Vlrts FROM1HE ROOFTOP OF.4SIA TIBET. NEB4L. KASHMIR
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vlRTS TIBET. FROM1HE NEB4L. ROOFTOP KASHMIR OF.4SIA Tl~e Metropolitan Museum of Art Acknowledgments I wish to express my deep gratitude to Mrs. Vincent Astor, Trustee Chairman of the Visiting Committee of the Department of Far Eastern Art, for her encouragement and help in connection with this exhibition. The illustrations in this check list and the color reproductions in the May, 1971, issue of the Museum Bulletin would not have been possible without her kind assistance. To our generous lenders and donors, two of whom have pledged their fine collections to our future permanent gallery of Lamaist art, which will present a more comprehensive display than the present exhibition, the De partment is greatly indebted. To friends and colleagues - especially Mrs. Antoinette Gordon, for merly Associate in the Department of Anthropology, The American Museum of Natural History; Miss Eleanor L. Olson, Curator Emeritus of Oriental Art, Newark Museum; Dr. Pratapaditya Pal, Curator of Indian Art, Los Angeles County Museum; Mr. Robert Skelton, Assistant Keeper, Indian Sec tion, Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Mr. Phintson Thonden, Repre sentative of His Holiness, the Dalai Lama - grateful thanks for their un stinting advice. My heartfelt appreciation to each and every one of my small staff for their devotion and unfailing support. Fong Chow This small exhibition is devoted to paintings, sculpture, and jewelry, drawn mainly from the Museum collection, produced in and around Tibet, Nepal, and Kashmir, three countries in the shadow of the mighty Himalaya, the tallest moun tains in the world, which dominate the roof of the Asian continent. The art of these mountain countries - with snow-covered summits, barren and rugged high plateaux, narrow valleys, untamed rivers, deep gorges, subject to extremes of cold and heat - is largely religious. Its main function is to serve as icons for worship or as aids to meditation. The major religions involved are Hinduism, Buddhism, and a Tibetan form of Tantric or Vajrayana Buddhism popularly known as Lamaism, where Hinduism and Buddhism are often so intermingled that they share the same philosophy and art forms, and sometimes the same gods. Hinduism owes its origins to the religion of the Indus Valley civilization (ca. 3000-1500 B.C.) in northwest India and that of their conquerors in the second millennium B.C., the Aryans. It absorbed the lingam worship, the Mother Goddess, the serpent gods and goddesses (nagas and naginis), the tree gods and goddesses (yakshas and yaksbis) of the pre-Aryan religion. It assimilated the basic concepts of the Vedic or Aryan tradition as well as the Vedic gods of the elements: Agni the god of fire, Surya the sun-god, Prthivi the earth goddess, and Indra, the chief of the gods. In time Hinduism evolved a large pantheon of gods. Chief among them are the trinity of Brahma the creator (no. 46), Siva the destroyer, Vishnu the preserver (nos. 6, 7, 24). The Goddess Devi in her manifestation as Parvati, con sort of Siva, had two sons: the elephant-headed Ganesa (no. 20), god of good for tune, and Karttikeya (no. 4), the god of war. Buddhism was founded by Gautama Siddhartha (ca. 563-483 B.C.), who was born in Lumbini, Nepal, in the foothills of the Himalaya. He taught the Four Noble Truths: life is suffering, the cause of suffering is desire, the suppression of suf fering can be achieved, and the way to achieve release from suffering and the cycle of rebirth (samsara) and to attain nirvana (extinction of all worldly desires) is by following the Noble Eightfold Path. By the first century A.D. two schools of Buddhism had developed, known as the Hinayana (Small Vehicle) and the Mahayana (Great Vehicle). Hinayana Bud dhism is dedicated to the proposition that each person has to work out his own salvation through monastic self-discipline; Mahayana proposed salvation for the masses through the intervention of Bodhisattvas, divine beings who, out of com- ^ passion for mankind, refuse to enter nirvana until all sentient beings have been r- saved. A later development of Mahayana, Tantric or Vajrayana (Vehicle of the Thunderbolt) Buddhism, was introduced into Tibet in the seventh century. There — the esoteric Indian system, with its mystical overtones, its use of magical rites, v spells, and incantations, its worship of the female energies in conjunction with male deities, incorporated elements of the older, native, shamanistic religion of Bon. It is this essentially Tibetan fusion of Vajrayana and Bon, commonly called Lamaism, that forms the core of religious belief of the Himalayan regions. It is s the source of inspiration common to the art of Tibet, Nepal, and Kashmir from the eighth century until the present time. <> rs - 1 ^ The highly complex Lamaist pantheon adopted the Buddhist divinities, many of whom were derived from Hinduism, and added countless more of its own. In the beginning was Adi-Buddha, the Primordial Buddha. He is worshipped in the form of Samantabhadra, Vajradhara (no. 58) or Vajrasattva (no. 2), the latter two repre sented holding the vajra (thunderbolt or diamond scepter), the supreme symbol of Vajrayana, and the ghanta (bell). The vajra is the male symbol, or compassion; the ghanta is the female symbol, or wisdom. The vajra represents the means (upaya), and the bell, the doctrine (prajna). Together they are the realization of the Absolute. From Adi-Buddha emanated five Dhyani-Buddhas or Buddhas of Meditation, each of whom is author of a different world cycle. They in turn evolved the Dhyani- Bodhisattvas, who are the actual creators of the universe. Of particular importance among these are the first triad: Manjusri, the Bodhisattva of Transcendent Wisdom, who can be recognized by his attributes, the sword, the book, and the blue lotus (nos. 3, 33, 34, 35, 92); Avalokitesvara, the Bodhisattva of Infinite Compassion (nos. 8, 10, 30, 31, 36, 37, 40, 42, 9D, who has 108 forms, including one with eleven heads and a thousand arms (no. 32); Vajrapani, the Bearer of the Thunder bolt, who personifies power (no. 48). The human manifestations of the Dhyani- Bodhisattvas are the Manusi-Buddhas or Mortal Teachers, who live on earth for a time to teach mankind. Sakyamuni, the historical Gautama Siddhartha, is the Manusi-Buddha of the world cycle we live in (nos. 11, 14, 15, 21, 78). In addition to these main divinities, the Lamaist pantheon includes other Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, feminine deities, Dharmapala, Yi-dam, and lesser gods, some of whom are apotheosized historical personages, like Tsong-kha-pa (1358- 1419), the great reformer who founded the powerful Ge-lug.pa sect in Tibet (no. 51). First among the female deities is Prajnaparamita, "the perfection of the virtue (paramita) of the enlightening transcendental wisdom (prajna)", consort of the Adi- Buddha (no. 18). The most popular goddess is Tara (nos. 12, 38, 49) who, ac cording to one tradition, was born of the tears Avalokitesvara shed for the suffering of mankind. The eight Dharmapala or "Defenders of the Faith" are terrifying or wrathful deities designed to repel enemies of Buddhism and to frighten people from committing sins. The Dharmapala Mahakala in no. 25 is a fierce, angry, frightening deity. Depicted in blue, surrounded by red flames, he wears a crown of skulls and a garland of severed heads. His right hand brandishes a chopper, while his left hand lifts to his open mouth a skull cup brimming with blood. He stomps on a human figure prostrate on a lotus pad floating in a sea of blood. Containing the red sea is a wall of skulls. Yi-dam are tutelary divinities with the rank of Buddhas divided into two classes - the benign and the angry types. They are usually shown with their sakti or consort in the position called yab-yum (Tibetan for father-mother), symbolizing the oneness of male and female, the union of the spiritual with the material. The art of Tibet, Nepal, and Kashmir shares a common development. Like the religion of these Himalayan countries, the art forms, iconography, and techniques were evolved, for the most part, from India. The last stage of what has been called the Golden Age of Indian art, the Gupta period (ca. 320-530 A.D.), when both Hindu and Buddhist painting and sculpture came to its classical perfection, inspired the first great period of Kashmiri art, just before and during the Karkota dynasty (7th- 8th century). Several pieces in the exhibition, the seated Buddha (no. 1), Vajra- 178800 sattva(no. 2), Karttikeya(no. 4), Vishnu(no. 6), and Varaha(no. 7), can be ascribed to this period, which at its height was under the famous ruler Lalitaditya (ca. 725- 756 A.D.). The naturalistic, rounded forms, the sensuousness coupled with spirit uality, the solid and undulating modelling unmistakably reveal the influence of Gupta style, modified by Gandharan, Central Asian, and Chinese elements. By the ninth century, the influence of the Pala-Sena culture (ca. 730-1200 A.D.) of Bengal and Bihar, in North-eastern India, center of Vajrayana Buddhism, was on the as cendancy. The earlier ascetic forms of Buddha were replaced by bejeweled and crowned Buddhas, and images of Bodhisattvas and a host of other deities vastly outnumbered those of Buddha. The art style was a continuation of the Gupta style but more stylized and more ornate. In Nepal the Gupta style was prolonged until the end of the eighth century. It can be clearly detected in the seventh-century Padmapani (no. 8). For sheer beauty and eloquence few pieces can surpass this stately, superbly modeled image. From the ninth century Vajrayana Buddhism brought Nepal into intimate relations with the Pala-Sena school. Its iconography and art forms became the dominant mode in Nepal as well as in Kashmir.