the law of the State—each with different legislative structures, was originally grounded in an old Indian system that regulated the relationship between a secular patron or donor and a preceptor or priest. This was defined as a diarchic form of governance founded on the twin systems of spiritual and temporal orders.9 To galvanize the legitimacy of its governing system, the Potala court of the Dalai Lamas ingeniously sought inspiration from these telling forerunners in Tibet’s local history. The founding system that the Dalai Lama and his Buddhist government established in the 1640s merely rearticulated this guiding principle of rule. The innovative part in redefining the twin system was to reassemble the executive power by bridging or merging the two opposing pillars and to simply designate their rule as “religion and state/government united in one.”10 The Dalai Lama Lineage: Indigenous Rebirth (Jātaka) Templates, Telling Imaginaires, and an Innovative Lineage Selection The emergence of the Dalai Lama institution proved to be a turning point in Tibet’s history after a chaotic period in the mid-seventeenth century. Earlier, a fateful meeting in 1578 between Altan Khan (1507–1582) of the Tümed Mongols and the Drepung chöje, the prospective Third Dalai Lama Sönam Gyatso (1543– 1588)—already a minor incarnate within the Geluk school—led to the establishment of a patron-priest (yönchö; yon mchod) pact. This event sparked the rise of Geluk as the dominant school in Tibet.11 Unknown to the parties involved back then, the new Tibeto-Mongol liaison held far-reaching repercussions throughout Central Asia, giving Tibet a voice in politics again, almost eight hundred years to the day after the demise of the Tibetan dynasty in 842 and the rise of the Ganden Phodrang in 1642. It spawned a momentous conversion of the Mongols to the Tibetan form of Buddhism, changing the religious landscape of Mongolia for good. To this end, the Altan Khan–Dalai Lama religiopolitical agreement was praised by both as a renewal and a symbolic restoration of the Yuan-Sakya pact almost three hundred years before, but this time on a more equal basis.

A number of years before the unification of Tibet under the Fifth Dalai Lama, Ngawang Losang Gyatso (1617–1682), which culminated in his all-out victory against his Tibetan foes in Shigatsé with the military help of Güshri Khan (1582–1655) of the Khoshuud (Qoshot) Mongols, the incarnate already entertained thoughts about how to provide an authoritative basis for his own now state-based incarnation lineage, a step considered vital to legitimate the institution’s divine origins. He did so by underscoring the institution’s time-tested link to the past. An unusual portrait sculpture of the Fifth Dalai Lama bears an inscription suggesting that it is akin to a touch relic, having been personally blessed with his barleycorn (fig. 7.3).12 The Fifth Dalai Lama, still a young incarnate novice, found inspiration from reading the Book of the Kadampa (Bka’ gdams glegs bam), which soon served as the basis for his lineage sanctification. Until his passing in 1682, the Great Fifth continued working on his former rebirth series in writings and with wall paintings and the manufacture of statues and thangkas, all with the aim of documenting the line’s exalted prestige. As head of state, the Dalai Lama personally reflected over whom he considered worthy of being Opposite: Fig. 7.3 Portrait Sculpture of the Fifth Dalai Lama (1617–1682); Tibet; 17th century; copper alloy with gilding; height: 3⅞ in. (9.9 cm); Yury Khokhlov Collection.

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Fig. 7.4 Dromtön (1105–1164), Framed by the Fifth Dalai Lama’s (1617–1682) Hand and Footprints; Tibet; late 17th century; pigments on cloth; 30 x 19½ in. (76.2 x 49.5 cm); Musée national des arts asiatiques–Guimet, Paris; MG 19106.

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Fig. 7.5 Fifth Dalai Lama (1617–1682) with His Own Hand and Footprints; Tibet; late 17th century; pigments on cloth; 30 x 19½ in. (76.2 x 49.5 cm); Musée national des arts asiatiques–Guimet, Paris; MG19107.

Published: Chayet 1994, pl. 24; Béguin 1995, cat. 323; Jackson 1996, pl. 31; Selig Brown 2004, pl. 19; Brauen 2005, fig. 42; Debreczeny 2012, fig. 9.4.

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ennobled into his own former rebirth lineage. He sought a grand scheme and soon found a basic predecessor lineage in high esteem within his own school. His choice fell on the preexistence lineage of Dromtön (’Brom ston Rgyal ba’i ’byung gnas, 1105–1064) (fig 7.4), the celebrated founder of the Kadampa (Bka’ gdams pa) sect, a forerunner school of the Gelukpa. He relied on an important source in the Kadampa/ Gelukpa tradition, the above Book of the Kadampa, a compendium largely containing material that stemmed from the Kadampa pioneer, the Bengali master Atiśa Dīpa karaśrījñāna (982–1054). Atiśa played a decisive role upon his arrival in Tibet in 1042 by promoting the cult around Avalokiteśvara; he himself was considered a manifestation of the deity. He acknowledged his principal pupil, Dromtön, as a manifestation of the very same deity and depicted this favorite student as a divine being in a collection of over twenty Jātaka-style biographical narratives, where Dromtön in his former lives—faithful to the popular Buddhist Jātaka genre—manifested himself as king and prince. The concept of royalty here is essential to keep in mind. In a particularly lengthy tale, Dromtön, as an embodiment of Avalokiteśvara, vowed to manifest himself in due course as Songtsen Gampo (see fig. 7.2), as well as other Tibetan dharmarāja. This tale acquired enormous popularity in future centuries, culminating in the writings and paintings executed at the Potala court. Dromtön was crowned as an emanational heir to Tibet’s royal history, elevated as an eleventh-century reviver of Tibet’s past, and in writings, he represented an envisaged indigenization of Buddhism onto Tibetan soil by founding a powerful new school.13 A popular way of visually documenting the former lineage of the Dalai Lamas was to paint each individual rebirth in a series of thangkas. The key figures in the series are depicted with hand and foot imprints (see figs. 7.2, 7.3, and 7.5), an increasingly popular expression that served as both blessing and sanctification.

An eighteenth-century painting in a variant style depicts the Fifth Dalai Lama with an assembly of his main former rebirth emanations (fig. 7.6).

The entire Dalai Lama lineage succession is, for the first thirty-six Indic prehistoric incarnations, nothing more than a mechanical adoption of Dromtön’s former rebirth series.14 What followed in the Dalai Lama’s genealogical enumeration was a more personal selection, starting with the Tibetan prehistoric kings, the dynastic progenitor Nyatri Tsenpo, followed by Songtsen Gampo and the other two prominent dharma-kings. Throughout his life, the Fifth Dalai Lama steadily expanded and fabricated his rebirth list to include further candidates from Tibet’s history that he considered worthy to be enrolled; it included figures already considered emanations of the Patron Deity themselves, or ones who had rendered ritual or restitutive service for the protection of the Jokhang in the heart of Lhasa, an imperial-period legacy and towering monument associated with the founding king. He was assisted at the close of his life by the powerful regent Desi Sangyé Gyatso (1653–1705), who must be counted as the key architect behind the ascendancy of the Geluk state throughout the century.

Desi Sangyé Gyatso and the Fifth Dalai Lama were true masters of the pen and wrote prodigiously, focusing on the role and legitimacy of the Geluk’s now exclusive claim to rule and to nation-building.

Together with his ruler, Sangyé Gyatso must be considered the ultimate codifier and vigorous promoter of the lineage construction; he expanded his master’s succession lineage based on—no doubt—the Dalai Lama’s advice. Looking closer, it becomes evident that there are several chronological overlappings between the individual figures, so three or four of his former embodiments are registered to have lived during the same century, thus rendering problematic a proper chronology between the figures. On one occasion, the Dalai Lama, in his defense, countered the critique by claiming—with disarming honesty—that inconsistencies in the succession are due to the workings or displays of illusion (māyā), quoting the Buddhist simile udakacandropamā, a celebrated dictum:15

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Fig. 7.6 The Fifth Dalai Lama Ngawang Losang Gyatso (1617–1682) with Previous Incarnations; Central Tibet; 18th century; pigments on cloth; 25¾ x 16⅝ in. (65.4 x 42.2 cm); Rubin Museum of Art; gift of the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation; F1996.29.3 (HAR 506).

Published: Rhie and Thurman 1999, cat. 129; Brauen 2005, fig. 48; Sørensen 2005b, fig. 1; Mullin 2007, fig. 18; Van Alphen 2014, 43, 96–97.

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[My numerous body manifestations at one and the same time are] tantamount to the simile of one moon capable of being reflected in the water (udakacandropamā) a countless number of times at one and the same time.

ཟླ་བ་གཅིག་ལ་ཆུ་ཟླ་གྲངས་མེད་འབྱུང་བ་ལྟར་ Fifth Dalai Lama His carefully honed selection of past existences discloses that Ngawang Losang Gyatso was fully aware of the national legacy and symbolism resting on his shoulders in his quest for national legitimation; he saw himself as a sort of royal heir to Tibet’s past, worthy of being the secular and spiritual ruler of a new nationstate.16 This belief is most evident in the repertoire and visual program of marvelous, detailed, largerthan-life wall paintings of his national rebirth lineages, paintings that along with the production of a large number of thangkas (see for example figs. 7.2, 7.4, and 7.5) would soon decorate the grand halls in the envisaged Potala Palace.

A Coveted Idol: The Political Struggle for a National Relic Prior to the military conflicts and ensuing unification of Tibet in 1642, a spectacular episode of regional strife in the seventeenth century helps illustrate the rivalry that prevailed between the united Geluk front, with strongholds throughout Ü (Dbus), and the neighboring Tsang (Gtsang) province, where the powerful Tsang rulers and the Karmapa reigned. The episode focuses on a coveted icon, the wooden statue of Phakpa Lokeśvara (fig 7.7), which for centuries had resided in a hermitage on the Red Hill (Marpori) in Lhasa.

Devotees and pilgrims considered it as an iconic instantiation and local substitute (sku tshab) of the real Patron Deity, and thus all denominations throughout Tibet worshipped it and regularly visited the statue while on pilgrimage to Lhasa.17 The cultic history of the statue and the national significance vested in this palladium meant the relic soon got caught between the unyielding fronts of Ü and Tsang.18 The Great Fifth, not without reason, called the relic Bod kha ba can kyi lha skal, “the fated or hereditary statue par excellence of Tibet.” The destiny embodied in this national relic tellingly mirrors the ongoing battle over Lhasa and ultimately the sovereignty over Tibet. The leading hierarchs on both fronts, equally claiming to be embodiments of the Patron Deity, and their ruling allies strived to secure the cultural prestige associated with custody over the icon. They could then claim to be the legitimate custodians of both the site and the statue, which was seen as an insignia of legitimation, not unlike a scepter.

During almost fifty years of warfare, the precious icon became enmeshed in politics.19 In 1605, the Ganden Kyishöpa (Dga’ ldan Skyid shod pa), a powerful local ally of the Gelukpa, removed it from Lhasa’s Red Hill during a battle and transferred to his Drakar (Brag dkar) estate. The Ganden Kyishöpa took this dramatic step out of fear that the statue would fall into the hands of their Tsang foes, as the Fifth Dalai Lama admits in his autobiography. The loss of the relic would have represented an ideological blow and displacement as the rightful inheritors to the legacy of Lokeśvara and his abode on the Red Hill.20 The icon’s odyssey continued. At the end of 1616 of the lunar calendar, the Mongol-born Fourth Dalai Lama passed away—an unnatural death brought on by military setbacks and possible foul play. In 1618, with Mongolia’s pro-Geluk troops in retreat, the successful Tsang armies attacked Lhasa and—temporarily—controlled most of Central Tibet. At this point, the Kyishöpa leader, Apal, seeing his Drakar estate about to be sacked, decided to transfer the holy icon to Mongolia (Kokonor, Amdo/Qinghai). In this unusual move, the statue was to be used as a kind of bait, to inveigle the Mongols into providing renewed military assistance and engagement with the Geluk. To hand over a national object to the Tümed Mongols was clearly born

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Fig. 7.7 Copy of the Phakpa Lokeśvara of Lhasa; Tibet or Nepal; date uncertain; wood with gold paint and colors; 11½ x 3½ x 1¾ in. (29.2 x 8.8 x 4.4 cm); Rubin Museum of Art; gift of Shelley and Donald Rubin; C2006.66.61 (HAR 700080).

from deep frustration and fear of the image’s imminent confiscation by the Tsang foes. For the Mongols, among them the Fourth Dalai Lama’s clan relatives, the precious statue of the deity represented a substitute, or replacement, for their young, recently deceased Mongol-born Dalai Lama.21 During internal struggles among the Mongol factions in and around Qinghai, however, the statue was transferred once again, this time by Sečen tayiji to Tongkhor Tulku (Stong ’khor sprul sku)—his root teacher—who in turn transported it to his mother seat, Tongkhor Tashilhunpo, in Kanzé of southeastern Tibet.

After Güshri Khan successfully defeated the Tsang troops in 1642, the Fifth Dalai Lama, as one of his first initiatives, requested that the Lokeśvara statue be returned to Central Tibet. Responding to this request, the Mongolian Dalai Güngjü—commonly addressed as Queen of Kokonor and the consort of Güshri Khan—helped bring the precious icon back to Lhasa. It is noteworthy that the Mongols who originally received the icon were the Tümed Mongols, and those escorting it back to Central Tibet were their erstwhile enemies, the Khoshuud. The statue arrived in Lhasa in 1645, in time for the sadü (sa ’dul, “earth-taming ritual”), which was conducted as a necessary prelude to the erection of the Potala Palace.

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Ever since, this national icon, a symbol of Geluk victory, has towered in its own chapel as the Potala’s principal statue (rten gtso) on the Red Hill.

A Nation Reborn Indeed, the most visually imposing symbol of the new power was the erection of the government seat, the Potala Palace. The intimate relationship between the ruling Geluk establishment and their Mongol military patron and benefactor Güshri Khan, himself an adamant devotee of the Dalai Lama personally, meant that the Great Fifth received as a pious donation from the Mongol ruler the entire Tibetan realm.

Barely enthroned, the Dalai Lama launched a number of projects to galvanize the new Ganden Phodrang government. In 1645, assisted by his closest advisers, he embarked on the daunting task of erecting his momentous palace on Marpori, the Red Hill. The site’s long history included the residence of Songtsen Gampo, and hence for six hundred years had been intimately associated with the Patron Deity, including a devotional hermitage. Known as Mount Potala, it was a local model and substitute of the mythic Mount Potalaka in southern India (fig. 7.8). The complex, multistoried, fortress-like edifice was steadily expanded and completed after fifty years, long after the Fifth Dalai Lama had passed away. During successive stages of construction, artists created major wall paintings. The first, executed in the late 1640s, included the lineage of the Dalai Lamas in the Grand Hall of the White Palace. It was later supplemented by the imposing dedicatory wall paintings in the Great Hall of the Red Palace, a much larger and more artistically elaborate set dedicated to the lineage biographies of the Fifth Dalai Lama. These were painted in the 1690s, at the end of the erection of Potala Palace.22 The Great Fifth’s powerful personality and long reign helped bring about his many successes.

Among these were the cultural initiatives he promoted, such as the major annual festivals, the grand annual welfare and prosperity program for Tibet, the government’s dual system (bod ’bangs bde thabs rim gro, etc.) that stabilized and unified the country, the establishment of several institutions of learning, such as a medical school, and support of Buddhist science. He was a learned and charismatic person who promoted art, rituals, history, poetics, and the science of astrology. Small wonder that he commanded respect from all corners of Tibet and Central Asia. The Great Fifth also traveled to Beijing to visit the Chinese Emperor Shunzhi (1638–1661) to strengthen the lucrative bonds to the Qing court (fig. 7.9). He entertained excellent relationships with a steady number of Mongol noblemen and potential donors who streamed to his doorstep in the new capital of Lhasa, which became the holiest pilgrimage site in Central Asia during his reign.

At the point of the Great Fifth’s passing in 1682—the death kept secret by an overambitious regent who wanted to follow in the footsteps of his ruler—his spiritual and political influence, as well as the respect he commanded, were at their height. A thangka from the Bogd Khaan Palace Museum depicts him as a supreme ruler (fig. 7.10). Tibet had also reached a pinnacle of success. Successive Dalai Lamas never enjoyed the relative level of self-governance that he had tacitly secured. Looking into the future and following an old juniper legend from Retreng Monastery—the erstwhile main seat of the Kadampas—Ngawang Losang Gyatso, the Fifth Dalai Lama, foresaw that there would only be seven Dalai Lamas in total.23 History would prove him wrong on this point, though he is rightly remembered as one of Tibet’s greatest personalities.

Opposite: Fig. 7.8 The Potala Palace and the Main Monuments of Lhasa; Tibet or Inner Mongolia; 18th–early 19th century (ca. 1757–1804); pigments on cloth; 34⅜ x 24½ in. (87.3 x 62.2 cm); Rubin Museum of Art; C2009.4 (HAR 65848).

Published: Hofer and Larsen 2014, fig. V3.4; Kaplan 2014, 132; Arthur 2015, 252–57; Arthur 2016, fig. 4; Chou 2018, fig. 4.14.

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Above: Fig. 7.9 Fifth Dalai Lama Visits the Qing Emperor (detail of fig. 7.1).

Opposite: Fig. 7.10 Fifth Dalai Lama Depicted as a Ruler; Mongolia; 19th century; pigments on cloth; 33⅞ x 18⅛ in. (86 x 46 cm); Bogd Khaan Palace Museum, Ulaanbaatar.

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notes 1

Ganden Phodrang (lit. “The Palace of Tu ita [Joyous Land]”) was initially set up in Drepung Monastery during the period of the Second Dalai Lama. Later, in the seventeenth century, it was transferred to the Potala Palace, the new seat of government in Lhasa.

The literature on the Great Fifth Dalai Lama, his time, and his government is enormous. See, among others: Ahmad, Karmay, Brauen, Schaeffer, Ishihama, Schwieger, and the references in this essay.

2

The particular Buddhist government in Tibet seems to have found immediate echoes in neighboring states, as discussed in Ardussi 2004, 11: “During the seventeenyear period 1625–1642, three governments were formed in Tibetan cultural regions of the Himalayas that endured into the twentieth century, each with a distinct religion-state basis.” These are Central Tibet, Sikkim, and Bhutan.

3

See, for example, Studholme 2002; Halkias 2013; Kapstein 1992; Van Schaik 2006; Sørensen 1994, 97–108; Vitali 1990.

4

Sørensen 2018. Avalokiteśvara was, from at least the twelfth century, designated as bod kha ba can kyi rgyal khams spyi mthun gyi lha skal, “the divine legacy/fate common to the entire Tibetan Realm/Kingdom.”

5

For details, see Sørensen 1994; Gyalbo, Hazod, and Sørensen 2000, app. I; Dargyay 1988, 1989; Neumaier 2007; Kapstein 1992; Pasang Wangdu 2002.

6

Studies on the Tibetan (re)incarnation principle are legion. See most recently, Hirshberg et al. 2017; Cabezón 2017; Gamble 2018; Schwieger 2015.

7

This is highlighted in many canonical scriptures dedicated to the feats of Buddha Amitābha and the Avalokiteśvara cult, such as the Lotus Sūtra, Śūraṇgama-sūtra, Gaṇḍavyūha-sūtra, and so on. These sources detail the deity’s most prominent faculty, how it “transfigures itself into various forms” at one and the same time—assuming a variety of “protean garbs” (nānārūpavikurvita) or manifestations according to the karmic disposition of the individual living beings, by way of displaying an innumerable number of (emanational) projections tailored to the devotee’s individual faculties (aśaya-anurūpavicitra-aparimāṇanirmāṇa-samdarśana).

8

9

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The incarnation inflation, or identity proliferation, often meant that religious masters claimed and listed so many former (and even predicted future) rebirths that it made no sense to start counting them (rnam ’phrul brjod kyis mi lang ba); one meets this passage in many biographies. See further, Sørensen and Hazod 2007, 473, 486, 512.

See several informative studies by Ruegg on its origin in India and later development in Tibet; Ruegg 1991, 1997, 2004, 2013.

10 Tib. chos srid gnyis ldan, chos srid gnyis ’brel, chos srid zung ’brel. See Cüppers 2004 for this concept.

11 During a missionary errand in Mongolia, Sönam Gyatso had his portentous meeting with the Tümed ruler. During these early days, the arrangement that brought about a patron-priest relationship in mutual recognition was no more spectacular than most of the similar mutually beneficial relationships forged between domestic or foreign patrons and their religious clients.

The bestowal of the Mongolian title dalai (ocean) upon the Geluk hierarch reflected two connotations: first, it reflected an honorary retranslation into Mongolian of the name element rgya mtsho (Tib. “ocean”), which the preceding Drepung throne-holder and incarnate Gendün Gyatso, in retrospect the Second Dalai Lama, carried (and which successive Dalai Lamas customarily should carry); and second, it reflected an old concept that the Mongol rulers used for their own Khan-ship— dalai-yin qan, “Ocean Khan.” However, the concept of ocean in Mongol culture implies universal, and by extension, in a Mongol context, it should be read as “Universal or All-Embracing Lama.”

12 The inscription reads: thams cad mkhyen pa ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho’i sku brnyan phyag nas ma.

13 See Sørensen and Hazod 2007, 463–71.

14 The first detailed description of his former rebirth lineage succession is found in Sørensen 2005a, 2005b; see further Ahmad 1999; Ishihama 2015; Kellner 2016; and especially Lin 2017 and Czaja 2018, 97–109. The entire lineage succession until the present Dalai Lama is enumerated with up to seventy incarnations in succession counted.

15 Sørensen 2005b, 247.

16 See Lin 2017 for a fine survey comparing the different shorter and more elaborated lineage lists. More elaborate lists are recorded in other texts that contain, respectively, Indic and Tibetan rebirth figures that range from fifty-eight through seventy-eight members.

Other lists include a set of sixty-five biographical thangka paintings. Significant also are the writings by the regent Desi Sangyé Gyatso. Monumental wall paintings depicting many of these former rebirth figures, numbering up to fifty-eight former rebirth members, decorate the Grand Audience Hall (tshoms chen) (Srid zhi’i phun tshogs) in the Red Palace of the Potala; these paintings were executed in 1694 under the guidance of the regent.

17 The relic is one of four autogenous statues made from sandalwood. The tale of its supernatural origin is deeply embedded in the legendary formation and conversion of Tibet to Buddhism, accounting for the statue’s national significance; cf. Sørensen 1994, 189–94.

18 See Sørensen 2007 for the spectacular story; Karmay 2014, 191–94.

Rise of the Dalai Lamas: Political Inheritance through Reincarnation

19 For the war raging throughout these unruly years, not addressed here, see Shakabpa 1967, 82ff.; Templeman 2016a, 2016b; Ahmad 1970; Karmay 1998b; Schwieger 2015; Thub bstan phun tshogs, 1996; Rnam rgyal dbang ’dus, 2003; Ngag dbang Blo bzang rgya mtsho, Yon tan rgya mtsho dpal bzang po’i rnam par thar pa Nor bu’i ’phreng ba, 1b1–52a6.

20 Sørensen and Hazod 2007, 500, 505–7. For centuries, the ultimate custodianship of Red Hill, with its many hermitages, was the object of deep-seated ideological and warring disputes concerning which party controlled the hermitages, key pilgrimage sites deep inside Geluk territory.

21 For details, see Sørensen 2007, 869–78.

22 See Lin 2017 for this gallery in the Potala.

23 The juniper legend—the origin myth behind the entire Dalai Lama institution—claimed that only seven Dalai Lamas in all would come into existence. As we know, however, the capriciousness of history meant that the line did indeed continue with the Eighth Dalai Lama.

See Karmay 2005a, 99–101; and Sørensen 2008 for further references.

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chapter 8

The Politics of Magical Warfare bryan j. cuevas

between the years 1837 and 1863, eastern Tibet was under siege. Over the course of nearly two

decades of war and pillaging, a brutal local chieftain from Nyarong named Gönpo Namgyal and his rebel forces had seized most of the independent territories in Kham and triumphantly unified much of eastern Tibet. Although these expanding military campaigns posed a direct, persistent threat to the two major political authorities at that time—the Tibetan government in Lhasa and the Qing Empire in China—it was not until 1865 that the Tibetan army finally quelled Gönpo Namgyal’s conquests.1 But clever strategy and adept military intervention may not have been the sole cause of the Nyarong warlord’s defeat.

Some Tibetan sources attribute Gönpo Namgyal’s downfall to the ritual accomplishments of the Tibetan Buddhist lama Jamgön Kongtrul (1813–1900), a luminary of the nineteenth century and a pioneering figure of the celebrated Rimé (nonpartisan) movement in eastern Tibet.2 The Tibetan commander Pulungwa Tsewang Dorjé commissioned Jamgön Kongtrul to perform various rites targeting Gönpo Namgyal and his troops. The lama wrote candidly about these performances in his autobiography: My retreat ended during the third month of the new Wood Ox Year [1865]. The war with the forces of Nyarong had turned in the [Lhasa] government’s favor toward the end of the last year.

The commander was still resident in the area at this time and sent a messenger to fetch me, so I went. For about a month I performed empowerments, ritual ablutions, and the like to offset the effects of negative forces. . . . During the fifth month, I accompanied Kushap Rinpoché to the peak of Uchetem, where we performed a magnificent ceremony to secure the mountain and suppress aggression. At first there were disturbances—a mighty wind rose up, and hail and lightning fell from all quarters—but eventually everything became very peaceful. Descending to Ngo-nang Lhasar, and to avert any negativity, we performed a ritual focusing on wrathful deities, based on the Eight Commands [Kagyé]. When we cast out the torma, there were some major omens that I could see with my own eyes, and when the effigy personifying negativity was prepared, others dreamed of signs that the hordes of our foe would be defeated.3 A few months later, surrounded by Lhasa government troops and trapped inside one of his Nyarong fortresses, Gönpo Namgyal, his two sons, and nearly thirty other relatives and servants were burned to death.

And so it appears the rituals of Jamgön Kongtrul proved successful in the end: the foe and his hordes were indeed defeated.

What sort of Buddhist ritual technology did Jamgön Kongtrul rely on to bring about such a dramatic outcome? In the passage above, he speaks explicitly of performing empowerments, ritual ablutions,

Opposite: Detail of fig. 8.7

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ceremonies to suppress aggressive forces, rituals involving wrathful deities, casting torma (offering cakes made of dough) as ritual weapons, and preparing effigies personifying the enemy to be deployed like Tibetan voodoo dolls (fig. 8.1).4 We might describe these rites collectively as a form of Buddhist magic, maybe even sorcery, and in Kongtrul’s case specifically, a type of magical warcraft (dmag bzlog).

I use the contested terms magic and sorcery here deliberately. In a Buddhist context, I define them both as involving a combination of ritualized acts that manipulate hidden links or bonds of macro- and microcosmic correspondences, which in the traditional universe of Tibetan Buddhism are presumed to exist between living beings and their greater external environment.5 In addition, such ritualized acts usually involve the ritual appropriation of the powers of deities, either benign or wrathful, to accomplish specific goals. In Tibetan Buddhism, these goals are generally understood to be fourfold: pacification of harmful forces; enrichment of life span, merit, and pleasures; subjugation or control over living beings; and destruction of enemies. The last two goals relate directly to what I refer to as Buddhist sorcery, and in addition to pacification, they form the predominant aims of Tibetan ritual warcraft, as exemplified in the series of rites performed by Jamgön Kongtrul in 1865.

Throughout Tibetan history, we find abundant evidence that Buddhist tantric masters frequently resorted to such rites of magic and sorcery in attempts to gain power or defend against hostile forces, compelling wrathful deities, expelling demons, and causing harm or death to rivals and enemies. In so doing, these ritual specialists drew on traditions of accepted Buddhist practice inherited primarily from India that had a long, lurid history in Tibet (see chapter 2).6 The seventeenth-century Tibetan historian Tāranātha (1575–1634), an accomplished ritualist himself, recorded the names of several exemplary Indian Buddhist sorcerers from as early as the ninth century.7 We are told these individuals worked forcefully to defend the famous monastery of Vikramaśīla against Türk (Skt. Turu ka; Tib. Duruka) invasions from Central Asia. The great paṇḍita Prajñārak ita, for example, installed a large torma of Cakrasa vara in his efforts to repel the Türk invaders. Lightning soon struck those troops, and their leader was killed. The master Līlavajra once defeated a Türk army by drawing the magic wheel (yantra) of Yamāntaka (fig. 8.2), rendering the troops unconscious and thus unable to advance.

During the performance of a tantric communal feast (Skt. gaṇacakra), the monk-adept Kamalarak ita hurled a pitcher of consecrated water, enchanted by the blessing of Yamāntaka, at troops invading the kingdom of Magadha. Tāranātha writes that immediately afterward a storm rose up and a mysterious band of black men emerged from the clouds, stabbing the Türk soldiers with daggers. The commander vomited blood and died, while the few who remained standing became afflicted with deadly diseases.8 Such forceful rites could be easily abused, as Tāranātha warns in his account of the villain Cā akya, the Brahmin minister of the king of Gau a. This sinister yogin, another master of the rites of Yamāntaka, is said to have murdered three thousand people, driven ten thousand insane, and laid waste to sixteen kings through hostile sorcery. He also defeated the armies of several barbarian rulers to allow the king of Gau a to seize their countries. As a result of these evil actions, Tāranātha concludes, Cā akya was struck with disease, died, and was reborn in hell.9 In Tibet, legend has it that once Padmasambhava, the revered Buddhist tantric exorcist from O iyāna, had blazed the trail, from the ninth century onward traditions of ritual warcraft were steadily transmitted to Tibetans. Nup Sangyé Yeshé (b. ca. 844) was an early Tibetan master of such rites and a bearer of Padmasambhava’s direct lineage. He was active in the turbulent period of the late ninth and early tenth centuries, following the collapse of the Tibetan Empire. During that period, territorial feuds and civil uprisings dominated Central Tibet, and in the midst of this chaos Nup is said to have deployed on multiple

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Fig. 8.1 Canopy of a Mahākāla Yantra; Tibet; 18th–19th century; pigments on cloth; 24⅜ x 20⅛ in. (61.9 x 51.1 cm); Rubin Museum of Art; gift of Shelley and Donald Rubin; C2006.66.509 (HAR 977).

Published: Brauen 2009, pl. 36.

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Fig. 8.2 Symbol Ma ala of Yama Dharmarāja; Tibet; 18th century; pigments on cloth; 12 x 12 in. (30.5 x 30.5 cm); Rubin Museum of Art; gift of the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation; F1996.11.1 (HAR 436).

Published: Leidy and Thurman, 1997, pl. 35; Rhie and Thurman 1999, cat. 177; Linrothe and Watt 2004, cat. 35; Makley 2007, fig. 3; Brauen 2009, pl. 34; Brauen 2010, fig. 12.

occasions the fierce rites of Yamāntaka to defend against and subjugate his anti-Buddhist rivals and to secure the good fortunes of the Tibetan people.10 All told, Nup Sangyé Yeshé stands as Tibet’s first Buddhist political sorcerer.

As the tenth century drew to a close, a period of renewal began to unfold. Tibetan historians describe this period as a Buddhist renaissance during which new competing Buddhist sects emerged, supported by new tantric transmissions from India, Nepal, and Kashmir. These new sects came to include the Kadampa, Sakyapa, the various branches of the Kagyüpa, and much later the Gelukpa. It was the age of the master siddhas and accomplished translators (lotsawa), many of whom preserved or augmented the tantric ritual

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traditions of earlier generations. Others traveled south to India and Nepal and brought back with them a wealth of innovative ritual systems, like those associated with Guhyasamāja, Cakrasa vara, Hevajra, Mahākāla, Yamāntaka, and Vajrabhairava.

By the twelfth century, many prominent tantric ritualists, almost all of whom could claim descent from noble families, had succeeded in establishing their own authoritative religious institutions that came to also serve as bases of local governance and political influence. One such figure was Lama Shang Tsöndrü Drakpa (1123–1194) (see fig. 1.5), who in 1175 founded the monastery of Tsal Gungthang in Central Tibet.

From this fortified base along the Kyichu River, Lama Shang acted vigorously to defend the Lhasa valley, the cradle of Tibetan civilization, and its prestigious legacy. To secure his interests in this area and neighboring territories, he frequently employed his own militia and engaged in mortal combat with rivals and other local hegemons.11 For these reasons, Lama Shang has become widely recognized as Tibet’s paradigm of the militant lama.

He is, moreover, notorious for having enhanced his capabilities on the battlefield by relying on the hostile powers of the fearsome deity Mahākāla. He was able to channel these powers through the inherited rituals of a twelfth-century master from Tangut (Tib. Minyak) named Tsami Lotsawa Sangyé Drakpa. Lama Shang had received and perfected these rites from his guru, Ga Lotsawa Shönupal (1110/14–1198/1202), himself a direct disciple of Tsami Lotsawa. The latter had once composed a small booklet of instructions on how to overthrow governments by using the skull rites of Mahākāla, likely in the form of the Raven-Headed Protector (fig. 8.3).12 One of Lama Shang’s own Tangut students, Tishri Repa (1164–1236), carried on Tsami Lotsawa’s legacy of magical warcraft at the Tangut court, where he was called on to perform Mahākāla rituals against the Mongols during their siege of the Tangut capital in the winter and spring of 1210.13 Tishri Repa may have been the earliest of the celebrated Mongol-repellers (hor/sog bzlog) in Tibetan and Inner Asian Buddhist history.

In the ages following Lama Shang, Central Tibet and Lhasa in particular remained sites of persistent conflict between competing clan and family groups and their allied Buddhist institutions.14 These Central Tibetan contests reached a crescendo in the fifteenth century when the Gandenpa (later known as the Gelukpa) consolidated their power in the Kyishö valley. The emerging presence of the Gandenpa in Lhasa provoked rival groups to react with force and fury. The factious and destabilized nature of the Tibetan political arena prior to and throughout the next two centuries forced many of the groups competing for power to depend on mightier forces beyond Tibet’s borders—first the Mongols and later the Manchus in China.

Some Tibetan groups, however, wished to avoid foreign intervention and preferred instead to protect their interests by their own forces, often led by Tibetan visionaries and tantric specialists who engaged such efforts by magical means. These ritualists most famously included Tibet’s Mongol-repellers.

The tradition of Mongol-repelling in Tibet appears to have first emerged in the mid-thirteenth century in reaction to the incursions of the Mongol emissary and Tangut commander Dorta Darqan in 1240.

Soon afterward, the Mongol ruler Köten (fl. 1235–1247) forged alliances with the Sakyapa in Tsang through the charismatic leader Sakya Pa ita (1182–1251) (see fig. 5.2). Some Tibetan histories characterize this period as a time of great fear and misery caused by rampant Mongol abuses, reportedly reaching a climax around 1281, when Mongol troops led by Qubilai Khan (1215–1294) were brought in to capture and kill a renegade Sakya governor. A decade later, the adminstrators of Sakya used Mongol mercenaries to wreak havoc on their rivals, including the sacking of Drigung Monastery.15 Records from this period describe a small band of disparate Tibetan tantric practitioners hostile to the Sakya-Mongol alliance roaming the country performing magical rites aimed at turning away and defeating the Mongol invaders.16

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This ritual tradition of Mongol-repelling persisted throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, sustained and embellished by Buddhist visionaries such as Tenyi Lingpa (1480–1537) and Chokden Gönpo (1497–1531), both of whom served at the court of Mangyul Gungthang in western Tibet. Tenyi Lingpa was a Nyingma lama whose earlier ritual effort to repel Mongol armies in Central Tibet was sponsored by both the king of Gungthang and the Lhatsun of Samyé.17 Chokden Gönpo, who was also supported by the same Mangyul ruler, had been a close disciple of the illustrious tertön Pema Lingpa (1450–1521), from whom he received special esoteric instructions on turning back Mongol armies.18 Chokden Gönpo subsequently became a great ritual defender of the Lhasa valley and a notorious master of Buddhist warcraft broadly targeting the emergent Gelukpa sect and specifically the monks of Drepung.19 The rise of Gelukpa influence in and around Lhasa can be traced to the consecration of three major monasteries in the vicinity of Lhasa by Tsongkhapa (1357–1419) and his closest followers, with the patronage of the ruling house of Phakmodrupa: Ganden in 1409, Drepung in 1416, and Sera in 1419. Also of great consequence was the inauguration of an elaborate public New Year’s celebration, the Great Prayer Festival (Mönlam Chenmo). Tsongkhapa introduced this festival in 1409, again with Phakmodrupa backing. These events served to strengthen the position of the Gelukpa in the Lhasa area. Their patrons included the Phakmodrupa ruler Drakpa Gyaltsen (1374–1432) at the fortress of Neudong as well as that ruler’s dependencies in and around the Kyishö valley.

Following Tsongkhapa’s death in 1419, his disciples initiated a concentrated effort of expansion outside Central Tibet into Tsang, a territory with deep Sakya and Karma Kagyü ties that was notoriously hostile to Tsongkhapa’s factions in Ü. Tsongkhapa’s close disciple, Gendün Drüpa (1391–1474)—later to be retroactively identifed as the First Dalai Lama—established the monastery of Tashilhunpo in Shigatsé in 1447, a clear move to stake Gelukpa claim on that area. It was only a decade prior, in 1435, that Shigatsé emerged as the center of power in Tsang, when the district governor of Rinpung seized the town and moved his headquarters there. Other leaders of Tsang joined forces with the Rinpungpa at Shigatsé in opposition to the Phakmodrupa in Neudong. This moment marked the start of the long, brutal struggles between the regions of Ü and Tsang, often cast in simplistic sectarian terms as a conflict between the Gelukpa in Ü (Yellow Hats) and the Karma Kagyüpa in Tsang (Red Hats). The story is significantly more complicated than this characterization, though for the most part, as is now well documented, all was brought to a bloody conclusion in 1642 with the defeat of the Tsangpa regime by the Khoshuud (Qoshot) Mongolian overlord and fervent Gelukpa patron Güshri Khan (1582–1655). This event was followed by the consolidation of Central Tibet, Ü and Tsang, under the banner of a unified Gelukpa government, the Ganden Phodrang, controlled by the Fifth Dalai Lama (1617–1682) (see figs. 7.1, 7.3, 7.5, 7.6, and 7.10).

The Gelukpa’s forays into Tsang politics in the middle of the fifteenth century only exasperated the Karma Kagyüpa and their Rinpungpa sponsors, who then renewed their interests in gaining control of Lhasa. In 1480, the Rinpungpa led troops into the Kyishö valley and captured a number of small districts under Gelukpa and Phakmodrupa control, including Ganden Monastery. In opposition to the Rinpung military campaign, the senior abbot of both Ganden and Drepung, Mönlam Pal Lekpai Lodrö (1414–1491), is reported to have launched his own special form of magical warfare to protect Ganden from further destruction, deploying against the Rinpungpa the destructive rites of Six-Armed Mahākāla (fig. 8.4).20

Opposite: Fig. 8.3 Raven-Headed Mahākāla; Bhutan; early to mid-19th century; pigments on cloth; 27⅞ x 20 in. (70.8 x 50.8 cm); Rubin Museum of Art; C2006.42.8 (HAR 89189).

Published: Kreijger 2001, no. 57; Sotheby’s 2006, lot 119; Luczanits and Namgyel 2015, fig. 7.

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This powerful Gelukpa hierarch is also notorious for having magically targeted several of his Sakya rivals.

In some Sakya sources, Mönlam Pal is therefore directly blamed for the troubles suffered at Nalendra Monastery, a Sakya institution, between the years 1488 and 1490. In retaliation, the Sakya abbot, Dakchen Lodrö Gyaltsen (1444–1495), with the help of Jetsun Doringpa (1449–1524), is said to have deployed his own counter-sorcery to thwart Mönlam’s magical threats.21 Mönlam Pal died a year later.

The Rinpungpa succeeded in capturing Ü in 1498 and drove their Phakmodrupa enemies to Gongkar and Kyormolung. From 1498 to around 1516, the upper Kyishö valley, east of Lhasa, was effectively under the control of the Drigungpa, a major Kagyü order that enjoyed the support and protection of the Rinpungpa. The Drigung controlled this area until at least the 1520s, but from 1516 onward the Drigung became increasingly tangled in conflicts with the Phakmodrupa and their Gelukpa lamas over landed property in the region. The Drigungpa remained a challenge to Gelukpa power in Central Tibet until the last decades of the seventeenth century.

In 1516, the Rinpungpa lost control of Lhasa; their armies were defeated by the Phakmodrupa and coalition forces drawn from the Ganden Kyishöpa, a new rising political power in Ü. The Phakmodrupa continued to defend the Gelukpa and maintain close ties with the incarnate leader of Drepung Monastery, Gendün Gyatso (1475–1542), later identified posthumously as the Second Dalai Lama. For a short while the Karma Kagyüpa withdrew into the background, but their ruling patrons in Tsang never lost sight of the goal to secure Lhasa and gain supremacy in Central Tibet.

While the Ü-Tsang conflicts continued and the Tibetan lords and lamas remained preoccupied with their own quarrels, Mongol tribal confederations from Ordos and Tümed relocated to the Kokonor and Amdo regions. It was not long before Tibetan leaders of the warring Buddhist orders approached these northern neighbors for military support. The Karma Kagyüpa in Tsang garnered the support of Mongol tribes in the Dam region of north-central Tibet, particularly the Khalkha Tsogtu. The Tsangpa lord Shingshak Tseten Dorjé (d. 1599) initiated and sealed this relationship in the mid-1500s. Later it was rumored that Tseten Dorjé’s death was caused by the sorcery of his political opponent, the Nyingma lama Jangdak Tashi Topgyal (1550–1603).22 Two centuries later, this Nyingma sorcerer took on a profound symbolic force in the private visionary life of the Fifth Dalai Lama, as the latter magically battled his Tsangpa enemies.23 The Drigung Kagyüpa, for their part, secured the support of Mongol tribes in the Nakshö region northeast of Drigung. Through these Mongol bonds, the Karma Kagyüpa in Tsang established alliances with both the Drigungpa and Taklung Kagyüpa in Ü.

This growing coalition worried the Gelukpa, who were then inspired to seek their own Mongol patrons; by the mid-1570s they had secured close alliances with the Tümed Mongols through the missionizing efforts of the Drepung incarnate Sönam Gyatso, the Third Dalai Lama (1543–1588). The intimate relationship forged between this lama and the chief of the Tümed, Altan Khan (1507–1582), famously paved the way for the emergence in the late seventeenth century of the Dalai Lama tulku institution as ruling political office of Tibet (see chapter 7).

The Third Dalai Lama and his allies had their enemies. Tibetan historians record that in 1546 the Drigung hierarch Rinchen Phuntsok (1509–1557), in an effort to eliminate the young Dalai Lama while he

Opposite: Fig. 8.4 Diverse Forms of Mahākāla and Other Protectors; Central Tibet; early 19th century (ca. 1805–1815); pigments on cloth; 40 x 28⅜ in. (101.6 x 72 cm); Rubin Museum of Art; C2007.21.1 (HAR 65787).

Published: Van Alphen 2014, 20–21, 72.

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was on his way to Tsethang, deployed the violent sorcery of the planetary deity Rāhula (fig. 8.5). Rāhula is related to the demigod (asura) Rāhu, who was borrowed into Tibetan mythology from Indian astrological and medical traditions. As with the Indian Rāhu, the Tibetan Rāhula is frequently blamed for causing lunar eclipses and foreboding weather events and—when provoked—bringing physical injury to human beings in the form of strokes and paralysis. Moreover, Tibetans believe that Rāhula’s power can be harnessed in Buddhist tantric ritual to help or harm.24 The Gelukpa were forced to respond in kind with their own counter-sorcery, and thus the Third Dalai Lama survived the Drigungpa’s magical attacks. Others less fortunate in his camp were said to have been struck down by seizures.25 Decades later, in 1575, the Third Dalai Lama’s maternal uncle, Kushang Künzang Tsewa Chökyi Wangchuk, scion of the Tsethang court, performed similar magic against the lords of Tsang as they attempted to march on Lhasa. According to the Third Dalai Lama’s biography, these magical rites were a great success and temporarily kept the Tsangpa forces out of Lhasa.26 From the late 1500s onward, the increasing involvement of the Mongols in Tibetan politics, particularly the Tümed following their invitation to Central Tibet by the Gelukpa administration, provoked violent reactions among non-Gelukpa groups, especially the Karmapa, Drigungpa, and Nyingmapa.

This sparked a resurgence of the age-old warcraft traditions of the Mongol-repellers. Powerful ritualists defending against Mongol incursions during this chaotic period were the Nyingma tertön Shikpo Lingpa (1524–1583) and his disciple Lodrö Gyaltsen (1552–1624), aptly nicknamed Sokdokpa, “the one who repels Mongols.” Around 1614, Sokdokpa wrote a fascinating little book, largely autobiographical, entitled A History of How the Mongols Were Repelled, in which he details over a period of four centuries the efforts of some of Tibet’s most noteworthy political visionaries—including himself—who fought the Mongols using specialized rituals designed to combat foreign armies.27 In his text, Sokdokpa establishes the legitimacy of these ritual actions and demonstrates their effectiveness.28 Though he is concerned about Mongol threats more generally, he does focus precisely on the Mongols of the western Tümen—namely, the Tümed, the Ordos, the Kharachin, and the Yüngshiyebü—which included the Mongol groups who claimed bonds of kinship to the family clan of Altan Khan and whose established loyalties strongly favored the Gelukpa in the Lhasa valley. The authority of the Tibetan prophecies of Sokdokpa’s teacher Shikpo Lingpa and interpretations of those prophecies at different points in history are a centerpiece of the work.

The prophet Shikpo Lingpa emerged in history as a controversial figure. He was a Nyingmapa disciple of the aforementioned Drigung sorcerer Rinchen Phuntsok, was supported by Drigungpa and Karmapa patrons, and rose to become a contemporary antagonist of the Third Dalai Lama. He appears to have been most active in the Kyormolung region on the western outskirts of Lhasa, but he was later linked directly to the center of Lhasa as a renowned master of flood control (chu bzlog) and steadfast protector of the Jokhang Temple.29 In this capacity, Shikpo Lingpa came into direct ritual competition with his Gelukpa rivals. The Gelukpa responded by denouncing Shikpo Lingpa as a dangerous black magician and false prophet. Later, the Fifth Dalai Lama included him and Sokdokpa among a select group of rogue political visionaries whose prophecies were deemed treasonous and whose writings were sealed and banned from publication.30 As much as Shikpo Lingpa, Sokdokpa, and other similiarly minded ritualists of the Nyingmapa and Kagyüpa orders worried about the rising presence of the Gelukpa in Lhasa and the increasing influence of the

Opposite: Fig. 8.5 Rāhula; Tibet; 15th century; gilt copper alloy; 12⅜ x 6 x 10 in. (31.4 x 15.2 x 25.4 cm); Rubin Museum of Art; C2003.7.2 (HAR 65206).

Published: Czaja and Proser 2014, cat. 12; Van Alphen 2014, 154–55.

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Mongols in Tibetan affairs, the Gelukpa in turn felt equally threatened by the disparaging prophecies of Shikpo Lingpa and his cohorts and feared the potency of their anti-Mongol, anti-Gelukpa sorcery.

Conflict raged on in Central Tibet. In 1605, the Drigungpa, assisted by Tsang forces, defeated the Gelukpa-friendly Kyishöpa in the Penyul valley northwest of Lhasa. Shortly after, in 1607, several Gelukpa monasteries and Kyishö estates, especially in the Drigung area, were looted, confiscated, or destroyed.31 The Gelukpa were progressively weakened by their more powerful rivals in Ü and Tsang, eventually suffering a terrible symbolic defeat in 1608 when the Tsangpa Desi Karma Phuntsok Namgyal (d. ca. 1621) and his allied Karmapa forces built a family palace atop Mount Potala in Lhasa.32 Two years later, one of Tāranātha’s pupils, Lampa Rapjampa Sönam Drakpa, a Gelukpa master of the fierce rites of Vajrabhairava (fig. 8.6) and retainer of the Fourth Dalai Lama Yönten Gyatso (1589–1617), is reported to have successfully employed his ritual powers to counter the attacks of the Tsangpa regime and their allied Yargyapa forces.33 Lampa Rapjampa was himself later defeated by magical means when attempting to deploy similar rites against the Tsangpa-allied Kurapa in Tsari to the south.34 In 1611, the Fourth Dalai Lama, along with Lampa Rapjampa and several others, targeted the Karmapa in Tsang, going to Drepung Monastery to perform an elaborate series of sorcery rites invoking the wrathful protectors Yama Dharmarāja (see fig. 8.9) and Śrī Devī in her form as the battle goddess Palden Makzorma (fig. 8.7).35 These rites had little effect in the end, as the Tsangpa Desi, supported by the Drigungpa and Karmapa, soon took Lhasa by storm from 1612 to 1613, pillaging the monasteries of Drepung and Sera.36 By 1616, most of the Kyishö valley, including Lhasa, and most of Tsang were under the control of the Tsangpa Desi. The Fifth Dalai Lama later linked the Gelukpa’s desperate plight in this period to the inauspicious prophecies of Shikpo Lingpa.37 By the middle decades of the seventeenth century, the Gelukpa were on their way to turning the tides in their favor. The Fifth Dalai Lama was formally recognized by that title in 1622, and his ministers had recently formed an alliance with Güshri Khan, the leader of the Khoshuud Mongols. The alliance was forged in an attempt to secure military reinforcements against the new Tsangpa Desi Karma Tenkyong Wangpo (r. 1620–1642). In the unruly years leading up to the rise of Gelukpa sovereignty over Tibet, the Fifth Dalai Lama worked closely with his trusted Nyingma advisor, Zur Chöying Rangdröl (1604–1657), who only recently had ascended the abbatial throne at Tsal Gungthang in 1633. Zur did well to uphold the legacy of that institution’s founder, the formidable Lama Shang.

A few years before, Zur had already established himself as a potent Buddhist sorcerer. In 1626, for example, when the Gelukpa were the targets of magical attacks by an alliance of Drigungpa factions in Tsang, the frightened abbot of Ganden Monastery called on Zur to perform a ritual counteroffensive, which, according to Gelukpa records, was a grand success.38 Between the years 1638 and 1641, Zur and the Fifth Dalai Lama regularly performed magical rites to combat the Tsangpa opposition. However, certain elder Gelukpa officials surrounding the Dalai Lama, including his regent Sönam Chöpal (1595–1658), were opposed to the Nyingmapa’s violent rites. As a result, the Dalai Lama felt the need to keep his practices with Zur secret. His guilt for dabbling in these secret performances manifested in his dreams and private visions during this period.39 Yet it is clear in the Dalai Lama’s private and public writings that he was convinced beyond any doubt that Nyingma sorcery and other related warcraft rituals were the most effective means for destroying his enemies.

Opposite: Fig. 8.6 Vajrabhairava with Consort; Mongolia; 18th–19th century; gilt copper alloy; 14⅛ x 12⅝ x 5¾ in. (35.9 x 32.1 x 14.6 cm); Rubin Museum of Art; C2005.25.1 (HAR 68853).

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Fig. 8.7 Śrī Devī as Makzor Gyalmo “Queen Who Repels Armies”; Central Tibet; ca. 1720; pigments on cloth; 33¼ x 22¾ in. (84.5 x 57.8 cm); Rubin Museum of Art; gift of Shelley and Donald Rubin; C2016.3 (HAR 105).

Published: Rhie and Thurman 1999, cat. 147; Mullin 2003, 178, 185; Linrothe and Watt 2004, cat. 31; Stump 2017, 410–11.

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Fig. 8.8 Red-and-Black-Faced Yamāri, Blazing Razor of Extreme Repelling; Tibet; ca. late 17th century; pigments on cloth; 22¼ x 14⅝ in. (56.5 x 37.1 cm); Rubin Museum of Art; C2008.4 (HAR 65815) Published: Jackson 2015, fig. 8.19.

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At the beginning of 1641, after news arrived that Güshri Khan and his armies had appeared in Tsang, the Fifth Dalai Lama asked Zur for instructions on the performance of various Nyingma rites of hostile sorcery, specifically the cycle of Karma Guru drawn from the visionary works of Jangdak Tashi Topgyal, as well as a wrathful Yamāntaka ritual from the obscure terma of Drugu Yangwang, called Black Sun and Moon Subduer of Yama.40 Thirty years later, the Dalai Lama instituted the Tashi Topgyal–inspired rites as state rituals to be performed in public by the monks of Namgyal Monastery.41 Between the sixth and seventh month of 1641, he and Zur went into dark retreat and deployed the aggressive Nyingma rites of Yamāri (fig. 8.8) and the Gelukpa protector Yama Dharmarāja (fig. 8.9) against their Tsangpa foes. The Fifth Dalai Lama describes these activities in some detail in his autobiography. Note here the similarities to Jamgön Kongtrul’s account of his own ritual war efforts against Nyarong Gönpo Namgyal more than two centuries later: First, I performed a rite of suppression based on the deity Shinjé Shorsang Nyimatrö [a Nyingma form of Yamāri/Yamāntaka]. I thought I would need to perform this rite of destructive action, which I had carried out the previous year [1640] when Beri was attacked. I had the stūpa drawn, and also its rituals designed by Zur. As I invited him, he came to Drepung. There were visitors who kept coming, but I avoided them and went into a retreat of darkness. I arranged all the items needed for setting up the stūpa rite [of suppression]. I performed the rite of destructive action in all its details. I had someone insert the imprecation material into Lake Kharnak.

There were serious signs of success [of the rite]. On the eve of the rite, in his dream, Tsultrim Losang, the servant of my retreat, saw waves rising to the sky from the Black Lake [Kharnak].

He said: “When I remember it, I still get terribly frightened. Some monks of the College, led by Drakna Chöjé, performed the rites of suppression and killing based on the deity Shinjé [Yama Dharmarāja]. The ordinary monks performed the atonement rite and the rite of aversion. Both in Drepung and Sera, monks of the great congregations recited sūtras for months on end. In the Tantric Colleges, the atonement rite was performed.42 In the Dalai Lama’s record of his private visions at this time, he also mentions seeing in front of the torma effigies a large head rising up with a ferocious expression and vomiting human skulls of various sizes.

The Dalai Lama understood these disturbing visions as a sign that the violent rituals were succeeding.43 A few months later, on the fifth day of the fourth month of 1642, Güshri Khan conquered the Tsang resistance and conferred on the Fifth Dalai Lama supreme authority over all Tibet. An eminent nineteenthcentury Nyingma historian succinctly characterized the Dalai Lama’s magical rise to power in the following terms: “By these ritual methods the Omniscient Great Fifth conquered the four border regions in battle and raised the banner of victory.”44 For the Fifth Dalai Lama and the countless other Tibetan adepts before and after him who relied on mastery of Buddhist rituals to assist allies or to defend against enemies, successful achievement in the practice of sorcery and magic meant successful accomplishment in the exercise of military power and the establishment of righteous rule. Indeed, as is amply demonstrated in the few episodes highlighted in this brief Opposite: Fig. 8.9 Yama Dharmarāja; Tibet; 18th century; pigments on cloth; 21¾ x 14⅛ in. (55.2 x 35.9 cm); Rubin Museum of Art; gift of Shelley and Donald Rubin; C2006.66.409 (HAR 855).

Published: Durham and Rice 2019, cat. 66.

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survey, Buddhist sorcery and magic have long served in Tibet as legitimate expressions of political action.

Belief in the efficacy of sorcery and magic derived from a worldview that saw the sorcerer and the warlord, the lama and the politician, operating within a singular, coherent system. In traditional Tibet, the political and the religious were never clearly separated. In the end, the tantric ritualist’s arsenal of magical assaults and counter-sorcery initiated during Tibet’s many periods of conflict and war proved to be just as vital to the success of the intended political outcomes as were the military’s swords and artillery fire. Warfare for Tibetan Buddhists was always a magical endeavor.

notes 1

Tsomu 2015, esp. 185–220.

2

On the influence of Jamgön Kongtrul in eastern Tibet, see Smith 2001a, 235–72.

3

'Jam mgon kong sprul 1997, 223–24, as translated in Jamgön Kongtrul 2003, 140–41.

4

On the use of such effigies in Tibetan ritual, see Cuevas 2011.

5

6

See Cuevas 2010 for further elaboration on the definition and use of the terms magic and sorcery in a Tibetan Buddhist context.

For a thought-provoking discussion of Indian tantric war magic from the perspective of contemporary just war theory, see Sinclair 2014.

7

On Tāranātha’s own ventures into the arena of ritual warcraft, see Templeman 2010, 104–12.

8

Tāranātha 1994, 294–95, 312–14; trans. Tāranātha 1990, 307, 327–28.

9

Tāranātha 1994, 115; trans. Tāranātha 1990, 130.

Cā akya is also said to have been prophesied in the Mañjuśrīnāmasaṃgīti, predicting he would become a Yama Dharmarāja in the future. See Tāranātha 2008, 47.

10 Bdud joms ye shes rdo rje 1996, 236–39; trans.

Dudjom Rinpoche 1991, 609–12; also Dalton 2011, 50–54.

20 Ahmad 2008, 127–28; Sørensen and Hazod 2007, 500n165.

21 Jackson 1989, 18–19.

22 Shakabpa 2010, 282–83. For a brief account of Tashi Topgyal’s life as a former incarnation of the Fifth Dalai Lama, see Ahmad 1999, 170–78.

23 Karmay 1988, 30.

24 Bailey 2015.

25 Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho 2007b, 94.6–95.3; cf. Bdud joms ye shes rdo rje 1996, 341–42; trans.

Dudjom Rinpoche 1991, 681.

26 Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho 2007b, 182.2–5.

27 For an extended analysis of Sokdokpa’s History, see Gentry 2017, esp. 90–167.

28 Gentry 2010.

29 Akester 2001a and 2001b; Ehrhard 2005; Sørensen and Hazod 2007, 516–17; Gentry 2017, 56–86.

30 Smith 2004; Gentry 2017, 384–408.

31 Sørensen and Hazod 2007, 536.

32 Sørensen and Hazod 2007, 537.

33 Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho 2007a, 307.2–308.6; cf. Shakabpa 2010, 314–15; Czaja 2013, 306–7.

34 Czaja 2013, 309n36.

11 Yamamoto 2012.

35 Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho 2007a, 309.3–310.6.

12 Sperling 1994.

36 Sørensen and Hazod 2007, 537.

13 Sperling 2004a.

37 Czaja 2013, 307n30.

14 For a succinct overview of these regional conflicts, see Wangdu 2012, 1:119–36.

38 Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho 2007d, 83.3–84.1.

15 Petech 1990, 24–31.

40 Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho 1989–91, 199; trans.

Karmay 2014, 153. See also Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho 2007d, 127.3–127.4, 128.6–129.1, and 129.4, where it is made clear that Black Sun and Moon Subduer of Yama (gshin rje ’joms byed nyi zla nag po) was chief among the practices he requested from Zur at this time. On Drugu Yangwang (Yang-wa ) and his

16 Sog bzlog pa Blo gros rgyal mtshan 1976, 217.3–219.4.

17 Everding 2004, 272.

18 Ehrhard 2008; Sørensen and Hazod 2007, 492–93.

19 Sog bzlog pa Blo gros rgyal mtshan 1976, 220.4–227.2.

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39 Karmay 1988, 30–31.

treasures, see Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho 2007c, 3:158.1–162.3; also Gu ru Bkra shis ngag dbang blo gros 1990, 478.

43 Karmay 1988, 29.

44 Gu ru Bkra shis ngag dbang blo gros 1990, 479.

41 Karmay 2002, 31.

42 Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho 1989–91, 204; trans.

Karmay 2014, 157. Translation modified for consistency of style.

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chapter 9

Bodhisattva Emperors of the Manchu Qing Dynasty wen-shing chou

the manchus adopted tibetan buddhism as a state religion after they conquered China

from the north side of the Great Wall and founded the Qing dynasty. Like many rulers of the preceding dynasties, the Qing emperors invited Tibetan clerics to their court and established what is commonly referred to as priest-patron relations with them. What was unprecedented, however, was the Qing incorporation of priest-patron relations from previous dynasties and existing ideals of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist kingship into the creation of a universal imperial persona.1 This new vision of kingship was ostensibly mediated through religious art and architecture. Imperial productions of temples, images, and implements therefore provide a direct and compelling account of how the Qing emperors harnessed the power of the past. By portraying themselves as the latest wheel-turning emanations of Mañjuśrī, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom dwelling on Mount Wutai (Wutai shan 五臺山) in northern China, the Manchu emperors sought to simultaneously assume the identity of China’s resident bodhisattva, position themselves as counterparts of the Dalai Lamas—recognized as emanations of Avalokiteśvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion—and trace their rebirths back to previous Indian, Tibetan, and Mongol Buddhist rulers and priests who had been associated with Mañjuśrī. This carefully calibrated path to legitimacy through spiritual rather than ancestral kinship allowed the Qing emperors to inherit a religiopolitical lineage that spanned the vast domains of their imperium across China and Inner Asia.

Connections between the Manchus and Mañjuśrī were first drawn in the early years of the Qing. The very ethnonym “Manchu,” which was decreed by the Qing dynastic founder Hong Taiji (1592–1643) in an effort to unite the various Jurchen tribes under one confederation, appears to have been created precisely because of its homophonic similarity to Mañjuśrī. When the Fifth Dalai Lama, head of the Gelukpa school of Tibetan Buddhism, addressed Hong Taiji as “Mañjuśrī-Great Emperor” and presented him with the honorific “God of Sky, Mañjugho a-emperor and Great Being” (Mañjugho a is another name for Mañjuśrī), these appellations all but fulfilled the Third Dalai Lama’s prophecy that a great secular incarnation of Mañjuśrī would unite China, Mongolia, and Tibet, thereby confirming the universal sovereignty of the newly consolidated Manchu power.2 Hong Taiji’s grandson, the Kangxi emperor (1654–1722), was the first to refer to his own status as an emanation of Mañjuśrī; both he and his successor Yongzheng (1678–1735), who was otherwise thought to be partial to Chan Buddhism, were known to have created iconic images of Mañjuśrī in their own likeness.3 The Qing emperors further promoted Mañjuśrī’s sacred abode of Mount Wutai in northern China through the production of mountain gazetteers, patronage of its monasteries, and imperial tours to the mountain.

As a result of the Qing support of Gelukpa Buddhism, monks from Tibet and Mongolia populated temples on the holy mountain, which was subsequently dubbed “China’s Tibet.”4 A hand-colored woodblock

Opposite: Detail of fig. 9.7

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print of the mountain by a resident Mongol lama from the mid-nineteenth century displays the aftermath of this imperial legacy (fig. 9.1). The sites and miracles depicted are overwhelmingly Tibetan Buddhist in iconography, with the prominent display of apparitions, such as that of the Gelukpa founder Tsongkhapa.5 Throughout the pictorial map, Kangxi is shown as engaged in various heroic and humorous activities based on the popular legend of his search on Mount Wutai for his father Shunzhi, who in local lore is said to have staged his death so that he could take monastic vows there. 6 In one episode depicted on the map, Kangxi pacifies the region by shooting a ferocious tiger, a story that resonates deeply with the tale of Mañjuśrī’s subjugation of poisonous dragons upon his arrival on Mount Wutai.

Among the Manchu rulers, Kangxi’s grandson Qianlong was the one who undertook the most comprehensive array of artistic, cultural, and ritual productions to crystallize his bodhisattva kingship. The sheer expanse and expense of materials—images, objects, scriptures, deity pantheons, and temple complexes, all manufactured under the Qianlong reign—reveal a sweeping narrative of universal emperorship to encompass all histories and traditions under his rule.

At the heart of the construction of this narrative is the collaboration between Qianlong and the brilliant Monguor Gelukpa polymath, reincarnate lama Changkya Rölpai Dorjé.7 Changkya’s previous incarnation was as a teacher to both the Kangxi and Yongzheng emperors, so when Changkya’s home monastery in eastern Tibet was brought into the fold during a Qing military campaign, the young reincarnate lama was taken to the Qing court and educated alongside the young prince, who would later become the Qianlong emperor.

Changkya became Qianlong’s root lama and was appointed the state preceptor after Qianlong ascended the throne in 1736. Well versed in Tibetan, Mongolian, Manchu, and Chinese, Changkya advised Qianlong on all matters related to Buddhism and Inner Asia. The impact of their trusted relationship was profound and wide-ranging: it determined subsequent Qing policies toward Inner Asia (including the search for key reincarnate lamas), the collection and reproduction of religious pantheons and imageries, the design and building of monasteries and palaces in and around the Qing court, and the translation and collation of the scriptural canon into Manchu. A sculptural image of Changkya represents him as a monkscholar with an intense, spirited gaze and a distinguishing lump on the right side of his face (fig. 9.2). It also identifies Changkya by his other well-known trait—as an emanation of Mañjuśrī, flanked by the deity’s attributes of a book and sword.

In his role as Qianlong’s chief consultant for Buddhist ritual and iconography, Changkya oversaw the design of religious images and objects at the Qing court. During this time, the palace workshops frequently recast iconic images and ritual objects from Tibet to reflect imperial tastes and sensibilities. For example, a larger-than-life-size Buddha Amitāyus, or the Buddha of Boundless Longevity, was created entirely of hollow, dry cinnabar lacquer with gold gilding (fig. 9.3). It was presumably one among a set of images made for a temple at the imperial summer retreat of Chengde to celebrate the birthdays of Qianlong and his beloved mother, the empress dowager. A Chinese technology for image making, dry lacquer is an extremely efficient medium used to mimic bronze casting, allowing for sizable images of lighter weight that can be created in a short amount of time. The use of dry lacquer to re-create large-scale Indo-Tibetan bronze images can be traced to the Yuan imperial workshop founded by the Nepalese artist Arniko (see fig. 1.9). By using the material and technique developed in the Yuan court, the Qing makers of the Buddha Amitāyus also connected themselves to the Mongol imperial legacy.

Other objects were made as gifts within a sumptuous culture of gift exchange between the Qing court and Inner Asia. Under Changkya’s supervision, imperial workshops created finely calibrated images and objects that were capable of articulating subtle and manifold meanings to their Inner Asian recipients. Gifts

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Fig. 9.1 Pilgrimage Map of Wutaishan; made by monk-carver Lhundrup from Amurbayas Qulangtu Monastery, Mongolia; Cifu Temple (慈福寺), Wutaishan, China; dated 1846; painted and colored xylograph; 46½ x 67¼ in. (118.1 x 170.8 cm); Rubin Museum of Art; C2004.29.1 (HAR 65371).

Published: Linrothe 2006, fig. 10.1; Chou 2007, 108–29; Raguin and Bangdel 2010, fig. 16; Baumer 2011, 228–31; Chou 2011, fig. 1; Debreczeny 2011, cat. 1; Charleux 2015, figs. 3, 45; Chou 2018, figs. 4.2, 4.21, 4.22, 4.23, 4.32, 4.33, 4.34, 4.40, 4.43.

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Above: Fig. 9.2 Changkya Rölpai Dorjé (1717–1786); China; Qing dynasty, 18th century; copper alloy with gilding; height: 6¼ in. (15.8 cm); Yury Khokhlov Collection.

Opposite: Fig. 9.3 The Buddha Amitāyus; possibly city of Chengde (Jehol), China; Qing dynasty, reign of Qianlong emperor (1736–1795); hollow dry lacquer; 40 x 27 x 18 in. (101.6 x 68.6 x 45.7 cm); Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, The Avery Brundage Collection; B60S16+. Published: Bartholomew 1991, fig. 5.

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Above: Fig. 9.4 Vessel in the Shape of a Butter Lamp; China; Qing dynasty, reign of Qianlong emperor (1736–1795); carved lacquer with gilded metal lining; height: 5⅛ in. (13 cm); Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, The Avery Brundage Collection; B60M403.

Published: Bartholomew 1991, fig. 17.

Opposite, top: Fig. 9.5 Shallow Bowl; Jiangxi Province, China; Qing dynasty, reign of Yongzheng emperor (1723–1735); porcelain with underglazeblue decoration; height: 1⅝ in. (4.2 cm); diameter: 6⅞ in. (17.5 cm); Asian Art Museum of San Francisco; gift of Arthur Leeper in memory of Hiroshi Sonami; B87P12.

Opposite, bottom: Fig. 9.6 Ritual Water Vessel; Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Province, China; Qing dynasty, reign of Qianlong emperor (1736–1795); porcelain with overglaze polychrome decoration; 8 x 6¼ x 4¼ in. (20.3 x 15.9 x 10.8 cm); Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, The Avery Brundage Collection; B60P2297.

Published: Bartholomew 1991, fig. 19.

intended as homages to Tibetan hierarchs also served as material testaments to Qing imperial supremacy.

A vessel in the shape of a butter lamp, made with red carved lacquer in deep relief, transformed the requisite vessel on every Tibetan altar into the consummate Chinese luxury form (fig. 9.4). The imperial kiln at Jingdezhen in Jiangxi Province also manufactured highly refined porcelain objects after Tibetan Buddhist ritual implements. A shallow bowl with Chinese blue and white glazes from the Yongzheng reign is embellished on the inside with a crossed vajra design, and on the outside with Tibetan Lantsa script used to render mantras and dhāra īs (fig. 9.5). A ewer in the shape of Tibetan Buddhist copper or silver ritual water vessels from the Qianlong reign retains the image of a makara, a mythical sea creature, at the base of the spout as can be seen on Tibetan prototypes (fig. 9.6). The rims of the vessel are lined with beaded decoration, and colored with metallic gilding, to suggest an affinity with Tibetan metalware. But the surface of the ewer is covered with Chinese imperial imageries of dragons, bats, and auspicious clouds in a coral-red overglaze.

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Many luxury objects in other media, such as silk embroidery, also carry messages of auspicious wishes through images and texts that are directly attached to the gifts themselves.8 They were designed to acknowledge their Inner Asian audience through the use of familiar and intelligible forms, and at the same time embody the universal sovereignty of the Qing emperor through their distinct motifs, media, styles, and technologies, resulting in a unique synthesis of Chinese and Tibetan traditions.

One particularly defining occasion for the production of a staggering array of meaningful objects was the Sixth Panchen Lama’s visit to the Qing court, which also coincided with Qianlong’s seventieth birthday celebration. The Sixth Panchen (1738–1780) was an ally of the Qing court and the most eminent and powerful Gelukpa Tibetan hierarch of his time. At the invitation of the Qianlong emperor and with the mediation of Changkya, he traveled to the imperial summer retreat of Chengde and Beijing in 1780 from his home monastery of Tashilhunpo in the Tsang region of Central Tibet. The entire journey was meticulously staged with rituals, ceremonies, and the sumptuous exchange of gifts, but cut short when the Panchen contracted smallpox and died in Beijing a month and a half later. His visit was nonetheless memorialized as the homecoming of the Tibetan Lama, the reenactment of auspicious precedents, the fulfillment of lifelong aspirations, and the cultivation of good karma on the part of Qianlong, the Panchen Lama, and Changkya.9 A year before the Panchen’s arrival, Qianlong ordered an architectural replica of Tashilhunpo Monastery to be built in Chengde as a residence for his esteemed guest from afar. This new home for the Panchen, named Xumi Fushou zhi miao 須彌福壽之廟 (a Chinese translation of the name Tashilhunpo), was adjacent to Putuo Zongcheng zhi miao 普陀宗乘之廟, Qianlong’s replica of the Potala Palace in Lhasa. This structure was built in 1771 in homage to the Dalai Lamas to celebrate the double birthdays of Qianlong and his mother, as well as to welcome the return of the Torghut Mongols, whose epic escape from Russia—though a calamitous event—was nevertheless celebrated by Qianlong’s court as a return to the imperial fold and thus an auspicious affirmation of his rightful rule.10 As with the Potala replica, Qianlong’s copy of Tashilhunpo was charged with the symbolism of his expanding reign. Blind walls with small ornamental windows, reminiscent of Tibetan forts, enclose buildings that otherwise follow the layout of a Chinese monastery along a central north-south axis. Under the direction of Changkya, the entire complex was outfitted with images and ritual objects matching the standards of Tashilhunpo and the Qing court. The thangkas and objects have since been scattered, save for a few large images, but extant documentation reveals the enormous scale of the production.11 A large thangka positions the cosmic Buddha Ratnasambhava, one of the five directional buddhas, below the Buddha Amitāyus (fig. 9.7). Since Amitāyus was both an emanational source for the Panchen Lamas and a symbol for long life conspicuously used in Qing imperial birthday celebrations, the thangka aptly speaks to both occasions of Qianlong’s birthday and the Panchen’s visit. To drive the message of felicitation home, the celestial attendants all carry pendants in the shape of a swastika (reading wan) and long life (reading shou), a special rebus for ten thousand years of long life reserved only for the emperor (see p. 190).

A similarly sized thangka of the Indian Buddhist philosopher Bhāviveka, which belonged to a set of thirteen thangkas depicting members of the incarnation lineage of the Panchen Lama, also presumably adorned Chengde’s Tashilhunpo (fig. 9.8).12 Ten years prior to his visit, the Panchen sent a set of twelve thangkas of his incarnation lineage as a gift to Qianlong for his sixtieth birthday.13 The palace workshop Opposite: Fig. 9.7 The Cosmic Buddha Ratnasambhava; Xumi Fushou Temple (須彌福壽之廟), Chengde, Hebei Province, China; 18th century; ink and color on cotton; 52⅜ x 32¼ in. (133 x 81.9 cm); Asian Art Museum of San Francisco; gift of John Sheldon Osborne; B83D6.

Published: Bartholomew 1991, fig. 10; Bartholomew 1992, pl. 3; Bartholomew 2001, fig. 7.10.

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adopted this set for the Panchen’s arrival by adding an image of the Sixth Panchen to the existing set of twelve, which ended with the Fifth Panchen.14 More than simply copying the originals and adding an updated incarnation, court artists transformed an originally Tibetan representation into a hybrid composition by infusing it with elements from the Chinese literati tradition. The representation of the philosopher in an animated gesture of debate and adorned with delicate gold tracings on his monastic accouterment follows the compositional and iconographic template of the Tibetan thangka gifted by the Sixth Panchen.

But added details, such as string-bound books and scrolls at the center of the composition, are indexical of classical Chinese erudition. Behind Bhāviveka is a painted screen, a favorite device in traditional Chinese scholars’ portraiture for exhibiting the refined inner landscape of the subject. The screen’s subtle, refined ink-monochrome landscape, evocative of the lofty monumental landscape paintings of Wang Wei 王維 (701–761)—a Tang dynasty poet-painter considered the progenitor scholar-artist by Chinese literati—is further paired with a highly stylized blue-and-green landscape that opens into the distance.15 What was originally a simple hut in the Tibetan composition is replaced by an elegantly tiled and latticed garden studio with peonies and a scholar’s rock. The painting would have no doubt impressed the visiting Sixth Panchen as he witnessed his own past life as an Indic scholar transported into the elegant mountain retreat of the literati, holders of China’s cultural authority.

Just as the Panchen’s arrival at court was eulogized as karmic inevitability, the unprecedentedly close bonds of friendship and priest-patron relations between Changkya and Qianlong were celebrated through a narrative of historical precedents. Among the most important were the identifications of Qianlong as the rebirth of the Mongol Yuan ruler Qubilai Khan and Changkya as the rebirth of Qubilai’s imperial preceptor, the Tibetan lama Phakpa, a relationship already made iconic in a fifteenth-century painting attributed to Khyentsé Chenmo (see fig. 5.5).16 This pair of priest-patron antecedents was portrayed in two Qing albums that praise the respective incarnation lineages of Changkya and Qianlong (figs. 9.9 and 9.10).17 In the album leaf of Changkya’s past life as Phakpa, Phakpa is seen preaching to Qubilai, who is seated on a three-cushioned throne below a peacock canopy. In the distance, colorful Mongolian yurts and halfChinese, half-Tibetan style architecture are set into a mountain landscape, a combination that bears close resemblance to Chengde, especially to the hybrid design of the Tashilhunpo copy there. Phakpa likewise appears in the album leaf depicting Qianlong’s previous incarnation as Qubilai, this time above the emperor in the position of Qubilai’s root lama.

The recognition of Changkya as a rebirth of Phakpa cross-referenced the identification of Qianlong as Qubilai. The retelling of this past allowed the Manchu ruler to declare himself heir to both the Chinggisid and Yuan dynastic lineages of Qubilai Khan and to reiterate his commitment to Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism. That all four were seen as emanations of Mañjuśrī only made their affinity to each other more indisputable. But beyond their connections to one another, the identification of past lives also reinforced the Manchu emperor’s status vis-à-vis the Dalai and Panchen Lamas, whose previous incarnations are also inextricable to this web of connections. The Sixth Panchen Lama, who authored the incarnation lineages of both Changkya and Qianlong, was himself a rebirth of Phakpa’s uncle, the philosopher Sakya Pa ita (1182–1251) (see fig. 5.2). Not coincidentally, Phakpa also occupied pride of place in the incarnation lineage of the Dalai Lamas, since the trusted imperial preceptor was viewed as the first Tibetan lama to hold both religious and temporal power.18 Opposite: Fig 9.8 Acarya Bhāviveka Converts a Nonbeliever to Buddhism; Chengde (Jehol), China; Qing dynasty, Qianlong reign, 1779–1780; color on cloth; 53¼ x 33¼ in. (135.3 x 84.5 cm); Philadelphia Museum of Art; gift of Natacha Rambova; 1959-156-1. Published: Jackson 2012, fig. 8.15.

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Fig. 9.9 Phakpa Lodrö Gyaltsen (1235–1280), Eighth Leaf of Changkya Rölpai Dorjé’s Rebirth Lineage Album; Beijing; 18th century; color on silk, quadrilingual verses inscribed with powdered gold-black ground, ciqing paper; individual leaf: 16½ x 10¾ in. (42 x 27.2 cm); Staatliche Museen zu Berlin— Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin; ID 7524 (8).

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Fig. 9.10 Qubilai Khan (1215–1294), from Qianlong’s Rebirth Lineage Album; Beijing; 18th century; color on paper; individual leaf: 16 x 12½ in. (40.5 x 31.8 cm); Palace Museum, Beijing.

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Fig. 9.11 Changkya Rölpai Dorjé; China; 18th century; ink and colors on silk; 49⅝ x 27½ in. (126 x 70 cm); Palace Museum, Beijing; 故 6655.

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Fig. 9.12 The Mañjugho a-cakravartin Emperor; formerly in Putuo Zongcheng Temple, Chengde, China; 18th century, ink and colors on silk; 43¾ x 25½ in. (111 x 64.7 cm); Palace Museum, Beijing; 故 6486.

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Qianlong’s court, however, did not stop at recalling past connections. In my view, his court took the convention of priest-patron relations to a new level by emphasizing the overlapping identities of the Qing emperor and his teachers. A most telling example of the promotion of a shared identity is an extant thangka from the Imperial Palace that features Changkya in a monk’s robe at the center of a pantheon of deities and spiritual masters (fig. 9.11). The Changkya thangka is similar to two other thangkas of Qianlong in the guise of an ordained monk from Yonghegong and the Tashilhunpo replica at Chengde (fig. 9.12).19 The two Qianlong thangkas belong to a group of seven known works that represent him as a Mañjugho a-cakravartin.20 While it remains unclear if this was a singular experiment or a more established convention, what is palpable is a fluid, playful interchangeability between the lama and the patron, alternately placed in the center of Gelukpa genealogy and by extension the Buddhist world of Inner Asia.

The visual parallel between the two figures is made through virtually identical sets of surrounding deities and protectors, as well as similarities between the central figures; both are wearing scholar hats and monastic robes, and both are seated on three-cushioned thrones, displaying the same gesture. At the same time, there is no ambiguity concerning the central figures: Qianlong holds the jeweled wheel of the cakravartin, while Changkya holds a long-life vase. The lama is recognizable through the iconographic attributes—bell and vajra—of his personal meditation deity, Cakrasa vara. Whereas in the Qianlong portrait thangkas Changkya occupies the position of the root lama overhead, in Changkya’s own portrait the triad of Tsongkhapa and his two chief disciples, Khedrup and Gyaltsap, now reside in the corresponding position. There is also a slight reconfiguration in the garland of lineage representatives around the central figure. In the Qianlong portrait thangkas, the Tsongkhapa triad appears at the apex of the garland of figures around Qianlong. But since they have been moved to a more prominent position in the Changkya thangka, two new figures in red robes—lamas in the Sakyapa school of Tibetan Buddhism—have been added to Changkya’s garland. The most unmistakable mark of Changkya's identity in his thangka portrait is the characteristic lump on Changkya’s right cheek. But this thangka also appears to lack the inscriptions that accompany the Qianlong-as-Mañjugho a-cakravartin thangkas. In particular, the verse below the throne on the Qianlong thankgas is highly specific to the emperor: Mañjuśrī (Smooth Lord), sharp-witted sovereign of men.

Playful, unexcelled, great dharma king.

On the diamond seat, feet firm.

May your wishes spontaneously meet good fortune! 21 The verse employs a series of puns and wordplay to evoke Qianlong’s connection to Mañjuśrī, Changkya, and the contemporaneous Eighth Dalai Lama. It also references the longevity rites that Changkya conducted on Qianlong’s behalf. The thangkas of Changkya and Qianlong were thus intentionally similar, yet differentiated through inscription and iconography, with the latter asserting the guise of a Mañjugho acakravartin, which both parallels and subsumes other emanations of Mañjuśrī.

The Qianlong thangkas and the singular example of the Changkya thangka derive from a subset of Gelukpa refuge-field paintings, images that visualize the ritual veneration of the teacher (guru pūjā).

Refuge-field paintings became popular in the eighteenth century at around the same time the Qianlong thangkas were created. They are maps of the transmission of religious teachings with the main teacher at the center of a pantheon of deities and teachers. In the Gelukpa refuge-field paintings, Tsongkhapa occupies

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the pivotal position, whereas in the Qing thangkas, Tsongkhapa is replaced by the emperor, or in one extant case, by his guru Changkya.

By preserving the attributes of Mañjuśrī that usually appear with Tsongkhapa in refuge-field paintings, the Qing thangkas also present Qianlong and Changkya as Tsongkhapa’s doubles at the center of the Gelukpa lineage. The addition of deities important to Qianlong and Changkya’s own practice, and to the Qing, such as those related to Qianlong’s Cakrasa vara initiations by Changkya, further re-centered the new field of refuge on the Qing court. Using the devotional lexicon of Gelukpa Buddhism, the double portraits of Qianlong and Changkya thus proclaimed their authority over the vast teachings and epistemic structure of Tibetan Buddhism, as well as over all of Inner Asia, which was united by the religion. When a Qianlong-as-Mañjuśrī thangka was presented at the enthronement of the Eighth Dalai Lama in 1762, in the Potala Palace in Lhasa, it was reportedly met with gladness.22 It is clear that the thangka indeed “spoke” the right language to its intended audience.

The layering of identities—felicitously evoked in the verse and through the pictorial language of the thangkas—is evident in a wealth of other imageries representing Qianlong and Changkya as complementary emanations of Mañjuśrī. Although most of the images have been removed from their original setting, by examining inventory records of their placement and location during the Qing it is possible to uncover a parallel narrative thread of the emperor and his lamas as a family of royal monks and deity emanations jointly presiding over the Buddhist realm.23 This collaborative dimension is further emphasized through the display of images inside the memorial shrines of the Sixth Panchen and Changkya, located adjacent to the Pavilion of Raining Flowers (Yuhua ge 雨花閣) in the Tibetan Buddhist chapel compound of the Qing palace. The Pavilion of Raining Flowers served as an initiation hall for Qianlong and an important site of ritual recitation.

The sculptural program housed inside constitutes the four levels of tantric Buddhist practice (one on each floor of the four-story building), culminating in three Gelukpa tutelary deities that were central to the Qing court and also found in the Qianlong- and Changkya-as-Mañjuśrī thangkas.24 The pavilion’s side halls were turned into memorial shrines of the Sixth Panchen and Changkya, where sculptural and painted images of the two hierarchs were placed for veneration (figs. 9.13 and 9.14). In addition to the Panchen and Changkya, Qianlong was also venerated in the halls he built to honor his teachers.25 Placed along the northern wall of Changkya’s memorial shrine is a multimedia shrine panel featuring a golden image of the Mañjugho a-cakravartin emperor in a Gelukpa monk’s robe, surrounded by 107 painted clay images in glass-covered niches. The emperor is seated inside a multistoried palace reminiscent of both a stūpa (Indo-Tibetan reliquary) and the exterior architecture of the Pavilion of Raining Flowers itself. Records suggest that another such panel was placed along the northern wall of the Sixth Pa chen’s memorial hall.26 In both, Qianlong’s shrine was placed in the direction of center (north), thus oriented toward the Pavilion of Raining Flowers. The shrine panels position Changkya and the Panchen vis-à-vis the Mañjugho a-cakravartin and commemorate the identities and relations of the triad in perpetuity.

The triadic arrangement emphasizes the equal standing of the Sixth Panchen and Changkya in relation to the emperor. Two imperial portraits of the pair in full royal regalia—in contrast to Qianlong in monk’s robes—were most likely placed for veneration in the two memorial halls (figs. 9.13 and 9.14). They are nearly identical in iconography, save for the implements on the tables in the foreground, which help to differentiate the two men along with their carefully rendered facial features.

Qianlong commissioned portraits of the Panchen in 1780 and Changkya in 1787, both from the lama painters of the Tibetan Buddhist painting academy at the Hall of Central Uprightness (Zhongzheng dian 中正殿). The two portraits, together with the two halls and the arrangements of their contents, were

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designed as mirror images of each other. In the words of Patricia Berger, the pair reinforces “the concept of their brotherhood, united in death as members of a single Gelukpa family.”27 If the two memorial shrines are seen as freestanding extensions of the Pavilion of Raining Flowers—a three-dimensional map of Buddhist paths to enlightenment, centered on Qianlong’s own religious practice—it becomes clear that Qianlong wished not only to venerate his teachers close to home but also to incorporate them into his own pantheon of deities and teachings.

This vision of Changkya, the Panchen, and Qianlong as a triumvirate at the center of the Buddhist empire reverberated beyond the imperial quarters. In a thangka that may have been made in one of Changkya’s workshops in Inner Mongolia, the three are depicted at the upper register above the main icon of Guan Yu, the famous third-century Chinese general turned martial deity. Though little known within mainstream Tibetan Buddhism, Guan Yu became popularized as a protective deity after Changkya authored a short prayer that was widely disseminated in Tibetan, Mongolian, and Manchu.28 The Qing rulers promoted Guan Yu as a national protector (fig. 9.15), linking him to the chief Gelukpa tutelary deities of Vajrabhairava, Guhyasamāja, and Cakrasa vara.29 They also equated Guan Yu with the Qing founder Nurhachi and later with King Gesar, the main hero of Tibet’s epic tale, who is well known in Tibetan and Mongolian art and literature.30 That Gesar was also rumored to be a previous incarnation of the Panchen would have only enhanced Guan Yu’s appeal.31 These overlays of identity united the popular figures of the Chinese, Manchu, Mongol, and Tibetan imaginaire. Guan Yu subsequently became a popular war god among Mongols and Manchus, and he was known to have been widely worshipped at many sites throughout northern China, Tibet, and Mongolia.32 The depiction of Changkya, the Sixth Panchen, and Qianlong from left to right as a united league of dharma defenders on top of the popular martial deity attests to the veneration of the triumvirate at the center of Qing imperium. Occupying the top level of the thangka, where teachers transmitting the teachings of the central deity or emanational sources of the central figure are usually depicted, the triad jointly gives credence to the newly Tibetanized deity of war. Their presence above Guan Yu makes clear that the evocation of historical precedent and the commemoration of shared identities serve to define not merely the past and present but—more significantly—the future. In fact, when the Sixth Panchen visited the Qing court, he prophesized his reunion with Qianlong and Changkya in the final battle of Shambhala, the holy war mythologized to cleanse the degenerate world overrun by heretics and usher in a new Buddhist era.33 Guan Yu thus became associated with the Shambhala myth by way of the Sixth Panchen, who was seen as a reincarnation of Gesar/Guan Yu and destined to be reborn as the king of Shambhala. The thangka also imparts this messianic vision of the future, where the Sixth Panchen—flanked by Changkya on his right and Qianlong on his left, both of whom were to be reborn as his generals—leads the world into the final battle. This image of heroic martialism began to replace that of a universal wheel-turning bodhisattva emperor in the late eighteenth century among the Mongols, where the myth of Shambhala continued to gain currency in the centuries to follow (see chapter 10).

Opposite, left: Fig. 9.13 Sixth Pa chen Lama; China; 1780; colors on cloth; 48⅞ x 26¾ in. (124 x 68 cm); Palace Museum, Beijing; 故 8849.

Opposite, right: Fig. 9.14 Changkya Rölpai Dorjé; China; 1787; colors on cloth; 48⅞ x 26¾ in. (124 x 68 cm); Palace Museum, Beijing; 故 8925.

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Fig. 9.15 Guan Yu, God of War; Inner Mongolia; late 18th–19th century; pigments on cloth; 22⅜ x 16⅛ in. (59.4 x 41 cm); Rubin Museum of Art; gift of Shelley and Donald Rubin; C2012.7.24 (HAR 1099).

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notes 1

For the Manchu view on the concept of a universal emperor that also combined Chinese, European, Central Asian, and Mongol ideals, see Crossley 1999, 36–38.

2

See Farquhar 1978, 19–20.

3

On Kangxi, see Sagaster 1967, 121, 264–65; on Yongzheng, see Kämpfe 1976, 61.

4

Charleux 2015, 110.

5

Chou 2018, 144–51.

6

Chou 2007, 123–25.

7

For more on Changkya, see Wang 1995; Illich 2006.

8

See, for example, the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara of the Six Syllables at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, 1989.4.

9

The rhetoric of karmic affinities among the three figures is discussed in a forthcoming essay by Nancy G. Lin and Wen-shing Chou.

10 Berger 2003, 14–23; Millward 2004.

11 Objects commissioned for the visit were documented in palace archives of various departments. For a partial compilation, see Zhongguo diyi lishi dang’an guan and Zhongguo Zangxue yanjiu zhongxin 1996. Terese Bartholomew, former curator of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, discovered several inscriptions sewn inside the mounting of thangkas from Chengde, which detail where they were hung inside the Tashilhunpo replica. See Bartholomew 2001, 179–81.

12 The Philadelphia Museum of Art has another thangka from the same series, which represents the Panchen Lama’s preincarnation as Tsongkhapa’s chief disciple, Khedrup (1959-156-2), and two other thangkas from the Tashilhunpo replica at Chengde (1959-156-5; 1959-156-4).

13 Ten of them are reproduced in Wang 2011, 43–56.

14 The palace workshop created the portraits in a variety of media to furnish the various sites the Panchen would visit in Beijing and Chengde, including wall hangings, ink engravings (moke 墨刻), and textile embroideries.

15 I thank Ping Foong for providing a detailed reading of the landscape styles in this painting, and Karl Debreczeny for making the inquiry on my behalf.

Personal communications, May 24, 2018.

16 Thu’u bkwan blo bzang chos kyi nyi ma 1989, 297.

17 Chou 2018, 102.

18 Schwieger 2015, 50–51.

19 Berger 2003, 58, raises the possibility that the two thangkas of Qianlong may in fact be connected with the Yongzheng emperor, who was recorded to have installed an image of himself as an ordained Gelukpa monk and emanation of Mañjuśrī at Songzhu Monastery.

20 The thangka of Changkya appears at a glance to be so similar in style and iconography to those of Qianlong that the work was repeatedly published with a mistaken

attribution of him as the emperor. See Wang 2003, pl.

32; and Wang 2011, pl. 34. Ishihama 2011, 213, identified this thangka as possibly the Third Changkya.

21 Translation from Berger 2003, 61. The original reads: jam dpal rnon po mi’i rje bor/ rol pa’i bdag chen chos kyi rgyal/ rdo rje khri la zhabs brtan cing/ bzhed don lhun grub skal ba bzang/ 22 Wang 1995, 227–28.

23 These records are available from the Palace Display Inventory (chenshe dang 陳設檔).

24 It was designed by Changkya after Tholing Monastery in western Tibet. For more on the layered program of this multilevel structure and its sculptural and painting programs, see Berger 2003, 97–104, and Luo Wenhua 2005, 77–126.

25 Chou 2018, 114–15.

26 Wang 2009, cites from Chenshe dang a “hanging panel with a sandalwood frame and glass cover, flanked by the emperor’s calligraphic couplet on yellow imperial paper,” which most likely refers to such a shrine.

27 Berger 2003, 189. Other rituals and commemorations produced by the imperial court similarly place them as equals, such as the nearly identical constructions of the funerary stūpas in Beijing for the Sixth Panchen and later at the Ocean-Taming Temple (Zhenhai si 鎮海 寺) on Mount Wutai for Changkya Rölpai Dorjé.

28 Guan Yu appeared frequently in Changkya’s dreams and became his personal protective deity. See Berger 2003, 118–19.

29 Heissig 1980, 99.

30 Heissig 1980, 93–101; Crossley 1999, 244–45 and 284– 85; Atwood 2004, 198.

31 Stein 1972, 88–89.

32 A temple dedicated to Guan Yu was built on the edge of Yonghegong, Qianlong’s birthplace, which he had converted into a large monastic university with the help of Changkya. Another small Chinese-style temple dedicated to Guan Yu on Bhamari Hill in Lhasa, southwest of the Potala Palace, was built by the Manchu amban in 1792 on Qianlong’s behalf to commemorate the defeat of the Gurkhas. Personal communications with Karl Debreczeny, June 4, 2018. In Chengde and its vicinity alone, there were some thirty temples dedicated to Guan Yu. See Bao Deyi and Wang Shuping 2017, 2.

33 Thu’u bkwan blo bzang chos kyi nyi ma 1989, 588–89.

The Sixth Panchen also promoted the Shambhala myth by writing a famous guidebook and a prayer to be reborn there. See Elverskog 2006, 200.

I am especially grateful to Karl Debreczeny, Nancy G. Lin, and Ellen Huang for their insightful comments and suggestions.

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the politics of magical warfare

chapter 10

Maitreya, Shambhala, and the End of Buddhist Empire johan elverskog

Ever since the Buddha prophesied that the life span of the Dharma would be cut in half—

from five thousand to twenty-five hundred years—on account of women being allowed as monastics, the Buddhist tradition has been fueled by the fear of its own demise.1 At the same time, this apocalyptic vision has been tempered by the belief in Maitreya, the future Buddha, who will eventually return like a messiah and revive the Buddhist dispensation.2 Indeed, it is precisely this mythology of collapse and resurrection— by no means exclusive to the Dharma—that has driven many Buddhists across Asia to transform their religious tradition and its political realities for millennia. In China, for example, fear about the end of the Dharma fueled the development of the Zen and Pure Land traditions and inspired millenarian political movements through the centuries.3 Yet the use of such messianic myths to drive political action was not exclusive to East Asia; Buddhists in Inner Asia used the myths of Maitreya and Shambhala to revive their traditions and forge new political realities. In so doing, they also created works of art to foster, promote, and ultimately create these new utopias.

One such moment that fostered new religious and utopian visions was the chaos unleashed in Tibet from the Mongol conquests, whereby the world created by the Tibetan renaissance of the eleventh through thirteenth centuries was shattered.4 As with any colonial experience, the Mongol rule of Tibet had negative and positive consequences. For instance, the global phenomenon of Tibetan Buddhism is largely a legacy of the Mongol Empire, as the Mongols made it an integral part of East Asian political culture.5 Yet most Tibetans viewed the Mongols not as benefactors but as barbarian invaders who needed to be repelled with war magic.6 Others saw the imposition of imperial rule as a failure of the Tibetan tradition itself; therefore, to save both Tibet and the Dharma, a religious reformation was needed.

The most important of these post-Mongol reformers was Tsongkhapa (1357–1419), who advocated a strict and puritanical return to the fundamentals of the tradition. Most notably, Tsongkhapa argued for a return to celibacy and adherence to the monastic code. In his mind, the less-than-orthodox practices of many tantric Buddhists had resulted in both a perversion of the Dharma and the disaster of the Mongol invasion. By purifying the tradition, Tsongkhapa hoped to revive not only the righteous practices of Buddhism but Tibet itself.

As such, it is not surprising that Tsongkhapa’s utopian vision—fueled by the apocalyptic Mongol invasion—overlapped with the worship of the future Buddha Maitreya. According to his biography, when Tsongkhapa was on his famous four-year retreat he had a vision of Maitreya. Following the retreat, Tsongkhapa performed the first of his four deeds: restoring a famous Maitreya statue.7 In 1409, he established a key Gelukpa ritual festival worshipping Maitreya. He also named the monastery he founded outside Lhasa after the heavenly realm in which Maitreya resides—Ganden, translated from the Sanskrit

Opposite: Detail of fig. 10.5

213

Tushita. Because of this connection between Tsongkhapa and the future Buddha—including its religiopolitical utopian visions—Maitreya worship became a key part of the Gelukpa tradition. This is well evidenced in the monumental Maitreya statue at Tashilhunpo Monastery, built by the First Dalai Lama, Gendun Drupa (1391–1475), in 1461.8 In the mid-fifteenth century, the future of the Gelukpa tradition—much less the existence of the Dalai Lamas as a political institution ruling Tibet—was unimaginable. Indeed, if not for subsequent Mongol patronage in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it is unclear whether the Gelukpa—the “virtuous ones”—would have even survived. It may have precisely been this precariousness—coupled with dreams of future glory—that made the Gelukpa tradition come to worship so avidly the future Buddha.

By the seventeenth century, when the Great Fifth Dalai Lama had consolidated his religiopolitical rule over Tibet with the help of Khoshuud (Qoshot) Mongol military power, it certainly seemed as if Tsongkhapa’s hoped-for Tibetan Buddhist utopia had become a reality.9 But the religiopolitical reality forged by the Fifth Dalai Lama and Güshri Khan—based as it was on the traditional priest-patron relationship—was not exclusive to Tibet.10 Qubilai Khan and Phakpa Lama originally institutionalized the Buddhist model of religiopolitical rule during the Mongol Empire period in the thirteenth century, and Buddhists across Asia came to recognize it.11 When the Mongols readopted Buddhism in the so-called second conversion in the sixteenth century, it was precisely this religiopolitical relationship that was revived. Thus in 1578 Altan Khan of the Tümed Mongols met with the Third Dalai Lama to forge a new Buddhist state.12 Moreover, in emulation of Tsongkhapa—and the Gelukpa vision of a new Buddhist dispensation as manifested in the cult of Maitreya—Altan Khan and his family built a monumental Maitreya temple in their capital city.13 As with many religiopolitical utopian dreams, Altan Khan’s alliance with the Dalai Lama and his family’s construction of the Maitreya temple failed to ensure a glorious future. Instead, the religiopolitical vision they had revived was quickly adopted by other Mongol rulers, who, in alliance with various Tibetan hierarchs, proclaimed the establishment of their own Buddhist kingdoms. As the Sino–Inner Asian economy began to deteriorate with the collapse of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) and the rise of the Qing (1644–1911), these newly formed Buddhist kingdoms started to fight among themselves.14 The initial euphoria of independence turned into a full-scale civil war, and their notions about the Buddhist present began to change.

Instead of the hopeful, utopian vision encapsulated in the cult of the future Buddha, many Mongols and Tibetans turned to the apocalyptic myth of Shambhala, which prophesied a world where the Dharma was under relentless assault. As noted above, the prediction of the Dharma’s demise was nothing new in the Buddhist tradition; the Shambhala myth, however, was created at a particular moment in time, thus it predicts the end of the Dharma at the hands of heretics. Specifically, it claims that Muslims will threaten the Dharma, so the final eschatological battle will be between the twenty-fifth and final ruler of Shambhala, Kulika Rudra Cakrin, who will ride forth with his Buddhist army and annihilate the Muslims and usher in a new golden age of the Dharma.15 To make sense of this myth, which first appears in the Kālacakratantra, it is relevant to note that this tantra was composed in the late tenth to early eleventh century in what is now northern Pakistan.16 This region was well known for the practice of Tantric Buddhism at the time, as evidenced in the history of Opposite: Fig. 10.1 Helmet (rmog) with Wrathful Deities and Mantras of Power; Mongolia; 15th–17th century; iron, gold, silver, copper; height: 7⅝ in. (19.5 cm); Metropolitan Museum of Art; purchase, gift of William H. Riggs, by exchange, 1999; 1999.120.

Published: Thurman and Weldon, 1999, no. 76; Norwick 2003, 395–408; La Rocca 2006, no. 16; La Rocca 2008, fig. 6; Pyhrr 2012, fig. 80.

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215

Padmasambhava, who came from this area and is credited with promoting Buddhism in Tibet.17 But that area—northwest India—in the tenth century was not only a hotbed of Buddhist tantra but also a refuge for certain Islamic groups. Indeed, there is evidence to support the argument that at the time of the Kālacakra’s composition there was a growing influx of Muslims seeking refuge from persecution for their beliefs by the Abbasid caliphate. The Kālacakra prophecy must be situated within this environment of expanding Muslim communities in northwest India and the subsequent process of Islamization.18 As with all religious prophecies, the interpretation of the Shambhala myth changed over time. Later scholars, for example, argued that the Muslims in the myth were purely symbolic; namely, the true battle was not against Muslims but rather one’s own ego.19 At other times of social and political upheaval, Buddhists mobilized the Shambhala myth by reinterpreting the heretics as the historical context required.

At different times, the heretics could thus be British, Russian, Nazis, or Chinese communists. All these groups could readily be plugged into the Shambhala myth as the current heretical threat to the Dharma.

At the time of the Tibeto-Mongol civil war in the early seventeenth century, the perceived enemies of the Dharma were other Buddhists. These included local rulers who had established their own independent Buddhist kingdoms, as well as those who followed Buddhist teachings deemed heretical, such as the Kagyü and Nyingma.20 As the battle raged between these competing Buddhist states, it is not surprising that they all brought the full arsenal of tantric mantras, wrathful deities, and war magic to maintain their newly forged political utopias.

One striking piece confirming this spiritual warfare is a Mongolian helmet, which has the Kālacakratantra mantra as its central iconographic feature (fig. 10.1). By wearing this helmet, a Mongolian Buddhist warrior quite literally engaged in the final eschatological battle against the perceived enemies of the Dharma, namely other Mongols and Tibetans.

Eventually this particular Buddhist civil war began to subside as many Mongol groups submitted to the new dharmic superpower: the Manchus. Some, however, continued to resist the centralizing power of the Qing dynasty. By the middle of the seventeenth century, there were four distinct Gelukpa-affiliated Buddhist states vying for power in Inner Asia: the Manchus in China proper, the Khalkhas in what is now Mongolia, the Oirat in what is now western China, and the Dalai Lama and the Khoshuud Mongols in Tibet. By the end of the eighteenth century, all these states were brought into the Manchu Qing dynasty (1644–1911); however, in the seventeenth century they all fought valiantly to maintain their independence.

Besides fighting to preserve their independence, these four groups also adopted the same religiopolitical institutions and ideologies of the Fifth Dalai Lama’s Tibet. They all emulated the iconic meeting between Qubilai Khan and Phakpa Lama in order to ritually recreate their Buddhist states. The Shunzhi emperor, for example, had an audience with the Great Fifth in Beijing in 1652 (see fig. 7.9).21 Galdan Khan of the Oirat, who had formerly been a monk in Tibet, similarly maintained a strong ritual relationship with the Dalai Lama.22 It was precisely through these ritual relationships that both the Manchus and Oirats confirmed their Buddhist bona fides.

While the Great Fifth maintained these external ties—and thereby sanctified the rule of these surrounding realms—in Tibet, he was engineering something wholly new: a theocracy, whereby the institution of the Dalai Lama would hold both religious and political power. In turn, the Khalkhas adopted this religiopolitical innovation when they wanted to sanctify their own independent Buddhist state. To this end, they anointed a son of their ruling Khan to be the religiopolitical leader of the Mongols and gave him the name Zanabazar (from the Sanskrit Jñānavajra) and the title Jebdzundamba Khutugtu (fig. 10.2).

He became the most important figure in both the religious and political spheres of Khalkha Mongolia

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Maitreya, Shambhala, and the End of Buddhist Empire

Fig. 10.2 First Jebdzundamba, Zanabazar (1635–1723); Mongolia; 19th century; pigments on cotton; 11½ x 9⅜ in.

(29.2 x 23.8 cm); Rubin Museum of Art; gift of Shelley and Donald Rubin; C2006.66.587 (HAR 1089).

Published: Jackson 2012, fig. 8.10.

217

during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.23 One reason he became such an important figure is because his authority—religious and political—was placed on a par with that of the Dalai Lama.

As such, the Khalkha creation of the Jebdzundamba lineage was both a challenge to the authority of the Dalai Lama and his state and a declaration of independence from the Manchus and Oirats.24 Indeed, it was precisely this affront to the dignity of the Dalai Lama that led Galdan Khan of the Oirats to launch a brutal scorched-earth campaign against the Khalkhas. This development led the Jebdzundamba Khutugtu to ultimately persuade the Khalkha to submit to the Qing, which they did in 1691, whereupon the combined Khalkha and Manchu forces waged another civil war against the Oirat for another sixty years.25 Before then, however, the recently anointed religious leader Zanabazar had followed the Gelukpa tradition of ritualizing independent Khalkha Mongolia through the cult of Maitreya.26 In particular, Zanabazar, who was an outstanding artist himself, made beautiful, famous statues of the future Buddha (figs. 10.3 and 1.19).27 He also followed Tsongkhapa’s religiopolitical model and instituted an annual worship ritual of Maitreya that included a procession of his statue through the capital city (fig. 10.4), which eventually became the most important ritual in the Khalkha Buddhist world.28 In doing so, Zanabazar emulated the founder of his tradition and specifically drew on the utopian visions of the Maitreya myth itself. Indeed, at a time of civil war—when the Khalkhas were fighting for their political independence from both the Manchu and Oirat—what better Buddhist myth to appropriate than that of the future Buddha? Maitreya’s imminent return symbolized not only the Buddhist utopia that is to be forged in the new dispensation but also encapsulated the vision of a newly independent Buddhist state of Khalkha Mongolia.29 Yet this particular Buddhist political utopia never came to fruition. In fact, it was Zanabazar who eventually convinced the Khalkha elite to submit to the Manchus in 1691, so together they could defeat their mortal enemy, the Gelukpa Buddhist Oirats, which the Qing armies finally did in 1756. At that point, the three formerly independent Buddhist states of Tibet, the Khalkha, and the Oirat were all under Qing Gelukpa rule.30 This new religiopolitical reality was reinforced through new historical narratives and ritual performances that affirmed the Manchus, Mongols, Oirats, Chinese, and Tibetans were all one Buddhist family. Ritual texts and historical works came to declare that they all shared the same mother!31 Thus, much as the Maitreya myth had promised a new Buddhist political reality, the Qing dynasty came to be conceived by its Buddhist subjects as a Buddhafield of enlightened action, as manifested in the Manchu emperor—himself a manifestation of the bodhisattva Mañjuśrī—and the reincarnated lamas of the tantric Buddhist world.32 As with all utopias, the Buddhist Qing eventually ran into problems. It was in response to these upheavals that Buddhist leaders began once again to turn away from the hopeful myth of Maitreya toward the apocalyptic myth of Shambhala. The Sixth Panchen Lama, Losang Palden Yeshé (1738–1780), was the first to do so. He wrote the most famous description of Shambhala, the Guidebook to Shambhala (Sambhala’i lam yig), and composed a poem in which he expressed the wish to be reborn in Shambhala during the reign of Kulika Rudra Cakrin, the Buddhist ruler who will kill all the Muslims.33 As with the appearance or revival of any apocalyptic myth, a crucial question to ask is why the Sixth Panchen Lama revived the Shambhala myth in the late eighteenth century?

The short answer is the appearance of fundamentalist Naqshbandi Sufism in northwest China among Opposite: Fig. 10.3 Standing Bodhisattva Maitreya (see fig. 1.19); attributed to Zanabazar (1635–1723); Mongolia; second half of 17th century; gilt bronze with blue pigment in the hair and traces of other pigments in the eyes and mouth; 249⁄16 x 8 7⁄16 x 7⅝ in. (62.4 x 21.5 x 19.4 cm); weight: 28 lb. (12.7 kg); Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum; gift of John West; 1963.5.

Published: Pal 1969, no. 47; Huntington 1989, no. 158; Rhie and Thurman 1991, no. 32; Berger and Bartholomew 1995, fig. 4; Cuno et al. 1996, 86–87; Wolohojian and Clark 2008, 103; Herndon-Consagra 2011, no. 16.

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219

Fig. 10.4 G. Dorj (Mongolian, 1870–1937); The Maitreya Procession at Lamyn Gegeen Khüree (detail); late 19th to early 20th century; colors on cotton; 27 x 39½ in. (68.6 x 100.2 cm); Fine Arts Museum, Ulaanbaatar.

the Hui in the 1760s.34 The Hui had long since transformed their religious practices and community into localized Sino-Islamic ones, and for centuries they had worked within the shifting political winds emanating from Beijing.35 In the 1760s, however, a sheikh named Ma Mingxin (1719–1781) returned from studying in Mecca and Yemen where an intellectual revolution was taking place. This was the time of tajdid, or renewal movements such as that of Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, the founder of Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi Islam, which—as Tsongkhapa had done earlier—advocated for a return to the “true religion.” In the case of ‘Abd al-Wahhab, this included purging the tradition of perceived “cultural accretions” as well as creating a righteous Islamic state ruled by Shari‘ah law. When Ma Mingxin returned to the Qing domains in 1761, the goal of his form of Naqshbandi Sufism was purification and revival on Middle Eastern models.

Ma Mingxin was successful in obtaining converts in the local community, not only because of his zeal and ideas but also because he carried the legitimacy of having studied in the Middle East. He knew both Arabic and Persian, unlike many local religious leaders who had forgotten such languages long ago. Thanks to these academic credentials and to old grievances in the Muslim community concerning the power of hereditary sheikh lineages, monetary disputes, and other matters, Ma Mingxin’s following continued to expand. Tensions in the community remained internal for a while, but eventually friction between the two Muslim communities escalated into violence, and the Qing state became involved. In particular, the court began implementing laws that discriminated against Muslims based solely on their religion.

The Board of Punishments passed the first of these laws in 1762. It mandated all Muslim leaders had to report any inappropriate behavior within their community to the authorities; in addition, local officials had to report Muslim criminal acts to the Qing. As might have been expected, the court records began to 220

Maitreya, Shambhala, and the End of Buddhist Empire

fill with Muslim acts of criminality, and local officials inundated the court with reports of Muslim bandits and their intrinsic propensity for violence. In response, the Qing became more suspicious and drafted further regulations concerning Muslims. Thus Muslims found in groups of three or more with any weapon were immediately deemed to be criminals. In the 1770s, the Qing court even created a new criminal act or category: brawling. It could be used as a pretense to arrest Muslims specifically.

As an inevitable result, Muslims who might not have sided with Ma Mingxin and his teachings joined him in protesting Qing policy, thus further reinforcing the Qing’s fear of a growing fundamentalist Islamic anti-Qing movement. The mutual animosity culminated in 1781, when a Qing official, sent to quell a local disturbance between the two Muslim communities, declared to one group that the new teachings of Ma Mingxin would be exterminated. To his dismay, his audience turned out to be Ma’s followers, and they summarily executed him.

With the death of a Qing official at the hands of these new Sufi teachings, the internecine violence moved to a new level, that of rebellion. In official discourse, such a categorization mandated a swift, brutal response by the Qing state. What ensued was a war on terror to restore social order, which invariably led to violence and fear on all sides. The Sixth Panchen Lama’s appropriation of the Shambhala myth in the late eighteenth century must be situated within this course of events.

Indeed, for all the Buddhists of the Qing, the Muslim rebellions that challenged the existence of the Manchu Empire’s enlightened Buddhafield were prophecy come true. Action was required, which meant joining the Qing military campaigns against perceived Muslim terrorists and drawing on the power of tantric rituals to ensure both military and spiritual success.

Buddhists therefore began writing about and praying for rebirth in Shambhala, as well as putting needles in the foundations of stūpas in the belief that they would transform into weapons during the final battle. This fervor for both rebirth in Shambhala and participation in the apocalyptic conflict came to include the building of large temples dedicated to Shambhala and the Kālacakratantra, which involved the production of paintings representing the final eschatological battle between Buddhists and heretics.36 One such painting is the massive thangka from nineteenth-century Mongolia, now housed at the Musée Guimet (fig. 10.5). It captures all the iconographic elements of the Shambhala myth: on the right is the hidden northern kingdom of Shambhala, with a beautiful capital city surrounded by mountains; and on the left is the final battle, with the Buddhist forces riding out from the east to destroy the evil forces in the west (see p. 212). Although unique in its size, the iconography of this painting is far from uncommon.

Throughout the nineteenth century, as Qing Buddhists were gripped by fear of the coming apocalypse, there was an outpouring of paintings representing Shambhala.

Considering the Muslim rebellions that raged during the 1860s and 1870s, from the northwest to the southeast, it is not surprising that Qing Buddhists drew so heavily on the Shambhala myth in this period.37 The Shambhala prophesy made sense of their world and justified action in that world. Qing Buddhists—be they Chinese, Manchu, Mongol, or Tibetan—were fighting for the preservation of their Buddhist world, which they deemed to be under mortal threat from Muslim barbarians.

As we now know, Muslims did not bring down the Qing dynasty, nor did Buddhism die out in Inner Asia. But the apocalyptic vision of the Shambhala myth clearly resonated for Qing Buddhists as the Manchu Empire was wracked by internal and external threats throughout the nineteenth century. These threats included not only rebelling Muslims but also the devastating quasi-Christian Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864).38 Along the coast, various imperial powers were challenging the Qing, resulting in everything from the Opium Wars (1839–1842, 1856–1860) to the Boxer Rebellion (1899–1901).39 For Qing Buddhists, these upheavals were readily conceptualized as heretical challenges to the authority and legitimacy of the 221

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Fig. 10.5 The Kingdom of Shambhala and the Final Battle; Mongolia; 19th century; pigments on cotton; 44 x 87½ in. (111.8 x 222.3 cm); Musée national des arts asiatiques–Guimet, Paris; MG24416 (HAR 31352).

Published: Béguin 1995, 457–58; Rhie and Thurman 1996, 378–79; Bryant 2003, 66–67, 70, 263.

223

Fig. 10.6 Nicholas Roerich (Russian, 1874–1947); Command of Rigden Jyepo; 1926; tempera on canvas; 27⅛ x 53½ in. (69 x 135.8 cm).

bodhisattva Mañjuśrī’s Buddhafield. Thus it was precisely within this framework that the Shambhala myth was mobilized again and again in new guises in order to save the Dharma and the state.

The Thirteenth Dalai Lama’s emissary to Tsar Nicholas II, Agvan Dorzhiev (1854–1938), was one of the first to mobilize the myth; he promoted the idea that Russia was the northern kingdom of Shambhala.

Dorzhiev told the Dalai Lama to ally with the Russians in order to break away from Qing China and challenge the encroaching threat of the heretical British in India. As the German scholar of Buddhism W. A. Unkrig described the project: In my opinion, the religiously based purpose of Agvan Dorzhiev was the foundation of a Lamaistoriented kingdom of the Tibetans and Mongols (and all other small Lamaist peoples) as a theocracy under the Dalai Lama . . . [and] under the protection of Tsarist Russia. . . . In addition, among the Lamaists there existed the religiously grounded hope for help from a “Messianic Kingdom” in the North . . . called “Northern Shambhala . . .” Agvan Dorzhiev had on occasion identified this Shambhala with Russia.40 The viability of this interpretation certainly gained credence when the British invaded Tibet in 1904, forcing the Dalai Lama to flee into exile.

The Russians capitalized on this event shortly thereafter by printing a pamphlet in Lhasa called “Ambassador of Wisdom” (ye shes po nya), which expressly stated that Russia was in fact Shambhala. To emphasize this point, the Russian envoy to Lhasa, Naran Ulanov, sent a letter to the regent of Tibet, who was ruling in the Dalai Lama’s absence. The letter explained that the Kālacakratantra was meant to flourish in the north, and thus the political future of Tibet should be in alliance with Russia and not with the heathen British.41 Such an alliance was never fully forged.42 Moreover, the geopolitical strategies of the early twentieth century and the fate of all the players in the so-called Great Game were soon radically transformed by the arrival of a new utopian vision: communism.43 In short order, the Shambhala myth was reimagined with 224

Maitreya, Shambhala, and the End of Buddhist Empire

Fig. 10.7 Buddha from Space; iron meteorite; 9½ x 5⅛ x 4 in. (24 x 13 x 10 cm).

communists now playing the role of the feared other threatening both the existence of the Dharma and the nascent independence movements of Tibet, Outer Mongolia, and the republics of Buryatia and Kalmykia in Russia.

Once again—as had occurred during the Qing—there was an outpouring of new historical retellings, ritual performances, and visual representations of Shambhala as a means to fight the Red Menace.44 Inner Asian Buddhists created most of these reimaginings themselves. With the Dharma having gone global in the nineteenth century, however, others also appropriated these ideas.45 Communist agents, for example, hoped to use the messianic ideas of the Shambhala myth to promote the Bolshevik revolution.46 Others used the myth to hold communism at bay, such as Baron Ungern-Sternberg, a general in the Russian White Army, who after losing to the Reds in Siberia was invited by the Eighth Jebdzundamba Khutugtu to Mongolia to expel the Chinese then occupying the country.47 It became popular to draw on the Shambhala 225

Fig. 10.8 The proposed Grand Maitreya Project

myth’s “Savior from the North” paradigm to explain Ungern-Sternberg’s success in reinstalling the Eighth Jebdzundamba Khutugtu as theocratic ruler of Mongolia in 1921.48 This iteration of independent Khalkha Mongolia did not last long. By the fall of 1921 the Sovietbacked Mongol communists had seized control. At that point, another Russian, the mystic Nicholas Roerich, had a new vision for the future of Mongolia and Tibet.49 He too saw himself as a savior from the north, believing that he was the last ruler of Shambhala who had come to usher in the New Age. As if to make this a reality, he had a personal vision of himself as Kulika Rudra Cakrin painted and then carved in stone (figs. 10.6 and 10.7).50 Roerich was not alone in hoping that the Shambhala myth, as well as the larger teaching of the Kālacakratantra, could halt the advance of communism. The Khalkha Buddhist polymath Zawa Damdin, for example, made the Kālacakratantra central to his project of protecting the Dharma in Mongolia. This project included “public initiations as late as 1935, building specially-dedicated temples, undertaking long retreats focusing on this deity, initiating separate ‘Kālacakra Scholars’ Tours (dus ‘khor gyi grwa ‘khor) in 1931 and 1933, and publishing his own commentaries as late as 1934.”51 But in 1937, the Mongolian communists launched their brutal purge of the sangha, and these visions of a new Buddhist utopia came to an end.52 So much so that when the Japanese invaded the Asian mainland, many Inner Asian Buddhists hoped they were actually the Shambhala army coming from the east to save them.53 The Japanese, of course, were not the Buddhist saviors from the east, and thus all of Buddhist Inner Asia came to be part of the communist world. Once again, contrary to the apocalyptic predictions of the Shambhala myth, the Dharma did not die. With the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the creation of 226

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fifteen independent states, many Buddhists in Inner Asia are once again turning to the hopeful vision of the Maitreya myth as they forge new religiopolitical realities in the contemporary world.

In Mongolia today, for example, two large-scale Maitreya statues are being built. One is a 66-foot-tall statue at Ulaanbaatar’s Dashchoilin Monastery.54 The other is part of the Grand Maitreya Project, which will include a 177-foot-tall Maitreya statue based on a Zanabazar sculpture (see figs. 10.3 and 1.19), as well as a 354-foot-tall stūpa (fig. 10.8).55 Whether either of these projects will make Mongolia a new Buddhist utopia is unknown. But based on historical precedent, as times change Buddhists will probably again be drawn to the Maitreya and Shambhala myths to explain their world. As such, we are sure to see more artistic representations of these myths well into the future.

notes 1

Nattier 1991, 27–63.

32 Berger 2003.

2

Sponberg and Hardacre 1988.

33 Bernbaum 1980. Bawden 1984–85, 453–509.

3

Chang 2004, 32–59.

34 Fletcher 1995; Lipman 1997.

4

Petech 1990.

35 Ben-Dor Benite 2005; Frankel 2011.

5

van der Kuijp 2004.

36 B lka 2003, 252, 262.

6

Kollmar-Paulenz 2000, 875–905. Gentry 2010.

37 Kim 2004; Atwill 2005.

7

Thurman 1982, 17–18. The other deeds were the teaching on the vinaya (code of monastic discipline), establishment of the annual Great Prayer Festival (Monlam Chenmo), and the founding of Ganden Monastery in 1410.

38 Platt 2012.

8

Henss 2014, 649.

42 Andreyev 2003.

9

Ahmad 1970.

43 Sarkisyanz 1958, 623–33.

39 Lovell 2015; Cohen 1997.

40 Snelling 1993, 79.

41 Andreyev 2001, 355.

10 Ruegg 1997.

44 B lka 2007, 125–38.

11 Franke 1978.

45 Savelli 2009, 311–51.

12 Elverskog 2003, 23–61.

46 Znamenski 2011.

13 Charleux 2014, 1–62.

47 Bawden 1989, 215–16.

14 Di Cosmo 2002, 337–67.

48 Kuzmin 2013, 179.

15 Newman 1995, 284–89.

49 Andreyev 2014.

16 Orofino 1997, 717–19.

50 Engelhardt 2017, 39–67.

17 Hirshberg 2016.

51 King, forthcoming.

18 Elverskog 2010.

52 Kaplonski 2014.

19 Newman 1998, 311–15.

53 Li Narangoa 2003, 491–514.

20 Charleux 2002.

54 Jichang Lulu, “Ulaanbaatar Monastery Gets Monumental Maitreya from China,” September 1, 2017, https://jichanglulu.wordpress.com/2017/09/01 /ulaanbaatar-monastery-gets-monumental-maitreyafrom-china/.

21 Hevia 1993.

22 Junko 1997.

23 Bareja-Starzynska 2015.

24 Elverskog 2006, 30–61.

25 Perdue 2005, 133–302.

26 Tsultemin 2015a, 137–59.

27 Tsultem 1982.

28 Berger and Bartholomew 1995, 149–50.

29 Tsultemin 2015b, 116–36.

30 Di Cosmo 2016, 111–45.

31 Bawden 1976, 436; Langelaar, forthcoming.

55 Antonia Blumberg, “Spiritual Center Aims to Revive Buddhism in Former Communist Mongolia,” Huffington Post, April 6, 2016, https://www. huffingtonpost.com/entry/grand-maitreya-projectmongolia_us_57043833e4b0537661880b70. Craig Lewis, “First Phase of Mongolia’s Grand Maitreya Project to be Completed this Summer,” Buddhist Door Global, April 12, 2017, https://www.buddhistdoor.net/ news/first-phase-of-mongolias-grand-maitreya-projectto-be-completed-this-summer.

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appendix 1

Tibetan Imperial Preceptors of the Mongol Empire

1.

Drogön Phakpa Lodrö Gyaltsen (’Gro mgon ’Phags pa blo gros rgyal mtshan; 1235–1281)

2.

Rinchen Gyaltsen (Rin chen rgyal mtshan; 1238–1279)

3.

Dharmapāla (Dharma pā la; 1268–1287)

4.

Yeshé Rinchen (Ye shes rin chen; 1248–1294)

5.

Drakpa Özer (Grags pa ’od zer; 1255–1303)

6.

Rinchen Gyaltsen (Rin chen rgyal mtshan; 1256–1305)

7.

Sangyé Pal (Sangs rgyas dpal; 1268–1314)

8.

Kunga Lodrö Gyaltsen Zangpo Pal (Kun dga’ blo gros rgyal mtshan bzang po dpal; 1299–1327)

9.

Wangchuk Gyaltsen (Dbang phyug rgyal mtshan; ?–1325)

10.

Kunga Lekpai Jungné Gyaltsen (Kun dga’ legs pa’i ’byung gnas rgyal mtshan; 1307–1329

11.

Rinchen Tashi (Rin chen bkra shis; dates unknown: appointed imperial preceptor in 1329)

12.

Kunga Gyaltsen (Kun dga’ rgyal mtshan; 1310–1353)

13.

Lochen Sönam Lodro (Blo chen bsod nams blo gros; 1332–1362)

14.

Namgyalpa Sangpo (Rnam rgyal pa bzang po; dates unknown)

15.

Ga Anyen Dampa Kundrak (Sga a gnyan dam pa kun grags; 1230–1303)—awarded posthumously

Opposite: Detail of fig. 6.4

229

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appendix 2

Translation of the historical part the inscription (lines 14–18), tracing the transmission lineage of Hevajra empowerments from its source, the Buddha Vajradhara, to Shākya Yeshé (1354–1435) and the Yongle Emperor (r. 1402–1424)1

Homage to Vajradhara!

Homage to Nairātmyā!

Homage to Virūpa!

Homage to K apāda (Nagpopa)!

Homage to amarupa!

Homage to Avadhūtipa!

Homage to Gayadhara!

Homage to Drokmi Shākya Yeshé (Brog mi Shakya Ye shes; d. 1074)!

Homage to Setön Kunrik (Se ston kun rig; 1030–1118)!

Homage to Sachen Kunga Nyingpo (Sa chen Kun dga’ snying po; 1092–1158)!

Homage to Sönam Namtsemo (Bsod nams rtse mo; 1141–1182)!

Homage to Drakpa Gyaltsen (Grags pa rgyal mtshan; 1147–1216)!

Homage to Sakya Pa ita (1182–1251)!

Homage to Chögyal Phakpa (Chos rgyal ’Phags pa; 1235–1280)!

Homage to Shang Könchok Pal (Zhang dkon mchog dpal; b. 1250)!

Homage to Nasa Drakphukpa Sönam Pal (Na bza’ brag phug pa bsod nams dpal; 1277–1350)!

Homage to Tsungmé Chökyi Jé Sönam Shap (Mtshungs med chos kyi rje bsod nams zhabs [=Blo gros brtan pa]; 1316–1358)!

Homage to Palden Lama Dampa (Dpal ldan bla ma dam pa [=Bsod nams rgyal mtshan]; 1312–1375)!

Homage to Amoghaśrībhadra (A mo gha shri bha tra)!

Homage to Shakya, representative [of Tsongkhapa], the protector of beings!

Endowed with the five wisdoms (ye shes) and spontaneously accomplished the four bodies/kaya; Homage to the one who is the great precious lord of perfect understanding and great goodness (byams chen) (Shākya Yeshé)!2 Homage to one who came into the presence of the Dharmarāja! (chos kyi rgyal po)!

Homage to [he who] gave me, “King of Merit” (sö [nam kyi] gyal [po])3 [this Hevajra empowerment]!

Opposite: Inscription on the back of fig. 6.4

231

Transcription of the inscription Line 1 ō na mo bha ga wa te / sarba saitrā lokya pra ti bi shi ha ā ya / bud dhā ya te nam tadya thā / ō bhrū bhrū bhrū / sho dha ya sho dha ya / bi sho dha ya bi sho dha ya / a sa ma sa manta / a wa bhā sa spha ra a ga ti ga ga na swa bhā wa bi shud dhe a bhi Line 2 hi nyatsan tu mā sarba ta thā ga tā : su ga ta wa ra wa tsa na / a mra ta a bhi he kai ra ma hā mu tra mantra pa de : ā ha ra ā ha ra / mamā a yur san dhā ra i / sho dha ya sho dha ya / bi sho dha ya bi sho dha ya ga ga na swa bhā wa bi shud dhe / u h i ha bi dza ya pa ra shud dhe Line 3 sa ha sra rasmi sanytso di te / sarba ta thā ga ta a ba lo ki ni / ha apā ra mi tā pa ri pū ra i sarba ta thā ga ta mā te / da sha bhu mi pra ti ha hi te / sarba ta thā ga ta hri da ya a dhi ha ha na a dhi ha hi te / mu dre mu dre / ma hā mu dre / badzra kā ya so ha ta na pa ri shud dhe sarba karma a wa Line 4 ra a bi shud dhe / pra ti na warta ya / ma ma ā yur bi shud dhe / sarba ta thā ga ta sa ma ya / a dhi ha ha na a dhi ha hi te / ō mu ni mu ni / ma hā mu ni bi mu ni bi mu ni / ma hā bi mu ni / ma ti ma ti / ma hā ma ti ma ma ti su ma ti / ta thā ga tā bhu ta ko i / pa ri shud dhe / bi saphu a Line 5 bud dhi shud dhe / he he dza ya dza ya / bi dza ya bi dza ya / sma ra sma ra / sphā ra sphā ra / sphā ra ya sphā ra ya / sarba bud dha a dhi ha a a dhi ha hi te / shud dhe shud dhe / bud dhe bud dhe / badzre badzre / ma hā badzre / su badzre badzra garbhe / dza ya garbhe / bidza ya garbhe Line 6 badzra dzwa la garbhe / badzrod bha we / badzra sambha we / badzre badzri i / badzram bha wa nu / ma mā sha ri ro sarba sata na nyatsa kā ya pa ri shud dhi ri bha wantu ???/ sarba ga ti pa ri shud dhi shatsa / sarba ta thā ga tā shatsa mō / sa mā shwa sa yan tu / bud dhya bud dhya / sid dhya sid dhya / bo dha ya bi Line 7 dha ya / bi bo dha ya bi bo dha ya / mo tsa ya mo tsa ya / bi mo tsa ya bi mo tsa ya / sho dha ya sho dha ya / bi sho dha ya / sa manta mo tsa ya mo tsa ya sa manta ya pari sud dhe (?) / sarba ta thā ga tā hri da ya / a dhi ha ha na a dhi ha hi te / mu dre mu dre ma hā mu dre ma hā mu dre man tra pa dai swā hā // Line 8 ō na ma sarbaba ta thā ga tā nō / ō ma hā tsin dā ma i dzwa la na sā ga ra go bhī ra / ā ka har ya / ā yun dha ra ā yun dha ra / san dha ra san dha ra / ka har a ka har a / ka hi i ka hi i / ka hu u ka hu u / sarba ta thā ga thā ma hā sa ma ye / ti ha ha ti ha ha / ma hā bhu ba na sā ga ri / so she dha ya mō sarbaba satwō shatsa bha ga

232

appendices

Line 9 wa ti / sarba pā ba bi ma le dza ya dza ya / dza ya lab dhe / sphu a sphu a / spho a ya spho a ya / bi ga ta (=bi pa da?) ā ba ra i / bha ya ha ra e hū hū hū / mri tyu dan dha ri a bha ya pra de u ha ī ha bya wa lo ki te sa man ta mu khe sa man ta wa lo ki te / ma hā mā ye ma hā bha sha dha re a mo kaha bi ma la ā kar ha Line 10 ya ā kar ha ya / ā ka a tha (=dha?) ya ā ka a ha ya / bha ra bha ra / sa bha ra so bha ra / in dri ya bi sho dha ni bhu ha ta bhu dze / ma hā mu drā bi lo ki te dza ya dza ya / sid dhe sid dhe / bud dhe bud dhe / bo dha ni bo dha ni / sa bo dha ni sa bo dha ni / sho dha ni sho dha ni / sa sho dha ni sa sho dha ni / bi sho dha ni bi sho Line 11 dha ni / ha ra ha ra ma ma sarbaba pā pa sarba ta thā ga tā / ku la bhu dze sa ma ya ti ha ha / pra sa ra tu ma ma pu ya / bi na shya tu pā pa / sarba ki lwi ha ha re / ma i bi shud dhe sho dha ya bi ma le / pi ka si ta pad me ka wa tsi ta bhu dze / ha a pā ra mi tā pa ri pū ra i / sarba ta thā ga tā thudi [=thud di?] ha bi lo Line 12 Ki ti swā hā / sarba ta thā ga tā gu hya a dha lan a dha ha hi te swā hā / ā yur da di swā hā / pu ya da di swā hā / pu ya bi lo ki te swā hā / pu ya a wa lo ki te swā hā / mri tyu da a e swā hā / ya ma dan e swā hā / ya ma dū de swā hā / sa ha ra i swā hā / pa bha rā i swā hā / san dha ra i swā hā / pra ti sa ra i swā hā Line 13 ti ja wa ti swā hā / dza ya wa ti swā hā / sarbaba ta thā ga tā mu drā a dha ha hā na a dhi hathi te swā hā / ō na ma strai ya datwi kā rā / sarbaba ta thā tā ga hri da ya garbhe / dzwa la dzwa la dharmama dhā tu garbha sa paha ra ma ma ā yu : sa sho dha ya ma ma pā pa / sarbaba ta thā ga tā sa man ta u hati ha bi ma le bi shud dhe / hū hū hū hū / a ba sa Line 14 ja swā hā / ye dharmā he tu pra paha wā he tun te hān ta thā ga ta hya wa da te / te hā nyatsa yo ni ro dha e wa wa dī ma hā shra ma a : ō sarba bidyā swā hā / e wa / ō a rdo rje mchang na ma / ō a bdag med ma la na mo / ō a ‘bir wa pa la na mo / ō a nag po pa la na mo / ō a a ma ru pa la na mo / Line 15 ō a a wa rdu rdi pa la na mo / ō a gha ya rda ra la na mo / ō a ‘brog mi shakya ye shes la na mo / ō a se ston kun rig la na mo / ō a sa chen kun snying la na mo / ō a slo pon rin po che bsod nams rtse mo la na mo / ō a rje brtsun grags pa rgyal mtshan la na mo / ō a Line 16 sa skya pan i ta la na mo / ō a chos rgyal ‘phags pa la na mo / ō a zhang dkon mchog dpal la na mo / ō a na bza’ brag phug pa bsod rnams dpal la na mo / ō a mtshungs med chos kyi rje bsod nams zhabs la na mo / ō a dpal ldan bla ma dam pa la na mo / 233

Line 17 ō a a mo gha shri bha tra la na mo / ō a shakya rgyal tshab ‘gro ba’i skyabs cig po la na mo / ō a ye shes lnga ldan sku bzhi lhun grub / ō a byams chen mkhyen rtse’i mnga’ bdag rin chen po che la na mo / ō a chos kyi rgyal po’i zhal snga na la na mo / Line 18 ō a bdag bsod rgyal gnang la na mo / ō a ha ā na nā ya pi godha ke sha wa rtata ma ne / tsa tur bi sha ti nai tra ya ho a sha bhu dzā ya ki ha a dzi mū ta wa pu he ka pa la mā lā a ne ka dha ri i ā tama kru ra tsi tāt ya ar dyentu da ri i ō mā ra ya ma ra ya ka ra ya ka Line 19 ra ya gasdza ya gasdza ya / tasdza ya tasdza ya / sho ha ya sho ha ya sapta sā ga ra na bandha bandha na ga a ha a kan kri ha a? ? atsā? ?? wa grihna grihna shatrun ha hā hi hā hu hu he hai ho hau ha hā : pha swā hā / ō di ba pi cu badzra hū hū hū pha swā hā / ō badzra kartata Line 20 ri he badzra ya hū hū hū pha swā hā / ō a ā i ī u ū ri rī li lī e ai o au a ā: hū pha swā hā / ō ā: na badzra nai rā tama hū pha swā hā / ō ā: a hū pha swā hā / ō ā: ga badzra gau ri hū pha swā hā / ō ā: ga hū pha swā hā / ō ā: tsa badzra Line 21 tsau ri hū pha swā hā / ō ā: tsa hū pha swā hā / ō ā: ba badzra bai tā li hū pha swā hā / ō ā: ba hū pha swā hā / ō ā: gha badzra ghasma ri hū pha swā hā / ō ā: gha hū pha swā hā / ō ā: pa badzra pu kaka si hū pha swā hā / ō ā: pam hū pha swā hā / ō ā: sha badzra sha Line 22 ba ri hū pha swā hā / ō ā: sha hū pha swā hā ō ā: la badzra tsa a a li hū pha swā hā ō ā: la hū pha swā hā ō ā: a badzra o bhi ni hū pha swā hā / ō ā: a hū pha swā hā / ō ye dharma he tu pra bha bā ha tun te hān ta thā gato hya ba dad te Line 23 hān tsa yo ni ro dha ye ba bā dī ma hā shra ma a ye swā hā //

notes 1

Heller 2008 translated this inscription with some differences.

2

As pointed out by Heller, these final verses of praise contain an acrostic, with each line including part of his name and title: byams chen Shakya Ye shes.

3

Heller’s reading of bsod rgyal as “merit” is problematic, as it should be written bsod nams. Bsod rgyal as a contraction of bsod nams kyi rgyal po (“king of merit”) or bsod nams stobs kyi rgyal po (“king of the strength of merit”) makes more sense as an epithet of kings and rulers.

234

appendices

Thanks to Pema Bhum for his help in refining a reading of this passage. Thanks to Chukyi Kyaping and Lobsang Tengye for their help with the following lengthy Sanskrit transcription of this inscription.

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Index

abhiṣeka, 62 Acala, 29, 49nn34–35, 58, 60, 88, 94, 96, 106 and Acala/Trailokyavijaya, 94, 96, 97 Blue Acala (Mi g.yo ba sngon po), 105, 107 as guardian of tantric halls, 88 and rituals, military, 94 Ak obhya, 94, 96, 97 Altan Khan chief of Tümed Mongols, 178 and Geluk interests, loyalty, 178, 180 and Maitreya temple, 214 as reincarnation of Qubilai Khan, 42 and Third Dalai Lama (Sönam Gyatso), 156, 178, 214 Amdo (A mdo), 42, 144, 162, 178 Amitābha Buddha, 78, 90, 93, 94, 96, 100, 102, 153, 168n7 and red body, 90 Amitāyus Buddha of Boundless Longevity, 77, 192, 194, 198 emanational source for Panchen Lamas, 198 Amnyé Ngawang Kunga Sönam (A myes Ngag dbang Kun dga’ Bsod nams), 106 Amogha (A mo gha), 131, 133, 148n26 Amogha (A mo gha ba dzra) the lesser, 118 Amoghasiddhi, 94, 96, Amoghavajra (A mo gha bdzra Che ba), 96 the greater, 118 Ananda, 90, 143 Anige (A nyi ko; A ni ka; E ner dga’; A nyi ke; 阿尼哥), 31, 50n55, 111, 115, 116, 123nn26, 30 comes to Tibet, 111, 115 and Daqianyuansi, 111 and Phakpa, Qubilai Khan, 33 and stele with life details, 111, 115 as supervisor-in-chief of artisans, 33 and Tibetan texts, 123n26 and white stūpas. 34, 115. See also stūpas Aparimitāyurnāma-mahāyānasūtra, 77 Aparimitāyus (Amitāyus) Buddha of Limitless Life, 77 Apal (’A dpal) Kyishöpa leader, 162 Arniko. See Anige art and diplomacy, 40, 42, 125, 131, 136 and patronage, 11, 19, 24, 26, 28, 33, 83, 105, 136, 140, 191 and politics, 11, 19, 48, 125 and propaganda, 19 as symbol, 19, 20, 26, 33, 44, 48, 90, 122, 134, 198 See also Tibetan Buddhist art Ārya Lokeśvara statue. 151. See also Phakpa Lokeśvara Asengé (A seng ge), 115

Aśoka, 53 as dharmarāja, 153 flower, 100 Asujiba (A su’u ji bha; Yesün Temür) Mongol king, 121 Āṭāṇāṭikasūtra, 62 Atiśa (a.k.a. Dīpa kara, Dīpa karaśrījñāna), 65 Bengali master, 160 and journey to Tibet, 94 Avalokiteśvara, 39, 43, 56, 60, 65, 66, 69, 70, 90, 100 and Amitābha emanation, 43, 78, 100–102 cult of, 74, 81n12, 160, 168n7 and Dalai Lamas, 42, 43, 155, 191 and destiny of Tibet, 151, 168n4 with eleven heads, faces 66, 69, 74, 78 as Mahākaru ika (Great Compassionate One), 153 patron deity of Tibet, 20 and six-syllable mantra, 66, 153, 211n8 See also Lokeśvara Avataṃsakasūtra, 74 bālacakravartin, 126 Baoguangdian (寶光殿), 144 Baosheng Rulai (宝胜如来), 90 Barom Kagyü (’Ba rom Bka’ brgyud). See Kagyü Bayan (Ba yan), general, 31, 116 Beijing (北京). 11, 44, 111, 115–18, 125, 140, 143 and Anige, 33, 34, 111, 115, 116 and Hui, 220 as Mongol capital, 33 and Mongol art, architecture, 33, 38, 98, 100, 108 and Qubilai Khan, 108, 111, 116, 203 and Tibetan lamas, 131, 134, 145, 164, 198, 211n14, 216 and White Stūpa monastery, 34, 111, 115, 116, 123n30 and Yongle, 125, 131, 148. See also Yongle See also Dadu Beri (Be ri), 186 Bezeklik cave center, 86 Bhagavatī-prajñāpāramitā-hṛdaya, 86 Bhairava, 62. See also Vajrabhairava Bhai ajyaguru, 49n7, 90 Bhāviveka, 201 Indian Buddhist philosopher, 198 Bimbisāra, 53 Binyang Cave, Longmen, 93 and Buddhas of the Three Eras, 93 Bka’ ’gyur. See Kangyur Blue Acala. See Acala Blue Annals, The, 125 Bodhicaryāvatāra, 92, 93 Book of the Kadampa (Bka’ gdams glegs bam), 156, 160 Brahma’s Net Sūtra (Brahmajāla sūtra; Fanwang jing), 74 Brahmanical Hinduism, 53

255

British, 44, 216, 224 and invasion of Tibet, 224 Buddha as cakravartin, 33, 56–58, 60, 62. See also cakravartin Buddha Amitābha. See Amitābha Buddha-carita-saṃgrāha (佛本行集经), 93 Buddha Dīpa kara. See Dīpa kara Buddha lineage, 57, 58, 62 Buddha Ratnasambhava. See Ratnasambhava Buddha Śākyamuni. See Śākyamuni Buddha Tejaprabha, 88 Buddha Vairocana. See Vairocana Buddhism and Chan, 191 collapse and resurrection of, 53, 172, 213 and court patronage, 11, 19, 26, 28, 30, 48, 83, 105, 136, 143, 144, 177, 191 and divine rule, 11, 20, 24, 28, 40, 43, 44, 57, 125, 151, 153, 160 revival of, 28, 47, 218 and Second Diffusion of, 155 as state religion, 19, 20, 43, 48, 86, 116, 148, 151, 156, 191 Tantric. See tantra, tantric See also Tibetan Buddhism Buddhist histories, 69, 175, 192 Buddhist kingship, 11, 53, 56–58, 64, 69 as divine kingship, 19, 20, 57 Buddhist magic and sorcery, 11, 19, 33, 58, 188n5 as expressions of political action, 171–78 and practice from India, 172, 188n6 ritualized acts of, 30, 42, 48, 180, 182 and sword, 60 and warfare, warcraft (dmag bzlog), 26, 47, 62, 172, 174 177, 178, 213, 216 See also magic and sorcery Buddhist ritual technology, 19, 171 Buddhist tantric masters, 11, 19, 26, 172 Bureau of Religious Affairs of Southeast China, 36 Cakrasa vara, 172, 175, 206, 207, 209 cakravartin, 24, 28, 30, 44, 60, 62, 96, 126, 134, 206 as renunciate, 56, 57 as universal ruler, 11, 24, 33, 40, 98, 153 Cā akya, 172, 188n9 Castiglione, Giuseppe Italian Jesuit court painter, 44 Central Eurasian cosmopolitanism, 74 Central Tibetan monasteries and destruction of, 108, 182 and interruption of Buddhism, 84, 148 Chabi, 31, 34 wife of Qubilai Khan, 50n55 Chakna Dorjé (Phyag na rdo rje), 108 Chang’an Tang Chinese capital, 96 Changkya Rölpai Dorjé (Lcang skya Rol pa’i Rdo rje), 115, 194, 202, 204, 211n32 as Changkya incarnation, 192, 211n20 as emanation of Mañjuśrī, 192, 201, 206, 207 and Monguor Gelukpa, 192 and Panchen Lama, 198, 201, 207, 209, 211n27

256

index

and priest-patron relationship, 44, 201, 206 and Qianlong, 44, 192, 198, 201, 207, 209 as rebirth of Phakpa, 201 Changkya thangka, 44, 198, 206, 207, 209 Changsengwa (Mkhan chen Byang seng ba), 118 charnel grounds (dur khrod), 118 Chen Ning (陳寧) carver, 38 Chen Sheng (陳昇) illustrator, 38 Chengde (承德; Jehol), 194 imperial summer retreat, 192, 198 and replica of Tashilhunpo Monastery, 198, 201, 206, 211n12 Chenghua (成化), 134, 136, 149n44 Chengzu, 125, 126 Chenrezik (Spyan ras zigs), 69, 78, 81. eleven-faced, 72, 74 emperor as emanation of, 78 as Tibet’s patron bodhisattva, 69, 74 See also Avalokiteśvara Chigya Dorta (Chi gya Dor ta), 108 China, 19, 20, 42–44, 76, 98, 115, 116, 191 and architecture, 42, 144, 201 and ethnic identity, 40, 43 imperial imageries, 28, 34, 44, 131, 191, 196 luxury mediums, 34, 40, 136, 198 and millenarian movements, 213, 224 painting and printing, 20, 38, 136 and translation, 20, 38, 85, 116, 198 and visual modes, 140, 144 See also Sino-Tibetan art Chinggis Khan (Genghis; Jing gir Han), 33, 47 arrives in Tibet, 106 and Tangut lands, 28, 30 and Tibet, 43, 108 chögyal chenpo (chos rgyal chen po), 72 Chokden Gönpo (Mchog ldan Mgon po), 177 See also Mongol-repellers Chongyé (’Phyong rgyas), 72 Cleveland Museum, 13, 50n55, 88 communism, 224, 226 and Shambhala myth, 225 Compendium of Maṇis, 65 Da Shengshou Wan’an Monastery (Mchod rten dkar po dgon pa; 大圣寿万安寺), 115 Dabao fawang (大寶法王; Great Precious King of the Dharma), 126 See also Phakpa Dadu (Beijing). See also Beijing Mongol imperial capital, 33 Dakchen Lodrö Gyaltsen (Bdag chen Blo gros Rgyal mtshan), 178 Dalai Lama (Ta la’i bla ma) institution, 151, 153, 155, 156, 164, 169n23, 178, 214, 216 Dalai Lama, Eighth (Jampal Gyatso; ’Jam dpal Rgya mtsho), 169n13, 206, 207 Dalai Lama, Fifth (Ngawang Losang Gyatso; Ngag dbang Blo bzang Rgya mtsho), 42, 43, 47, 111, 123, 153, 162 and Autobiography, 162, 186 and dual system (bod ’bangs bde thabs rim gro), 151, 156, 164

and Güshri Khan, 156, 163, 164, 177, 214 and Hong Taiji, 191 and Nyingma, 178, 182, 186 and private visions, 182, 186 and rebirth list, 160 and Tsangpa enemies, 182, 186 and unification of Tibet, 151, 156, 177 and visit to China, 164, 216. See also Shunzhi Dalai Lama, First (Gendun Drupa; Dge ’dun Grub pa), 214 as disciple of Tsongkhapa, 177 Dalai Lama, Fourth (Yönten Gyatso; Yon tan Rgya mtsho), 42, 162, 163, 182 Dalai Lama, Second (Gendun Gyatso; Dge dun Rgya mtsho), 168n11, 178 Dalai Lama, Third (Sönam Gyatso; Bsod nams Rgya mtsho), 42, 178, 214 and Altan Khan, 42, 178 and Drepung chöjé, 156 and Tümed Mongols, 156 Dalai Lama, Thirteenth (Thubten Gyatso; Thub bstan Rgya mtsho), 224 and Agvan Dorzhiev, 224. See also Dorzhiev, Agvan Dam (’Dam) region, 178 Dampa. See Ga Anyen Dampa daṇḍa rod as emblem of legal punishment, 62 Daoist, 36, 148 Daqianyuansi Temple (大乾元寺), 111, 123 Dashchoilin Monastery, 227 Datong River. See Ju River (大通河) Dentik Monastery (Dan tig dgon), 83 Deshin Shekpa. See Karmapa, Fifth Desi Sangyé Gyatso (Sde srid Sangs rgyas Rgya mtsho), 160, 168n16 and Fifth Dalai Lama, 160 dhāra ī, 92, 93, 196 Dhāraṇīsaṃgraha, 57n15 of Atikū a, 60 Dharma, 19, 60, 65, 83, 87, 136, 156, 213 and communist threat, 216, 225, 226 defenders of, 174, 186, 209 end of, 93, 213–16, 224, 226, and Muslim threat, 214, 216 perversion of, 213 dharmarāja, 33, 72, 134, 153, 160, 231 Dīpa kara, 88, 90, 92, 93 Director of Imperial Accoutrements, 144 Dīrghāgama, 57 Dönyö Gyaltsen (Don yod Rgyal mtshan), 118 Dorjé Drakpa (Rdo rje Grags pa), 118 Dorta Darqan, 175 Tangut commander, 175 Dorzhiev, Agvan, 224 Drak Lhamo (Brag lha mo), 25 and rock carvings, 25 Drakna Chöjé (Brag sna chos rje), 186 and Shinjé, 186. See also Yama Dharmarāja Drakphukpa (Brag phug pa), 118 Drathang Monastery (Gra thang dgon), 84, 93 and Buddhas of the Ten Directions, 84 and murals, 86

Drepung chöjé. See Dalai Lama, Third Drepung Monastery (’Dras spungs), 47, 168n1, 177, 178, 182, 186 Drigung Kagyü (’Bri gung Bka’ brgyud), 106, 108, 178, 180 Drigungpa (’Bri gung pa), 108, 178, 180 Drogön Phakpa. See Phakpa Drogön Tishri Repa (’Gro mgon Ti shri Ras pa), 26, 30, 87, 105, 175 Drölma Lhakhang (Sgrol ma lha khang), 84 and Heavenly King sculptures, 84 Dromtön (’Brom ston Rgyal ba’i ’Byung gnas), 158, 160 Drotsang Dorjé Chang (Gro tshang Rdo rje ’chang), 143 Drugu Yangwang (Gru gu Yang dbang), 186, 188n40 and Black Sun and Moon Subduer of Yama, 186 and rites of Yamāntaka, 186. See also Yamāntaka dry lacquer sculpture, 34, 192, 194 dual law (lugs gnyis), of Dharma and State, 151, 156, 164 Duke of Liangguo (Ling gu’u gung; 凉国公), 115 and stele, 115 See also Anige, stele Düldzin (Slob dpon ’Dul ’dzin), 118 Dunhuang, 28, 74, documents, 24, 78 and Dunhuang Research Institute, 14 Eight Great Stūpas in Cave 76, 84, 85 Library Cave, 88, 90 and paintings, 20, 24, 49n6, 88, 90, 93, 94, 98 and sūtra-copying, 77 and Tanguts, 28, 84–88, 90, 93, 94, 98 Tibetan occupation/rule of, 20, 23, 24, 26, 77, 78, 93 and Tibetan patronage, 20, 24 and Yulin Cave 25, 24, 25, 49n8, 90 Eastern Thousand Buddha Caves complex (东千佛洞石 窟), 88 Eastern Tibet (Dokham; Mdo khams), 83, 84, 163, 171, 192 edict (’ja’ sa), 111 granting privileges to monks, 108 Eight Auspicious Symbols, 96, 98, 136, 137 Eight Great Bodhisattvas, 24, 25, 49n10, 81n9, 84, 144 eight (ten) great dangers, 53, 56 Eight Masters of Horses, 140, embroidery, 131, 133, 198 Erdeni Zuu Monastery first monastery in Mongolia, 47 eunuchs, 42, 136, 140 and artistic production, 144 as envoys to Tibetans, 140 Fahaisi (法海寺), 140 fan xiang (梵像; Indic images), 34 Feilaifeng (飞来峰), 36 in Hangzhou, 102 and Tibetan Buddhist art, 102 Fifth Dalai Lama. See Dalai Lama, Fifth First Diffusion of Buddhism, 84 Five Dhyāni Buddhas, 94, 96, 97 Five Dynasties period, 90, 93 Fragrant Hills (Spos ri; 香山), Beijing, 115

257

Ga Anyen Dampa (Sga A gnyan Dam pa Kun dga’ Grags pa), 33, 50n54, 111, 116, 229 as Dharmapāla Adept (Chos skyong sgrub pa), 116 as emanation of Mahākāla, 33 Ga Lotsawa Shönupal (Rgwa Lo tsā ba Gzhon nu dpal) disciple of Tsami Lotsawa Sangyé Drakpa, 175 guru of Lama Shang, 175. See also Lama Shang Tsöndrü Drakpa Galdan Khan, 47, 216 and Fifth Dalai Lama, 218 as ruler of Western (Zünghar) Mongols, 47 Gaṇḍavyūha-sūtra, 65, 168n7 Ganden Kyishöpa (Dga’ ldan Skyid shod pa), 162, 178, 182 and Drakar (Brag dkar) estate, 162 as Geluk ally, 162, 182 Ganden Monastery, 177, 182, 213, 227n7 Ganden Phodrang (Dga’ ldan pho brang), 47, 156, 164, 168n1, 177 unique Buddhist government, 151 Gandenpa, 175. See also Gelukpa Gandharan- and Khotanese-influenced styles, 84, 88 Ganesha, 97 Gansu, 20, 25 Geluk, Gelukpa (Dge lugs pa), 42, 47, 155, 162, 174, 177–80, 182, 198, 209, 216 as dominant school, 156 and Kadampa/Gelukpa tradition, 160 and lineage, 206, 207 and Maitreya worship, 47, 213, 214, 218 and Mongol support, patronage, 42, 164 and Phakmodrupa patrons, 178 and priest-patron relationship, 156, 168n11, 177, 178, 191, 206 and Qing support, 191 and tradition, 47, 213, 214, 218 and Yama Dharmarāja (protector), 186 See also Ganden Phodrang Gendun Drupa. See Dalai Lama, First Gendun Gyatso. See Dalai Lama, Second Gesar (Ge sar), 209 as Tibet’s epic tale, 209 gifts, gift exchange, 74, 144, 201 between Qing and Inner Asia, 192 diplomatic gifts, 40, 131 Panchen gift to Qianlong, 198 silk as valuable gift, 131, 134 sūtras as, 77 Gobi Desert, 20, 86 Goden. See Köten Khan Gongkar (Gong dkar), 178 Gönpo Namgyal (Mgon po Rnam rgyal), 186 and military compaigns, 171 Great Compassionate King of the Dharma (大慈法王) as Shākya Yeshé title, 131. See also Shākya Yeshé Great Fifth Dalai Lama. See Dalai Lama, Fifth Great Prayer Festival. See Mönlam Chenmo Great Rejoicing King of the Dharma (大慶法王), 136 Great State Preceptor (大國師) as Shākya Yeshé title, 131. See also Shākya Yeshé Guan Yu (關羽), 209, 210, 211n28 and Shambhala myth, 209

258

index

Guan Zhuba (管主八; Bka’ ’gyur pa) and Qisha Canon (磧砂藏), 38 Guazhou (瓜州), 77, 85 Gugé (Gu ge) Kingdom, dynasty, 26, 48, 155 Guiyi Military Regime (归义军), 90 Gungthang Lama Shang (Gung thang Bla ma Zhang), 88, 105 Gungthangpa (Gung thang pa), 108 guru pūjā. See refuge-field paintings Güshri Khan, 156, 177 and defeat of Tsang troops, 163 and Fifth Dalai Lama, 163, 164, 182, 186, 214 Güyüg (Guyuk; Go yug), 108 Gyalsé (Rgyal sras; Ch. Gusiluo 唃厮罗), 84 Gyal Temple (Rgyal lha khang), 108 Gyaltsap (Rgyal tshab) disciple of Tsongkhapa, 206 Gyantsé (Rgyal rtse), 148n5 Gyijang Lotsawa (Gyi ljang Lo tsa ba), 105 Gyo Öchung (Skyo ’Od ’byung), 118 Hall of Central Uprightness (Zhongzheng dian; 中正殿), 207 Hangzhou (Mentsé, Sman rtse), 36, 102, 116 as printing center, 38, 134 Hārītī, 62 Hayagrīva, 88, 94 Hermitage Museum, 97, 98, 100 Heruka, 62 Hevajra, 62, 131, 133, 134, 148n26, 175 empowerments, 231 and role in early Ming, 60 Hevajra Tantra, 134 and rituals to destroy, 26 Hexi Corridor, area, 20, 90, 100 Hong Taiji, 191 founder of Qing Empire, 43, 191 and Manchu-Mañjuśrī connection, 44 Hongwu (洪武), emperor, 125, 148n4 period (1368–1398), 125 Hui, Hui Muslims, 218, 220. See also Muslims and Sino-Islamic religious practices, 220 Hülegü (Hüle’ü, Hu la hu), 108 and Drigungpa, 108 imperial messages (gser yig), 111 imperial preceptor (di shi 帝師; Tib. ti shri), 26, 28, 30, 31, 33, 87, 108, 111, 115, 116, 120, 126, 148, 201, 229 imperial tablets (gser byang), 111 India and Nepal, 20, 34, 174, 175 Indian Buddhism, 20, 56, 58, 65, 77, 153, 172 and engagement with republics, royal courts, 19, 53, 57, 62, 64 indigo, 134, 149n29 Indra king of gods, 58 Indrabhūti, king, 144 Islam, 216, 221 and Shar‘iah law, 220

Jamchen Chöjé Shākya Yeshé. See Shākya Yeshé Jamgön Kongtrul ( Jam mgon Kong sprul), 172, 186, 188n2 and Rimé movement, 171 Jamyang Chöjé (’Jam dbyangs Chos rje Bkra shis ldan) founder of Drepung Monastery, 47 Jang (’Jang) region, 106 Jang Tsöndrüdrak (Cang Brtson ’grus grags), 106, 107 Jangdak Tashi Topgyal (Byang bdag Bkra shis Stobs rgyal), 186 Nyingma lama and sorcerer, 178 Japan, Japanese, 74 invasion of Asia, 226 Jātakas, 60, 156, 160 birth stories of the Buddha, 93, 153 Jebdzundamba Khutugtu (Rje btsun dam pa Hu thog thu), 216–18, 225, 226 as emanation of Vajrapā i, 47 See also Khalkhas Jetsün Drakpa Gyaltsen (Rje btsun Grags pa Rgyal mtshan), 107 Sakya patriarch, 106 Jiajing emperor, 148 Jingdezhen imperial kiln, 136 Jingim (Zhenjin 真金) crown prince of Qubilai Khan, 30, 31 Jokhang Temple (Jo khang), 65, 72, 115, 180 and Dīpa kara influence, 93 and Fifth Dalai Lama, 160 Jonang school, 47 Jowo (Jo bo) statue, 66, 69, 115 Ju River (’Ju lag chu; Ch. Datong he 大通河), 123n33 See also Datong River Juchu Temple (’Ju chu lha khang), 116, 123n33 Jurchen Jin dynasty (1115–1234), 44, 90 Juyongguan Pass (居庸关), 98, 100 as stūpa gate, 38 See also Namkha Sengé Jyekundo (Skye rgu mdo), 25 Kadampa (Bka’ gdams pa) school, 155, 160, 164, 174 Kagyü (Bka’ brgyud), 26, 28, 106, 118, 174, 180, 216 and alliances with Drigungpa, Taklung Kagyüpa, 178 Barom Kagyü, 87, 106 Drigung Kagyü, 49n32, 106, 108, 178, 180 Karma Kagyü; Karma Kamtsang, 106, 177–78 and Mongol support, 30, 108, 178, 180 Phakmodru, 30, 108, 177, 178 Tsalpa Kagyü, 30, 106, 108 in Tsang, 85, 87, 106, 177, 178 Kaipinghur. See Shangdu Kālacakra, 48, 148n26 Kālacakratantra, 216, 221 and final battle, 48, 214, 224 and halting communism, 226 kalaśa vase, 62 Kamalarak ita, 172 Kangxi emperor, 191, 192 and Zanabazar, 47

Kangyur (Bka’ ’gyur), 134, 136, 137 kapala (ka pa’a la) skull cups, 118 Kāraṇḍavyūha-sūtra, 153 as source of Avaloketeśvara mythology, 66 Karchung inscription, 64 Karma Kamtsang. See Karma Kagyü under Kagyü Karma Pakshi. See Karmapa, Second Karma Phuntsok Namgyal (Karma Phun tshogs Rnam rgyal), 182 Karma Tenkyong Wangpo (Kar ma Bstan skyong Dbang po), 182 Karmapa, Fifth (Deshin Shekpa; De bzhin Gshes pa), 40, 126, 143, 145, and Yongle, 40, 126, 136 Karmapa, First (Düsum Khyenpa; Dus gsum Mkhyen pa), 26 and Tsangpa Tashi, 85, 87 Karmapa, Fourth (Rölpai Dorjé; Rol pa’i rdo rje), 125 Karmapa, Second (Karma Pakshi; Karma pak+shi), 108, 116 Karmapa, Seventh (Chödrak Gyatso; Chos grags Rgya mtsho), 136 Kashmir, 62, 85, 93, 100, 174 Keru Lhakhang (Ke ru lha khang), 84 kesi (缂丝; btags sku) textile, 28, 34, 98, 105, 131, 148n26 Acala kesi thangka, 49n34 textile art, 88 See also silk tapestry khadga magical sword, 60 Khalkha Mongols, 47, 178, 216, 226 and Jebdzundamba Khutugtu, 218 See also Mongols Khalkha Tsogtu, 178 Kham (Khams), 83, 106, 171 Khamtön Shakya Dorjé (Khams ston Sha kya Rdo rje), 118 Khara Khoto (Kharakhoto; 黑水城), 28, 98, 100, 102 and Lücheng (绿城), 100 Kharachin, 180 Kharnak (Mkhar nag) lake, 186 Khedrup (Mkhas grub), 206 main disciple of Tsongkhapa, 211n12 Khitan Liao dynasty (916–1125), 86, 90, 94 Khön Jetsün Drakpa Gyaltsen. See Jetsün Drakpa Gyaltsen Khoshuud (Qoshot) Mongols, 156, 163, 177, 182, 214, 216 Khotan (Li yul), 20, 65, 84, 93, 106 and Khotanese monks, 78 and linear brush method, 94 Khyentsé Chenmo (Mkhyen brtse Chen mo), 31, 113, 201 King of the Dharma, 44, 126, 131, 136, 206 King of Merit (Bsod nams kyi rgyal po), 134, 231, 234n3 kingship, 57, 58, 191, 192 encoded with Buddhist values, 53, 56 sacral, 11, 19, 20, 126, 151 Tibetan traditions of, 64, 69, 78 Kizil cave center, 93 Kokonor region, 84, 162, 178 Könchok Kyap (Dkon mchog skyabs), 33 Kongtrul. See Jamgön Kongtrul Korea, Korean, 74, 126 Koshila (Qoshila; Rgyal bu ko shi la; Emperor Mingzong; 明宗皇帝), 122 and Empress Babusha, 120, 121 and King Tuq-Temür, 35

259

Köten Khan (Go dan khan), 106 and alliance with Sakyapa, 30, 108, 175 Kozlov, Pyotr Russian explorer, 100 Kri a Yamāri, Black (Gshin rje gshed nag po), 118 Krodha Acala (Khro bo mi g.yo ba), 106 as Krodharāja (angry king), 60 Kubera, 140, 142 kula Buddha families, 62, 64 Kulika Rudra Cakrin, 214, 218 and Shambhala, 226 Kunga Lekpai Jungné Gyaltsen (Kun dga’ Legs pa’i ’Byung gnas Rgyal mtshan) as imperial preceptor, 120, 229 Kunga Lodrö Gyaltsen (Kun dga’ Blo gros Rgyal mtshan) as imperial preceptor, 118, 229 Kunga Rinchen (Kun dga’ Rin chen), 118, 120, 229 Kunga Sangpo (Kun dga’ Bzang po), 118, 229 Kunga Tashi Gyaltsen (Kun dga’ Bkra shis Rgyal mtshan), 148n5, 229 Kunga Wangchuk (Rgyal tshab Kun dga’ Dbang phyug), 118, 120 Kurapa (Sku rab pa), 182 Kushang Künzang Tsewa Chökyi Wangchuk (Sku zhang Kun bzang Rtse ba Cho kyi Dbang phyug), 180 Kushap Rinpoché (Sku zhabs Rin po che), 171 Kyichu River (Skyid chu), 175 Kyishö (Skyid shod), 162 Kyishö valley (Skyid shod), 175, 177, 178, 182 Kyishöpa (Skyid shod pa), 178, 182 Kyormolung (Skyor mo lung) region, 178, 180 Lachen Gongpa Rabsal (Bla chen Dgongs pa Rab gsal), 83 lacquer, 11, 34, 136, 137, 192, 194, 196 See also dry lacquer Lake Kharnak. See Kharnak Lalitavajra (La li ta ba dzra) Indian master, 118 Lalitavistara, 58 hagiography of the Buddha, 56 and Lalitavistara cakravartin, 57 and use of anonymity, 57 Lama Shang Tsöndrü Drakpa (Bla ma Zhang Brtson grus Grags pa), 26, 27 30, 49n34, 105, 175 and Tishri Repa, 26, 30. See also Tishri Repa and Tsal Gungthang Monastery, 175, 182. See also Tsal Gungthang and Xixia, 88 Lampa Rapjampa Sönam Drakpa (Lam pa Rab byams pa Bsod nams Grags pa), 182 Langdarma, emperor, 83 Lantsa script (lanya dza), 196 lha tsenpo (lha btsan po), 72, 84, 153 Lhasa Jokhang. See Jokhang Temple Lhasa Jowo (Lha sa’i jo bo). See Jowo statue Lhasa Treaty Inscription, 72 Lhatsun (Lha btsun), 177 and Samyé Monastery, 177 Li Yuanhao (李元昊), 84 Liangzhou (Ling ju), 87, 123n33 Liao dynasty. See Khitan Liao Likyön (Lig yon), 115

260

index

Līlavajra, 172 and magic wheel of Yamāntaka, 172 Lingusi (靈谷寺) temple, 126 Liu Bingzhong (劉秉忠), 31 Lodrö Gyaltsen (Sokdokpa, Sog bzlog pa Blo gros Rgyal mtshan), 188n27 and rituals against foreign armies, 180 See also Mongol-repellers Lokeśvara, 151, 153, 162, 163 Longmen cave complex, 93 Losang Palden Yeshé. See Panchen Lama lotsawa (lo tsā ba) translators, 174 Lotus Sūtra, 153, 168n7 Lumé Tsultrim Sherab (Klu mes Tshul khrims Shes rab), 84 and Buddhist culture and art, 84 Ma, Empress (馬), 126 Ma Mingxin, 220, 221 and anti-Qing movement, 220 Macartney, George, Lord and 1793 embassy to China, 44 Madhyamāgama text, 57 Magadha, 53, 172 magic, 11, 19, 26, 30, 48, 57, 60, 153 and Hevajra, 60 and magical thinking, 58 and magical warfare, 26, 42, 47, 62, 172, 175, 177– 80, 182, 213, 216. See also Tāranātha and magician, 64 and Śambara, 58, 60. See also Śambara and sorcery, 172, 178, 180, 182, 186, 188. See also Buddhist magic and sorcery and vidyādharas (sorcerers), 60 Mahākāla (Ma ha ka la), 11, 26, 28, 30, 115, 134, 144, 146, 178 as destructive force, 177 and founding of Bhutan, 48, 177 and Mahākāla temples, 31, 116 and military objectives, 26, 28, 30, 31, 33, 116, 177 as protector of Mongol Yuan, 30–33, 116, 134 Raven-headed form, 48 skull rites of, 175 Mahākāśyapa, 90 Mahāprajñāpāramitāsūtra, 77 Mahāsammata, 57, 58, 65 as law-giver, 57 and Śakyamuni lineage, 58 mahāsiddha, 88 Mahāsthāmaprāpta, 90, 100 Mahāsudarśana, 57 Mahāvairocana, 74, 81n9, 94, 96, 97. See also Vairocana Mahāvairocana-abhisaṃbodhi (“Enlightenment of the Great Vairocana”), 25 Mahāyāna, 155 scriptures of, 153 Mahāyoga, 26. See also tantric practices Maitreya, 47, 90, 213, 214 buddha of the future, 47, 48 Chinese appearance of, 36 cult of, 48, 214, 218 and Grand Maitreya Project, 226, 227 and Tsongkhapa, 213, 214, 218.

Makzor Gyalmo. See Palden Makzorma

Manchu, Manchu Empire, 19, 47, 48, 148, 175, 191, 192, 209, 216, 218, 221 and connection with Mañjuśrī, 43, 44, 191, 218 and Mahākāla, 33 and Qubilai Khan spiritual ancestry, 33, 39, 43, 44, 201 and Sino-Tibetan Buddhist art, 44 See also Qing dynasty ma ala (dkyil ’khor) and authority, 60, 64 Mandate of Heaven Confucian concept of, 48 mandorla of Prajñāpāramitā, 86 Mangyul Gungthang (Mang yul gung thang), 177 Mañjugho a emperors (’Jam dbyangs gong ma), 43, 191, 206, 207 Mañjuśrī (’Jam dpal), 20, 43, 65, 118, 191 bodhisattva of wisdom, 20 Buddhafield of, 218, 224 emanations of, 39, 43, 191, 201, 206, 207, 211n19 as Mañjuśrī-cakravartin, 44, 206 and sword, 44, 60, 192 and Wutai shan (Mount Wutai), 34, 191, 192 Marvelous Images, Names, Sūtra and Dhāraṇī of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas (諸佛菩薩妙相名號經咒), 140, 145 Mentsé. See Hangzhou metalware, 74, 196 Metropolitan Museum of Art, 13, 35, 118, 131 Ming, Ming dynasty (Rta’i Ming; Ch. Da Ming, 1368– 1644), 40, 42 and borderlands, 42, 48, 144 and Chinese identity, 40, 42, 125 eunuchs. See eunuchs and Hevajra, 60 importance of garrisons, temples, 31, 42, 144, 148 and Mongol precedents, 40, 125, 131, 134, 144 and Nanjing as early capital, 126, 131 and Tibetan Buddhism, 40, 42, 125, 126, 134, 136, 140, 143, 144, 148 Ming emperors, 136, 144 Taizu (Hongwu period), 125, 126, 128 Xuande, 131, 136, 139 Yongle, 40, 125, 126, 131, 134, 136, 140, 144, 148, 231.

See also Yongle Ming imperial workshops, 40, 125, 126, 131, 144, and modular production, 131 and Tibetan Buddhist art, 40, 125, 126, 131, 144, and Yongle period bronzes, 40, 126, 144 Minyak. See Tangut Minyak Sherap Yeshé, Danasi (Mi nyag She rab Ye shes), 111, 116, 123n25 Mirror Illuminating the Royal Genealogies, 65, 69, 78 Möngke Khan (Mong gol Han, Mung khe Han), 30, 108, 111 Mongol-repellers, 42, 47, 140, 213 Chokden Gönpo, 177 Lodrö Gyaltsen (Sokdokpa), 177, 180 Shikpo Lingpa, tertön, 180 Tenyi Lingpa, Nyingma lama, 177 Tishri Repa, 175 See also magic Mongols, Mongolia (Hor yul) and alliances, 108, 175, 178

and cavalry, 126 and chaos in Tibet, 213 and confederations from Ordos and Tümed, 178 Khalkha Mongols. See Khalkha and Khoshuud (Qoshot) Mongols. See Khoshuud and lingua franca, 42 and Mahākāla, Mahākāla cult, 26, 30, 33, 48, 116, 134 and politics of Tibet, 42, 48, 125, 156, 162, 177–80, 182 and religiopolitical view, 33, 108, 191, 214, 218 and second conversion to Tibetan Buddhism, 42, 148, 214 Tümed Mongols, 156, 162, 163, 168, 178, 180, 214 and Western Mongols (Stod hor), 108 and worship of Maitreya, 47, 213, 214, 218 Mongol Ilkhans, 30 Mongol Yuan dynasty (Hor rgyal rabs; 1271–1368), 30, 40, 44, 105, 122, 125, 136, 156, 192 and Geluk. See Geluk and King Qayshan. See Qayshan and patron-priest relationship. See patron-priest relationship Mongol Square script. See script Mönlam Chenmo (Smon lam Chen mo) Great Prayer Festival, 177, 227n7 Mönlam Pal Lekpai Lodrö (Smon lam Dpal Legs pa’i Blo gros), 177 and magical warfare, 177 Mount Wutai. See Wutai shan mudrā, 90, 93–97 Amitābha meditation mudrā (Mituo dingyin 弥陀定印), 90 Musée Cernuschi, 13, 144 Musée Guimet, 13, 33, 90, 115, 221 Muslim, 48, 214, 221 and Shambhala myth, 214, 216, 218 See also Hui Myanmar (Burma), 111 Nakshö (Nags shod) region, 178 Nālandā, 60 Nalendra, 178 Namgyal Monastery (Rnam rgyal), 186 Namkha Senggé (Nam mkha’ Seng ge), 38 Nanjing, 126, 131 Nelson-Atkins Museum, 140 Nepalese artists, masters, 31, 33, 105, 111, 115, 116, 123n30, 192 Neudong (Sne’u gdong), 177 Newar, Newari, 47 Ngawang Losang Gyatso. See Dalai Lama, Fifth Ngo-nang Lhasar (Ngo nang Lha gsar), 171 Ngok Dorgyal (Rngog Rdor rgyal), 118 Ngorchen Könlün (Ngor chen Dkon lhun), 118 Northern Song dynasty, 28 Nup Sangyé Yeshé (Gnubs Sangs rgyas Ye shes), 172 as first political sorcerer, 174 Nurhachi, 209 Nyarong (Nyag rong) region, 171 Nyatri Tsenpo prehistoric king of Tibet, 160

261

Nyingma, Nyingmapa (Rnying ma pa), 177, 180, 182, 216 and cycle of Karma Guru, 186 and Jangdak Tashi Topgyal, 178, 186 and rites, 180, 182, 186 and Yama Dharmarāja, 182, 186 and Yamāri/ Yamāntaka ritual, 186 oaths, 62, 64, 76 Ocean-Taming Temple. See Zhenhai si O iyāna, 144, 172 Ögedei (O go ta), 108 Oirat Mongols, 216, 218 Old Tibetan Chronicle, 72, 76, 78 omen, omens, 72, 171 Ordos, 178, 180 Padmasambhava (Pema Jungné; Pad ma ’Byung gnas), 64, 172, 216 as tantric exorcist, 172 Pala (Pa’a la), 84, 86 early Pala style, 84 East Indian Pala style, 100, 102 Palden Makzorma (Dpal ldan Dmag zor ma) as battle goddess, 182 Pamtingpa (Bal po’i Pham thing pa), 105 Panchen Lama and revival of Shambhala myth, 209, 211n33, 218, 221 Panchen Lama, Sixth (Losang Palden Yeshé; Blo bzang Dpal ldan Ye shes), 198, 207, 209, 211n27, 218, 221 as rebirth of Sakya Pa ita, 201 as reincarnation of Gesar/Guan Yu, 209 and Qianlong thangkas, 198, 201, 207, 209 and Shambhala, 209, 211, 218, 221 visit to Qing court, 198, 201, 209 Pa ita Sumati Kirti (Pan+di ta Su ma ti Kirti), 105 Pasenadi, 53 patron-priest relationship (yönchö; yon mchod), 30, 31, 105, 108, 116, 126, 156, 168, 191, 201, 206, 214 between Changkya and Qianlong, 201 between Kagyü and Tangut dynasty, 106 between Möngke Khan and Drigungpa, 108 between Mongols and Tsalpa Kagyü, 106 between Qianlong and Rölpai Dorjé, 44 between Qubilai Khan and Phakpa, 44 between Sakyapa and Mongol dynasty, 106 between Sakyapa and Tangut king, 106 between Tanguts and Tibetans, 30 Pavilion of Raining Flowers (Yuhua ge 雨花閣), 207, 209 Pema Lingpa (Pad ma Gling pa), 177 as tertön, 177 Pelliot, Paul, 20 Penyul ( Phan yul) valley, 182 Persia, Persian, 20, 30, 74, 88, 126, 128, 220 gold-thread brocade (nasij), 88 Phakmodru, Phakmodrupa (Phag mo gru pa), 30, 108, 177, 178 and fortress of Neudong, 177 and Gelukpa, 177, 178 Phakpa (’Phags pa; Drogön Phakpa, ’Gro mgon ’Phags pa), 30, 31, 38, 118, 120, 122nn18–19, 201, 229, 231 and Anige, 31, 33, 111, 115, 116

262

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and Mahākāla, 31, 33, 116, 126 as preceptor-officiant (mchod gnas), 30, 106, 201 and Qubilai Khan, 30, 31, 33, 39, 40, 44, 108, 111–16, 126, 201, 214, 216 script. See script, Phakpa script Phakpa Lokeśvara statue, 162, 163 Phakpa script. See script, Phakpa script Pillar Testament, 65, 66 Plain of Milk Lake, 72 Pönchen Shakya Sangpo (Dpon chen Shakya Bzang po), 111, 115 invites Nepalese sculptors, 115 porcelain. See pottery Potala court, 156, 160 and wall paintings, 160 Potala Palace (Pho brang Po ta la), 43, 88, 97, 162–64, 198, 207 pottery, porcelain, 11, 35, 111, 136 white pottery (rdza dkar), 111 as ritual implements, 136, 196 Prajñāpāramitā, 86 Prajñārak ita, 172 and large torma of Cakrasa vara, 172 Prātimokṣasūtra (So sor thar ba’i mdo; 别解脱经), 92, 93 preceptor-officiants (mchod gnas), 106 Precious Rosary of Religious Practice (Chos spyod rin chen phreng ba), 106 priest-patron relationship. See patron-priest relationship printing, 28, 84, 134 Chinese woodblock technology, 88 and Qisha Canon (磧砂藏), 38 and Tangut edition of Buddhist canon, 38 of Tibetan canon, 131 of Tripiṭaka, 85, 102 Xixia printed image, 86 as xylographic illustrations, 86 Protect the Nation Safeguard Peace Temple (Da Huguo bao’an si; 大護國保安寺), 136 Protect the Nation Temple (Huguo si; 護國寺), 33 Pulungwa Tsewang Dorjé (Phu lung ba Tshe dbang Rdo rje), 171 Pure Land School, 90, 213 Putuo Zongcheng zhi miao (普陀宗乘之廟), 198, 205 Qayshan, King (武宗海山皇帝), 121 Qianlong (乾隆) emperor, 44, 148, 192, 198, 201, 206–9 and Changkya Rölpai Dorjé, 44, 192 See also Changkya Rölpai Dorjé as emanation of Mañjuśrī, 44, 201, 206, 207 and imperial workshops, 44, 192 as universal emperor (cakravartin), 44, 206, 207 Qing Empire (1644–1911), 43, 44, 47, 48, 171, 209, 214, 216, 218, 224. See also Manchu as Buddhafield of enlightened action, 218 and defeat of Oirats, 216, 218 and legitimacy, 43, 44, 48, 191 and Muslims, 48, 214, 218, 220, 221 and Qing Gelukpa rule, 191, 192, 207–9, 216, 218 and triumvirate of Changkya, Sixth Panchen, Qianlong, 209 Qinghai, 143, 162, 163 Qinghai Provincial Museum, 144

Qingtang. See Tsongkha Kingdom Qisha Canon (磧砂藏), 37, 38, 50n63 mixed Tibetan and Chinese imagery, 38 Qoshot. See Khoshuud Qubilai Khan (Go pe la, Se chen rgyal po, Hu pi li), 19, 31, 33, 40, 42–44, 50n55, 105, 126, 148, 175, 214, 216 as emanation of Mañjuśrī, 39, 43, 44, 201 enthroned in 1260, 30, 108 as model of rulership, 30, 39, 40, 122, 125 and Phakpa. 30, 31, 33, 39, 40, 44, 108, 111–16, 126, 201, 214, 216. See also Phakpa and Tibetan Buddhism, 19, 30–33, 40–44, 105, 122, 148, 201 Qutansi (瞿曇寺), 143, 144, 148n4 and Golden Buddha Image Stele (御制瞿曇寺金 佛像碑), 144 See also Drotsang Dorjé Chang Ra tradition (Rwa lugs), 118 Rāhula (Sgra gcan ’dzin) planetary deity, 180 rājadharma, 65 Rājantepurappavesana-sutta, 53 Rakta Yamāri (Gshed dmar lhan skyes), 118 Ralpachen (Ral pa can), 65 rang ’byung (rang jung) self-arisen image, 144 Ratnasambhava, 96 one of five directional Buddhas, 94, 198 Red Hill (Marpori), 43, 162, 164 refuge-field paintings, 206, 207 as ritual veneration of the teacher (guru pūjā), 206 reincarnation, 26, 42, 43, 48, 136, 209 as means of succession, 11, 19, 26, 43, 151 relics, 72, 122 religiopolitical lineage, 33, 116, 156, 191, 218 religious-political rule (lugs gnyis kyi srid jus), 151, 156 as twin systems, 151 Retreng Monastery (Rwa sgreng), 108, 164 Rimé (ris med) nonpartisan movement, 171 Rinchen Gyaltsen (Rin chen Rgyal mtshan) Tibetan imperial preceptor, 115, 116, 229 Rinchen Kyab (Rin chen Skyabs; Minister Yang Lianzhenjia; 楊璉真伽), 36 Rinchen Palden (Rin chen Dpal ldan), 136 Rinchen Phuntsok (Rin chen Phun tshogs), 178 and violent sorcery, 178, 180 Rinchen Tashi (Rin chen Bkra shis) as imperial preceptor, 120, 229 Rinpung, Rinpungpa (Rin spungs pa), 177, 178 attacks on Geluk, 177, 178 Roerich, Nicholas, 224, 226 and Shambhala, 226 Rölpai Dorjé. See Changkya Rölpai Dorjé Rölpai Dorjé. See Karmapa, Fourth royal dead, 72 and burial mound as tomb, 72 Russia, 198, 225 as northern kingdom of Shambhala, 224, 226 sādhana (brgyud pa), 118 Sādhana of the Forty-Nine Vajrabhairavas, 118

Śaivism, 62 Sakya, Sakyapa (Sa skya pa), 28, 30, 85, 134, 155, 174, 175, 177, 178, 206 and Dorjé Drakpa, 118 lamas as imperial preceptors, 30, 106, 108, 111, 201 and Lineage of Sakya, 111 and Mongol garrisons, 30 and Nalendra Monastery, 178 and priest-patron relationships, 106, 108 Serkhang Chenmo (Gser khang chen mo), 115 and tradition of Vajrabhairava, 118 and Yuan-Sakya pact, 156 Sakya (Sa skya) Monastery, 115 and Mönlam Pal Lekpai Lodrö, 178 Sakya Pa ita (Sa skya pa i ta), 30, 108, 175, 201, 231 Śākyamuni, 53, 84, 90, 94, 97, 153 and royal relations, 53 and myth of lineage, 58, 93 Samādhirājasūtra, 55 sam sāra, 155 Śambara, 58, 60 grand magician, 58 Śamvara, 62 Samyé Monastery (Bsam yas), 20, 25, 64, 74, 177 and Dīpa kara influence, 93 and Samyé pillar, 64 and Vairocana, 25, 74 Sandalwood Buddha (Tsan dan jo bo) text, 123n25 Sangyé Tashi (Sangs rgyas Bkra shis; Lama Sanluo 剌麻三囉), 148n4 Sanskrit, 39, 57, 111, 116, 143, 144, 213, 216 Sasanian Empire, 76 and art, 20, 25 script Mongol Square script (Hor yig ’khor ma gru bzhi), 39, 108, 111 Phakpa script, 30, 39, 111, 114 Tangut script, 38 uchen (dbu can), 90, 93, 103n13 umé (dbu med), 92, 93 sculpture, 26, 31, 33, 36, 47, 60, 65, 66, 69, 72, 74, 81, 84, 93, 151, 156, 162, 163 arhat statues, 131 Chenrezik (Avalokiteśvara), 69, 72, 73, 78 and early Ming, 131 of eighth century, 62 of Mahākāla, 115, 116 Maitreya, 213, 218, 227 Ming bronze, 144 Phakpa Lokeśvara, 162–64, self-arisen, 144. See also rang ’byung seals (tham ka), 30, 111 Sengge Ragi, Grand Princess, 33, 50n53 Sera (Se ra) Monastery, 177, 182, 186 Seven Treasures, 56, 98 Sewa Döndrup Yeshé (Gze ba Don Grub Ye shes), 118 Shākya Yeshé (Shākya ye shes), 131, 133, 134, 136, 148n26, 231 Shalu (Zhwa lu) Monastery, 86, 100 Shaluoba (沙囉巴; Shes rab dpal) Tangut translator, 38 Shama Lotsawa Sengyal (Zha ma Lo tsa ba Seng rgyal), 105 Shambhala myth, 48, 211n33, 213–16, 218, 221, 224–27

263

and final battle, 48, 209, 214, 221, 223 and Qing-Muslim violence, 48, 214, 218, 221 Shang Könchokpal (Zhang Dkon mchog dpal), 118 Shang Tsöndrudrak. See Lama Shang Shangdu (Shang do; aka Kaipinghur, Kha’i phing hur; Ch. Shang du), 111, 122 founded by Möngke Khan, 111 as Mongol imperial capital, 33 Sharchen Yeshé Gyaltsen (Shar chen ye shes rgyal mtshan), 118 Shazhou (沙州), 85 Shigatsé (Gzhis ka rtse), 156, 177 Shikpo Lingpa (Zhig po Gling pa), 180, 182 Nyingma tertön, 180 ritualist against Mongols, 180, 182. See also Mongol-repellers Shingon Buddhism, 94 Shingshak Tseten Dorjé (Zhing shag Tshe brtan Rdo rje), 178 and death by sorcery, 178 Shinjé (Gshin rje). See Yama Dharmarāja Shinjé Shorsang Nyimatrö (Gshin rje Bshor sang Nyi ma khros), 186 Shunzhi (順治), 192 Chinese emperor, 164 and Fifth Dalai Lama, 216 siddhas, 88, 174 Śīlasaṃyuktasūtra, 55, 66n3 silk, 33, 34, 94, 98, 106, 198 and Ming production, 40, 131 and Mongol imperial figures, 33–35 and silk textiles, 40, 131 and Tangut court, 28 tapestry. See silk tapestry and Tibetan Buddhist icons, 28, 34, 131 and thangkas, 49n34, 88, 97, 98, 100, 105, 106, 118, 131, 198 See also kesi Silk Road, 20, 26, 28, 77, 83, 88, 93, 98, 100 silk tapestry, 50, 60, 88, 97–100, 105, 118, 120, 122 canopies (bla bre), 106 of Krodha Acala, 60, 106 See also kesi silk tapestry Vajrabhairava ma ala. See Vajrabhairava ma ala silk tapestry Sino-Tibetan art, 25, 44, 48, 102, 126 and visual idiom, 131 Sino-Tibetan border, 25, 26, 42, 48 and border strategy, 144 and imperial monasteries, 42 Sino-Tibetan Treaty, 24 six-syllable formula (oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ), 66, 153, 211n8 as powerful mantra, 153 Sokdokpa. See Lodrö Gyaltsen Sönam Chöpal (Bsod nams Chos phel), 182 Sönam Gyatso. See Dalai Lama, Third Sönam Sherab (Bsod nams Shes rab), 131, 133, 148n26 Song Dynastic History (Songshi 宋史), 85 Song dynasty (960–1279), 28, 84, 85, 88, 93, and Southern Song (Sung lho ma), 31, 33, 116

264

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Songtsen Gampo (Srong rtsan sgam po), 60, 65, 71, 72, 74, 78, 81, 164 and Amitābha, 43, 66, 78 as Avalokiteśvara, 43, 65, 66, 69, 70, 74, 153, 160 and Chinese and Nepalese wives, 69 as eleven-faced Chenrezik, 69, 72, 74, 78 and legendary biographies, 153 Sorqaqtani Beki (Btsun mo Za yin E kha zo rog ta), 108 Soviet Union, 226, 227 and revival of Maitreya myth, 227 Söwang (Bsod dbang; Bsod nams Dbang po), 118 spiritual warfare. See magic Śrī Devī, 26, 182, 184 as wrathful protector, 182 Sri Lanka, 136 statue. see sculpture stele (rdo ring), 50, 111, 144 and Anige epitaph stele, 111 Duke of Liangguo (Ling gu’u gung; 凉国公), 115 and emperors’ descent from heaven, 72 and eulogies, 72 and Imperial Bestowal of Qutansi’s Golden Buddha Image Stele, 144 and Mongol khan, 111 stone pillars. See stele śuddhāvāsakāyika pure abodes, 57 Sudhana, Sudhana legend, 65 Sufism. See also Hui Naqshbandi Sufism, 218, 220 Sukhāvatīvyūha-sūtra, 153 sumeru throne (须弥座), 100 Sumpa Yeshé Paljor (Sum pa Ye shes Dpal ’byor), 106, 108 Supu pacandra, 55, 56 sūtra-copying projects, 77 Tibetan and Chinese sūtras, 77 Suvarṇabhāsottamasūtra, 65 tablet signs (sgo byang), 111 Taiping Rebellion, 221 Taizu, 125, 128 and Empress Ma, 126 Ming emperor, 125 Takdeling (Rtak bde gling) Monastery, 116 Taklung (Stag lung), 178 Taktsang Paljor Sangpo (Stag tshang Dpal ’byor Bzang po), 116, 123n26 Tamerlane (Temür), 148n1 Tang dynasty (618–907), 20, 49n2, 88, 93, 140, 201 and esoteric Buddhism, 49n2 Tangchui Pingche (Byang bi jus phing chang; Tang chu’i phing chad) Chinese master, 116 Tangut art, 34, 36, 48, 105, 106 and Buddhist art, 28, 83, 84, 94, 98 and Chinese style (Pala, Khotanese influence), 84 and early Pala style, 84, 86, 102 and eastern India features, 84 and patronage, 28, 83 Tangut Gha (Mi nyag gha), 106 Tangut Gyagö king (Mi nyag rgya rgod rgyal po), 111

Tangut Kingdom, dynasty (Minyak; Mi nyag rgyal rabs), 30, 39, 48, 83, 84, 86, 87, 88, 94, 102, 105, 106, 111, 175 and “Buddha Khan” (Burqan Khan), 28 as Buddhist center of Qinghai-Tibet plateau, 83 kings of, 105, 106, 108 and Mongol conquest, 36, 105 rule at Dunhuang, 93 and rulers as cakravartin, 28, 30, 98 Sogdian influence on, 98 and translation, 38, 83–85 and Tsongkha, 106 See also Xixia Kingdom Tangut silk tapestry (kesi 缂丝). See kesi tantra, tantric practices, 19, 60, 94, 118, 172, 174, 180, 214, 216 and Buddhism, 11, 20, 26, 60, 62, 83, 88, 102, 207, 216, 218 and literature, 64 and ritualists, 175, 188, 213 and sacral kingship, 58 with sexual content, 11, 26 of union and liberation (sbyor sgrol), 26 See also Hevajra Tantra, Kālacakratantra, magic Tantric colleges, 186 Tārā, 56, 100 eight emanations of, 98 and Green Tārā, 98 Savioress from the Eight Fears, 98 Tāranātha (Tā ra nā tha), 172, 182, 188nn7–9 and Jonang tradition, 47 and magical warfare, 47 Tibetan historian, 172 Tashi Topgyal. See Jangdak Tashi Topgyal Tashilhunpo Monastery (Bkra shis lhun po), 47, 163, 177, 206, 211nn11–12, 214 and Sixth Panchen, 198, 201 Tay inscription, 126 Tengyur (Bstan ’gyur) commentaries of the Buddhist canon, 123n25 Tenyi Lingpa (Bstan gnyis gling pa) Nyingma lama, 177 and repelling Mongols, 177 terma (gter ma), 53, 186 treasure texts, 53 tertön (gter ston), 53, 177, 180 treasure revealer, 53 Testament of Wa (Dba dzhed), 65 textiles, 35, 40, 55, 211n14 and Buddhist art, 40, 88, 131, 148n26 damask fabric, 98 and kesi. See kesi silk. See silk tapestry thangka hanging scrolls, 98 Thönmi Sambhota (Thon mi Sam bho ta), 69 Three Saints of the West, 90, 100 Tibet and borrowing from neighbors, 74, 90, 180 and Buddhist revival, 28, and collapse of empire, 26, 42, 53, 83, 90, 151, 172 and competing sects, 30, 105, 174, 175, 180, 216 and fragmentation, 26, 105

and patriarchs, 42, 105, 125, 131, 140 three regions of (Bod chol kha gsum), 108 unification of (1642), 42, 151, 156, 162, 177, 186 Tibetan army, 171 Tibetan Buddhist art, 28, 44, 48, 53, 56, 74, 83–86, 88, 98, 102, 125, 164 and China, 96, 100, 125, 126, 131, 134, 136, 140, 144, 148, 191, 192, 207 and relation to power, 11, 19, 20, 40, 43, 44, 48, 78, 105, 125, 175, 191 Tibetan emperors (tsenpo; btsan po), 20, 72, 151, 153 as cakravartin, 24, 153 and cosmopolitan trends, 20, 69, 74 and kula (sku bla) ceremony, 64 and link to cosmic Buddha, 74 as military hero, 64 multiple representations of, 72, 155 as protector bodhisattvas, 11, 20, 26, 43, 53, 65, 66, 69, 72, 78, 153 as shaman, magician, 64 sūtras as gifts for, 77 and treasure literature, 53, 64, 65 and Vairocana, 25, 74, 77 Tibetan-Tangut painting, 88, 102 Tibeto-Mongol liaison, 156 and civil war, 216 Tishri Repa Sherab Sengé (Ti shri Ras pa Shes rab Seng ge), 26, 87, 105 court chaplain to Tangut, 30 and magical warcraft, 175 as Mongol-repeller (hor/sog bzlog), 175. See also Mongol-repellers Tolui (Tho lo no yon), 108 Tongkhor Tulku (Stong ’khor sprul sku), 163 Torghut Mongols, 198 torma (gtor ma) effigies, 186 to repel Türk invaders, 172 as ritual weapon, 171, 172 role of torma in rituals, 171, 172, 186 transformation tableau (bianxiang 变相), 84 and Pala influence, 84 translation project, 77, 81n20. See also Tri Songdetsen Treaty-Edict Temple, 24, 49n8 Tri Desongtsen (Khri Lde srong brtsan), 64, 72 and divinity, 72 Tripiṭaka, 57, 85, 102, 136 Tri Songdetsen (Khri Srong lde brtsan), 64, 65, 74, 77 and divinity, 72 and eulogies, 72 and translation project, 77 Tsal Gungthang (Tshal Gung thang) Monastery, 49n32, 108, 175, 182 Tsalpa Kagyü (Tsal pa Bka’ brgyud), 30, 106, 108. See also Kagyü Tsami Lotsawa Sangyé Drakpa (Rtsa mi Lo tsa ba Sangs rgyas Grags pa), 175 and magical warcraft, 175 Tsang (Gtsang), 162, 177, 178, 180, 182, 186 and defeat of Tsangpa, 163, 177 and Karmapa, 162, 182

265

Tsang Yangdakbar (Gtsang Yang dag ’bar), 118 Tsangpa Desi (Gtsang pa sde srid), 182 Tsangpa Dungkhurwa Wangchuk Tashi (Gtsang pa Dung khur ba Dbang phug Bkra shis), 105, 108 Tsangpa Tashi. See Karmapa, First tsenpo (btsan po), 20, 72, 84, 153 Tibetan emperor, 72, 151 Tsethang (Rtses thang), 180 Tsongkha Kingdom (Tsong kha, 1008–1104; Ch. Qingtang 青唐), 26, 28, 84, 85, 105–7, 214 absorbed by Tangut Xixia, 49n34, 105 and King Tritönchen (Tsong kha’i rgyal po Khri ston chen), 105 and Tsongkha-Xixia relations, 28, 84, 85, 105, Tsongkhapa (Tsong kha pa), 131, 134, 177, 207, 211n12, 213, 214, 220, 231 with disciples Khedrup and Gyaltsap, 206 four deeds of, 213 Gelukpa founder, 192 and Maitreya, 213, 214, 218 and monastic code, 213 and Mönlam Chenmo, 177 and Phakmodrupa patronage, 177 Tsultrim Losang (Tshul khrims Blo bzang), 186 Tsurphu (Mtshur phu) Monastery, 49n32 tulku (sprul sku), 155, 178 emanation bodies, 155 Tümed Mongols, 156, 162, 163, 168n11, 180, 214 and alliances, 178, 214 Tümen, 180 Tuq-Temür, King (Rgyal po thug the mur; Ch. Wenzong 文宗皇帝), 35, 120, 121, 122 Tu ita Heaven, 168n1, 214 Ü (Dbus), 162 Uchetem (Dbu che ltems), 171 Uighurs, 30, 88, 105 Ulanov, Naran Russian envoy to Lhasa, 224 Ungern-Sternberg, Baron general in Russian White Army, 225 Upasaka (Dge gnyen), 106 Urga (Ulaanbaatar), 47 Ürgyenpa (U rgyan pa), 50n65, 111 ūrṇakośa, 60 uṣṇīṣa, 96 and Buddha’s superior power, 60 and earliest uṣṇīṣa text, 60 U acakravartin, 60 U avijayā, 36, 38 Vairocana (Rnam par snang mdzad), 24, 25, 74, 77, 94, 96, 97 and Eight Great Bodhisattvas, 81n9 and Samyé Monastery, 25, 74 Vairocana ma ala, 25, 74, 81n9 and Tibetan Empire, 25 Vaiśrava a, 140 Vajrabhairava (’Jigs byed bsdus pa), 131, 141, 175, 182, 209 three-faced, six-armed (’Jigs byed zhal gsum phyag drug), 118

266

index

Vajrabhairava ma ala silk tapestry, 34, 118, 120, 122 based on Phakpa’s work, 118 as ma ala of forty-nine Vajrabhairava deities, 118 Vajrapā i, 43, 47, 65, 96 as guardian of Buddha, 62 Vajrayāna (Tantric) Buddhism, 26, 87, 88 Vajro a, 60 vidyādhara (sorcerer), 60, 62 and flying, 60 as model for esoteric bodhisattvas, 60 vidyādhara-cakravartin, 60, 62 as source for Buddhist tantric lore, 60 Vikramaśīla Monastery, 172 Vimalakīrti, 20 Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa-sūtra, 20, 23, 49n5 vinaya, 53, 58, 227n7 Wang Wei (王維) Tang dynasty poet-painter, 201 Wangchuk Gyaltsen (Dbang phyug Rgyal mtshan) as imperial preceptor, 120 Wanli (萬歷) emperor, 148 war magic. See magic Wencheng Chinese princess, 72 Wenzong, Emperor. See Tuq-Temür White Stūpa of Beijing (Pe cing gyi mchod rten dkar po), 34, 111, 115, 123n30 and Da Shengshou Wan’an Monastery (大圣寿万安寺), 115 White Stūpa of Wutai shan, 34, 116 Wisdom Kings (明王), 94 Five Great Wisdom Kings (五大明王), 94 Wutai shan (Mount Wutai) (Ri bo rtse lnga; 五臺山), 34, 116, 191–93 sacred mountain of Mañjuśrī, 34, 191 Wuzong (武宗), emperor, 40, 136, 140 Wuzong waiji (武宗外纪), 136, 149n36 Xixia art, 28, 38, 83–88, 97, 98, 100, 102, 105, 106 as general concept, 84 Xixia Kingdom, 38, 90, 100, 106 and Buddhism, 28, 83–88, 94, 98, 102 and Buddhist monks, 83–85, 87 and founding (1038), 83, 84 inclusivity of, 28, 84 and ritual practice, 26, 84, 87 and Silk Road, 26, 28, 83, 88, 98 and Xixia-Tibetan cultural interaction, 84, 105-6 Xixia Translating the Sūtras (西夏译经图), 84 frontispiece artwork of, 84 Xu (徐), Empress, 126 Xuande (宣德) emperor, 131, 136 and Xuande period (1426–1435), 139 Xumi Fushou zhi miao (須彌福壽之廟), 198 as replica of Tashilhunpo, 198 yakṣa tree spirits, 62 Yama Dharmarāja (Shinjé, Gshin rje), 174, 182, 186, 188n9 and rites of suppression and killing, 186 Yamāntaka, 94, 172, 174, 175 and wrathful ritual, 174, 186

Yamāri, 118, 185. See also Yamāntaka Nyingma rites of, 186 Yang Lianzhenjia (楊璉真伽; Rinchen Kyab, Rin chen Skyabs), 36 and Feilaifeng (飞来峰), 36 and Qisha Canon (磧砂藏), 38 Yangdak Dorjé (Yang dag Rdo rje), 118 Yargyapa (Yar rgyab pa), 182 Ye Wang (Ye dbang) Prince of Yan (燕), 125. See also Yongle Yerang City (Ye rang grong khyer), 111 Yeshé Ö (Ye shes ’Od), 155 as monk-ruler of Gugé (996–1090), 48 Yin 陰 family, 20, 23 Yongdzin Könchokpal (Yongs ’dzin Dkon mchog ’phel), 118 Yonghegong (雍和宮), 206, 211n32 Yongle (永樂) period (1403–1424), 39, 40, 125, 128, 131, 134, 140, 144, 148, 231 and cakravartin ruler, 40, 126, 134 and Fifth Karmapa, 136 as founder of Ming, 40, 125 and priest-patron relationship, 126 and Shākya Yeshé, 131, 134, 231 and Tibetan Buddhist art, 40, 125, 126, 136, 148 and Yuan Dynastic History (Yuan shi), 122 Yongle period bronzes, 40, 126, 144

Yongzheng emperor, 191, 192 Yönten Gyatso. See Dalai Lama, Fourth Yuan, Yuan dynasty, 30, 35, 38, 102, 122n8, 126. See also Mongols, Mongol Empire Yulin, Yulin cave complex, 24, 88, 94 and Cave 25, 24, 25, 49n8, 90 Yumbu City (Yum bu grong khyer), 111 Yüngshiyebü Mongols, 180 Zanabazar (Yeshé Dorjé, Rje btsun dam pa Hu thug tu Ye shes Rdo rje), 47, 216–18, 227 Zawa Damdin (Rtsa ba Bla ma Rta mgrin) Buddhist polymath, 226 Zen and Pure Land traditions, 213 Zhangye River (张掖河), 85 Zhengde period (正德, 1506–1521), 136, 140, 141, 143, 148 Zhenghe (政和), admiral, 136 Zhenhai si (鎮海寺), 211n27 Zhenwu (真武) Chinese martial god, 31 Zhu Shou (朱壽), 140 Zünghar Mongols, 47 Zur Chöying Rangdröl (Zur Chos dbyings Rang grol), 182, 186, 188n40 Nyingma advisor to Fifth Dalai Lama, 182

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Contributors

Karl Debreczeny, PhD, is senior curator at the Rubin Museum of Art. His research focuses on artistic, religious, and political exchanges between the Tibetan and Chinese traditions. His publications include The Black Hat Eccentric: Artistic Visions of the Tenth Karmapa (2012) and the coedited The Tenth Karmapa and Tibet’s Turbulent Seventeenth Century (2016).

Ronald M. Davidson, PhD, is professor of religious studies at Fairfield University. His area of expertise is the social and linguistic dynamics of Buddhist ritual, particularly the associated use of mantras, dhāra īs, and Indian tantrism. He has translated texts from Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese. His publications include Tibetan Renaissance: Tantric Buddhism in the Rebirth of Tibetan Culture (2005) and Indian Esoteric Buddhism: A Social History of the Tantric Movement (2002).

Brandon Dotson, PhD, is associate professor of Buddhist studies at Georgetown University. His research interests include Tibetan religions, divine kingship, religious historiography and epic, Dunhuang studies, divination, medieval Tibetan law, and animals and religion. Dotson is the editor of Kingship, Ritual, and Narrative in Tibet and the Surrounding Cultural Area, an issue of Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie (2015), and author of The Old Tibetan Annals: An Annotated Translation of Tibet’s First History (2009).

Xie Jisheng 谢继胜, PhD, is a professor of the Zhejiang University Center for Buddhist Art. His research focuses on investigating the sites of Tibetan or Sino-Tibetan Buddhist art, especially in the areas where Tanguts were active from the twelfth to the fourteenth century. His publications include 西夏藏传绘画 [Xixia Thangka Paintings with a Tibetan Style, 2001] and 江南藏传佛教艺术: 杭州飞来峰石刻研 究 [Collective Research of Feilaifeng’s Tibetan Style Sculpture, 2014], and he was a contributing author to 北京藏传佛教艺术: 元明清北京藏传佛教文物遗存研究 [Tibetan Buddhist Art in Beijing: A Study of Remains of Tibetan Buddhist Relics in Beijing, of the Yuan, Ming, and Qing Dynasties, 2018].

Tsangwang Gendun Tenpa (Tshangs dbang Dge ’dun bstan pa 苍王•耿登丹巴) is deputy director and chief curator of the Chengdu Dargye Himalayan Art and Culture Museum (Khrun tu’u Hi ma la ya’i rig gnas bshams ston khang 成都大吉喜马拉雅文化艺术博物馆). Originally trained as a painter, since 2012 he has been engaged in the research of more than three thousand objects in the Dargye Museum. His publications include Gzi dmar/ deng rabs bod kyi lhug rtsom phyogs sgrig tshe ring rnam drug dpe tshogs [Red Agate: A Compilation of Contemporary Tibetan Essays, 2018].

Per K. Sørensen, PhD, is professor of Central Asian studies in Leipzig (retired). His interests cover Tibetan and Bhutanese literature, culture, and history. Among his most noted writings are Divinity Secularized (1990), Tibetan Buddhist Historiography (1994), and the coauthored medieval-era trilogy Civilization at the Foot of Mt. Sham-po (2000), Thundering Falcon (2005), and Rulers on the Celestial Plain (2007).

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Bryan J. Cuevas, PhD, is John F. Priest Professor of Religion and Director of Buddhist and Tibetan Studies at Florida State University. His principal research interests are Tibetan history and biography, Buddhist magic and sorcery, the politics of ritual power in premodern Tibetan societies, and the literary history of death narratives and death-related practices. His books include Travels in the Netherworld: Buddhist Popular Narratives of Death and the Afterlife in Tibet (2008) and The All-Pervading Melodious Drumbeat: The Life of Ra Lotsawa (2015).

Wen-shing Chou, PhD, is assistant professor of East Asian art at Hunter College, City University of New York. Chou’s research focuses on the relationship between religious vision and early modern empiricism in the art of China and the Himalayas, as well as the intersection of history, geography, and biography in Buddhist traditions. Her first book is Mount Wutai: Visions of a Sacred Buddhist Mountain (2018), and her current project explores the courtly culture of linguistic and material pluralism in Qing China.

Johan Elverskog, PhD, is Dedman Family Distinguished Professor and professor of history and religious studies at Southern Methodist University. He has written extensively on the interaction between Buddhism and politics across Inner Asia in monographs such as The Jewel Translucent Sūtra: Altan Khan and the Mongols in the Sixteenth Century (2003), Our Great Qing: The Mongols, Buddhism and the State in Late Imperial China (2006), and Buddhism and Islam on the Silk Road (2010).

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contributors

Image Credits

Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, British Columbia / photograph by Stephen Topfer: p. 104, figs. 1.7, 5.5 © Asian Art Museum of San Francisco: p. 7, p. 190, figs. 4.11, 6.12, 9.3, 9.4, 9.5, 9.6, 9.7 Bogd Khaan Palace Museum: fig. 7.10 Bruce Miller Collection / photograph © John Bigelow Taylor: fig. 3.7 Buchner, Elmar, et al. 2002. “Buddha from Space—An Ancient Object of Art Made of a Chinga Iron Meteorite Fragment.” Meteoritics & Planetary Science 47, no. 9: 1491–1501 / image courtesy of Elmar Buchner: fig. 10.7 © The Cleveland Museum of Art: pp. 8–9, p. 15, p. 52, p.

82, figs. 2.7, 3.5, 4.7, 4.8, 4.9, 4.10 Ronald M. Davidson: fig. 2.5 Karl Debreczeny: figs. 1.11, 1.14, 5.7, 6.14 Dunhuang Academy, ed. 1996. The Grotto Art of Dunhuang: Mogaoku Cave 465, pp. 34, 36, pls. 3, 4.

Nanjing: Jiangsu Art Publishing House / image courtesy of the Dunhuang Academy: fig. 4.3 Dunhuang Academy, ed. 1987. Series of Chinese Grottoes V, Mogaoku, pls. 109–10. Beijing: Wenwu Publications / image courtesy of the Dunhuang Academy: fig. 4.1 Dunhuang Research Academy: figs. 1.2, 1.3 Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin / Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin: fig. 9.9 © The Field Museum / image no. A115127d_006B, cat. no.

119332 / photograph by John Weinstein: fig. 1.10 Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution: figs. 1.9, 1.18 The Grand Maitreya Project: fig. 10.8 Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum / photographs by Imaging Department © President and Fellows of Harvard College: figs. 1.19, 4.12, 10.3 Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art / photograph by David De Armas: fig. 1.5 Jia Yang 甲央 and Wang Mingxing 王明星. 2000. Bao Cang: Zhongguo Xizang Lishi Wenwu 宝藏: 中国西藏历史文物 [Precious Deposits: Historical Relics of Tibet]. Vol 2, pp. 84–85, fig. 44. Beijing: Morning Glory Publishers: fig. 5.1 Jia Yang 甲央 and Wang Mingxing 王明星. 2000. Bao Cang: Zhongguo Xizang Lishi Wenwu 宝藏: 中国西藏历史文物 [Precious Deposits: Historical Relics of Tibet]. Vol 3, pp. 94–95, fig. 48. Beijing: Morning Glory Publishers: fig. 6.2 Jia Yang 甲央 and Wang Mingxing 王明星. 2000. Bao Cang: Zhongguo Xizang Lishi Wenwu 宝藏: 中国西藏历史文物 [Precious Deposits: Historical Relics of Tibet]. Vol 3, pp. 150– 51, fig. 55. Beijing: Morning Glory Publishers: fig. 6.5

The Metropolitan Museum of Art: figs. 5.6, 5.8, 5.10, 5.11, 6.3, 6.7, 6.8, 6.9, 10.1 / © The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource, NY: fig. 5.9 Musée Cernuschi / © Julien Vidal, Musée Cernuschi, RogerViollet: fig. 1.17 / © Stéphane Piera, Musée Cernuschi, RogerViollet: fig. 6.15 Musée national des arts asiatiques–Guimet, Paris, France / © RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY: p. 4, figs. 3.6, 4.5, 6.13 / photographs by P. Pleynet: p. 18, fig. 6.11 / photographs by Thierry Ollivier: p. 150, p. 212, figs. 1.8, 7.5, 10.5 / photograph by Daniel Arnaudet: fig. 7.4 © Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, Brussels: fig. 7.2 © 2019 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: p. 2, fig. 6.6 The New York Public Library: figs. 1.12, 1.13 Pal, Pratapaditya. 1984. Tibetan Paintings: A Study of Tibetan Thankas Eleventh to Nineteenth Centuries, pl.

92. New York: Ravi Kumar: figs. 1.16, 6.1 Palace Museum, Beijing: figs. 9.10, 9.11, 9.12, 9.13, 9.14 Pelliot, Paul. 1914. Les Grottes de Touen-houang: Peintures et sculptures bouddhiques des epoques des Wei, des T’ang et des Song. Vol. 1, pl. LXIV. Paris: P. Geuthner: fig. 1.1 The Philadelphia Museum of Art: fig. 9.8 Pritzker Collection: fig. 2.6 / photographs by Hughes Dubois: p. 10, p. 124, p. 228, p. 230, figs. 3.4, 4.4, 6.4 Roerich Museum, New York: fig. 10.6 Rubin Museum of Art: figs. 2.1, 2.2, 2.3 / photographs by Bruce M. White: p. 68, p. 268, figs. 2.4, 3.1, 7.1, 7.6, 7.8, 7.9, 8.1, 8.2, 8.4, 8.5, 8.6, 8.8, 8.9, 9.1 / photographs by David De Armas: p. 170, figs. 3.2, 5.4, 7.7, 8.3, 8.7, 9.15, 10.2 © The State Hermitage Museum / photograph by Vladimir Terebenin: fig. 1.6 Uranchimeg Tsultem: fig. 10.4 University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive / photograph for UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive by Benjamin Blackwell: fig. 6.10 Von Schroeder, Ulrich. 2001. Buddhist Sculptures in Tibet.

Vol. 2, Tibet and China, p. 353, pls. 353A–B. Hong Kong: Visual Dharma Publications: fig. 1.15 Weng Lianxi 翁连溪 and Li Hongbo 李洪波, eds.

2014. Zhongguo fojiao banhua quanji 中国佛教版画全集 [The Complete Collection of Chinese Buddhist Prints]. Vol. 3, p. 81.

Beijing: China Bookstore Press: fig. 4.2 Xie Jisheng: fig. 4.6 Yury Khokhlov Collection / photographs by Bashir Borlakov: figs. 5.3, 9.2 / photographs by Marian Gerard: p. 16, figs. 3.3, 5.2, 7.3 Zhang Changhong: fig. 1.4

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This catalog is published in conjunction with the exhibition Faith and Empire: Art and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism, organized and presented by the Rubin Museum of Art, New York, February 1–July 15, 2019, and curated by Karl Debreczeny, Senior Curator, Collections and Research, with the assistance of Lizzie Doorly.

Copyright © 2019 Rubin Museum of Art All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in any part, in any form (beyond the copying permitted

by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press) without permission from the Rubin Museum of Art. The exhibition and catalog Faith and Empire: Art and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism are made possible by Fred Eychaner, Zhou Yu Quan, the Zhiguan Museum of Art, the Ellen Bayard Weedon Foundation, the E. Rhodes & Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, Christopher Fussner, the Thomas and Frances Blakemore Foundation, the Neil Kreitman Foundation, Yury Khokhlov, Margot and Tom Pritzker, Carlton Rochell and Kathleen Kalista, and John Eskenazi.

Published by the Rubin Museum of Art, New York 150 West 17th Street, New York, New York 10011 Editor: Karl Debreczeny Project Director: Sarah Zabrodski Project Manager: Patrick Booz Designer: Phil Kovacevich Cartographer: Anandaroop Roy Printing and Binding: Conti Tipocolor, Florence, Italy Distributed by the University of Washington Press ISBN: 978-0-692-19460-7 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Debreczeny, Karl., editor. | Rubin Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.) host institution.

Title: Faith and empire : art and politics in Tibetan Buddhism / The Rubin Museum of Art. Description: New York : Rubin Museum of Art, 2019. | “This catalog is published in conjunction with the exhibition Faith and Empire: Art and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism, organized and presented by the Rubin Museum of Art, New York, February 1-July 15, 2019, and curated by Karl Debreczeny, Senior Curator, Collections and Research, with the assistance of Lizzie Doorly.” | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018053987 | ISBN 9780692194607 (hardcover) Subjects: LCSH: Buddhism and art--China--Tibet Autonomous Region--Exhibitions. | Buddhist art--China--Tibet Autonomous Region--Exhibitions. | Buddhism and politics--China--Tibet Autonomous Region--Exhibitions.

Classification: LCC BQ4570.A7 F35 2019 | DDC 294.3/36709515--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc. gov/2018053987 Cover: detail of fig. 6.4 Back cover: fig. 2.4 Frontispiece: detail of fig. 6.6 Page 4: detail of fig. 3.6 Page 7: detail of fig. 4.11 Pages 8–9: see fig. 3.5 Page 10: detail of fig. 4.4 Page 15: detail of fig. 4.7 Page 16: see fig. 3.3 Page 268: detail of fig. 9.1