Independent Study Project

Title: An aesthetic journey into the Tibetan Buddhist Meditational Art of Buryatia

By Carmen Cochior - Plescanu BA Religious Studies and Tibetan Department of Languages and Cultures of China and Inner Asia, 221618 Word count: 10.000

Under the Direction of Dr. Nathan W. Hill

Table of contents Abstract

I. Introduction

1.1 Buryatia - the birth of an ethnos , the atmosphere of the art of the steppe

II. The introduction of Tibetan Buddhist art to Buryatia

2.1 Buryatia - the vision of Buddhist Art

2.2Account of schools and stylistic interpretation

III.III. The accomplishment of Tibetan aesthetic grammar in the Buryat cultural milieu 17-

18thth centuries

IV. Decomposition and regeneration of Buddhist Art and its revival throughout the 19 thth century

4.1 The survival of Buddhist Art during the Russian Protectorate

V. The Great Revival - the reaffirmation of Buddhist aesthetics in Buryatia 19th to 20 thth century

VI. Afterword and acknowledgements

6.1 Tibetan-styled thangkas,, tsakli, illuminations and dedications from the Matvei

Nikolaevich Khangalov History Museum of Buryatia

List of Figures

ii The Tree of Diagnosisis, Atlas of Tibetatan Medicicine, Histotory Museum of Buryatia iiii Kalalakuta or Halalahaha, poisison inincarnrnatate, AtAtlas of TiTibetatan Medicinine,e, History Museum of Buryatia iiiiii The Palace of the Healing Buddha, detail, Museum of Buryatia. iviv The TrTree of DiDiagnosisis, detatailil, AtAtlalas of TiTibetatan Medidicicine, HiHiststororyy Museum of Buryatia vv Ritual Preparation of Rejuvenation Elixirs, Atlas of Tibetan Medicine,e, of Buryatia vivi A sseet oof ffoouurr tsakli depictiting Garuruda, Gubibilha, Kururukulla andd Vajravarahi, Buryatia, 19thth century viivii Guandi - Geser, Painting on cotton, Buryatia, late 18thth century viii Lhamo - Painting on cotton 18-19thth century ixix Vaishravana also known as ‘Vaishravana and the Eight Horsemen’ - Painting on cotton, Buryatia, 18th century xx Śākyamuni Buddha - Painting on cotton, late 18thth - early 19thth century

VII. Bibliography 22 Abstract

I. Introduction

1.1 Buryatia - the birth of an ethnos , the atmosphere of the art of the steppe

II. The introduction of Tibetan Buddhist art to Buryatia

2.1 Buryatia - the vision of Buddhist Art

2.2Account of schools and stylistic interpretation

III.III. The accomplishment of Tibetan aesthetic grammar in the Buryat cultural milieu 17-

18thth centuries

IV. Decomposition and regeneration of Buddhist Art and its revival throughout the 19 thth century

4.1 The survival of Buddhist Art during the Russian Protectorate

V. The Great Revival - the reaffirmation of Buddhist aesthetics in Buryatia 19th to 20 thth century

VI. Afterword and acknowledgements

6.1 Tibetan-styled thangkas,, tsakli, illuminations and dedications from the Matvei

Nikolaevich Khangalov History Museum of Buryatia

List of Figures

ii The Tree of Diagnosisis, Atlas of Tibetatan Medicicine, Histotory Museum of Buryatia iiii Kalalakuta or Halalahaha, poisison inincarnrnatate, AtAtlas of TiTibetatan Medicinine,e, History Museum of Buryatia iiiiii The Palace of the Healing Buddha, detail, Museum of Buryatia. iviv The TrTree of DiDiagnosisis, detatailil, AtAtlalas of TiTibetatan Medidicicine, HiHiststororyy Museum of Buryatia vv Ritual Preparation of Rejuvenation Elixirs, Atlas of Tibetan Medicine,e, of Buryatia vivi A sseet oof ffoouurr tsakli depictiting Garuruda, Gubibilha, Kururukulla andd Vajravarahi, Buryatia, 19thth century viivii Guandi - Geser, Painting on cotton, Buryatia, late 18thth century viii Lhamo - Painting on cotton 18-19thth century ixix Vaishravana also known as ‘Vaishravana and the Eight Horsemen’ - Painting on cotton, Buryatia, 18th century xx Śākyamuni Buddha - Painting on cotton, late 18thth - early 19thth century

VII. Bibliography 22 Abstract

The influence of Tibetan Buddhist aesthetics upon the Buryat artistry consists of an

extraordinary array of remarkable sculptures in ststone, wood and terracotta, castt

bronzes with inlaid stones, gilding and pigment and the beautifully detailed religious,

ritualistic paintings - maṇḍalas (( Tibetan:: དཀལ་འཁི ོར ར ;; Wylie:: dkyil 'khor )) and images of gods

and goddesses, bodhisattvas, spiritual masters, lamas and other prominent spiritual

figures, cosmograms along with representations of various eschatological myths. The

organization of the aesthetic adventure into the Tibetan artistic influence in Buryatia

is envisioned, at the risk of being simplistic, following the exhibition narrative: the

material has been divided in two broad historical and cultural zones with emphasis on

the distinct aesthetic cohesiveness, whereas Tibetan influence should be of particular

interest. Our knowledge of historicity of Buryat Buddhism is primarily based on very

few comprehensive books and articles that provide data for the monastic chronology

and for the special artistic motifs which distinguish within the tradition. The growing

rerecognititioion of ththe importrtance of TiTibetatan ‘p‘patatroronage’ in Buryryatatia is shown inin

Buyandalai Dooramba’s chorography bearing the title Buriyad yajar-un burqan-u

sasasin ker delgeregsen kiged sasasin bariyici kedun blam-a-nar-un cadig totobci tetedui

ogulegsen selte orosiba,,11 (Lubos Belka, 2008) which is a valuable source of basic

knowledge on Buryat Buddhism including detailed explanations on the context Tibetan

monastic art has taken shape in Buryatia. Noteworthy is the aspect of tentative ideas

dealing with the chorography of the artistic movements, in the lack of any official

empirical case studies in situ or veritable inventory of Tibetan Buddhism in Buryatia.

11 Translated as “How the Teaching of Buddha spread in the Buryat land, together with a brief accouount of sosome of ththe lamas who upheld the teaching”; the Romanized text in writtenn Mongolian was published by Professor Rincen in 1959, Origin and Spread of Buddhism in Buryatia - A text of Buyandalai Dooramba, Zsuzsa Majer and Krisztina Teleki, Eotvos Lorand Universirsity, Department of Inner Asian StStudies, PuPubliblishshed in Acta Orientalialia Academiae Scientiarum, Hung. Volume 61 (4), p. 447-497, 2008 33 Since the history of Buryat Buddhism has been given insufficient attention specifically and pararadoxixicalllly equalllly by ththe rereprpresentatatitives of ththe Weststerern and Buryryatat

Buddhological schools22, the disparate resources will however attempt an unprejudiced reconstruction of the diachronic evolve of Buddhist art within the Buryat mosaic of cultures. In emphasizing the distinctive features and styles of the works created most likely to fulfil the spiritual requirements of the Buddhist religion with an unerring sense of beauty, there will be presented an assemblage of few emblematic masterpieces, namely from Ukhtomsky’s collection at State Hermitage Museum St. Petersburg,g,

Zanabazar FiFine ArArts Museum, Choijin Lama Templple Museum, Buryryat Histotoricalal

Museum, Bogd Khaan Palace Museum in Ulaanbaatar. The purpose of their visual exploration accompanied by their dedicatory inscriptions is to enhance and bring more insight into the contextual and spiritual significance of Tibetan art within the great monastic establishments of the Buryat culture. While the subject matter of thee

Buryat Buddhist artwork is primarily represented by the classical personalities of the

Buddhihist pantntheon, ththe essay wiwill addidititionalally prprovidide commentatariries whicichh correspond with the ability of the Buryat artist to manipulate those features that are unique to the nature of the particular Tibetan Buddhist medium and to integrate them in the ethnic-cultural patterns.

I.I. InIntrtroduucctition

22 ThThe most significant papapers of ththe Buryat Buddhohological schooool are: K.M. Gerasimova, Lamaism natsional’ no-kolonial’ naia politika tsarizma v Zabaikal’ e v XIX i nachale XX vekov (Ulan-Ude, 1957); idem Obnovlencheskoe dvizhenie buriatskogo lamaistskogo dukhovenstva (1917-1930) (Ulan –Ude, 1964); Lamaizm v Buriatii XVIII- nachala XX vv. Struktura I sotsial’ naia rol’ kul’ tovoi sistemy (Novosibirsk, 1983); L.L. Abaeva, Kul’t gor i buddizm v Buriatii (evoliutsiia verovanii i kul’tov selenginskikh buriat, Moscow, 1992); Buddizm i traditsionnye verovaniia narodov Tsentral’ noi Azii (Novosibirsk, 1981); Buddizm i srednevekovaia kul’ tura narodov Tsentral’ noi Azii (Novosibirsk, 1980), Buddhism I kul’turno-psikhologicheskie traditsii narodov Vostoka (Novosibirsk, 1990); Buddizm i literaturno-khudozhestvennoe tvorchestvovo narorodov TsTsentrtralal’ noi AzAzii (N(Novovososibibirirsksk, 1985), PsPsikikholologigichcheseskikie asaspektkty buddizmaa (Novosibirska, 1991), Filosofskie voprosy buddizma (Novosibirsk, 1984), N.L. Zhukovskaia, The Revival of Buddhism in Buryatia, English translation from the Russian text by M.E. Sharpe, Anthropology and Archaeology of Eurasia, vol. 39, no.4, Spring 2000-01, p. 24 44 Four thousand years ago a remarkable culture, that of the pastoral nomads, emerged

in the Eurasian steppes north of the Great Wall of China, in the vast expanse of

grasslands that stretches from Siberia into Central Europe. By the first millennium

B.B.C.C., mateterial prospereritity among ththe nomads had brbrought about a flowering of

creativity and the evolution of a new artistic vocabulary. The pastoral peoples left no

written record but the legacy of their art that remained extant provide a key to

understanding their culture and beliefs. Beautifully crafted, highly sophisticated and

abstract in design, primarily embellished with animal motifs, these objects are the

visual representation of the natural and supernatural worlds that guided their lives.

The figures that populate the extant artefacts epitomize the ‘animal style’ that would

remaiain a sisignifificicant sosoururce of ininspiriratatioion in ththe decororatativive ararts of ththe Eurarasisian

contntininent for yearars to come. This overview chroroniniclcles ththe legacy of ththe Buryryatat

primitive art, traditionally relegated to the periphery of art history, in order to prepare

the aesthetic interaction between the Eastern part of Eurasian steppes, Buryatia and

Tibetan civilization.

1.1. Buryatia - the birth of an ethnos, the atmosphere of the art of the

steppe

For the ancient Buryats, the birth of life and art has its origin in the natural and life

cycles, considered to be the matrix of conceptualization. Buryat people believe that

human being is connected with mother-nature by their navel and worshipping its five

elements, the softness of wood, the earth’s expanse, iron’s strength, fire’s heat and

55 water’s purity was the supreme reflection of the ‘knot of vitality’ in which life, birth

and death are considered to be a natural phenomenon. According to ethnographic

studies on the Buryat culture3, the soul4 before taking refuge in the mother’s womb,

“resides in trees, in animals, therefore becoming totems, in stars, in the Sun and the

Moon, respected as life-givers”.5 The tree revered and worshiped as the soul-

depositary in the Buryat tradition, is the obligatory element in the material and

aesthetic setting of the life-cycle rituals, the wedding ceremonies, funeral rites and

most importantly accompanies the conception and birth, acting as a medium for the

embryonic life-force to arise.6 The Buryat‘s sacred gnosis pertains to so such a distant

historical reference that we must probably interpret these archaic traditional culture

claims as example of the mythological thinking. A human of mythological

consciousness, asserts V. V. Fetiskin, “doesn’t strive for objective knowledge, but his

main tendency is the subjectivism which gives rise to anthropomorphism, according to

which everything in the world is assimilated to him, is considered in his own image

and likeness”.7 Therefore, within the Buryat primitive conceptualization of life-forces,

humans’ psychophysical forces are envisioned as the propensity of the natural forces.

The idea of the nature’s sacral substance that nourishes the human beings (Mong.

3 S. Zhimbeeva, The concept of vitality and its interrelations with nature in Buryat traditional culture, ВИТАЛЬНОСТЬ. ВЗАИМОСВЯЗИ В ПРИРОДЕ, Витальность. Взаимосвязи в природе, Russian Federation, 2008, translation in English provided by the author, p.4-6 4 Noteworthy is the ontological concept of the soul among Mongolian peoples. What is customarily translated as ‘soul’ by the Western scholars, in both Mongolian and Buryat languages sulde represents the “protective spirit embodied in the standard which has been worshipped since immemorial times”. The assimilation of the concept of sulde(r) (indwelling spirit; in Written Mongolian and in the modern Mongolian languages and dialects, the form of the word is without final r) to that of the individual 'soul' (Mong. siir, siinesun, siir siinesun) is a much later development, see Igor de Rachewiltz ,The secret history of the Mongols: a Mongolian epic chronicle of the thirteenth century, Volume 1, Brill, 2004, p.330 5 S. Zhimbeeva, The concept of vitality and its interrelations with nature in Buryat traditional culture, ВИТАЛЬНОСТЬ. ВЗАИМОСВЯЗИ В ПРИРОДЕ, Витальность. Взаимосвязи в природе, Russian Federation, 2008, translation in English provided by the author, p.8 6 Gerasimova K. M. Concept of human vitality in Tibetan texts on medical magic, Culture of Central Asia: written sources. Issue 2. Ulan-Ude 1998, p. 11 7 S. Zhimbeeva, The concept of vitality and its interrelations with nature in Buryat traditional culture, ВИТАЛЬНОСТЬ. ВЗАИМОСВЯЗИ В ПРИРОДЕ, Витальность. Взаимосвязи в природе, Russian Federation, 2008, translation in English provided by the author, p.9 6 sulde)8 is interestingly paralleled to the Tibetan embryology by Scrynnikova to Dandar

Dashiev’s commentary on the Atlas of Indo-Tibetan Medicine. According to the author, the first organ to emerge within the embryo, the ‘vital vessel’ (Tib. srog-rtsa), has its origin in the nature and particularly in the “sacral substance of the solar nature”.9 The mystical scenario in the paintings and carvings pertaining to Palaeolithic proto-Buryat time echoes the archetypal imagery of paramount importance in the quest of gaining a deep understanding of Buryat primitive culture. Named Bo Murgel or Bo shazan 10, the Buryat shamanic spiritual system was defined around its distinctive cults of Huhe

Munhe Tengeri (Eternal Blue Sky) and Tengeriin (Sky Dwelling Gods), whose energy dimension was appeased, attracted, controlled and harmonized into the human disposition, through the male Bo or the female Utgan shamans. Essentially solitary, the primeval shaman developed empathy towards a highly abstract and symbolic imagination and towards sublimities which he communicated through powerful pictographic zoomorphic and anthropomorphic metaphors. Having attained those impressions of a mythical reality through a visionary entasis resembling to a numinous experience, the shaman artist becomes, paralleling the Hindu etymology, a manifestation of prakṛti, the primordial matter and the nature itself.11 The shaman attempted to do this by constructing the imago naturae, the archetypal image, in the most archaic form of aesthetic expressions, such as the totemic petrogliphyc art, the circular gold plated burial mounds (Mong. kurgany ) or the standing stone idols (Mong. kameny baba). Skkrynniakova in her savant work ‘On sacral and vital by Mongolian

8 In old Mongolian astrological books the term sulde sometimes is used to translate the Tibetan rlung-rta, usually interpreted as kei morin, ‘wind horse’. 9 Gerasimova K. M. Concept of human vitality in Tibetan texts on medical magic, Culture of Central Asia: written sources. Issue 2. Ulan-Ude 1998, p.7-8 10 There is no real semantic difference between murgel and shazhan and their use is similar to Tib. bon and Tib. Chos. Murgel remained closely tied with Bo religion while shazan is nowadays used to designate the Buryatian adaptation of Tibetan Buddhism, see Dmitry Ermakov, Bo and Bon, Ancient shamanic traditions of Siberia and Tibet in their relation to the teachings of a Central Asian Buddha, Vajra Publications, Kathmandu, Nepal, 2010, p.31 11 Michael Ripinsky-Naxon, The nature of shamanism: substance and function of religious metaphor, State University of New York Press, 1993 7 people’12 emphasized that petroglyphs all over Buryatia are marked by an antenna on the vertex in the form of a pictogram which denotes the “absolute life potency concealed in the subtle spiritual substance of the soul”. 13

Representations of nomadic art forms denominated as the Central Asia Animal Style reveal connotations to the elementary basis of the body and spirit as they stylistically narrate the interrelations of the inner and the outer, Cosmic and Mundane. The petroglyphic imagery of the sheep and bull speak of the birth, life and death within the Buryat culture. Putting their bones in the burial place was connected with the worshipping of the sacral substance and with the ritual of granting the future return of the soul: “The sheep’s bone, being a repository of the soul acts as a phallic symbol and expresses the relation with the solar light, while the bull’s 14 cannon-bone was used during the ritual of activating the force of the fore-fathers, embodied in the banner”.15 Among the many reliquaries of sacred architectonics, the geometrical shaped mounds remain impressive even today in their overgrown state due to their intricate motifs ubiquitous in the cosmological myths of most major settlements in

Siberia. Each image and motif imprinted on the vertically erected plates as if meeting the rising sun and the sharp deer stones as if cutting the sky provide the viewer with a glimpse of the Buryat the two distinctive visions of the divine in a tangible form. The most preeminent zoomorphic imagery reflected in the Buryat primitive art is that which represents the shaman’s protective spirit, the deer. Ceremonies attending the tribal initiation of the shaman or the consecration of the shaman’s costume frequently involved the sacrifice of a deer, whose spirit would provide the shaman the vital sustenance during his visionary journeys into the land of the deceased. The

12 Skrynnikova Т. D, Sacral and vital in Mongolian culture, The world of Buryat traditional culture, Ulan-Ude, 2006. P. 64–11 13 Skrynnikova Т. D, 2006 14 The mythical ancestor of the Buryats is considered to be named Buh Baabai Noyon (Prince Father Bull) see Ermakov, 2010, p. 99 15 Gerasimova K. M., 1998, p. 12-20 8 interconnection of the deer and the tree is glimpsed frequently within shamanic imagery and representations that refer back to more archaic beliefs regarding the tree of life and its animal source.16 To use trees bracketed by deer, often in combination with representations of the sun and moon for ornamental stitching was a canonical requirement in the shamanic costume adornment.17 Perhaps the primitive shamans

(Turco-Mong., Altaian kam, Bur. boo) were the oldest sovereigns of art in the true sense. During their initiation ceremonials, they employed the full repository of art by sacral play and yohor dance,18 the ritualic silk robe orgoi, toli metal pendants in form of discs embodying the same symbolism and function the Tibetan me long19, the intricately decorated iron crowns embellished with two iron antlers perceived as the roots of a mythical tree, the hese-drum and the ritual shanginuur-bell, the horse- headed birch staff with whom the shaman used to journey into the underworld, zoomorphic and anthropomorphic amulets, the tug (Mong. lit. pillar) the ritual support for sulde20 or the khur (bowed two-string fiddle) and kuchir (bowed four-string fiddle, resembling the Chinese erhu) musical instruments employed for clairvoyance purposes and for summoning the spirits.21

16 Gerasimova K. M., 1998, p. 21 17 Buryatian shamanic costume, amitai (alive) or ezetei (having its own master spirit), see Dmitry Ermakov, p. 155 18 The yohor dance is also performed during shamanist rituals, as a means of raising spiritual energy to help carry the shaman to the heavens. Ancient Mongols used the yohor to celebrate the election of a new khan, see J. Lee Jacobson, Music and Dance Among the Aginsk Siberian

Buryats, The World and I, 2009, p. 2 19 Toli were used as a support, container and disseminator of the light energy, as a symbol of mind and soul and represented the warrior-magician’s life-force and protective energy. They are identical, then, in function to the melong mirrors of various non-human beings who serve as Protectors of Bon or Buddhism, see Dmitry Ermakov, Bo and Bon, Ancient shamanic traditions of Siberia and Tibet in their relation to the teachings of a Central Asian Buddha, Vajra Publications, Kathmandu, Nepal, 2010, p. 347 20 Here sulde refers to a Mongolian type prayer flag, which is an important ethnic marker alongside the rituals and songs of conjuration (dayudalya) of ecstatic invocations. See Walther Heissig, The religions of Mongolia, University of California Press, Translated from German by Geoffrey Samuel, 1980, p.46 21 Formozov’s book ‘A study of the petroglyphs’, correlates shamanic rite of summoning of the soul with that similarly practiced in Tibet under the name of Lu-gon Jyabo dung-dri, or Expulsion of the Prince of Devils..see, N. N. Agapitov and M. N. Khangalov, Materials for the study of shamanism in Siberia: Buryat Shamanism in Irkutsk Guberniia, Izvestiia Vostochno- sibirskago otdela Russkago geograficheskago obshchestva 14, no. 1-2, 1883, p.1-6, for translation see Andrei A. Znamenski, 2003 9 In many respects the most exquisite transformation of early Buryat art of a purely

aesthetic kind, arouse within the framework of Hsiung-nu culture (Chinese: 匈 奴 ;

pinyin: Xiōngnú) dated between the second and the first centuries B.C. 22 The rapid

transformation of the artistic scenes demonstrates that within the context of Hsiung-

nu tribal union in Central Asia, the Near Eastern artistic and mythological cultures

were exposed to the unique ethnic, cultural and linguistic proto-Mongolian

environment. Some of the prototypical compositions of the new environment may

have been retained, but the principal mythological and epic scenes and images

became stylized and transformed by the Hsiung-nu art in conformity with their own

aesthetic norms.23 The splendid bronze plates made in the Ordos style techniques still

retain the ancient geometric patterns and animal heads ornamented with minerals

such as chalcedony, jasper, agate, carnelian, as well as bones of animals rendered in

the same manner as those on the buckles from Peter the Great collection.24 A stylistic

analysis of different objects of the later Hsiung-nu art collected from the Buryat sites, 25

makes it possible to trace an evolutionary sequence that sees their aesthetic root in

the originally ‘Scythe-Siberian zoomorphic style’ stone carved representations,26 22 Mouton, Central Asiatic Journal, Volume 39, 1995 23 Serghey Miniaev, The origins of the Geometric Style in Hsiung-nu art, Corrected by Barbara Hazard, Institute of the history of material culture, Russian Academy of Sciences, St Petersburg, Russia, 1996, p. 5-12 24 It is probable that plates of this type were the prototypes for the manufacture of Hsiung-nu bronze plaques, but during the course of repeated copying and re-casting many original details have been lost. The heads of animals, rendered in the same manner as those on gold plates from the Peter the Great Collection, are preserved in the frames of a number of bronze plates; probably the earliest examples of such objects, see Serghey Miniaev, The origins of the Geometric Style in Hsiung-nu art, Corrected by Barbara Hazard, Institute of the history of material culture, Russian Academy of Sciences, St Petersburg, Russia, 1996, p. 5-12 25 The first Xiongnu sites were discovered in 1896 by the anthropologist J. D. Talko-Grinzevich in the area around Kyachta, now in the Buryatia Republic, Russian Federation. A subsequent expedition led by P. K. Kozlov excavated several barrows in the Noin-Ula area of Outer Mongolia between 1924 and 1925. These tombs held a rich hoard of silver vessels, carpets and jade objects. Repeatedly studied and published, these finds have until recently defined the typical forms of Xiongnu art. Only in recent years have some Xiongnu sites in the Trans-Baikal area been thoroughly excavated. See Dr. Sergey Minyaev, Art and Archeology of the Xiongu: new discoveries in Russia, Circle of Inner Asian art, Newsletter, Issue 14, December 2001. London, p.1-7 26 The subject had been used in Near Eastern art from time immemorial, the earliest known examples being representations on the cylindrical seals dating from Period C in Susa. This scene continued to be popular in the Near East throughout the period of 1500-900 B.C., when it was depicted on cylindrical seals and bronzes, and even later, as evidenced by a fragment of a ninth-century B.C. vessel from Hasanlu. A similar scene is represented on a golden pectoral 10 culminating with perhaps one of the most original compositions, the so-called ‘lattice’

bronze plaque-buckle adornments which present clear-cut silhouettes of stylized

fantastic animals standing beside a symbolic tree.

II. The introduction of Tibetan Buddhist Art to Buryatia

2.1 Buryatia - The Vision of Buddhist Art

The greatest contribution to the shift in Buryatia’s artistry after the 16 th century27,

from the highly figurative style of autochthonous aesthetics to the Buddhist ritualistic

mentality and iconographical imperatives is held by the Tibetan Tantric system which

exported not only its system of faith, of meditational and yogic praxis, but also its

aesthetic language which could express most vividly its spiritual visions and

aspirations. Questions of iconography, while important for the understanding of the

artefacts themselves and their identification, ought not to shadow the explanation of

the profound religious and philosophical tradition of which they are a physical

manifestation. A noteworthy aspect for the understanding of the sacramental art is

that within Tibetan Buddhist milieu the artworks serve solely religious purposes and

from the Sakkyz hoard, which in a way may be viewed as an intermediate link between Scythian art and that of the Near East. Scenes of this type were adopted and modified by Scythian artisans, the outcome of the process being seen on buckles from Peter the Great's collection. These, in turn, were copied and remodelled by Xiongnu jewellers. See Dr. Sergey Minyaev, Art and Archeology of the Xiongu: new discoveries in Russia, Circle of Inner Asian art, Newsletter, Issue 14, December 2001. London, p. 1-7 27 Although earliest encounters with Tibetan Buddhism are likely to have occurred before 17th century: ‘For already four centuries and not 250 years, as the republic’s society celebrated in 1991, the Buryats have professed Buddhism; one set of views, found in literature, holds that Buddhism was known to the Buryats as early as thirteenth, sixth, and even second century B.C.-that is, from the time of the Hunnu state in Central Asia’, N.L. Zhukovskaia, The Revival of Buddhism in Buryatia, English translation from the Russian text by M.E. Sharpe, Anthropology and Archaeology of Eurasia, vol. 39, no.4, Spring 2000-01, p. 23 11 they rigorously conform to the iconographical precepts often contained in the sādhanā

meditational and invocational formulae. Thus, the deity takes a concrete embodiment

in the form of images, which is further gazed and employed in preliminary and

advanced visualization stages, until the very essence of Tantric praxis, the unio

mystica between the worshipper and the deity is accomplished.28 An artistic depicting

Vajrayāna (Mongolian: Очирт хөлгөн) would follow the basic stylistic descriptions

found in the compositions of the mystics and theologians, as well as precise aesthetic

proportions of so called ‘handicraft style’, with ornamental and plastic inclusions of

detailed gestures - mudras, clothing and accessories. The transformation of Buddhist

Art in Buryatia was unconscious and gradual, which would seem in the first stance to

contradict the injuction to absolute integrity in the transmission of the teachings and

canonical imperatives of one’s master or school, a condition which apply all the way

through from meditation to painting in the Tibetan tradition up to 21st century.

(Heather Stoddard, Early Sino-Tibetan Art, 2008, p.4)

This accounts for the extreme conservatism as well as the survival of the entire range

of Buddhist teachings in Tibet and where it had travelled. To work upon the form

within the canonical limits, asserts B. Badmazhapov, is an indication that belongs to a

special union marked with the knowledge of the sacred rules and that the attitude

towards the form along with its didactics and splendour can only determine the skill of

the religious artist and his purity of style understood as a standard of harmony. 29

Tibetan Tantric art is dominated by a type of highly ritualistic mentality, where the

faith exhibits a prerequisite condition of transformation of the sacred form into

emotional expression. (Heller, Tibetan Art, 1999, p. 12) However, despite such well

established aesthetic conventions, which are imperative in providing the necessary

28 Deborah Ashencaen and Gennady Leonov, Art of Buryatia, Buddhist Icons from Southern Siberia, Spink and Son Ltd., London, 1996, p.5 29 Ts.-B. Badmazhapov, Buddhist Paintings in Buryatia, Buddhist Himalaya: A Journal of Nagarjuna Institute of Exact Methods, vol. VII, no. I, II, 1996, p. 2 12 consistency to the form, the Buddhist artefacts of Buryatia, Kalmykia and Tuva were

allowed a certain amount of morphological and stylistic experientials or ‘originality’ in

the modern sense.30 Consequently, the artistic techniques applied in Buryat religious-

aesthetic milieu are only partially recognizable to the connoisseur, due to its seldom

mingling with the individuality of style born of ethnologic distinctions.

A marked increase in the frequency and the number of participants in the missions

from Buryatia to Tibet from the beginning of the 17th century period onwards is of

great significance given the proliferation of images from different schools; however in

the lack of dated pieces and uncertainty surrounding inscriptions, the attribution of an

exact chronological reference would be at least hazardous. Indeed, one of the

fundamental problems in Buryat art history is the lack of dated objects, which has

given rise to difficulty of deciding who was actually responsible for the execution of a

given work and within what temporal sphere it was created. Since many Buryat

artefacts today bear no inscription to elucidate the monastic affiliation or the date,

they were customarily expertised within a cross cultural context, solely on stylistic

estimation.

The close homogeneity of style of the extant early images, their Tibetan aspect and

iconography, the continual presence of Tibetan hierarchs in the Buryat land, all tend

to point to a precise origin for what we generically call the Buryat style, beyond that of

the already established Tibetan styles. In many respects the Buryats acquired a

mature Tibetan style characterised by a long assimilation of foreign styles and

elements adapted to its aesthetic. The thangkas ( Tibetan ཐང་་)31 and bronzes produced in Buryatia from the 17th century and throughout the latter half of the 19 th

century continued to reflect closely the developments taking place in Tibet itself and

30 Ts.-B. Badmazhapov, 1996, p.3 31 Thangka literally means 'thing that one unrolls’. Unique to Tibetan Buddhism, a thangka is a portable painted or embroidered banner or scroll made of linen, cotton, or silk; thangkas are categorized by their background colour and serve as aids to and focuses for meditation. 13 already in the 19th century, both Mongolian and Tibetan patterned sculptures of ritual

subjects were being abundantly produced in Buryatia. Local skilled craftsmen were

excellent in wood carving and metal treatment as well as in painting with distemper

on cloth and wood, in modelling with clay and papier-mâché and in the carpet

weaving from horse hair. This is how the first centres of professional art appeared,

resulting from a blend of original artistry with that of the master-darhans.

II.2 Account of schools and stylistic interpretation

The stylistic interpretation and analysis of the Tibetan pictorial scrolls in Buryatia is

intimately connected with the Tibetan Buddhist iconology which traditionally is a

stylistic blending with the Indian aesthetic expressiveness typified in the plasticity of

the slight toned natural elements and restrained clouds, with the Nepali style

characterized by the abundance of mountains, birds, trees richly decorated with

garlands and strings of jewellery and the Chinese, characterized by the purity of

painting, impulsive contours, flowers, trees and ponds as well as birds in colourful

plumage.32 The Tibetan thangka styles imported by the Buryat artists exhibit a plastic

decorative quality within the limits of several schools including the early classic

Kadampa33 ( Tibetan: བའ་གདམས་པ་; Wylie: Bka'-gdams-pa), characterized by simplicity, extensiveness and richness of the decorum. The spiritual and artistic legacy of

Kadampa is attributed to the Indian Buddhist scholar Atiśa, who was not only

accomplished in liturgical interpretation, composition and translation, but he was both

a skilled artist and calligrapher (Eimer, 1979, section 092).The didactic illuminations

found in the manuscripts used as teaching tools and the esoteric meditative visions

32 Deborah Ashencaen and Gennady Leonov, Art of Buryatia, Buddhist Icons from Southern Siberia, Spink and Son Ltd., London, 1996, p.6-7 33 Kadampa school, ‘those of the oral teaching’, emphasizing the primordial imperative of the guru (Skt.) or lama (Tib.) who directly reveals the teaching to his disciples, see Amy Heller, Tibetan Art, Jacka Book, 1999, p. 124 14 accounted in his treaties reveal Atiśa’s aesthetic ideals which would eventually be

established in new iconographies in his original fashion. Atisa’s presence in the

Tibetan artistic reaffirmation at the end of 10th century may be viewed as the

importation of eastern Indian visual ideals and intellectual discourses, to complement

the Kashmiri and Nepalese currents already exerting their influence on art and

spirituality (Heller, Tibetan Art, 1999, p.60). Ulteriorly, the Menri School34 (Tib. sman

bris) stemmed out of the vision of the reputed painter Menla Dondrub (Tib. sman bla

don-grup, 1425-1505). With his skilful contrivance he fertilized the artistic milieu with

an almost baroque abundance in detail and with unusual pitoresque curved lines and

twinkling space. Working in the second half of the fifteenth century, Menla and his

disciples designed and fulfilled the liturgical and decorative needs of Tibetan

sanctuaries, acquiring such fame that later histories attributed them the transmission

of the iconometric system of Buton Rinchen Drub ( Tibetan: བུ་ོན་རན་ཆི ེན་བ་; Wylie: Bu-ston

Rin-chen Grub) (Heller, Tibetan Art, 1999, p.177) and described their style as such:

“The coats of pigment and shading are thick. In most respects, the layout is

just like a Chinese scroll painting, with the exception that this is slightly less

orderly... The bodily posture, skeletal structure and musculature/flesh contour

are excellent. Necks are long, shoulders are withdrawn, and clearness

predominates. There is much shading. The colours are detailed, soft and

richly splendid. Malachite and azurite pigments predominate (these give

green/blue tonalities). From distance the painting is very splendid, and if one

approaches, it is detailed... This is the tradition of (Menla). ” (Jackson, A

history of Tibetan painting, 1996, p.119)

The third major influence on Buryat religious fine art was the Karma Gadri school of

painting which developed during the second half of the 16 th century and which is 34 Amy Heller, Tibetan Art, Jakabook, Antique Collectors’ Club, 1999, p. 189 15 intimately affiliated to its first Kagyupa spiritual patron the 7th Karmapa Mikyoa Dorje

( Tibetan མི་བོད་ོ་་ེ; Wylie: Mi-bskyod Rdo-rje, 1507-1554). The characteristics attributed to the Karma Gadri style are the distinctive Sino-Indian aesthetic imprint reflected in

purity, the remarkable sense of ethereal space due to nuanced shading of vast fields

of colours surrounding the central figure, as well as the great pictural elevation in

employing pastel colours.35 The founding artist was Namkha Tashi, who studied under

the Menri virtuoso master artists and who further complemented the style by

including iconometric proportions copied from older Indian metal sculptures, probably

Pala Style and a completely distinctive use of diluted colours as an imitation of the

subtle washes used in certain Chinese landscape paintings. (Heller, Tibetan Art, 1999,

p. 188)

The plastic embodiment of the iconic symbols in the thangkas depends of numerous

aspects including worship rituals, iconometry and on the mastering and reproducing

experience of the canonical standards of materiality, sensibility and preciousness.

However, in the modus of style as well as in the reproduction of the standard metric

patterns, there remains a considerable space for personal creativity, as in the icons,

the central religious figures can enter the secondary theme, the interpretation of

which depends upon personal taste of the artist. Very often the Buryat Buddhist

iconographic patterns present this very peculiarity of style derived from the early

Tibetan Buddhist-shamanist syncretism as resulting from the specimens of the early

laconic religious paintings. Although local artists were subject to the same

iconographical and iconometrical cannons as the Tibetan master-artists, they have not

conceived cliché reproductions of identical types but rather delineated themselves by

commingling styles rooted in folk art as evidenced in “the charming naivety of the

35 Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Visual Dharma. The Buddhist art of Tibet, Shambhala, Berkley and London, 1995 16 early thangkas, and their subdued turquoise-blue palette”.36 Although many aesthetic

elements in Buryat architectonic or plastic art are created with a high amount of

spontaneity, their spontaneity actually reflects a mastery of complex rules of the form

and proportion vocabulary. Some religious artefacts achieved such great heights of

poignancy, passion, elegance and wit that they all serve to make the Buryat tale more

real than history itself.

III. The accomplishment of Tibetan aesthetic grammar in the Buryat

cultural milieu, 17-18th centuries

Art and political historical narratives of Tibetan Buddhism in Buryatia often juxtaposes

disparate or isolated elements rather than stating a connection between them, leaving

up to the reader to observe and define the relationship of their values that

accommodated within the aesthetic cradle of the steppe lands. Once scattered

artefacts, the Buddhist Tibetan are now visually organized and displayed within the

Buryat museums or temples, revealing the evolve of the tradition more vividly and

accurately than any historical documents and conveying countless details of its

sufferings, failings and its grace. Despite the discrepancies within the academic

discipline regarding the historical realities within Buryat religious and cultural milieu,

given the dominance of statist socialist discourse, we should allow the stories of the

artefacts become an object of reverent and unbiased understanding. Therefore, with

these observations in mind, we have the opportunity to take this perspective as the

nucleus of the further research.

Since the region along Lake Baikal (Buryat Pribaikal’e) and the eastern region (Buryat

Zabaikal’e) was assimilated to Russia in 1658-59, consequent to the Nerchinsk Treaty

36 Deborah Ashencaen and Gennady Leonov, Art of Buryatia, Buddhist Icons from Southern Siberia, Spink and Son Ltd., London, 1996, p.7 17 which defined the borders between the Sino-Russian Empires, we may speak of a “

harmonious blend of religion and politics” (Tibetan chos srid zung ‘brel),37 a dictum

which prevailed and stigmatized the Tibetan history likewise. Not only did the Russian

Empire implemented the Orthodox Christianity and the religion of Old-Believers

(Buryat Semeiskie) in the Altaic region, as a substitute or antidote against the folk

beliefs and customs, namely the shamanistic tradition but has also implemented

governmental constrains which limited the legitimacy of Buddhist practice. With

conformity to extant historical accounts38 we acknowledge that by the second half of

the 17th century, Buddhism in Transbalkania was not yet methodized and

conventionally tailored, but rather responded to autochthonous nomadic migrations

which determined the lamas to perform their rituals in felt temples (Buryat dugans)

situated in the portable yurts of local princes as well as in large communal tents. By

the end 1720, the two first stationary Buddhist monasteries (datsan) Tsongol (Buryat

Tsongolski) and Sartulski, were built in the eastern part of the sacred Lake Baikal, and

in the proximate period Empress Elisaveta Petrovna signed a ‘tolerance decree’

(Rus.ukaz ), by which the Buddhist religious, educational and artistic presidium in

Buryatia was strictly regulated.39 The political aim of this officious act along with the

tsar’s legitimization of Bandido Khaambo Lama40 on the priors of Gusinoe ozero datsan

37 Namkhai Norbu, The necklace of Gzi, A Cultural History of Tibet, Ch. V Religion and Politics, A note on Tibetan Theocracy, Narthang Publications, Dharamsala, 1989, p.28 38 Galdanova, G. Gerasimova, Lamaism in Buriatia, Nauka Publishing, Novosibirsk, 1983, Ch. 3, p. 12 39 Tzarina Elizaveta Petrovna decreed the ‘Tolerance Patent’ as early as 1741; the existence of this decree has often been referred to in Russian literature, but real evidence has not been found in the archives, see Lubos Belka, The Revival of Tibetan Buddhism in Inner Asia: A Comparative Perspective, Asian and African Studies, 11, 2002, p. 18 40 The First Khambo Lama Damba-Darzha Zaiaev (1711-1776), a Buryat from the Tsongol clan, is considered to be the founding father of Buryat Buddhism. Having received his monastic education at the Drepung monastery in Lhasa, he started active propagation of Buddhism among the Selenga Buryats, having built the first monastery in Buryatia, called Baldan Braibun (Buryat pronunciation of Lhasa’s Drepung), also known as the Tsongol Monastery. In 1764 Empress Catherine the Great granted him the title of the first Pandito Khambo Lama of the Transbaikal, after which this date became known as the beginning of the formation of the official Buddhist church in the Russian empire. In 1768, on the request of the Empress, who was fascinated with his stories about Tibet, Zaiaev composed one of the first Buryat written works describing his journey to the “Land of the Snows.” This unique document provided an early glimpse into Buryat pilgrimage routes through the Gobi desert to Tibet (Russian translations are available in Sazykin 1986; Vanchikova 2006), Anya Bernstein, Doctor of 18 as the accredited leader of Buryat Buddhism was to guarantee de facto the status of

‘constitutional monarchy’ and autocephality of the Buryat ecclesiastical institution, vis-a-vis the authority of the Tibetan Dalai Lamas and the Mongolian Jebdzundambas.

Although engulfed by the Russian Empire, Buryatia sublimated its desire for real sovereignty by focusing on the construction of an ethnic emblem and on its cultural augumentation. This drew upon an aesthetic revival consolidated in the Buryat national school of Buddhist architecture, painting and sculpture, among which the most refined are the complex of temples of the Gusinoe ozero (Tamcha) datsan, the thangkas of the renown lama-iconographer Osor Budaev41 or the wooden sculptures of the Orongoi masters from the Yangazhan datsan.42 This, during the reign of the

Seventh Dalai Lama Kelzang Gyatso (Wylie: bskal bzang rgya mtsho, 1708-1757) was to be the last Buddhist major dynamics from one country to another until modern times. From then on, a tradition was established for promising young Buryat monks to travel to Drepung Monastery in Lhasa in order to receive instruction on the aesthetic theories, their application and interpretation, on iconometry, iconography and technical finesse. The typological stylistic atmosphere of the 18th century Buryat

Buddhist paintings unfolds in the mellifluous convergency of the Nepali-Tibetan, Sino-

Nepali, Sino-Tibetan, Tibetan-Mongolian and Sino-Mongolian styles.43 Throughout the

Northern Buddhist belle époque, the cult of Tsongkhapa (Tibetan: ཙང་ཁ་པ་; Wylie: Tsong- kha-pa, 1357-1419) the Tibetan regenerative of the 14th century Tibetan Buddhism,

Philosophy, Department of Anthropology, Religious Bodies Politic: Rituals of Sovereignty in Buryat Buddhism, New York University, May 2010, p. 170-171 41 Osor Budaev (1886—1937) was an outstanding representative of the school of Buryat zuragchins-monks and icon-painters, that flourished until the end of the 19th century. His composition of the traditional themes Sansarin-hurde, or the Wheel of Life shows both the causes of sufferings and the ways to salvation. It is the circle of the wheel which has neither beginning nor end that is an exact symbol of absolute movement and that characterizes the ‘sensual’ world where nothing is eternal and constant but rather everything is in a state of flux, see Gennady Bashkuev, Buryatia: Tradition and Culture, Soyol Publishers, LTD, Russia, Buryatia, Ulan-Ude, 1995, p. 3 42 Ts.-B. Badmazhapov, 1996, p.9 43 Deborah Ashencaen and Gennady Leonov, Art of Buryatia, Buddhist Icons from Southern Siberia, Spink and Son Ltd., London, 1996, p.4 19 found fertile ground in the passionate Buryat artistry. The new diversity of Tibetan chromatic as well as its new balance of style enhances the richness of the composition of two painted 18th century Buryat scrolls depicting Tsonkhapa.44 These two strikingly different scroll compositions impersonate the accomplished master having a transparent cold-pane complexion including dense tones of dark blue, dark blue-liliac, gray, gray-blue, coral-red and green details seated on a triple lion throne, corresponding to the Buddhist archetypal motifs the Sun, the Moon and the Lotus flower, engaged in padmasana pose, exhibiting a Vajra mudra gesture. The particularity however, stands in the absence of the traditional accustomed mandorla.

So great was the concentration on Tibetan aesthetics in Transbalkania that the

Russian diplomat and true connoisseur of Buddhist art, Prince Esper Esperovich

Ukhtomsky (1861-1821) managed during 1890s and 1917s, to salvage and acquire a considerable part of his famous collection of Tibetan art in Buryatia, nowadays housed and staged at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.45 The German scholar

Albert Grunwedel in his innovating Mythologie du Buddhism en Tibet et Mongolie sur la collection lamaique du Prince Ukhtomsky described Ukhtomsky’s collection as

“being so perfect and complete that it can almost serve as the basis for the history of

Lamaist art”.46

Intricately elaborated thangkas, gilt bronzes and copper sculptural aesthetics

(Mongolian burhans), incrustations of lapis lazuli, turquoise and corals, depictions of various Buddhist deities (dokshits, dakinis), the votive stamped clay tablets (Tibetan tsha-tsha) and a vast palette of ritual artefacts crafted in multifarious Buddhist art styles, prayer-wheels (Buryat maniin-hurde), cone-shaped suburgas, conches, bells,

44 Deborah Ashencaen and Gennady Leonov, 1996, P.4 45 A.I.Andreyev, Some reflections on Buddhist art collecting and collectors in Russia in the 18th century-early 20th century, Buddhism and Nordland, 2010, p.1 46 citing Albert Grunwedel, Mythologie du Buddhism en Tibet et Mongolie sur la collection lamaique du Prince Ukhtomsky , Leipzig, 1900 20 vajras, gabals, purbas , amulet-holders (Tibetan gau) pertaining to Tibetan art were

introduced to the Buryat artists, thus providing a strong impetuous for the

development of local artistic schools.47 Osor Budaev (1886-1937) was a distinguished

representative of the school of Buryat zuragchins - monastic figures and icon painters,

whose compositions cultivated traditional motifs such as Sansarin-hurde (lit. Wheel of

Life), Tsagan Ubugun or the Mañjuśrī (Skt: मञुशी , Tib.ན་རས་གཟགས་ི ), the patron of arts - reflected a superior standard of harmony both in the colouring skills and in the

beautiful transformation of the sacred-schematic form into a refined emotional

expression (Badmazhapov, 1996). The typically heterogeneous iconography depicting

Tsagan Ubugun (Buriat cayan ebiigen) is presented with great recurrence in all Buryat

schools as he embodies the magical, transmutative force of Buddhism in the Buryat

land. The exact emergence of this ancient shamanistic chthonic god (Buryat

sabdakov ) of fertility and longevity in the Buddhist pantheon is difficult to determine,

considering that there are very few dated examples to compare them against. 48 A

stylistic comparison of the thangkas crafted within the temporal boundaries of 18th

and 19th centuries certainly indicate an earlier accommodation of the deity within the

Buddhist ceremonial practices, however not earlier than this period did the pictural

representations of Tsangan Ubugun, namely the White Elders, found their place inside

the temples or in the canonical iconography. On the propagation of the cult in

Buryatia, N. L. Zhukovskaya (Zhukovskaya, 1998) documented the prevalence of the

cult among certain archaic groups and determined that the function of this ancestral

character was later acculturated in Buryat milieu in agreement to the paradigmatic 47 A.I.Andreyev, Some reflections on Buddhist art collecting and collectors in Russia in the 18th century-early 20th century, Buddhism and Nordland, 2010 48 Walther Heissig , New Material on East Mongolian Shamanism, Asian Folklore Studies, Bonn Vol. 49, 1990, p.225 “The stability of mythological figures, with their old traits, os much more significant because Mergen gegen Lubsangdambjalsan (1717-1766), the famous author of a Buddhist liturgy in the Mongolian language, attempted already in his time to substitute the exclusively Lamaist divinities Mahakala, Tara, Sridevi, Esrua qormusta tngri, and Ginggis Khan for the ancient shamanist pentad of the five Jayayaci tngri (fate gods) [...] some shamans call her (the Chinese mother goddess Wang mu niyang niyang) ‘White Mother (caran emege) or Holy Mother (borda emerge), imploring her together with the old god of fertility and longevity, the Cayan ebugen (Sarkozi 1983, 357-369; Hessing 1987, p. 589-616), for the help against illness and death for many children.’’ 21 ‘keepers of the faith’ (Buryat srunma) models, such as Chinese Show-syn, the Tibetan

Pehar Gyalpo ( Tibetan: ལ་པོ་དཔེ་ཧར ; Wylie: rgyal po dpe har ,also spelt: pe kar, dpe dkar )

and to the Tibetan’s mysterious Tsam49 (Wylie: ‘cham) ceremonial dance’s divinities.50

Despite the fact that the White Elder cult was included only in the third level of the

official Buddhist pantheon, it often assumes a preeminent aesthetic role though the

majestic sculptures and the various innovative compositional thangkas and texts

preserved in Ivolginsk, Kizhinginskom, Aga and Tsugolskom datsans.51 Some idea of

sophistication of both style and technique can be gleaned from the archival aesthetic

materials in the Museum of the History of Buryatia containing twelve multi-temporal

matrixes of iconographic images of the White Elders:

“flat as shell, Tsagan Ubugun‘s body is clothed in Chinese dress giving him a

motionless look with the finger gestures similar to those of peaceful deities;

visually, he is marked with a green halo and a crown-like head-dress plus a

dragon’s head staff and shoes of a stylized decoration and the periphery of

the scrolls are separated from the centre by the decorated compositions

similar in form to the back of a throne reminiscent of a temple entrance

(Skt. torana)”52

The transposing of Tsagan Ubugun in Buryat Buddhist visual expression in the scrolls

of 19th century was materialized in the graphism combined with a gradually thickening

of the colours alongside the edges, as if powdered with lazurite dust, which refract

through the pale and watery paint consistency. There is a certain proclivity among the

Buryat artists for suave masses with linear, elegant light-malachite shaded silhouettes

49 The ancient religious mask dancing Tsam is one of the significant religious rituals reflecting Buddhist teaching through correct apostolic images and essence. Tsam mask dancing is included in the art form called Doigar depicting independent imagination as one of the 10 kinds of wisdom according to ancient Indian philosophy. 50 N. L. Zhukovskaya, Cagan Ubugunov, M,N.M., 1988 51 Nemanova Eleanor Allekovna, The Semantics of the image of the White Elders in the traditional culture of the Mongolian peoples,Library catalof of Russian and Ukrainian Theses , Ulan-Ude, 2004, p. 2 52 L. Zhukovskaya, Cagan Ubugunov, M,N.M., 1988, p.13 22 and native red and black suave sartorial details, illuminated by light white outlines.

The Buddhist symbolism emblematized here, such as the rosary, in addition to the

usual set of attributes, such as a dragon heads staff and a boo, indicate the artist’s

pronunciation of the sacred canonical plastic directives. The symbolic dominative

specificity of Tibetan Buddhism emerged in the late 19th and beginning of 20th century,

when the emblems of longevity are introduced - such as the Jina Amitayus (Tibetan

rgyal-ba Tshe-dpag-med) peripheral portrayal in the upper corner of the thangkas - a

fact that substantiate the rarefication of the autochthonic elements in the virtue of the

assiduous blossoming of embodied Tibetan Tantric art in Buryat artistic tradition.53

IV. Decomposition and regeneration of Buddhist Art and its revival

throughout the 19th century

4.1 The survival of Buddhist Art during the Russian Protectorate

The incipiency of Buryat Buddhist art fracture began under the Russian propagandist

directive, namely the ‘construction of the first socialist state in the world’, vociferated

during the October Revolution of 1917. The significant secular and religious literature,

the artistic fulfilment of architecture, painting and sculpture within the framework of

Buddhism and beyond that, the ‘knowledgeable’ laical or religious individuals (Rus.

narody ) suffered severe consequences which ultimately conduced to a mass

annihilation:

“From 1941 to 1946 , not a single Buddhist monastery existed on the

territory of the region of the east of Lake Baikal (including the Aga

[Bur.Aginsk ] Buriat Autonomous Okrug of Chita Oblast) and the region to

53 Ts.-B. Badmazhapov, 1996, p.9 23 the west of Lake Baikal [Bur.Predbaikal’e] (including the Ust’-Orda Buriat

Autonomous Okrug of Irkutsk Oblast).”54

However, in the proximity of year 1946 the Soviet Union, on the fictitious clisheistic

pretexts of freedom of consciousness and of religious practice, has allowed rebuilding

and reopening of two ritual settlements, Aginski and Ivolginski, nonetheless suffocated

by Russian Committee on Affairs of Religions and Cults’ strict watchful eye. As a result

of neglect and destruction “many bronzes, thangkas and religious books were

destroyed and those which survived were either hidden private households or locked

away in small provincial museums, where they were hardly ever exhibited”

(Zhukovskaya,2001). In retrospect, this dramatic period of coercition, censorship and

devastation of the religious and aesthetic destinies of the Buryats, has called for,

following the disintegration of the Soviet machine of repression, a return to

remembrance, restoration and revival. De facto, the first glimpses of revival,

additionally entitled ‘microrevival’55, was rather a restorative endeavour of the almost

extant Buryat religious life. Atsagat Datsan was once a revered scriptorium and

centre of Buriat Buddhist scholarship, whose extant fine manuscripts are displayed in

Ulan-Ude’s Literary Museum was completely eradicated in 1930s, yet taking rebirth

under the patronage of Agvan Lobsan Dorzhiev (Tibetan Ngawang Dorji), the Atsagat

Tsanid-Hambo Lama, who became the devoted confidant, and one of the seven

mentors to the Thirteenth Dalai Lama.56 The multi-architectural religious complex ,

Ivolginski (Ivolga) Datsan was founded as epicentre of Siberian Buddhism, hosting not

only Tibetan aesthetic atmosphere but also a Korean-style wooden Etigel Khambin

Temple honouring the 12th Khambo Lama ‘of all Russia’, Pandito Khambo Lama

54 A.I.Andreyev, Some reflections on Buddhist art collecting and collectors in Russia in the 18th century-early 20th century, Buddhism and Nordland, 2010, p.2 55 The first restoration, also called microrevival took place from 1946 until the end of late 1980, W.Kolarz, Religion in the Soviet Union, Macmillan Press, 1961, 457-458 56 Stephen Batchelor, Article. The Trials of Dandaron, Buddhist Perseverance in Russia, Tricycle, 1992, p. 1 24 Itigelov, whose undecayed body is presently exhibited as a remnant of extraordinary spiritual attainment.57 However, revival did not meant merely a matter of rehabilitation of datsans or restoration of the ecclesiast tradition, but rather a transformative process of maturation of Buddhist tradition, whose spiritual eminence acted as an adjuvant and parasol for the Buryat community during the socialist domination. In Buryatia, the Tibetan Buddhism which had fallen into oblivion until the perestroika, emerged again from obscurity and begun to attract attention to both scholars and Tibetan spiritual school leaders.

As part of resurgence of national sentiment which marked the ‘second revival’58 period since the 1988 onwards, the painful echoes of repression and of forced mass isolation into the Soviet gulags operated as an in memoriam nourishment among the Buryat

Buddhist representatives. Through the prism of Stalinist socio-political dictatorship, the castigated lamanate has submitted itself to a metamorphosing process rising philosophy and art beyond the narrow ideological space. The great revival of Buryat

Buddhism began at the end of 1980 when under the influence of perestroika and in the context of the gradual thawing of the formerly repressive regime, ritual and artistic life recommenced its restoration. Despite the massive destruction of monasteries and temples, the main repositories of the country’s artistic heritage, throughout the Stalinist époque, a considerable number of metal and wooden sculptures, devotional paintings of appliquéd fabrics and illuminated books on paper were salvaged by both monastic figures and the bourgeois Russian collectors.

57 The 12th Khambo Lama is believed to be the reincarnation of the Lama Damba Dorja Zayayev the first Khambo Lama, born in 1702, Naj Wikoff, Pandito Khambo Lama Itigelov’s Most Precious Body, North Country Public Radio, St. Lawrence University, Canton, New York, 2005 58 Lubos Belka, The Revival of Tibetan Buddhism in Inner Asia: A Comparative Perspective, Asian and African Studies, 11, 2002, p.10 25 Apart from the resurrection of surviving material in the Buryat Buddhist shrines, the

primary concern of enhancing the spiritual lives of eminent monks ultimately

contributed to a strong experience of artistic and educational interchange with the

cognate Buddhist nations. Indeed, this is a period, when, not only that Ivolginskyi and

Aginskyi Monasteries effectively recommenced their activity, but were allowed a

cultural, religious and artistic interchange with the Mongolian educational entities

such as the Gandantegchinling Spiritual Academy in Ulaanbataar and with the

paramount Buddhist higher education institutions in Dharamsala.59 Following the

Tibetan erudition systematization, the Buddhists temples were reconverted into

universities where Tibetan, Mongolian languages and Sanskrit, the ‘Five Great

Sciences’ (religious philosophy, grammar, Tibetan and Mongolian medicine,

technology of arts and craft) and ‘Five Small Sciences’ (poetry, stylistics, metrics,

dances and music, astrology) were intensely studied. It may be recalled that

throughout the 19th century religious restoration, several of the world’s ancient

sacred objects delivered from Tibet and India were kept in Buryatia, among them the

a colossal metal statue of Buddha Maidari,60 the wooden Sandal Buddha statue

Zandan Zhuu located in the Egita Monastery - Yeravin Aimak, proclaimed by the

Buryat Buddhist Sangha one of the three National Buddhist Treasures Sacraments and

the canonical Kangyur (Wylie: Bka'-'gyur , lit. translation of the word) of 113 volumes

and Tengyur (Wylie: Bstan-'gyur, lit. translation of treaties) of 300 volumes, containing

encyclopaedic manuscripts of medieval Buddhist teachings in philosophy, medicine,

logics, linguistics, astrology and other fields of knowledge. Buryatia acted as a

59 Bolsokhoeva Natalya Danilova, Iroltuev -Pandita Khambo- Lama, philosopher, founder of the Ashagat Mamba Datsang and Emchi, Buddhism and Northernland, 2010, p. 3 60 Buddha Maidari, Buryat nomination for Maitreya (Sanskrit), Metteyya (Pāli), or Jampa ( Tibetan), is a future Buddha of this world in Buddhist eschatology. In some Buddhist literature, such as the Amitabha Sutra and the Lotus Sutra, he is referred to as Ajita Bodhisattva. Maitreya is unique in Buddhism because he is the only other figure besides Gautama Buddha who is universally accepted in all Buddhist traditions. In Buryatia, he has been associated with predilection with the Shambhala myth, as he would come as defender of the faith and of the ‘khan of the three kingdoms’, the head of the theocratic state, see Caroline Humphrey, Marx went away but Karl stayed behind, University of Michigan Press, 2001, p.118 26 repository for the preservation of Tibetan medical knowledge along with other related

Asian systems. The iconic illustrations epitomised in the unique medical Gyu-Shi

(Wylie: rgyud bzhi)61 and Vaidurya-onbo (A treatise on Tibetan Medicine)62 and the

only full copy of Atlas of Tibetan Medicine of the two preserved in the world, presently

at rest in the Museum of History in Buryatia.63

A special attention should be given to the Buryat iconography of the Sandalwood

Buddha (Bur. Zadan Zhou) dated from the late 19th century to the beginning of the

20th century, since the exquisitely carved and polished statues, along with vivid

paintings offer a priceless experience which have no verbal analogies. Aesthetically,

the beautifully proportioned sculptures emerge from the sacred atmosphere of

Buddha Śākyamuni’s life. Although according to the hagiographic tradition, these

sculptures were crafted by the divine Visvakaraman (lit. ‘the omnificent’) out of

sandalwood, gold and seven precious stones, no visual prototype has yet been found

in Buryatia or Tibet, which makes the aesthetic experience from both the form and the

composition, both intriguing and complex (Ts.-B.Badmazhapov, 1996). While the

61 The Four Medical Tantras (Root Tantra-rtsa rgyud, Explanatory Tantra (bshad rgyud), Instructional Tantra (man ngag gi rgyud) and Subsequent Tantra ( phyi ma'i rgyud) were compiled by Yuthok Yönten Gönpo in the ninth century and then rediscovered by Drapa Ngönshé in the eleventh century. 62 Beginning from the middle of the XIXth century the philosophical, medical, tantric and astrological faculties were founded in many Buryat datshangs. Within the classical Tibetan education the study of medicine was very significant, as it belongs to one of the five major sciences In the medical faculties the students learn a great number subjects of the Science of Healing. Fundamentals of Tibetan medical education include learning by heart the main guidance on the theory and practice of Tibetan medicine rGyud bzhi (Four Medical Tantras). Tibetan tradition dates this text from the XIIth century. It too is accompanied by the numerous commentaries, among of them the most detailed ‘Vaidurya - onbo,’ (1687-1688), written by Desi Sangye Gyatsho. In addition pharmacological and pharmaceutical guidebooks, pharmacognostical treatises and prescription books were one of the most important components of medical education, see Bolsokhoeva Natalya Danilovna, Ch. D. Iroltuev - Pandita Khambo - Lama, philosopher, founder of the Ashagat Manba Datsang and Emchi, Buddhism and Nordland, 2010 63 Through the courtesy of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama who encouraged the proliferation of Tibetan Buddhist Medicine to Siberia, the edition of the most famous medical thangkas illustrating a commentary on The Gyu-shi known as The Blue Beryl or the Blue Lapis Lazuli were offered as instructional tool to the Buryat practitioners. After having been removed from the Buddhist Collection of the Museum of Atheism in Ulan-Ude during the Soviet period of repression, the thangka collection has been rediscovered in 1958, however remained undisclosed to the public, see Peter Fenton, Tibetan healing: the modern legacy of Medicine Buddha, The Theosophical Publishing House, 1999, p.10-11 27 quintessential Tibetan styled sculptural representation is addressed to Buddha

Candana-prabhā, often denominated as Sandalwood Shining or King Udayana Buddha,

the painted iconography presents two compositional patters with diversity in both the

decorum and the secondary figures: Śākyamuni Buddha surrounded by his disciples

Śāriputra (Sanskrit: ािरपु त) and Maudgalyāyana (Pali: Moggallāna) in the ‘Chinese style’ temple interior on a high carved altar framed with columns and railing including a

canopy and a full set of altar precious ones and offerings, and secondly, Buddha with

his retinue in a natural atmosphere, a landscape with blooming trees, golden veined

rocks, clouds resembling coral brush and flowing dense dark-blue waters.64

In the canonical Tibetan Buddhist iconography the structure of form corresponds to

the coordination and symmetry, paying minute attention at the placing of the centrum

and the peripheral elements into the iconic space. A specific arcane esoteric ritual

enables the mutual reversibility of the two space elementals and allows the artist to

journey between the many levels and enforce several types of sacred meanings. (Ts.-

B. Badmazphavov, 1996) The linearly-chromatic composition of the Buryat Zandan

Zhuu65 thangkas, could be distinguished from the particularities of garment of the

central figure and the abundance of gold as a graphic simulation of the water surface,

the visual effect of which is one of opulent grandeur and ostentation. Apart from the

seductive gold, the Buryat artists adopted the ‘ribbed lines’ arranged in rhythmical

transitions between thick purple rigs and vibrating, iridescent colours which illuminate

the crown, halo, strings, jewellery. This particular qualitative style in the Buryat

iconographic development unambiguously ascertain that the commitment to

canonical rigour and the high degree of mastery did not suffice for accomplishing a

perfected sacred art. A fine representative example which reflects the Buryat exalted

64L. Sh. Dagyab, Tibetan Religious Art, Wiesbaden, 1977, p.30 65 Zadan Zhuu or the Sandalwood Buddha, transliteration by Lubos Belka, Zandan Zhuu and the Buryat Sangha: History and Present State, The Ecological Problems and Spiritual Traditions of the Peoples of the Baikal Region. Ulan-Ude : Izd-vo GUZ 2006 28 style is the visual expression of Bodgdo Zonkhobae66, or the Precious Teacher

Sumatikirti (Tibetan Blo-bzang grags-pa, Lozang-dragpa, Vajra Keeper), which indicate that the inspiration came largely from the Gelug establishments67 with unconventional incorporation of reconstructed autochthonic traditional values.68 During the 19th century, Menri Sarma remained influential and further integrated Chinese landscape devices such as billowing clouds and architectural motifs to break up as compositional divisions of the painted surface in addition to the ornate brocade styles emulating the

Chinese silk upholstery. (Jackson 1996, p.34-40) The ‘New Menri’ was esteemed particularly during the époque of the Fifth Dalai Lama69 who reinforced the authority of

Gelugpa aesthetic beyond the monastic confines. The importance of the cults of protective deities is reflected by the numerous paintings and sculptures of the guardian deities of the Buryat Gelug tradition which is an area where the individual artists followed the iconographic stipulations but achieved great expressive liberty.

Following the nag thang genre (literally ‘black ground paintings’), in which the illuminated manuscript of the Fifth Dalai Lama’s visions is painted, the Buryat artists popularized the black or indigo manuscript illuminations complementing them with gold and silver ink. Some of the most refined examples of Buryat nag thang extant today in the Buryat Historical Museum, are 18th and 19th century thangkas illustrating the wrathful deities and the ritual diagrams employed in meditational or worship practice. The ceremonial paintings reflect the ritual stipulations which categorize white as the base colour for peaceful deities, yellow as the colour for deities associated with development of wealthy and worldly aspirations, red for deities

66 Bodgdo Zonkhobae, transliteration by TB Badmazhapov, Buddhist Paintings in Buryatia, Buddhist Himalaya, A Journal of Nagarjuna Institute of Exact Methods, Vol. VII No. I & II, Ulan Ude, 1996 67 Since Gelugpa acquired the official status of the state religion and was legitimized by the Dalai Lamas’s presidium, it was mainly from this source that Buryat Buddhist iconographic milieu was primarily fertilized. 68 Ts.-B. Badmazhapov, 1996, p.10-11 69 Ngawang Lobsang Gyatso (Wylie: Blo-bzang Rgya-mtsho, birth name: Künga Nyingpo) the Great Fifth Dalai Lama (1617–1682) 29 worshipped for subjugation of evil influences and black or dark blue for fierce protective deities or coercitive rites. (Heller, 1999, p. 193)

Among other features inspired by the art of the famous Gelug East Tibetan Labrang

Monastery, are the low mossy hills of the taiga, occasionally covered with pine trees, the distinctive linear or cumulous clouds floating above them, and the rich and varied textile designs which cloth the deities.70 The mount of the Gelugpa female

Dharmapala,71 Sridevi (Tibetan dPal ldan lhamo) along with the White Tara ( Buryat

Sagaan Dara Ehe, Sanskrit: Sitatara; Tibetan: Sgrol-dkar ) whose presence are central in the Buryat lyrical compositions and rich coloured thangkas of 19th century, reflect the authentic Tibetan tastes and its aesthetic mannerisms: the refined delicate balance, the colouring with pale-pink predominating instead of the ubiquitous reds of earlier styles.72 Ornamented with abundant leaf, bright contrasting colours and strict proportions, these Tibetan Gelug inspired artefacts were and continue to be regarded as the most prized achievements of Buryat aesthetics.

V. The Great Revival - the reaffirmation of Buddhist aesthetics in

Buryatia, 19th to 20th century

Although Buddhism has not been deprived of its moral purpose during the repressionist regime, it has been infused with substantial ideological agreements, as a consequence of the Soviet cynical divide et impera policy towards the satellite

70 Lubos Belka, The Revival of Tibetan Buddhism in Inner Asia: A Comparative Perspective, Asian and African Studies, 2002, p.11 71 In Vajrayana Buddhism, a dharmapāla ( Tibetan: chos-kyong) is a type of wrathful deity. The name means Dharma-defender in Sanskrit, and the dharmapālas are also known as the Defenders of the Law (Dharma), or the Protectors of the Law. The two main types of dharmapalas are mahakalas (male) and mahakalis (female), on the one hand, and lokapālas on the other. All dharmapālas, with the exception of most lokapālas, appear within the iconographic representations as wrathful, see Chögyam Trungpa, Visual Dharma: The Buddhist Art of Tibet, Hayden Gallery, Taylor and Francis, 2001, p.22 72 Deborah Ashencaen and Gennady Leonov, 1996, p.4 30 ethnoses as a means of ensuring its political quintessence. In this course of time, the

ministerial appointments and the progressist ‘lotus essences’ (Rus. obnovlentsi)

became more mingled and a utopian-political magical character permeated the Buryat

Buddhist milieu. The idea of a great Buddhist Tibeto-Mongolian-Russian confederation,

accentuated at the turn of the 19th and 20th century, was broadly based upon the most

preeminent utopian expectations, the Shambhala myth. Mythogenesis for the Buryat

society, as Lubos Belka asserts, especially of an eschatological and chiliastic nature,

reinforces and amplifies in the times of constrainment, “when otherwise disparate,

heterogeneous myths and rituals are joined and mobilised”.73

Certainly, the reaffirmation of support for the orthodox Buddhism and of the salvic

mythology surrounding it was ubiquitously reflected in the nature of aesthetics

popular in Buryatia at the turn of 20th century. One can perhaps understand the Buryat

desire to participate in the international appeal of Buddhism as well as the conscious

desire to repeat the earlier, original aesthetic models and climate of orthodox

Buddhism. Three major personifications were elevated to the soteriological status by

both Tibetan and Buryats and became the resolute iconographic leitmotif of the late

19th and early 20th century: the future Buddha Maitreya (Tib. byams pa, Mong. Bur.

Maidar, literally The Loving One), the 25th Kulika Rudra Chakrin Shambhala ruler

(Tibetan’khor lo can, Mongolian Buriat Rigden Dagpo, Eregdyn Dagbo Khaan, literally

The Wrathful One with a Wheel) and the reputed mythological character Gesar from

Ling.74

73 Lubos Belka, The Myth of Shambhala: Visions, Visualisation, and the Myth’s Resurrection in the Twentieth Century in Buryatia, Brno, research paper supported by the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange grant, Archiv orientalni, Quarterly Journal of Asian and African Studies, Praha, Czech Republic, 2003, p. 249 74Lubos Belka, The Myth of Shambhala: Visions, Visualisation, and the Myth’s Resurrection in the Twentieth Century in Buryatia, Brno, research paper supported by the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange grant, Archiv orientalni, Quarterly Journal of Asian and African Studies, Praha, Czech Republic, 2003 31 Although the eschatological myth of Shambhala was rarely expressed visually, the

very few extant Buryat artefacts such as stupas, thangkas and in the tsakli (Tibetan

Tsak li xylographed paintings)75 display an impressive unconventional aesthetic of the

three intermingling mythological-eschatological characters. However, within the

Northern Buddhism and particularly in Buryat artistic expression, solely the two

characters - Maitreya (Buriat Maidar ) and Rudra Chakrin - and their associated

eschatology are concentrated on specific types of sacral architecture and colossal

sculptural and pictural representations. The adulation of these two deified apocalyptic

deities can be discerned in older east Tibetan and Mongolian thangkas, which are the

very source of the necessary consistency to the form that the Buryat artistic

aesthetics later achieved. I would go further and state that not in the phenomenon of

political radicalization but within its spiritual and esoteric aesthetic communication,

the Buryat artists understood the recovery of the Shambhala myth in the first third of

the 20th century.

VI. Afterword and acknowledgements

The collection of religious items that are now exhibited to the great public, is

unprecedented not only in the uniqueness of artefacts complied with great taste and

mastery but also in its extraordinary significance for any research on the history of

Buddhist religion and art in Buryatia. The Buryat Historical Museum possesses a

unique collection of Buddhist ritual art which survived the depredations of the 1930's,

at which time most of the monasteries were destroyed and only a small fraction of the

abundant artistic and spiritual heritage survived. By studying the style of the

75 Tsakli pictures are used also as miniature thangka, but their principal purpose is rather different from the thangkas; they are used as ‘cultic cards’ (see Gerd-Wolfgang Essen - Tsering Tashi Thingo, Die Gotter des Himalaya. Buddhistische Kunst Tibets. Systematischer Bestandskatalog, Prestel-Verlag, Munchen 1989, p.263), or they are used as ‘consecration cards ’ (see Amy Heller, A set of thirteen century tsakali, Orientations, November 1997, pp. 28-52) 32 artefacts, one is able to shed light on unbiased history of this remote region’s

embrace of Tibetan Buddhism and of its artistic legacy. More than simple artistic

treasure, the exquisite Buryat Buddhist artefacts remain even today vectors for acts

of piety, meditation and spiritual accomplishment, and are thus a vivid, mysterious

testament of faith that punctuate the Tibetan spirituality among the Buryats.

6.1 Tibetan-styled thangkas, tsakli , illuminations and dedications from the

Matvei Nikolaevich Khangalov History Museum of Buryatia

Fig. 1 The Tree of Diagnosis, Atlas of Tibetan Medicine, History Museum of

Buryatia

In this painting we have the visual representations of the three humors (Tib. nyes-pa gsum);

the blue leaves symbolize rlung, the yellow leaves mkhris-pa, and the white leaves bad-kan.

The root of diagnosis has three trunks: visual observation, pulse reading and questioning. This

painting shows how Tibetan doctors diagnose illness when the three nyes-pa are imbalanced. Fig.2 Kalakuta or Halahaha, poison incarnate, Atlas of Tibetan Medicine,

History Museum of Buryatia

According to prophecies in the Tibetan medical texts the age in which we now live is a time of

great disruption in the environment and the five natural elements. These factors create the

causes for eighteen new types of malignant diseases that threaten the lives of human beings.

This painting shows the three different types of poisons: compounded poisons, food poisons

and naturally grown poisons. The creature in the centre is called Kalakuta or Halahala, poison

incarnate. Fig.3 The Palace of the Healing Buddha, detail, Museum of Buryatia

The painting illustrates Prajnapatidaksa, physician of the gods; a member of the retinue of the

Healing Buddha first explained the medical teachings. Lord of Living Beings, he is among the

founders of the art therapy. The detail shows the attendants of the Master of Remedies in the

medicinal City of Irresistible Beauty, believed to be located in the land of Oddiyana.

33 Fig.4 The Tree of Diagnosis, detail, Atlas of Tibetan Medicine, History

Museum of Buryatia

The root of diagnosis includes, left to right, visual observation, palpation and inquiry.

Fig.5 Ritual Preparation of Rejuvenation Elixirs, Atlas of Tibetan Medicine,

History Museum of Buryatia

The theme of this painting deals with the generation of the Lesser Elixir of Rejuvenation

through visualizations of the light-ray emanations from the celestial palace of medicine

depicted in the centre. The monk seated to the left of the palace is instructed to visualize

himself as a meditational deity as he gathers the rejuvenation elixirs from the realms of gods,

antigods, humans, animals, tormented spirits and the hell realms shown below the palace. In

the lower part of the paintings is a panel showing the ideal surroundings that enhance sexual

pleasure and therefore, fertility.

Fig.6 A set of four tsakli depicting Garuda, Gubilha, Kurukulla and

Vajravarahi, Buryatia, 19th century

The tsakli are miniature paintings which are used in Tibetan Buddhist rituals of divination or

initiation rites. They are considered ‘portable icons’ due to their miniatural size and

traditionally are housed in gaus (amulet boxes). Garuda is fine example of painting on cotton

with applied gold leaf in the Labrang style. Gubila is the name of a fivefold group of deities

considered to protect people in every aspect of their lives. The central figure in this tsakli is

the goddess Molha, the only female-deity of this group, whose name in Tibetan means

‘woman-goddess’. She rides an antelope and her attributes are ‘happiness invoking arrow’ and

a ‘divination mirror’. The corners are occupied by Polha (lit. man-god), Yulha (lit. country -god),

Dalha (lit. war-god) and Srog-lha (lit. the god of life). Red Tara, also known as Kurukulla, is

according to M. Foucher, 'the heart of Tara' (Etude sur l'Iconographie bouddhique de l' Inde,

Paris, 1900). She is worshipped by unhappy lovers, and is believed to be particularly successful

in bewitching men and women. Her mantra repeated ten thousand times is said to bring about

all of one's desires. The Goddess Kurukulla is invoked for the controlling activities of

subjugating, magnetizing, and attracting. She is extremely seductive: her red colour and

subjugating flower-attributes emphasize her more mundane activity of enchanting men and

34 women, ministers and kings, through the bewitching power of sexual desire and love (Skt.

vashikarana). Vajravarahi, the ‘Daimond Sow’ is worshipped as a protectress of hidden

teachings of Vajrayana Buddhism. Four manifestations of Vajravarahi encircle the main image;

she holds a kapala (skull-cup) in her left hand and a kartika (ritual knife) with her right hand. Fig.7 Guandi - Geser, Painting on cotton, Buryatia, late 18th century

Geser the son of the celestial ruler was sent to his father to Ling to become its king. According

to the epic he defeated his enemies and achieved much glory and fame. The Mongolian version

of the epic refers to Gesar as “the master of ten directions, who uprooted ten evils in ten

countries of the world” (Deborah Ashencaen and Gennady Leonov, 1996, p.30). Worshipped by

the Buryats mainly as a god of war, Geser acts also as a protective deity who patronises

soldiers, cattle and grants well-being. In the 18th century the cult of Geser in Buryatia was

intermingled with that of the Chinese god Guandi - the protector of the Manchus - so much so

that Geser took a totally distinctive Chinese appearance. Guardi is depicted in this thangka

astride his horse Chitu (lit. red hare) and is accompanied by two characters, respectively his

adopted son Guanping and his minister Zhoutsang. Although the deities are rendered in a

Chinese style, they are placed within a distinctive Buryat setting. Fig. 8 Lhamo - Painting on cotton 18th- 19th century

The thangka reproduced here depicts Magzor Gyalmo, Palden Lhamo ( Skt. Shri Devi), the

goddess of music and eloquence according to Vajrayana tradition. Wrathful in appearance with

one face and two hands, she rides atop a yellow mule inside a bone and skeleton palace

surrounded by a host of fierce retinue figures: two-animal faced dakinis, the four Queens of the

Seasons, the makara-faced dakini Makaravaktra on the frontispiece and the lion-faced red

dakini Simhavaktra with a kartrika and a snare in her hands in the upper extremity. The

goddess is intimately consociated with the Gelug Tibetan order, since as female guardian of

the sacred lake, Lhamo La-tso, avowed the First Dalai Lama Gendun Drup (1391–1474) who in

one of his visionary experiences, postulated that she would protect the reincarnation lineage of

the Dalai Lamas. Fig. 9 Vaishravana also known as ‘Vaishravana and the Eight Horsemen’ - Painting on cotton, Buryatia, 18 th century

35 This composition demonstrates a clearly indigenous Buryat style, considering the unusual subdued turquoise and blue palette and the use of naive aesthetic vocabulary. The spacious composition and the stylistic execution of elements such as the upturned lotus petals of Vaishravana’s throne can be ascribed to Mongolia and East Tibet. The cult of Vaishravana, (Tib. Rnam-thos sras) the leader of the Yaksha race and worldly Guardian of the North, was extremely illustrious in Buryatia, since it is to the north of Mongolia and Tibet that the Buryat steppes and mountains are located. The deity Vaishravana Riding a Lion has a retinue of eight armour clad horseman. Seven of the eight horsemen (Skt. Ashvapatis), protectors of the eight directions, face forward but one always has the head turned away. At the upper part of the thangka resides the blue-faced ferocious Vighnantaka in his two arm form, standing in the Pratyalidha attitude, carrying the Tarjanipasa in his left hand and Vajra in his right hand.

Fig. 10 Śākyamuni Buddha - Painting on cotton, late 18th- early 19th century

This particular thangka presents an interesting amalgamation of Sino-Tibetan and Buryat

styles. The fine and compound polychrome painting is complete with a precious setting

characterized by the liberal use of gold for the ornamentation of Buddha’s clothes, exemplary

of the 18th century Sino-Tibetan paintings. Separately, the linear shapes of the cumulus

clouds, the mossy hills, the triangular regulation of water and the use of ground mica added to

blue pigment in order to create a lustrous visual effect, are distinctive elements of originality

essentially rendered in most Buryat paintings.

36 Fig.i

37 Fig.ii

38 39 Fig.iv

40 Fig.v

41 Fig.vi

42 Fig.vii

43 Fig.viii

44 Fig.ix 45 Fig.x

46 47 VII. Bibliography

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49