CHAPTER 9 Looking East, Facing Up: Paintings in Karma Gardri Styles in Ladakh and Zangskar ROB LINROTHE We get art history's writing wrong if we take it to come essentially after art. Ifwe are to get the shape ofthat writing right (if we are to understand the terms on which it gives itself essentially to reading), we have to see it as belonging to-emergent within-the terms of its object's visibility, and so need to think about it as structured by that particular shape. 423 a practiced eye to determine the roots and antecedents of contemporary Buddhist painting in Ladakh and Zangskar. The "official" Dharamsala Eri (E bris) style and its variants are having an increasing impact in Geluk (dGe lugs) contexts for both regions, while the earlier orientation toward Tashilhunpo Monastery and the Tsangri style (gTsang bris) is still visible in murals and in portable paintings. By the eighteenth through the early twentieth century, many Geluk monks and a few artists from Ngari (including Spiti, Ladakh, and Zangskar), studied in Shigatse's Tashilhunpo and to a lesser extent at Lhasa's Drepung Monasteries, both having had long-standing connections to the western regions. 424 When the monks and other pilgrims returned west, they brought with them the best tokens they could afford of those travels. The finest of these were adopted by artists and patrons as lodestones oftheir own artistic aspirations. At least through the sixteenth or seventeenth century, and TODAY IT TAKES Fig. 9.23, detail Unless otherwise noted, all photographs by the author beginning as early as the eleventh century, there was a great deal of localization and creative adaptation in Ladakh and Zangskar, but after that there was an increasing homogeneity of harmonious Tsangri color schemes, landscape formulas, and polished compositions, even in murals created by local artists in Zangskar. Every Geluk monastery or village shrine seems to have the same standardized set of Panchen Lamas and their pre-incarnations, from Phe in western Zangskar to Lhasa and northeast into Amdo. The arhats based on Ming-dynasty paintings were similarly distilled and distributed throughout the Geluk realm. By this time, the Sakya (Sa skya) lineage had little presence in Ladakh and Zangskar, except at Matho, or Mangtro (Mang spro), Monastery, which still houses an impressive collection of metalwork images and paintings reflecting the refined taste typical of Sakya hierarchs. The Nyingma (rNying rna) and the Kagyu (bKa' brgyud) lineages resisted the hegemony of Geluk visual culture, at least to a certain extent. As David Jackson has already documented, the Drigung CBri gung) Kagyu maintained Driri CBri bris) painting in Ladakh at Phyang and Lamayuru Monasteries, though sometimes mixed the darker skies associated with the Tsangri style. The Drukpa CBrug pa) Kagyu in Ladakh and Zangskar retained strong ties to Bhutan, which like these kingdoms, prided itself on political and cultural independence even though all three were firmly circumscribed within a Tibetan sphere. The impact of Bhutanese sensibilities in Ladakh and Zangskar can be seen in the murals and paintings in Remis, Stagna, and Bardan, as well as at other Drukpa monasteries in the region. There were and are also connections to the non-Bhutanese branch of the Drukpa Kagyu, the so-called Northern Drukpas. Sustained institutional links tied Ladakh and Zangskar to central Tibet and Bhutan, and these ties go a long way to explain the related cultural expressions. By no means are the Drukpa arts of Ladakh and Bhutan always identical; individual creativity and innovation existed, and not a simple center and periphery dependency. However, definite relationships arose among these modules THE PLACE OF PROVENANCE 181 of Buddhist culture; the differences can be quite subtle. Unlike these enduring historical connections, links between Ladakh and Zangskar--{)n the extreme westward extension of the Tibetan cultural horizon-and Kham (Khams)--un the eastern edge of the Tibetan world-were much more tenuous and much less visible. Over the course of the eighteenth through twentieth century, wanderers from Kham appear in the records of Ladakh and Zangskar. But there were no known regular missions to Kham (or vice versa), no dormitories created for the use of Ladakhi and Zangskar monks as there were at Tashilhunpo, no estates granted to support royal scions studying at Drepung,425 no renowned artists studying in Kham-as Zhedpa Dorje (Bzhad pa rDo rje, d. 1816) of Dzonkhul ·(rDzong khul) in Zangskar had done in Bhutan426-and no marriage alliances with the Kham aristocratic families as there were with those of central Tibet. 427 Except possibly through its contribution to the art of Bhutan, the Karma Gardri (Karma sGar bris), the most distinctive painting style ofKham, had little impact in Ladakh and Zangskar. Karma Gardri does not usually figure in the history of the art of its western counterparts. One would expect it to be clearly visible if it were present in the west, because, as Jackson's chapter 5 in this volume lays out, the Karma Gardri style is visually recognizable by many of its features, even when they are merged with Mensar (New Memi) in the Khamri (Khams bris) style followed by many Kham artists. This Karma Gardri style may be a little too simplistically considered exclusive to southeastern Tibet (for it was followed in the main Karma Kagyu monastery in central Tibet), too facilely seen as following Chinese precedents as a direct consequence of its geographic proximity to Sichuan and other centers of Chinese culture, and too tightly connected to the Karma 182 CHAPTER 9 Kagyu lineage by the conventional label of "Karma Gardri" (the "Karma[pa] encampment" style). At the same time it was convincingly brought to an apex by the great teacher and patron Situ Panchen, the subject of a previous volume in this series. 428 Neither Ladakh nor Zangskar is acknowledged in that art historical narrative (neither term appears in the index to Jackson's volume), and it would be just short of shocking to find artists of those two regions working in the Karma Gardri style. Yet in fact, models of this encampment style were available to nineteenthand twentieth-century artists, and continue to be available to twentyfirst-century artists in Ladakh and Zangskar had they cause to search the holdings of some of the lesser-known monasteries and shrines. Recently, an important set of paintings done by the hand of the Fourteenth Karmapa was seen in Korzok, on the shores of Tsomoriri, in eastern Ladakh. At least two other encampment-style paintings, including one belonging to a Situ Panchen-designed set of Eight Great Siddhas, have come to light in the same monastery. Other paintings in the Karma Gardri style have been observed in the Markha Valley, and in Zangskar (David Jackson has also found evidence of recent Karma Gardri painters in Dolpo and Spiti, as mentioned in chapter one). This essay gives some details of these rare sightings. More will probably be revealed when the rich monastic treasuries are comprehensively surveyed. We can make no claim to the artistic impact these had on the local production of art. My working assumption is that all of these portable paintings were produced in Kham or by Kham artists working elsewhere and then brought to Ladakh and Zangskar; had they been local productions, one could expect at least some murals to have been produced in the same style. It is instructive that such paintings were available for artists to . study or emulate but that they did not seem inspired to appropriate the style. Not only are regimes of artistic training implied by this disinterest-in other words, how artists learn and develop painting skills-it also indicates what truly determines dominant visual styles in a Tibetan Buddhist monastic context. Since artists and patrons had visual options, it strengthens the force of their choices toward the styles of western central Tibet and Bhutan. Eventually they even largely left behind their own heritage derived from the Kashmiri style, Khache (Kha che), a style traced back to the eleventh century and renewed during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In the conclusion, after examination of material evidence and issues of style, social and religious history, patronage, and artistic production in Ladakh and Zangskar, we will return to the hypothesis that, ultimately, institutional connections, not aesthetic power or novelty, determined the choices made by monastic authorities in terms of the style affiliations for commissions to affiliated artists (for murals and sets of portable paintings) in this region during the last few centuries. This has significant implications for reading and systematically understanding Tibetan art history and visual culture. Style, hardly divorced from meaning, is content. The Karma Gardri-style paintings that have made the longest journey within the Tibetan Buddhist cultural realm-that I have located-are found in a small shrine built at the summer grazing camp, or doksa ('brog sa), at Shade (Sha ded) in Zangskar. The villagers there use the doksa for male sheep and goats. 429 Shade has been described as ''the most remote, the highest, and nearly the smallest of Zangskar villages, standing at 4,160 meters on a minor tributary of one of the headwaters of the Lungnak River. "430 If the village itself is so obscure, how much more so a doksa used only in the summer! This site is called Tantak (Dran drag), and the shrine where the paintings are now kept is a single-room lhakhang, with a few adjacent rooms used occasionally by monks deputed from its mother monastery, Phuktal (Phug dar), a day's walk away. However, both years I visited the Tantak shrine, no monks were present and local villagers from Shade living near the shrine in summer rooms (not tents) had the keys. When I tried to visit the Shade shrine in 2010, I was told that it is now closed: all its books, paintings, and statues had been transferred to Tantak. Thus it is possible that the paintings now in Tantak originally belonged to Shade. The first painting from the Tantak shrine depicts Vajrsattva, the larger central figure directly below a white chdrten encircled by a keyhole-shaped nimbus rimmed in pink (Figs. 9.1 and 9.1, detail). Directly above is a white chdrten, PadmapaI)i is at bottom center, on his right Mafijusrl, and on his left VajrapiiI)i in peaceful form. Buddha Sakyamuni sits at Vajrasattva's right side, and Sita (white) Tara (sGroI dkar) on his left. On either side of the chdrten two monks hold books. They wear red hats that resemble those of Drukpa Kagyu ('Drug pa bKa' brgyud) and Drigung Kagyu ('Bri gung) hierarchs. The one on the proper right has a mustache. No inscriptions were observed on front or back of the painting. It has suffered from water damage, revealing the lighter tonality of the original painting. The features most closely resembling the Karma Gardri style include: the relative openness of the composition, the use of clouds as framing and connecting devices, the trees with cone-shaped branches placed in clusters of three (we will encounter the same device in the Tara painting C9; Figs. 9.27 and 9.27a), the schematic ridgelike treatment of the clouds at the very top (alternating dark and light), and most distinctively, the background. The cloth is very thinly painted; there is a smooth gradient between the plain light green FIG. 9.I (above left) Tantak Vajrasattva FIG. 9.I, detail (above) Tantak Vajrasattva toward the bottom and the pale blue at the top. This is not a particularly fine painting, but its features betray its origins well outside of Zangskar. The other painting is quite small and in similarly poor condition (Figs. 9.2 and 9.2a, detail). Not only is there a horizontal crease across the main figure's face, but a water stain encircles his eye, which is rather unsettling. The main figure is Padmasambhava, the THE PLACE OF PROVENANCE I83 FIG. 9.2 (above) Tantak Padmasambhava FIG. 9.2A, detail (above right) eighth-century figure with a legendary reputation who is credited with overcoming local demonic resistance to transplanting Buddhism to Tibet. He wears the kind of hat typically worn by important Nyingmapa teachers, though since Padmasambhava is revered by all the stem of a white lotus, as one would expect of PadmapaI}.i. Alternatively, the lineages, this painting need not be attributed to the Nyingmapas. this figure in the Tantak painting may appear in five of the mid-nineteenth- be the Siddha Rolpa (Sanskrit: Lalita) who appears above the Karmapa in a century Tara paintings discussed below that are associated with the Fourteenth Karmapa (AI, B4, C8, CIO, and Cll; Above the main figure is a small bodhisattva or a siddha (Fig. 9.2a, detail). One leg is pendant and he makes the dana gesture of giving. His hair is in a high chignon, and he wears large round earrings, a small crown, an orange skirt over a striped dhoti, and a long green scarf with an antelope skin draped over the left shoulder. This may be PadmapaI}.i Avalokitesvara, of nineteenth-century Karma Gardri painting now in the Musee Guimet.432 Figs. 9.19,9.22,9.26,9.28, and 9.29). The nimbus is a variant of the elaborate depictions oflight radiating Other Karma Gardri painting features are the restrained sparse from the Buddha in the Situ Panchendesigned set of "The Hundred Previous Lives of the Buddha."433 There the composition and the thin atmospheric background. The gradient moves up the lightrays alternate between thinner and darker solid color at the very top; there the sun and the moon appear on either whom Padmasambhava is considered a thicker lines against a blue background. Behind Padmasambhava, there are body-emanation. One of the well-known sets of paintings associated with Situ denser wavy lines against a light green background, even closer to that found Panchen includes an eighteenth-century painting (now in the Rubin Museum of frequently in Amdo Rebgong painting today.434 Another device occurring here Art) depicting a seated Avalokitesvara, naked to the waist but for a green scarf and an antelope skin, with a high chignon, one leg up and one leg pendant.431 and frequently met with in eighteenthand nineteenth-century paintings from Kham is the sprouting of the lotus stem and leaves supporting Padmasambhava's However, Situ's Avalokitesvara holds lotus seat emerging from an expanse of r84 CHAPTER 9 blue, as if from a lake ringed by lightly washed green hills. Modified versions cloth from pale green to plain and then a side of Avalokitesvara (or Lalita). This painting is also of interest because ofthe inscription on the back (Fig. 9.2b, inscriptions on reverse). Unfortunately, it does not identifY the artist, the donor, or intended recipient, nor the location of its creation. Besides the consecratory syllables (om ah ham), there are three lines in Lafitsa or Rafijana script and three lines of Tibetan cursive FIG. 9.2B, inscriptions on reverse Zangskar, I will first add three other examples of Kham-style painting surviving in the western regions of Ladakh and Zangskar. Two of them are kept in a spectacular little shrine high on a cliff in the Markha Valley (south of the Indus in Ladakh) near Umlung (Fig. 9.3). The shrine is referred to as Tetsa or Techa. 438 It is tended by a single monk deputed by Remis Monastery in Ladakh. The paintings in the old assembly hall, or dukhang ('du khang), are clearly Drukpa Kagyu script (dbu med). Dan rTen-ne Martin, lineage walls just at that time and place in subject matter, as one would expect since the mother monastery was founded a leading Tibetologist whose expertise I have depended on, notes that the where Kagyu and Nyingma teachings intermingled. One influential example by Shambhunatha (i.e., sTag tshang Ras pa) in the seventeenth century. Devers ornamental ludic script transcribes the Guru Rinpoche mantra followed by the of this is the famous Rime (Ris med) movement led by Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo ('Jam dbyangs mKhyen and Vernier explain that subsequent to "the visit of the Drukchen Rinpoche frequently encountered Ye Dharma invocation. 435 Next is a prayer to Padmasambhava that freely translated is as follows: Vidyadhara Padmasambhava, brtse'i dBangpo, 1820-1892) and Jamgon Kongtrul Lodro Thaye (' Jam mgon Kong sprul bLo gros mTha' yas, 1813-1899) and other teachers in Kham, fully developing harmony among such as Patrul Rinpoche (dPal sprul Rin po che, 1808-1887), who played down sectarian differences. 437 us. Allow us to comprehend the Mahamudra of the natural state. by which these paintings arrived in perform adhi$thana (empowerment) and free us from discord, Before considering the agency [i.e., the Great Drukpa Lama] to the valley in June 2009, a new dukhang was built on top of the site that houses the books and statues of the deities that were previously in the old one."439 Indeed, I saw and photographed several paintings in the new dukhang, including two that FIG. 9.3 Tetsa Shrine, Markha Valley Let auspicious good luck and attainments become widespread. Thus the emanated mantra is transcribed!436 The mention of Mahamudra might suggest a Kagyu context, being most commonly affiliated with the Karma, Drukpa, and Drigung Kagyu, but is not exclusive to that lineage. Also, the subject matter ofPadmasambhava might lead one to assume an originally Nyingma context, though, as already mentioned, Padmasambhava is also revered in the other traditions. This is where the stylistic evidence for a Kham origin of the nineteenth century can be useful. There was a well-known concerted movement toward permeability of THE PLACE OF PROVENANCE 185 FIG. 9.4 Tetsa Vajrasattva may be from Bhutan (a Guru Dragpo Marchen [VajrakTIa], and a very impressive large Sarvavid Vairocana painting). An additional two also appear to be in the Karma Kagyu style. The first is a small painting of Vajrasattva mounted in Indian cotton (Fig. 9.4). This is a replacement mounting; there is an earlier row of needle-holes visible at the upper right. Above these holes, the pigment is much brighter, giving some indication that this remounting took place recently. Otherwise the painting has been subject r86 CHAPTER 9 to humidity or water, cracking, and staining. The orange and pink pigments are still bright, but the white pigment with red lines has mostly flaked away to reveal the medium gray ink underdrawing. As a result, the figure itself has a tentative look, diminishing whatever visual impact it might once have had. This time Vajrasattva appears alone. He hovers against a background of a medium blue fading into an unpainted area at the middle. Below are pale green rocks and a pool of light blue water. A lotus bearing him arises from the water. In that way the painting resembles the Tantak Padmasambhava. On either side of the lotus are cintama1J,i pearls, a conch, and two elephant tusks, precious offerings to Vajrasattva. He is an important deity in Esoteric Buddhist practice and is not merely confined to purification rituals, the context in which he is most often associated today. The second Tetsa painting is quite extraordinary (Figs. 9.5-9.5c). Although also having suffered severe water streaking, it is the finest so far introduced. It depicts a monk with heavy jowls and neck sitting and resting his arm upon a gnarled pine tree. (I did not notice any inscriptions.) His extended right hand holds a long Tibetan book to bless two bowing monk-disciples; he touches the top of their heads with the text, in the traditional Tibetan way (Fig. 9.5, main figure). This is a standard behavioral response,440 yet it is rare to see it shown in almost a cavalier way.441 To my eye, the gesture succeeds in giving the monk character and a sense of humor. His face is very well painted, with fine details around the eyes and the visible comer of the mouth turned up in a smile (Fig. 9.5a, detail of main figure). The gold detailing of the hat and robe is intricate and precise; tiny conches, wheels, gems, and an apsaras pouring from a vase are all visible on the pointed, folded Drukpa hat. His halo is another tour de force of painting, asserting its presence notwithstanding its transparency. Another monk, bare-chested but like the main figure wearing a yogi's strap across the chest, floats on a cloud outlined in blue; Jackson has identified this style of clouds as distinctive to the Karma Gardri in chapter 5 (Fig. 9.5, upper left). The monk carries a long-life vase in his lap. Below him, two exotic blue birds-one with a flowering branch in its mouth-fly across the unpainted background in line with the teacher's hat. Three more birds are perched in the tree branches behind the main figure. In the middle distance, above and behind the two monks receiving the book blessing, a solitary monk wearing a red outer robe sits in meditative absorption inside a cave. Below the main figure, seated on the other side of the tree, there appears to be a senior disciple (Fig. 9.5b, detail depicting tree, tigers, and disciple). Although wearing monastic robes, he has long hair piled on his head and a kapiila skull bowl at his side. This is a Drukpa yogin; his unshaved face and mustache are handled with the right shades of ink to convey his unorthodoxy, confirmed by the earring. He too has a pleasing, thoughtful air about him. Behind him a lay attendant erects the yogi's kha.tviinga staff. The yogin stares at a pair of tigers at the base of the treetrunk. One tiger snoozes with a big grin, the other stares back at the yogin with its jaws open as if either growling or purring. The long black stripes against the tawny fur contrast wonderfully and FIG. 9.5 , main figure (top left) Tetsa Drukpa Lineage Painting 30 x 17 in. (76.2 x 43.2 cm) FIG. 9.5A, detail of main figure (above left) FIG. 9.5B, detail depicting tree, tigers and disciple (top right) FIG. 9.5c, detail depicting Tsering Ma (above right) THE PLACE OF PROVENANCE 187 parallel the dark knots against the rich brown tree trunk. Below the two tigers, in the lower left, Tsering Ma, the Auspicious Lady of Long-life, smiles benevolently, riding a green-maned lion (Fig. 9.5c, detail depicting Tsering Ma). Besides the artist's being able to invest character into each of the figures through facial expression and behavior (including the lion and the tigers), the success of the painting depends on two factors: the quality of the stone-ground pigments and the depiction of the landscape. The orange, red, brown, and pink shades are still bright in lustre. The artist also had an innovative range of colors at his or her disposal. Note the unusual shade of gray-green worn by the attendant with the kha.tval:tga, the medium green of the wicker stool below the main figure's flexed plump toes, and the steel blue of the birds. But what stands out is the undiluted purity of the blue-and-green of the landscape. This is made from dense unmixed stone-ground azurite (the blue) and malachite (the green). The setting contains elements of Chinese landscape painting. The tree and the use of blue-and-green recall the Ming-dynasty landscapes with the Sixteen Arhats that were sent to Tibet in the fifteenth century.442 It is also reminiscent of Chinese figure painting against a plain background. Or so at first it appears; actually there are long horizontally I , I stratified clouds directly below the pair of :flying birds (Fig. 9.5). This painting relates to one in the Rubin Museum of Art that Jackson has insightfully assigned to the period of the early, pre-Situ Panchen Karma Gardri style of the seventeenth century443 (Fig. 9.6). The similarities between the two paintings are clear: the gnarled and knotted tree, the modulated outlining, the unpainted sky, the character in the face (there the main figure is endowed with fierce determination), the asymmetrical treatment of the mouth, and the fine gold patterning on the cloth. There are also 188 CHAPTER 9 subtle but significant differences: the treatment of the halo is opaque in the Rubin Museum painting, the brushwork handled with restraint and tightness by the latter artist, the contained billows of foliage compared with the looser, somewhat scratchy edges in the Tetsa foliage and :flora along the horizon. Perhaps most significant is the relative scale of major and minor figures. In FIG. 9.6 Gomchung Sherab Changchub Tibet; 17th century Ground mineral pigment on cotton 31 % x 20 in. (80.6 x 50.8 cm) Rubin Museum of Art C2006.66.269 (HAR 418) FIG. 9.7 Tsomori Lake with Korzok village and monastery at the foot of the mountain the Rubin Museum painting, the minor figures are mostly of the same size, are evenly distributed, and are relatively smaller in scale in relation to the main figure, Gomchung Sherab Changchub (sGom chung Shes rab Byang chub, 1130-1173), a previous incarnation of the Situ incarnation. The Tetsa painting varies their size and places the figures asymmetrically. One overall tendency in the eighteenth century---certainly in paintings associated with Situ Panchen-is to miniaturize the minor figures into an almost doll-like size. The landscape background is also smoothed and simplified; the main figures have a mannered preciosity rather than a hearty personality.444 Just the opposite is true of paintings attributed to the late sixteenth century done for Karma Kagyu patrons in the Menri or early Gardri style: the minor figures are larger, the landscapes more complex like their Chinese models. 445 Stylistic development is rarely along a single spectrum bracketed between two poles, but if it were, one might be tempted to date the Tetsa lineage painting slightly earlier in the seventeenth century than the Rubin Museum painting for all of these reasons. The appropriation of the Chinese elements of the landscape was still fresh and novel, not having been abstracted into the soft atmospheric minimalism one sees in the nineteenth-century Karma Gardri paintings, such as the Vajrasattva and Padmasambhava paintings from Tetsa and Tantak. A fifth Kham-style painting preserved in Ladakh appears in the monastery at Korzok. Korzok is located at the northern end of the large freshwater lake Tsomoriri in southeastern Ladakh, near both Spiti to the south and Tibet to the east (Fig. 9.7). It is now one of the headquarters and the winter habitation for Tibetan nomad herders who used to cross the border between Ladakh and Ngari Province in the Rupshu (previously, Ru shod, also Ru thog) area, also referred to in Ladakh contexts as Changthang. 446 Founded in the nineteenth century, this monastery contains a painting of three mahiisiddhas: GhaJ)tapa and his consort at top left, Padmavajra at top right, and Kukkuripa with a white dog, later revealed to be a qiikinz (Fig. 9.8). These are three mahiisiddhas derived from a set of Eight Great Siddhas originally designed and painted by Situ Panchen in 1725-26. They were used as a gift to an influential ruler when Situ Panchen needed permission to build and move to a new monastery nearby.447 Altogether a nine-painting set, with each ofthe eight siddhas painted separately, they were displayed on either side of a central Padmasambhava (or Vajradhara) painting. However, the siddhas from this textually documented (but presumably lost) set were also assembled into composite images, in three- or five-painting sets, or in a single painting. These original compositions of Situ Panchen remained models used and reused without any stigma of "copying" into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, particularly in Kham. Three versions of the composition are in the collection of the Rubin Museum of Art as illustrated and discussed in chapter 2. They differ from each other not in the arrangement of the siddhas but in minor details concerning the landscape, the clouds, and the precise placement of the siddha motif on the rectangular space. 448 The one closest to the Korzok painting is at first glance nearly identical (Fig. 9.9): they share the same model down to the patterns of the scarves, the clouds, and the sharp-edged cusps on the rocks. Nevertheless, the blue water at the bottom ofthe Rubin painting is missing in the Korzok version and there are variations in coloring. As with other nineteenth-century paintings from Kham, the pale green is lightened at the bottom and yields to an unpainted expanse above the horizon, with a graduallight-to-dark tint of blue at the upper sky. Rocks are in the formulaic blue-and-green style with multicolored sets of clouds scattered high and low. This Korzok painting-like the others in monastic and shrine collections in Ladakh and Zangskar we have examined-has stains and cracks along folds. Such a painting is not always hanging in the dukhang of the monastery THE PLACE OF PROVENANCE 189 9.8 (above left) GhaJ;ltJipa, Padmavajra, and Kukkuripa, Korzok Monastery FIG. FIG. 9.9 (above right) GhaJ;ltapa, Padmavajra, and Kukkuripa Eastern Tibet; 19th century Karma (Kagyu) Lineage Ground mineral pigment on cotton 11 x 11 3,4 in. (27.9 x 29.8 em) Rubin Museum of Art C2006.66.434 (HAR889) but exhibited only during festivals or special occasions, resulting in damage from frequent rolling and unrolling. Art historically, we can be sure that it has not been in-painted, its colors not freshened or brightened. Only the stains have been added. There is no evidence that the cloth mounting has been replaced, though the upper dust cover is certainly relatively new. Once again, no inscriptions were discovered on the painting. 190 C HA P TE R 9 The lack of inscriptions naming historical personages prevents us from knowing precisely how the two Vajrasattvas, the Padmasambhava, the Drukpa Kagyu lineage, and the siddha paintings were brought to Ladakh and Zangskar. While one cannot exclude the possibility that the paintings were done in Ladakh, Zangskar, or some other location, we can be certain they were done by artists familiar with painting conventions current in Kham-in the nineteenth century for most of them, and in the seventeenth century for the Drukpa Lama painting. Since we know of no artistic atelier in Ladakh or Zangskar specializing in the Karma Gardri style, it is probably safe to assume, by way of Occam's razor, that they were painted in Kham, or possibly in Karma Kagyu contexts such as Tshurphu in central Tibet. Beyond that, different scenarios can be contemplated for their arrival in Ladakh and Zangskar. It is certainly within the realm ofthe possible that they were commissioned of artists working in the Karma Gardri styles in Kham or elsewhere by traveling Ladakhi or Zangskari patrons who subsequently returned home with them. Since the Padmasambhava and the Tetsa Vajrasattva are not of particularly distinguished quality and focus on a single deity-both potential yidamsthey might instead reflect the kind of painting brought by a solitary religious practitioner for personal devotions or meditation support. Through their traditions of "mendicant asceticism and solitary meditation," Drukpa practitioners "gained the well-deserved reputation in Tibet as that land's long-distance religious travelers and pilgrims par excellence."449 Writing in 1940 after a series of expeditions to both sides of the western Tibetan borders, Tucci observed that in the early seventeenth century, there was a regular intercourse between Jalandhar and Tibet as there is even now. There is hardly any doubt that this was chiefly due to the travels of Tibetan pilgrims of the rDsogs e'en [i.e. Nyingmapa] and specially of the bKa' brgyud pa sects who used to visit the sacred places of Buddhist tradition. After rGod tshang pa [1189-1258] their number must have considerably increased: to-day there is a regular intercourse along the routes and the tracks of western Tibet. 450 Given the series of "Khampa migration and settlement into other parts of far western Tibet"451 during the latter half of the nineteenth century, paintings may have been brought by laymen as well, gradually donated to the local shrineseven one such as Tantak, which is nominally overseen by the Gelukpa monastery ofPhuktal. A notable feature of this nineteenth-century efflorescence of pilgrimage to far-western Tibet and the neighboring regions of Kashmir and India was the recognition and rather arbitrary designation of parts of Himachal Pradesh (including Mandi and Riwalsar) and the Punjab (including Amritsar and Lahore) to be regions associated with the life of the "International Buddha," Padmasambhava. 452 This resulted in a flow of mendicants, including many from Tibet's eastern reaches, across Ngari into Spiti, other regions of Himachal Pradesh, and the Punjab. Since Zangskar and Ladakh were the westernmost outposts of Tibetan Buddhism, it would not be surprising that some of the pilgrims went or returned by way of these villages and monasteries. Most of the pilgrims traveling between Kham and Ladakh and Zangskar remain nameless. Anyone of them could have brought the Vajrasattva and Padmasambhava paintings. However there were a number of prominent Drukpa teachers, mainly from central Tibet or Bhutan, who traveled in or near these regions, along with political events and institutional ties that fostered such connections. Among the most prominent events, one of the earliest Drukpa teachers to stay at Kailash and to go even farther west is Go Tshangpa (rGod Tshang pa), mentioned by Tucci above. Tucci asserts that Go Tshangpa went as far as Jalandhara via Spiti and Lahaul, where "imprints" of his hands or feet are still pointed out. 453 Locally, it is believed that he came to Ladakh; above Hemis Monastery there is still a shrine devoted to and named after this early pilgrim-meditator. 454 The Drukpa presence at Kailash in western Tibet began in the early thirteenth century and "lasted without interruption ever since."455 Go Tshangpa's follower, Orgyanpa Rinchen Pal (0 rgyan pa Rin chen dpal, 1230-1309), also reached Jalandhara, and returned via Kangra, Lahaul, and Ladakh. 456 Tagtshang Repa (sTag tshang Ras pa), also known as Ogyan Ngawang Gyatso (0 rgyan Ngag dbang rGya mtsho, 1574-1651) strengthened the Drukpa institutional ties with the Ladakhi kings through his trip to Ladakh possibly in 1614 (when he also visited Lahaul and Zangskar both on his way and when returning) and during his long stay in Ladakh beginning in 1622.457 However, Tagtshang Repa was not from Kham, but from central Tibet. Still, under his influence, the Ladakhi king Sengge Namgyal (Seng ge rNam rgyal) sent numerous missions to the Drukchen incarnation between 1626 and 1641, bringing gifts back and forth between the Drukpa centers of central Tibet and Ladakh. 458 It was also during this period of the first half of the seventeenth century when Bemis Monastery itself was founded. Eventually these relations were complicated by the establishment of a branch of the Drukpa in Bhutan. Conflict arose when the Ladakhi kings supported the Bhutanese Drukpa against the Fifth Dalai Lama, culminating in the war of 1679-84.459 A certain Druwang Rinpoche (Grub dbang Rin po che), a follower of the Fifth Drukchen (dPag bsam dBang po, 1593-1641), was sent to Ladakh at the bequest of the Ganden Phodrang (Geluk) government in 1655 in an attempt to smooth relations between the Lhasa and Leh governments. 460 Another mission was sent soon after 1661. 461 The tensions between the Bhutanese Drukpas and Lhasa broke into hostilities in 1676 but were resolved by 1678. The Lhasa-Leh war, precipitated by the Ladakh Namgyal kings supporting the Bhutanese against Lhasa, started in late 1679. The Sixth Drukchen, Mipham Wangpo (Mi pham dBang po, 1641-1717, born in southeastern Tibet), traveled to Ladakh around 1684 in order to convince the Namgyal king to return to the Buddhist fold after his (forced?) conversion to Islam. 462 The Seventh Shinta (dKa' Drukchen, Kagyu ｔｲｩｮｬｴｾ＠ brgyud 'Phrin las Shin rta, 1718-1766) visited Ladakh around 1747 or 1748. 463 The Eighth Drukchen Kunzig Chokyi Nangwa (Kun gzigs Chos kyi sNang wa, 1768-1822) visited between 1801 and 1802, unfortunately during a smallpox epidemic; the king died, though the Drukchen survived. 464 Among the notable Bhutanese Drukpa visitors to Lakakh is Jamgon Ngawang Gyaltsen (Byams mgon Ngag dbang rGyal mtshan, 1647-1732). He was a celebrated guest of the kings of Ladakh between 1706 and 1712.465 Later in the same century, a distinguished lama from a Nyingma monastery (Ka' thog) in the Derge region ofKham, Kathog Rigzin Tsewang Norbu (Ka' thog Rig 'dzin Tshe dbang Nor bu, 1698-1755), was sent to Ladakh in 1752 to 1753 by the Seventh Dalai Lama to mediate a dispute within the Namgyal royal family. The rift was splitting Ladakh into two and disrupting trade and tribute. THE PLACE OF PROVENANCE 191 FIG. 9.10 (above left) Hand-colored photograph of the Kham yogi Drubwang Shakya Shri (grub dbang sha kya shri; 1853-1919) Bardan Gompa, Zangskar FIG. 9.II (above right) Kankani Ch6rten, !char village, Zangskar These tensions had ramifications also in Spiti. 466 The Kathog succeeded in producing a treaty after talks conducted at the Dechen N amgyal Monastery at Hanle (Vruple), east of the large lake Tsomoriri. Founded by Tagtsang Repa in 1624, Hanle was the site where the Ladakhi king Sengge Namgyal died in 1642 while returning from an expedition to Tsang against "raiding Mongol clans and Guge refugees," and where Tsetan Namgyal (Tshe brtan rNam rgyal) was enthroned in 1782. 467 Another high-profile Drukpa Kagyu pilgrim from Kham was Lama Karma Tenzin (sKarma bsTan 'dzin) of II I l ' 19 2 CHAPTER 9 Dzonkhul Gompa (rDzong khul dGon pa) in Zangskar. 468 He was from Derge and was "attracted by the fame of [the Drukpa yogi, abbot and painter] bZhad. pa [rDo rje, d. 1816], whom he succeeded as abbot at Dzonkhul (rDzong Khul) after the death ofbZhad pa."469 Not long after his arrival, in 1814, the Fifth Dechen Chokor Rinpoche Yongzin Yeshe Drubpa (bDe chen Chos 'khor Yongs 'dzin Ye shes grub pa, 17811845), a Drukpa teacher from central Tibet arrived in Ladakh for a three-year stay.470 Across the Omasi La, south ofDzonkhul, in the region known as Paldar, a mother and a child from Kham settled in the twentieth century, while they and several other locals became disciples of a Nyingma master from the first half of the twentieth century known as the Kham Lama, since he was originally from Lithang (Li thang) in Kham. 471 Parenthetically, an old, hand-colored photograph of the Kham yogi Drubwang Togden Shakya Shri (Grub dbang Rtogs ldan Sha kya Shri, 1853-1919) is kept on the altar at Bardan Gompa in Zangskar (Fig. 9.10), so the fame ofDrukpa yogis traveled in both directions.472 As David Jackson discusses in chapter 7, the Ladakhi painter Ridzon Setriil Losang Tshultrim ChOphel (1864-1927) of the Geluk monastery of Ridzong went to southwestern Kham for study. However, there is still no evidence to support the beliefthat any of these particular travelers were in any way involved in bringing the paintings discussed to Ladakh or Zangskar. They do, however, provide necessary examples from different periods of the types of contacts between Kham and the western regions by which such paintings are likely to have been conveyed. There is one final admittedly enigmatic piece of visual evidence worth considering. It does not demonstrate the presence ofKham artistic styles in Ladakh and Zangskar but rather documents contacts with preeminent Kanna Kagyu tulkus as early as the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century. It is found in the murals inside the Kankani ChOrten at the village ofIchar (Fig. 9.11).473 On the upper interior murals, there are two smaller images ofDusum Khyenpa (Dus gsum mKhyen pa, 1110-1193), the First Kannapa (Figs. 9.l2 and 9.l3), and one large portrait of a red-hat lama with the Karma Kagyu stem lineage ending with Dusum Khyenpa above him (Fig. 9.l4). In both depictions of the Kannapa wearing the black hat (Figs. 9.l2 and 9.l3), he makes the gesture of turning the wheel of the teaching, dharmacakra mudra, a conventional attribute ofDusum Khyenpa and the basis for his identification here. The larger portrait of the teacher wearing a red hat (Fig. 9.l4) appears on a wall to the proper right of Ratnasambhava Tathagata, with four-anned Avalokitesvara on the latter's left. All three (i.e., the red-hat teacher, Ratnasambhava, and Avalokitesvara) are nearly the same size and are surrounded by hosts of smaller deities, or retinue. The red-hat monk, the most prominent teacher featured in the lehar murals with the Karmapa above his left shoulder, is most likely one of the first Shamars, the socalled Red Hat Kannapas, a lineage that began in the late thirteenth century.474 Based on style, these murals date to the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century. I am not aware of a member of one of the Red Hat Kanna Kagyu lineages visiting Ngari around that time; moreover, unlike the Drigung and Drukpa Kagyu lineages, which are well-attested throughout Ladakh and Zangskar, Karma Kagyu shrines are rare there. Still, the presence of the portraits of black- and FIG. 9.12 (top left) Padmasambhava and Dusum Khyenpa Mural within !char Kankani Chorten, !char village, Zangskar; ca. late 14th--early 15th century FIG. 9.13 (above left) Dusum Khyenpa Mural within !char Kankani Ch6rten, !char village, Zangskar; ca. late 14th--early 15th century FIG. 9.14 (above right) Shamar Lama Mural within !char Kankani Ch6rten, !char village, Zangskar; ca. late 14th--early 15th century THE PLACE OF PROVENANCE 193 red-hat Karmapas deep in Zangskar must represent some direct contact, familiarity with, and even reverence for their lineage on the part of religious devotees (no later than the fifteenth century) in Zangskar. 475 In the early eighteenth century, an otherwise unknown Ladakhi prince is recorded in the biography of the Eighth Shamar (dPal chen Chos kyi Don grub, 1695-1732) as having met the Shamar and Situ Panchen during 1724 in the Manasarovar region of western Tibet while traveling to Kailash. 476 The importance of Situ Panchen for the development of the Karma Gardri style is well established and has been repeatedly mentioned above. 477 Thirty-eight years later, in 1762, Situ Panchen met the Ladakhi queen mother Nyila Wangmo (Nyi zla dBang mo), probably in Lhasa in 1764 to congratulate the Eighth Dalai Lama on his accession. 478 There Situ Panchen met two brothers, Ladakhi princelings, one of whom was probably also the distinguished head of Hemis Monastery.479 As we will see next, this contact with the chief personalities of the Karma Kagyu was revived in the nineteenth century. Already we have demonstrated that many opportunities arose in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for southeastern Tibetan paintings to have reached the shrines of Ladakh and Zangskar. On July 14,2010, on the seventeenth day of a forty-two day trek through Ladakh and Zangskar, I happened to arrive at the previously described (Fig. 9.17) Korzok Monastery on the eve of its annual masked dance festival, Korzok Gustor (Fig. 9.15). During the uncosturned run-through (Fig. 9.16), I entered the dukhang and was surprised to find that the monks had displayed a number of their artistic and religious treasures, including a group of twelve thangkas that were in the Karma Gardri style (Fig. 9.17). (1 had been to Korzok in 2002 and had not seen these paintings.) 194 CHAPTER 9 --Eleven White Taras hung on either side ofa Karrnapa portrait (Figs. 9.19-9.29). A monk from Korzok informed me that this was a self-portrait of the Ninth Karrnapa Wangchuk Dorje (Fig. 9.18) and that he had painted it along with the Tariis. He also said that ten more Tara paintings (making up a set of Twentyone Taras) were in a related Drukpa monastery closer to the border of Tibet, and thus restricted for foreigners. The monastery in question may be HanIe, the Drukpa monastery mentioned above, too near the border of Chinese-controlled Tibet to presently allow foreigners FIG. 9.15 (top) Korzok Monastery during Korzok Gustor July 15, 2010 FIG. 9.16 (above) Monk in rehearsal for Korzok Gustor July 14, 2010 Photograph by Joel Reed FIG. 9.17 Interior view of Korzok Dukhang with Karmapa paintings displayed July 15, 2010 access, or Chumur, a sister monastery to Korzok, similarly off limits to foreigners. Three of the hanging paintings had inscriptions on the backs, which were also uncovered. On the day of the actual dance, the dust covers had been removed with only the red rolling ribbons hanging in front of the paintings. These I carefully set aside while photographing and then equally delicately put them back. Thus on the afternoon of one day and the morning of the next, I was able to study and photograph them within the dukhang, not ideal conditions since because of the festival, there were many people coming through the shrine and performers getting in and out of robes and masks with assistants. I did not feel comfortable measuring each painting with a tape measure and made only rough estimates of the sizes. Nonetheless, it was only because of the festive atmosphere, with the treasures displayed and everyone happy and involved, that these paintings became accessible. When I returned on July 28,2011 (seventeenth day of a thirty-seven day trek), the date happened to coincide with the visit of the current Drukchen Rinpoche (the Twelfth Gyalwang Drukpa Jigme Perna Wangchen [rGyal db,ang 'Brug pa 'Jigs med Pad rna dBang chen, b. 1963]). The eleven Tara paintings were once again displayed (in a different configuration among other paintings), but not including the Karmapa portrait. Other paintings that had not been shown the year before, including a different Karma Gardri portrait discussed below, were also hanging near the throne of Drukchen Rinpoche. Between the two opportunities for study and photography under fieldwork conditions, the photographs revealed enough to make some preliminary observations about the paintings. I have not been able to confirm the information provided by the helpful monk-that the rest of the set is in an inaccessible monastery (to me)--so the following will focus on the twelve paintings in Korzok Monastery. I would also point out that all of the Korzok Taras are White Taras, while known sets ofthe Twenty-one Taras are made up of different forms of Tara; they do not include White Tara in this standard form: two-armed, legs in full lotus position (padmasana), seven eyes (on the palms and soles and above the normal pair), proper left hand holding the stem of a white utpala-lotus, the right extended beyond the knee in the gesture of giving or dana, the paramita of generosity. The monk's information that the paintings were done by the Karmapa can be partially confirmed in the case of the three paintings with inscriptions. They were not by the Ninth Karmapa, but rather by the Fourteenth Karmapa Thekchok Dorje (Theg mchog rDo rje, 1798-1868).480 This is based on the inscriptions found on the back of two of the Tara paintings and the portrait of a Karmapa. Its iconography suggests this painting does indeed depict the Ninth Karmapa Wangchuk Dorje (dBang phyug rDo rje, 1556-160111603) (Figs. 9.18 and 9.30). While not all depictions of the Ninth Karmapa show him in teaching gesture, vitarka mudra, and holding a long-life vase in his right and left hands respectively, this appears to be one of the standard ways of depicting him, and no other Karmapa is consistently portrayed with these characteristics. 481 Interestingly, in two different modem paintings of the Ninth Karmapa based on the same template, the deity above his right shoulder is White Tara, the same deity surrounding him at Korzok (Fig. 9.17). The beginning of the first line of the inscription on the Karmapa portrait, once again in cursive "headless" script, (dbu med) is, unfortunately, covered by a patch (Fig. 9.30a, inscription). Karsha Lonpo and Dan Martin have kindly transcribed it as follows: xxx xxx xx rje'i dbang phyug nyar (nyid? nyer?) la yang / 'di nas byangchub snying po 'i bar / rjes 'dzin byin gyis rlob pa dang / don gnyis 'grub par mdzad du gsol / ces pa'ang karma ka ya na pa ra ma badzra syas so / THE PLACE OF PROVENANCE 195 FIG. 9.18 Portrait of Ninth Karmapa Wangchuk Dorje Fourteenth Karmapa Thegchuk Dorje Korzok Monastery; 19th century FIG. 9.19 Portrait of Tara No. Ai Fourteenth Karmapa Thegchuk Dorje Korzok Monastery; 19th century FIG. 9.20 Portrait of Tara No. A2 Attributed to Fourteenth Karmapa Thegchuk Dorje Korzok Monastery; 19th century FIG. 9.24 Portrait of Tara No. B6 Attributed to Fourteenth Karmapa Thegchuk Dorje Korzok Monastery; 19th century FIG. 9.25 Portrait of Tara No. B7 Attributed to Fourteenth Karmapa Thegchuk Dorje Korzok Monastery; 19th century FIG. 9.26 Portait of Tara No. C8 Fourteenth Karmapa Thegchuk Dorje Korzok Monastery; 19th century 196 CHAPTER 9 FIG. 9.21 Portrait of Tlirli No. A3 Attributed to Fourteenth Karmapa Thegchuk Dorje Korzok Monastery; 19th century FIG. 9.27 Portrait of Tlirli No. C9 Attributed to Fourteenth Karmapa Thegchuk Dorje Korzok Monastery; 19th century FIG. 9.22 Portrait of Tlirli No. B4 Attributed to Fourteenth Karmapa Thegchuk Dorje Korzok Monastery; 19th century FIG. 9.28 Portrait of Tlirli No. C10 Attributed to Fourteenth Karmapa Thegchuk Dorje Korzok Monastery; 19th century FIG. 9.23 Portrait of Tara No. B5 Attributed to Fourteenth Karmapa Thegchuk Dorje Korzok Monastery; 19th century FIG. 9.29 Portrait of Tara No. C11 Attributed to Fourteenth Karmapa Thegchuk Dorje Korzok Monastery; 19th century THE PLACE OF PROV E NANCE 197 A rough translation might be: ... [rdo?] rje [or Lord, Master] Wangchuk Karmapa ... / From now until we attain enlightenment/ Empowering through adhi$thiina disciples, then / Mayall benefits and accomplishments be done / This [done by] Karmapa Yana Parama Vajra (= Sanskrit equivalent of Theg mchog rDo rje). Because the crucial first line that might have identified this figure is obstructed, we can only note that Wangchuk is part ofthe Karmapa's name. Ifwe can reconstruct the previous word as Dorje, it is odd that this part of the name would come before the Wangchuk. Less tentative, according to Dan Martin, is the last line, a Sanskrit transcription of the Fourteenth Karmapa's name, an erudite literary device fitting what we know of him. Jamgon Kongtrul, the Rime master mentioned earlier, reports that in 1836 to 1837, "Gyalwang Karmapa Thekchok Dorje moved his monastic encampment to the eastern Tibetan provinces and settled at Karma Gon Monastery. A letter came from Karmapa to Situ Rinpoche requiring Situ to send me to instruct Karmapa in those aspects of Sanskrit grammar which he wished to study."482 In the first month of 1837 to 1838 Jamgon Kongtrul stayed with the Fourteenth Karmapa and offered him: a comprehensive teaching and review of the Sanskrit grammar entitled Kalapa. He insisted that he needed further notes to explain the basic text, so I composed these as welL He spent the fourth lunar month visiting members of his family, during which time I also gave him instructions on the grammar entitled The Discourse of Sarasvata and the work Poetics: The Source ofRiches, and he in I98 CHAPTER 9 turn bestowed on me several of his calligraphyexercises. 483 This first-person account not only confirms the Karmapa's interest in Sanskrit but also his handsome calligraphy, evident in all three inscriptions. Jamgon Kongtrul remained in close contact with the Karmapa through at least 1864 to 1865; they exchanged teachings, transmissions, and empowerments. 484 In the fifth lunar month of 1860 the Fourteenth Karmapa arrived, with a retinue of some fifty persons including Buddhist luminaries at Jamgon Kongtrul's newly constructed hermitage Tsadra in time to perform the consecration of the structure and its contents. 485 He attended the Black Crown ceremony performed by the Fourteenth Karmapa on numerous occasions and was assigned the task of explanations to the audience. They traveled to and from central Tibet together, the Karmapa sometimes in the company of a younger incarnation, the Ninth Drukchen Jigme Mingyur Wanggyal ('Jigs med Mi 'gyur dBang rgyal, 1823-1883). This is significant given the importance of the Drukchen for Ladakh and because Korzok is a Drukpa Monastery now under the aegis of Hemis Monastery and the Twelfth Drukchen RiI}poche. The condition of the painting is somewhat worse than others we have examined (Fig. 9.18a, detail). Vertical and horizontal creases have resulted in paint loss. Although there is a serious rent at the Karmapa's left shoulder, the face except at the hairline has been spared. The medium-ink lines of his demeanor are still clearly visible, while traces of pink or carmine suggest the face and fingers were once lightly tinted. the triple gradient of green, plain, and blue is without any other landscape signifiers. The Chinese red-lacquer table supports a kuv,Qikii-water pourer, a porcelain cup and stand, and a metalwork bowl. Below the table, a careful arrangement of green, orange, red, and blue cinttima1).i spread between a conch and a piece of coral, enhances the sense of planar space and distance. This sense of space, along with the intensity of the colors against the plain ground are the hallmarks of the Karma Gardri style of the nineteenth century. We will return to the issue of style below, after first considering the eleven Taras. At least two of the White Taras were painted by the Fourteenth Karmapa as demonstrated by his inscriptions on the back of paintings Al and C8 in the group (Figs. 9.19, 9.19a, 9.26, and 9.26a). The two inscriptions (Figs. 9.19b and 9.26b) not only plainly mention him by name, but they also make explicit their dedication to the headman of Rupshu, Tsering Tashi, also the founder of Korzok Monastery. Both begin by requesting the blessings of AIya Tara (,Phags rna sGroI rna), both mention the chief (dpon) of Ladakh Ruthog or Rushod (La dwags Ru shod; i.e. Rupshu) Tsering Tashi (Tse ring bKra shis), and both indicate that they are bestowed on him by Karmapa Thekchok Dorje (Karma pa Theg mchog rDo rje) by name. 486 The longer inscription, onAI, appears to mention that it is a nying thang; that is, a one-day thangka, which such luminaries as Situ Panchen are known to have painted, including White Tadi. 487 This is one ofthe simplest compositions in the group, making it a plausible candidate for the nying thang classification. The historical circumstances and significance of a donation of thangkas to a Drukpa monastery in Ladakh by a high incarnate lama based mainly in Kham must be sifted carefully because they are so unexpected and unprecedented. The twelve paintings are a tangible manifestation of a broad involvement of the Fourteenth Karmapa in the founding of Korzok Monastery and with the leading personalities involved in that founding, including the Ninth Drukchen, the Ruthog chief, Tsering Tashi, and Kunga FIG. 9.r8A, detail Portrait of Ninth Karmapa Wangchuk Dorje Fourteenth Karmapa Thegchuk Dorje Korzok Monastery; 19th century THE PLACE OF PROVENANCE I99 FIG. 9 .1 8B, inscriptions on reverse Lote Nyingpo (Kun dga' bLo gro sNying po), understood to be the actual founder of the monastery and who considered himself a disciple of the Fourteenth Karmapa. The name of the Ruthog chief Tsering Tashi-mentioned in the inscriptions-is also identified with the establishment of Korzok by a contemporary history of Buddhism in Ladakh. Here it is noted that the monastery was named by the Fourteenth Karmapa as: "Thubten Nyinpo Drub Gyudtan Darcho Ling (Thub bstan sNying po sGrub brGyud bstan Dar chos gling)"; that the Fourteenth Karmapa sent an official letter with his seal, blessing the monastery; and that he wrote the monastic rules (bca yig) for the monastery. The Rushod Ponming (dpon ming) Tsering Tobdan (elsewhere Tsering Tashi) was also involved with the founding; and a statue of the Buddha (Sha' kya thub) consecrated by the Fourteenth Karmapa was brought from Tibet. 488 There appeared to be delays and inauspicious signs between the period of the founding and the completion, and so a disciple of the Fourteenth Karmapa, Kunga Lote Nyingpo, and the Rupshu (i.e., 200 CHAPTER 9 Ruthog, Rushog) chief asked the Ninth Gyalwang Drukpa to approve another site. It took eleven years, between 1847 and 1858, to complete the monastery.489 Kunga Lote Nyingpo not only founded Korzok but is credited with establishing the nearby monastery Chumur. 49O On September 19,1846, Alexander Cunningham indirectly confirmed the existence of Korzok when he journeyed through this region and "passed Korzo Gunpa, or monastery, inhabited by one Lama, who resides there throughout the year. He rears some barley and turnips on the banks of the Korzo rivulet close "' that the to the lake."49! This suggests monastery was at that time more of a hermitage, certainly not of the current scale (Fig. 9.15). By contrast, some twenty years earlier, Trebeck, normally a keen observer, never mentions it despite having walked along the west bank from the northernmost point of Tsomoriri to Kyangdam, the southernmost point, and would have had to pass the site on his way to Parang La, Spiti.492 By 1931, when Walter Koelz traveled through the region on his collecting expedition, "There were about fifteen wild monks in the monastery."493 These significant notes seem to confirm that there was no shrine or monastery at all in the l820s, and when founded by 1846, it was at first a very modest establishment. Only after 1858 did it take on larger dimensions and require a monastic code of behavior for monks living together. The Fourteenth Karmapa bestowed paintings on Korzok and mentions the Ruthog chief, Tsering Tashi, by name, suggesting a personal connection between the incarnate lama, his disciple Kunga Lote Nyingpo, and Tsering Tashi. It is possible that their relationship was carried out purely by correspondence. However it is clear in his biography as well as Jamgon Kongtrul's observations, that the Fourteenth Karmapa Thegchok Dorje, made extensive pilgrimages. He and a disciple traveled to Ngari Korsum (mNga ri sKor gsum), certainly going to Kailash and Manasarovar. 494 Perhaps he actually encountered the Korzok founders there or in central or even southeastern Tibet, though this is only speculation. In July 2011, along with the eleven Tara paintings, another Karma Gardri painting was found in the Korzok dukhang, this one depicting the Fourteenth Karmapa (Figs. 9.30 and 9.30, detail). An inscription in gold against the side of the red offering table reads, in part, "Homage to Thekchog Dorje."495 It appears to be a late nineteenth-century painting. At the center above the Karmapa is Amitayus, at the proper right comer is White Tara, and in the top-left comer is Padmasambhava. A tiny image of the cotton-clad yogi Milarepa, representing the Kagyu lineage, is balanced atop the snow peak on the Karmapa's right. At bottom center is Bernag Chen Mahiikala, the personal protector of the Karmapas, with the four-armed protectress Dudso Dokam Wangchugma, and the treasure protector, the "Oathbound Blacksmith," Damchen Garwa Nagpo, holding a bellows and seated on a goat with intertwined horns, in the left and right comers, respectively. A fascinating vernacular version of the founding events at Korzok was recorded by Monisha Ahmed and is FIG. 9. I9A, detail of Tara No. A1 Fourteenth Karmapa Thegchuk Dorje Korzok Monastery; 19th century THE PLACE OF PROVENANCE 20I most widely used today. . . . Once the monastery was built, Korzok became the focal point of the region of Rupshu and the Rupshu Goba its chief authority. 496 FIG. 9.19B, inscriptions on reverse worth extended quotation and consideration. According to this source, the family members of the chief of Rupshu were nobility from Lhasa. When they arrived in Rupshu, Kunga Lote Nyingpo was living at Chumur. Since many monks had died unexpectedly at that location, Kunga Lote Nyingpo was afraid the location was inauspicious. He went to the Rupshu Goba [headman] and said that a new monastery had to be built ... Tsering Tashi was the new Rupshu Goba. Kunga Loto [sic] requested Tsering Tashi to go to Lhasa and consult the lamas there to decide on a site for the monastery. In Lhasa, the lamas told Tsering Tashi to conceive of building the monastery in the navel of the Goddess Dolma [i.e., Tara]. The resulting sanctified quality of the local environment would mean a pure setting for the building and remove the misfortune that prevailed at the present site of Chumur. The lamas told Tsering Tashi that in Ruphsu there is a mountain in the shape 202 CHAPTER 9 of the goddess Dolma, with her right leg outstretched and her left leg folded in. [Compare Fig. 9.7] There in the centre of her navel he was to build the monastery. Tsering Tashi replied that there are so many mountains-how would he know which one was Dolma? He was then given a statue of Shakyamuni (i.e., Buddha) and told that it would recite the prayer 'ma-ha mu-ni yes so ha' all the way till he reached the place designated for the construction ofthe monastery. The Goba did as the lall1as said, but when the statue stopped chanting he noticed that a man had just been cremated at that site. He hesitated and wondered how he could build a monastery there. The statue of Shilkyamuni replied that it was the chosen spot, and that it was a good place because the man who had just been cremated there was a virtuous person, he had a 'good bone' (ru-shod). It was from this 'good bone' that Rupshu derives its name, which refers to the place of the good bone. Most people say that now only the clergy continue to refer to the place by its old name Ru-shod, of which Rupshu is the modified fonn and the one Although Ahmed's sources hold that the Korzok Gompa is six hundred years 01d,497 and include tales of miraculous events such as a speaking statue, the account nonetheless preserves the role ofTsering Tashi, and notes that lamas from Tibet were involved in the founding along with a Sakyamuni sculpture 498 (such as the one sent by the Fourteenth Karmapa). Also intriguing is the prominence of Tara, although she is widely beloved in all Tibetan cultures. The eleven Tara paintings may be divided into three groups on the basis of the increasing complexity of the composition: A, in which Tara appears alone (AI-3; Figs. 9.19-9.21 and 9.19a); B, in which she appears with a deity above her (B4-7; Figs. 9.22-9.25 and 9.25a); and C, in which Tara appears with a deity both above and below her (C8-U ; Figs. 9.26-9.29, 9.26a, 9.27a-b, 9.28a, and 9.29a). The paintings vary in size, with none larger than fourteen inches wide and some no more than eight inches wide, with heights correspondingly proportional. The fact that they are not all ofthe same size confirms that they were not made at the same time as a set and alerts us to their heterogeneous origins. Nine of the paintings are mounted in similar manner and materials as that of the Ninth Karmapa (AI-3, B4--6, C8-10; Figs. 9.19-9.24 and 9.26-9.28). All of these have plain blue silk framing all four sides, red or orange rolling ribbons (streamers), and a recent tie-dyed dust cover. However, only three of the nine (A2, A3 and B6; Figs. 9.20,9.21, and 9.24) also have-like the Karmapa portrait-a slender inner gold brocade strip immediately outlining the painting. (It is not the case that all three with inscriptions have such an addition, though two of the three inscribed paintings-including the Karmapa-do have this embellishment.) One painting (C9; Fig. 9.27) in this group of nine similarly mounted Tara paintings has the addition of a "door" (thang sgo) on the lower panel, in what looks to be Indian brocade of silver and yellow medallions on a red ground. Two Tara paintings (B7 and Cll; Figs. 9.25 and 9.29) are mounted singularly-B7 with a red inner brocade border (matching the streamers) and older Chinese blue brocade with a cloud pattern; and C 11 with fine Chinese yellow and green figured damask silk on three sides and a contemporary satin red machine-made cloth with colored plant designs on the bottom flare; its streamers are also unique. As we will see, these eccentricities in the mounting reinforce other differences that suggest, with some certainty for B7, an alternate origin. 499 In every painting with a small deity above Tara (eight of the eleven), it is either Buddha Amitayus (B5, C8-11; Figs. 9.23 and 9.26-9.29) or Amitabha (B4, B6-7; Figs. 9.22, 9.24, and 9.25). The four paintings with an additional small deity below (C8-11; Figs. 9.26-9.29) have in every case the same two-armed white goddess holding a visva-vajra at her chest with her right arm and a medicine or monk's bowl (patrii) at her left hip (Figs. 9.27a and 9.28a). This is the two-armed ｕｾｊＩｉ｡ｶｩｪｹ＠ (gTsug tor rNam rgyal Phyag gNyis ma).500 In fact, the four paintings of Group C (Figs. 9.26-9.29) feature the three deities known as the Three Long-life Deities (Tse Lha rnam gsum): Amitayus, White Tara, and ｕｾｊＩｉ｡ｶｩｪｹＮ＠ Their presence suggests the intentions of the artists to extend the lifetime (of oneself or of others) during illness or old age, during astrologically inauspicious years, because of difficulties arising during meditation practice, or because of prophecies of a curtailed lifespan. This intended function probably carries over to all the White Tara paintings, whether or not they have the full complement of Long-life Deities. The three paintings with inscriptions by the Fourteenth Karmapa provide a number of points for comparison, though each is distinct (Figs. 9.18, 9.18a, 9.19, 9.19a, 9.26, and 9.26a). The control in the execution of the brush stroke, a certain tightness in the drawing of the facial features, textile patterns made by aggregating dots of yellow or gold, and the coral, conch, and cintiimaT)i offerings are all features shared by the Kannapa portrait (Figs. 9.18 and 9.18a) and the FIG. 9.26A (above left), detail of Tara No.C8 Fourteenth Karmapa Thegchuk Dorje Korzok Monastery; 19th century FIG. 9.26B inscriptions on reverse (above) Tara C8 (Figs. 9.26 and 9.26a). Also, the two Taras (Figs. 9.19, 9.19a and 9.26, 9.26a) both sit on a lotus emerging from light blue water surrounded by eddies and supported by drooping green lotus leaves with similar leaf patterns. In both cases the breasts are indicated by two circles, the right nipple simultaneously emphasized and hidden by a necklace ornament. Al (Figs. 9.19 and 9.19a), the simplest painting with an inscription possibly referring to itself as a nying thang, or one-day painting, is looser and more spontaneous in the depiction of the facial features, wisps of hair above the ears, and the sagging bun on the left side of her head. The single, unrimmed halo is less than a perfect circle, as if drawn by a skilled but not expert hand; there is a sun and moon in the comers. As might be expected in a painting done in a single sitting, the background is nearly plain, except for the rippled water. All three inscribed paintings have THE PLACE OF PROVENANCE 203 FIG. 9.30 Fourteenth Karmapa Thegchuk Dorje Korzok Monastery; 19th century 20 4 CHAPTER 9 FIG. 9.30, detail (above) FIG. 9.28A (top right), detail of Tara No. CI0 Two-armed ｕｾｊＩｉ｡ｶｩｪｹ＠ and lower landscape Attributed to Fourteenth Karmapa Thegchuk Dorje Korzok Monastery; 19th century FIG. 9.27A (bottom right), detail of Tara No. C9 Two-armed ｕｾｊＩｉ｡ｶｩｪｹ＠ and lower landscape Attributed to Fourteenth Karmapa Thegchuk Dorje Korzok Monastery; 19th century the distinctive gradient color, with blue at the top fading to a plain ground, and then in the case of the Karmapa portrait (Figs. 9.18 and 9.18a) and C8 (Figs. 9.26 and 9 .26a), to green at the base, though C8 has additional hummocks (two·of them supported by eroded escarpments) and a lake. Of these three, only this Tara (C8) has clouds, both cumulus at the lower horizon line, and the long-tailed bands of blue and white supporting Amitayus above (Fig. 9.26a). The size of the main figure in relationship to the picture plane is different in each case. The Al Tara (Figs. 9.19 and 9.l9a) is largest, dominating the whole space, while the Karmapa portrait (Fig. 9.18 and 9.18a) has a generous allotment of space around him, yet he does not feel lost in the space. The Tara of C8 (Figs. 9.26 and 9.26a) is by contrast much reduced, though obviously this in the interest of introducing the other two Long-life Deities. All three inscribed paintings are constructed using repetitive drawing THE PLACE OF PROVENANCE 205 FIG. 9.25A (above left), detail of Tara No.B7 Attributed to Fourteenth Karmapa Thegchuk Dorje Korzok Monastery; 19th century FIG. 9.29A (top right), detail of Tara No. Cll Attributed to Fourteenth Karmapa Thegchuk Dorje Korzok Monastery; 19th century FIG. 9.27B (right), detail of Tara No. C9 Attributed to Fourteenth Karmapa Thegchuk Dorje Korzok monastery; 19th century formulas particularly evident in the garment folds: a combination oflong, flowing lines in the diagonal scarves or swirls of robes, with practiced swallowtail patterns-such as those between the ankles of the two Taras-and the symmetrical turning of the red robe hem to reveal the green underside in the Karmapa portrait. Certainly in the latter and in C8, there is a shared tension between 206 CHAPTER 9 the openness and plainness of the background with precisely drawn intensely colored objects. The one-day Tara has a more consistent and less insistent flow from one part into another. Could these three paintings have been done by the same hand? We might be able to answer this question better if we expand the scope to include the other paintings in the set. Let us immediately eliminate a painting that stands apart-B7, which, as already indicated, has a singular mounting (Figs. 9.25 and 9.25a). Its back is also much darker and thinner than any but one other painting in the set. In the worst condition of all the paintings, only here is Tara's chignon upright and not aslant like all the others. Most (but not all) of the other Taras have a white or blue scarf that circles Tara's left elbow. In B7 the scarf drapes diagonally across her torso. The lotus is completely different from the others, her hair is adorned with flowers and gold chains, not a crown, and finally, the drawing is clumsier in its handling of the line, less precise, particularly in the trees and offering in the lower section. I would eliminate this from consideration as having come from the same hand or painterly prescription that generated the others. Certainly it belongs to the category of Karma Gardri painting. However, there is a folk painting quality in the face and the inert clouds along the upper border of Tiira's nimbus and at Amitabha's back. The other painting with a distinctive mounting, Cll (Figs. 9.29 and 9.29a), is also darker than any of the others, though a plain-weave cotton backing precludes determining whether it too had an inscription. It stands out because it is marginally finer than any of the others. The lotus flower is somewhat less formulaic, the eyes look slightly downward to Tara's right, and her dhoti has the subtlest pattern on it, with stripes of alternating width and color, and a hint of gradient shading. The same hints are also visible rimming the main body nimbus of all three figures in the painting. The darkened surface might be because it was recognized as being finer, and so was kept hanging in the abbot's quarters (I am speculating) when the others were rolled up. Or, it may actually be older, done by a more practiced hand, inherited by the Fourteenth Karmapa, and therefore included in the group he gave to the Rupshu chief at the Korzok founding. Most of the other paintings fit very closely to the inscribed Tara C8 (Figs. 9.26 and 9.26a). C9 is somewhat stifter, with a preciosity in demeanor, but this may be because more pink shading remains on her face, arms, and torso than on the others (Figs. 9.27 and 9.27b). There are other anomalies, such as the Gauguin-like coloring and shapes to the clouds supporting Amitiiyus, the stiff lotus petals on the throne, and crudely drawn flowers and trees in groups of three at the bottom (Figs. 9.27 and 9.27b). But most of the garment patterns, including the ruffle around the waist, the trailing scarves draped over the throne, and the long-stemmed lotus at the left shoulder, correspond to the others enough to indicate it is following the same model in paintings associated with Situ Panchen from the eighteenth century.501 Based on this type of close examination, I would suggest that the Karmapa portraits, A2, A3, B4, B5, B6, C8, and CIO (Figs. 9.20-9.24,9.26, and 9.29) fit very comfortably together, with C9 and C11 (Figs. 9.27 and 9.29) not as impossible to link to the primary group as B7 (Figs. 9.25 and 9.25a) would be. This leaves Al as the remaining outlier, though it has an inscription by the Karmapa (Figs. 9.19 and 9.19a). Is the idea that it is a one-day painting sufficient to account for the differences? It is, as already indicated, somewhat looser and more relaxed, not following as precise a template as the others. A2 and A3 (Figs. 9.20 and 9.21), like Al (Figs. 9.19 and 9.19a), are compositionally spare, and only have offerings below the central figure but no other deities. They might also be candidates for classification as one-day paintings, given their compositions. Yet they are as tightly constructed in terms of execution as the main group and do not stand apart the way Al does. An alternative explanation for A I is that it used a different model for White Tara than the templates for the other paintings (except B7). Instead of using a model probably based on that of Situ Panchen's painting commissions, it may have used one that either came down from the Tenth Karmapa, whose much looser brushwork and idiosyncratic depictions of deities derived from his own taste and whose vision is celebrated. It could also have come from one-day paintings that Situ himself painted that may have been freer in handling than his more formal commissions. The Fourteenth Karmapa may have inherited examples of paintings in this other model done by his immediate predecessor, the Thirteenth Karmapa Dudm Dorje (bDud 'dul rDo rje, 1733/34-1797/98) who was also interested in art and exchanged paintings and received lineage transmissions from Situ Panchen. 502 But once again, this is only conjecture. Ifwe are to admit the evidence of the three inscriptions and apply it to the group as a whole, accepting that most of them are the work of the Fourteenth Karmapa-and I see no reason to reject this-then we must also conclude that he was able to paint in more than one manner, one that was more painstaking and time-intensive and one that was freer and more rapid. That is not a difficult proposition to accept. I would like to conclude with a brief summary of the characteristics of the Karma Gardri style, building on chapter 5, as well as considering why this style never took hold among artists in Ladakh and Zangskar. It seems that Tibetan as well as Western commentators agree that there is something particularly "Chinese" about the art associated with the Karma Gardri style. The Thirteenth Karmapa Dudiil Dorje, the disciple of Situ Panchen, notes: "Gradually colors became thinner, and the mood expressed [or style] more distinguished. The paintings ofNam-[mkha']-bkra-[shis] [a sixteenth-century artist] had still thinner colors, and landscapes painted in a Chinese style. It became known as the 'Encampment Style' (sgar ris)."503 George Roerich, in Tibetan Paintings, wrote in 1925 (when he was just twenty-three years old): "the school in the Khams province in Eastern Tibet" THE PLACE OF PROVENANCE 207 was distinct from the Lhasa and Gyantse school and observed that the school of Derge in Kham ''points towards Mongolia and China".504 Tucci similarly observes that "the mysterious poetry of space," visible in certain schools-the one example given is that of Kham-is derived from Chinese art: "China not only gave this painting a sense of space, she also opened the eyes of Tibetans to landscape; it was of course a conventionallandscape, imitatedfrom Chinese models. "505 Gega Lama also notes that the Karma Gardri "has its origins in the Chinese schools of painting,"506 while Marylin Rhie also asserts that "[t]he Eastern Tibetan schools, the most famous of which is the Karma Gadri ... are intimately related to painting movements in China. "507 It seems that everyone agrees that Chinese landscape was especially important in the development of the Karma Gardri style. Yet the same can be and has been said about the New Menri (sMan ris) style that coalesced in the seventeenth century at Tashilhunpo in central Tibet around Tsangpa Choying Gyatso (gTsang pa Chos dbyings rGya mtsho; active mid-seventeenth century). Exemplifying that style is the depiction of Go Lotsawa Zhonnu Pal ('Gos Lo tsa ba gZhon nu dPal, 1392-1481) from the well-known set of Panchen Lama pre-incarnations that was promulgated in various forms throughout the Geluk domains (Fig. 9.31).Jackson has argued persuasively that the original designs for the woodblock prints on which many sets (on canvas, silk, paper, or woven brocade) were based "may well have been [by] the famous Chosdbyings-rgya-mtsho, even though we have no way of knowing whether the originals were actually painted by his own hand or by one of his major pupils following his exact instructions."508 This painting (Fig. 9.31) belongs to one of several such sets retained at Kyi Gompa in Spiti, which had enduring institutional 208 CHAPTER 9 connections with Tashilhunpo, sending monks there for advanced training over the centuries. This painting also adapted some of the conventions of Chinese blue-and-green landscape painting to provide a setting and to bind together scenes organized in hieratic scale. 509 Yet within its intricate spaces that create a towering but shallow space parallel to the picture plane, it is completely different in the landscape setting from the Karma Gardri paintings we have considered. Thus more precision with regard to "Chinese landscape painting" is required when distinguishing one type of Tibetan painting with "Chinese" characteristics from another.510 Since the Karma Gardri emerged around the same time or a little later than the New Menri (or Tsangri) style, it is possible to consider the former as a kind of stripping away ofthe crowded compositions of the latter. In that sense, the simplification can be seen as a reaction to the increasing density of New Menri and to the Karma Gardri's own early phase, as exemplified by the Tetsa lineage painting (Figs. 9.5-9.5c), which shares much with the New Menri. It makes a great deal of sense to find the inspiration for the New Menri's eventual blue-and-green formula (for a formula is what it became) the lavish fifteenth-century court paintings of arhats, examples of which have been found in central Tibet. 5ll According to this developmental narrative, the Karma Gardri artists seized on the possibilities of adapting a looser brushwork found in some Chinese paintings and a different conception of space, one that goes back to sources other than the fifteenthcentury arhat paintings. Instead ofthe brittle spatial qualities of New Menri, which must be constantly adjusted and negotiated as they push and pull toward the picture plane and back into depths, the Karma Gardri style can have a more relaxed and tranquil atmospheric relationship between figure and ground. 512 in As Rhie has observed, in Karma Gardri painting, "gradations of subtle color ... create an atmospheric illusion of space ... which completely and readily draws the viewer into its depths"; she refers to it as "idyllic naturalism."513 Rather than the colorful Buddhist arhat painting of the Ming, the minimalist depiction of landscape can be found in a range of painting genres in Chinese painting, from portraiture to bird-andflower painting, on both silk and paper, usually combining ink brushwork with light colors. It is impossible to single out a single artist or school that provided the bulk of the models for Karma Gardristyle landscape, since the placement of portraits against a minimally indicated setting was conventional since the fourth or fifth century in China and always remained an option for its painters, professional and literati. The mastery of atmospheric minimalism in Chinese painting built on the naturalistic achievements of Five Dynasty (907-960) and Northern Song (960-1127) monumental landscape masters, with the courtacademy and so-called Chan painters in Hangzhou ofthe Southern Song (1127-1279) reducing these grand vistas to quiet comers. They miniaturized the views, making them as intimate as the poetry that accompanied them, and like their literary counterparts, more evocative than descriptive. These discoveries were never lost to Chinese painters and were literally expanded upon by the socalled Zhe school of the Ming period. The spaces created around the Korzok Taras, the Tantak Vajrasattva and Padmasambhava, the Tetsa Vajrasattva, and the Korzok Karmapa portraits reduce the setting into a few intimations of mountains forming a horizon line and occasionally a lake at the bottom. Otherwise the landscape is merely suggested, without the mundane plotting of perspectival apparatus. The artists and patrons realized that the more-is-less approach actually has its virtues in conveying sacred qualities. The works succeed in suggesting dispersed immanence, a state of being both in and beyond space; Dietrich Seckel similarly observed in certain Japanese Buddhist paintings with a corresponding minimalist treatment of the background, the empty setting "imparts to them also a timeless quality because they are removed from the flow of time into an 'Eternal Now' which includes all present, past and future, just as spacelessness includes all dimensions. They are, therefore, embedded in the infinite background of undefinable emptiness from which they radiate in spiritualized loftiness without, however, completely entering the present world."514 They convey the potential of presence in the phenomenal world, of movement toward it, and of entering into it (never departing it) without being bound by it. The atmospheric space conjured by the minimalist "Chinese" techniques have another virtue besides the spiritual implications. It is remarkably well suited to artist-practitioners such as Situ Panchen, the Tenth Karmapa and, in this context, the Fourteenth Karmapa, who took a great interest in art and attained impressive levels of skills in painting but probably did not have the time to master the tight formulas and techniques of certain kinds of intricate painting. Compared tothe dense, complicated landscapes of the New Menri (Fig. 9.31), the Karma Gardri style could be executed in a mode that is much less challenging technically, since it sincerely makes a virtue of emptiness. 515 Without requiring all of the technical skills honed by professional painters who trained from youth, these paintings still succeed in evoking an appropriately spiritual space, "beyond the alternative of two- or three-dimensional space," but rather a "supra-empirical, visionary spht:re of liberation."516 The Karma Gardri style allowed competent, enthusiastic but still amateur (in the original sense of "those who do it for love, not money") artists to accomplish credible paintings despite the heavy demands that leaders of spiritual lineages typically face. In turn, it lent itself to the kind of "one-day painting" that religious masters who were proficient amateur painters could produce for their own religious edification and aesthetic pleasure. Such objects, in turn, as we have seen, well served the purpose FIG. 9.31 Go Lotsava Zhonnu Pal From a set of Panchen Lama preincarnations, designed in the mid-17th century Kyi Gompa, Spiti; ca. 18th century T HE PLACE OF PROVENANCE 209 of gifts to devoted followers, who would treasure not only that the image was of one pertinent religious figure but was painted by another revered eminence. This brings us back to the initial issue: that despite the presence offine examples of Karma Gardri-style painting in a number of monasteries in both Ladakh and Zangskar, they seem to all be imports and did not inspire artists to work in a similar style. Except for the extent that the contemporary Eri or Tsangri style incorporate ideas or qualities of Karma Gardri painting, eighteenth- through twenty-first- century artistic practice in Ladakh and Zangskar provides little or no evidence of the Karma Gardri mode. A larger issue is at stake here. It seems that institutional connections are more determinative of the dominating aesthetic stance adopted by affiliated artists than aesthetic preferences per se. Since Drukpa monasteries of Ladakh forged connections with central Tibetan and Bhutanese Drukpa practitioners, the art they patronized was similarly interlaced with the art of those regions. Geluk monasteries in Ladakh and Zangskar were, as we have mentioned for Kyi Monastery of Spiti, largely affiliated with the Panchen Lama's monastery of Tashilhunpo, while Ladakh's Drigung monasteries engaged artists trained in the Driri style(s). Because of the power of the woodblock prints in disseminating central Tibetan compositions, and because so many paintings from Tashilhunpo were brought back to Ladakh and Zangskar by returning monks as well as in exchanges between hierarchs and nobles, the artists working for Ladakh and Zangskar's Geluk monasteries participated in a Geluk aesthetic "hegemony." Despite the occasional intrusion based on personal contacts and random acquisitions, institutional networks played the dominant role is visible between the eleventh and seventeenth centuries in variations of a distinctive regional mode based on the Khache, or Kashmiri style, was then disrupted. The power of the Ganden Phodrang government, and the conflicts that developed between it, Bhutan, and Ladakh, seem to have had far-reaching effects on the art of the entire Tibetan cultural horizon. By driving the Kagyu into Kham, it actually helped to stimulate the Kham Karma Gardri style; on the other hand, the geographical distance from Kham made the Gelukpa of western Tibet focus on the closer Tashilhunpo, and the Drukpas on the surviving Drukpa connections in central Tibet and Bhutan. The Karma Gardri-style paintings in their midst, absent Karma Kagyu monasteries in Ladakh and Zangskar, were exotic intrusions, not viable models. The question might be raised, do Tibetan artists ever respond to aesthetic novelty by modifying their style to incorporate what they admired in imported art? Was it ever a prime motivator for the development of Tibetan painting? While it could be argued in reply that the very transformation of styles in Ladakh and Zangskar predicated on access to the art being produced at institutional centers such, as Lhasa, Tashilhunpo, and Punakha in Bhutan was at least partly an aesthetic response to the impressive, highly polished composition, drawing, and painting being imported, there is another more obvious example of stylistic changes motivated by aesthetic rather than institutional association. This is the introduction of aspects of Chinese landscape painting into all Tibetan painting movements by the seventeenth century and onward that we have just been considering. There were no institutional pressures to adopt Chinese-derived methods of creating As a coda, I introduce a final painting in the style related to the Karma Gardri, possibly of the twentieth century, found in the Thukje shrine near Tsokhar, north ofTsomoriri in eastern Ladakh. The very modest shrine is built around a narrow cave in the cliffs on the northeastern side of the salt lake (Fig. 9.32). The ｭｯｲ･＠ of a cleft in the rock-now ｣｡ｶｾ houses a white marble four-armed Avalokitesvara of no great ·age within an unrelated but very handsome silver frame of greater antiquity. Among the dozen or so mostly tattered local thangkas is an import that stands out. It depicts a very conventional, iconometrically standard Buddha Sakyamuni, in setting the aesthetic agendas for artists working in those places far from central Tibet, including Ladakh and Zangskar. The localization in western Tibet which settings. Rather it was driven by the visual effects of unity or even-in the case of Karma Gardri-style paintingennobling isolation of the main and seated beneath the Bodhi tree against a sky bare of clouds (Fig. 9.33). The background is clearly that of Kham. Most unusual are the naturalistic scale of 210 CHAPTER 9 subsidiary figures when placed in less abstract spaces found in earlier painting. To be sure, such issues can easily become circular and tautological. If the Lhasa artist is responding to visual novelty seen in Chinese painting, then why is the Ladakhi artist who begins to work in the same style responding to institutional imperatives? How does the simple binary of aesthetic response versus institutional affiliation deal with paintings of Tsongkhapa painted in the Karma Gardri style found at Geluk monasteries in eastern Tibet?517 Why is it that a regional style sometimes trumps all other considerations? Clearly, we are still far from an understanding of the complex ways in which lineage, regionalism, artists' and patrons' aesthetic responses, and institutional affiliations affect artistic choices in Tibetan art. It is precisely to that desirable end that this essay and this book are dedicated. We can go beyond Tucci's grandiloquent but antiquated notions of styles acting upon artists, rather than vice versa, and restore agency to Tibetan artists. 518 FIG. 9.32 (above right) Thukje shrine near Tsokhar, eastern Ladakh FIG. 9.33 (below left) Sakyamuni Buddha seated beneath the Bodhi tree in Kham style Thukje shrine, Tsokhar, eastern Ladakh; ca . 20th century FIG. 9.33, (below right) detail the tree in relation to the figure, and the treatment of the bark on the trunk (Fig. 9.33, detail). It is strikingly "Chinese" in the sense that it seeks to emulate the marks of the brush and ink of Chinese landscape painting. This provides more evidence that Kham artists were indeed looking east and that Ladakhi artists and patrons had access to these products from the other side of the Tibetan world, but in their own creations chose to face "up" to the art of those religious centers such as Punakha in Bhutan and Tashilhunpo in central Tibet. THE PLACE OF PROVENANCE 211 384 Another good RMA painting from Bhutan is HAR65858. 385 Niamosorgym Tsultem 1982 and 1986. 386 See, for instance, P. Berger and T. Tse Bartholomew 1995. 387 C. Meinert ed. 2011. 388 See D. Jackson 2005b. 389 Cf. C. Meinert ed. 2011, nos. 49, 54, 55, 58, 77, 78, 125, and 306. 390 See N. Tsultem 1986, pI. 115, "Images of previous reincarnations of Jebzundampa") [The Second Jetsun Dampa with his series of previous rebirths.] 54 x 38 cm., Fine Arts Museum. 391 392 in a pavilion holding a long red-covered book in his right hand on his lap, left hand extended out, palm outward, at this left knee. He wears an orange and white turban with gold crest and long-sleeved grayish robe and light green boots.] I assume that this inscription specifies the main figure as the Second Jetsun Dampa, which is ｡ｳｾ･Ｎｲｴ､＠ in the Spanish and Russian language editIons ofN. Tsultem 1986 (though not in English or French). The names as written in gold in the rectangular dark brown boxes below each figure are (with descriptions between square brackets): 1. Bde mchog [Samvara, standing two-armed form embraced by a red consort.] 2. 'Bar ba'i gtso bo [dark-skinned Indian monk with red pandita's hat, right hand in teaching gesture and left holding a book on his lap. His hat drapes sideways over his head.] 4. Ratna chen po [dark-skinned Indian yogi seated on a dark antelope skin with hands folded in meditation on his lap, wearing a white robe] 393 394 395 414 A. Terentyev 2010, fig. 3. 16. Dznyanabadzra [First Jetsun Dam pa, as final minor figure. He holds a vase of longevity on the hands he folds in his lap.] 415 See also the article of Gregory Henderson and Leon Hurvitz 1956, "The Buddha ofSeiryoji: New Finds and New Theory," Artibus Asiae, vol. 19, no. 1 (1956), pp. 4-55. Rob Linrothe kindly brought that article to my attention. 416 See Kimiaki Tanaka 1999, p. 52. 417 See Andrey Terentyev 2010. 418 Ibid. See the two relief images in P. Berger and T. Tse Bartholomew 1995, no. 17, Zanabazar and his previous reincarnations. See P. Berger and T. Tse Bartholomew 1995, p. 125, fig. 1. See, for example, the self-portrait in Patricia Berger and Terese Tse Bartholomew 1995, fig. 16, "Portrait of Zanabazar," and the fine cast sculpture, ibid., no. 95, "Portrait of Zanabazar. " 396 N. Tsultem 1986, fig. 88. 397 Treatises on the faults of eating meat and in support of vegetarianism are known, such as one by the contemporary Drigung Kagyu lama Rase Konchok Gyatsho. 398 P. Berger 1995, p. 261, Fig. 1, "Zanabazar." See N. Tsultem 1982, The Eminent Mongolian Sculptor-G. Zanabazar, pI. 104. 400 See P. Berger 1995, p. 261. 401 See P. Berger 1995, pp. 290-294 and nos. 103, 105 and 106. I am indebted to Karl Debreczeny for this information. 402 See, for instance, Heather [Stoddard] Karmay 1975; and in the second edition, Heather Stoddard 2008, Early Sino-Tibetan Art, Bangkok: Orchid Press. 6. Dar rna dbang phyug 404 On the Qing period, see also PatriCia Berger 2002. Empire ofEmptiness: Buddhist Art and Political Authority in Qing China. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. See also Karl Debreczeny 2003. "Sino-Tibetan Artistic Synthesis in Ming Dynasty Temples at the Core and Periphery." Tibet Journal, vol. 28 (nos. 1-2), pp. 49-108. 8. 'Brug sgra rgyal mtshan 9. Sangs rgyas ras chen 11. 'Jam dbyangs chos rje [a Tibetan monk wearing a yellow Geluk pandita hat] 12. Chos kyi nyin byed [gray-skinned monk from Ceylon wearing a red pandita's hat and orange monk's robes.] 13. rJe btsun Kun dga' grol mchog. [Tibetan lama with right hand extended to his knee in gesture of giving, the left holding a gold vase of immortality on his lap.] 14. dGa' byed sa skyongs (Prince RamagopaJa, a youthful Indian prince seated 220 NOTES 405 406 419 See P. Berger 2003. 421 As suggested by Karl Debreczeny in a personal communication. 422 Some well-informed artists and authorities on painting from central Tibet (such as Tenpa Rabten) strongly believe that all surviving Tibetan regional painting styles derived somehow from the three main styles of Menri, Khyenri, and Gardri and their later developments (Tib.: de la ma 'dus pa med). CHAPTER 407 Several RMA paintings are grouped in HAR under the rubric "Beijing, Imperial Palace Style." 408 Karl Debreczeny kindly pointed this out to me. 409 I thank Karl Debreczeny for this insight. 4 10 Terese Tse Bartholomew 1992, "Three Thangkas from Chengde," PSIATS5 (Narita); and Terese Tse Bartholomew 1997, p. 104ff. 411 Terese Tse Bartholomew 1997, p. 109. 412 Its impressive refined style may have led 9 423 Stephen Melville, "Plasticity: The Hegelian Writing of Art," in Margaret Iversen and Stephen Melville, Writing Art History: Disciplinary Departure (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010),172. I acknowledge my gratitude to Melissa Kerin, Annie Bien, and David Jackson for reading drafts ofthis essay and making constructive suggestions. 424 These lasted until 1959; see Lopon Konchok Tharchin and Geshes Konchok Namgail, Recollections of Tibet, ed. Francesca Merritt (Okhla: Sona Printers, no date), pp. 13-18, 25-28. 425 Yong he gong, The Treasured Thangkas in Yonghegong Palace, revised and enlarged edition Beijing, 1998. See Xin Yang et al. [The Palace Museum] 1992. See D. Jackson 1996, p. 135, note 270. 420 See also Gilles Beguin 1993, Tresors de Mongolie, XVlle-X/Xe siecles. Paris. 403 7. 'Od zer dpal I thank Karl Debreczeny for this information and several references. 15. rJe btsun Tiiranatha [red hat] 5. Rong zorn Chos bzang [long-haired Tibetan lay master with long-sleeved upper garment and feet tucked into orange-trimmed red lower robes.] 10. Sang gha bha dra [Tibetan scholar of Sanskrit grammar holding a white sheet of paper in his left hand and a pen in his right, wearing a green-trimmed orange long-sleeved jacket and bare feet. His head is either shaved or bald, and an orange band is tied around his forehead.] 4lJ 17. Blo bzang bstan pa'i sgron me la na mo [The Second J etsun Dampa as main figure] 399 3. [Nag po Spyod pa'i? unclear] rdo rje [grayskinned Indian adept dancing with damaru held aloft in right hand, skull-cup held to his heart by his left hand. Seven parasols float above in the sky, as do two damaru drums.] Chogyam Trungpa to wrongly classify it as "Kadampa Style." See Chogyam Trungpa 1975, p. 16. See Luciano Petech, The Kingdom ofLadakh C. 950-1842 A.D. (Rome: Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1977), pp. 84-86, describing a late seventeenth century son of the Ladakhi king who obtained the Geshe Rabjampa (dGe bshes Rab 'byams pa) degree at Drepung ('Bras spungs) and was appointed abbot of the Gelukpacontrolled Palkhor Chode (dPal 'khor Chos sde) monastery at Gyantse; he apparently studied alongside the son of a Zangskari king at Drepung as well. 426 Zhedpa Dorj e spent several years at Punakha Monastery in Bhutan studying with religious, artistic, and calligraphic masters; Geza Bethlenfalvy, "Bla-ma bzad-pa and the rdzOli-khul Gompa," Acta Orientalia 34 (1980): pp. 5--6. 427 For example a noble lady of the Bhnup. clan from Dvagpo (Dvags po), southern Tibet was "richly endowed by the [Lhasa] government and then set forth for Ladakh" to be married to the Ladakh king Nyima Namgyal (Nyi rna rNam rgyal) in 1694; Petech, Kingdom of Ladakh, p. 95. 428 429 John Crook and Henry Osmaston, "Sha-de: Meagre Subsistence or Garden of Eden?" in Himalayan Buddhist Villages (Bristol: University of Bristol, 1994), p. 267. 430 Crook and Osmaston, "Sha-de," p. 251. 43 1 HAR 65829; also Karl Debreczeny, "Bodhisattvas South of the Clouds: Situ Panchen's Activities and Artistic Inspiration in Yunnan," in David P. Jackson, Patron and Painter: Situ Panchen and the Revival of the Encampment Style (New York: Rubin Museum of Art, 2009), fig. 10.4. 432 Gilles Beguin, Les Peintures du Bouddhisme Tibetain, (Paris: Musee National des Arts Asiatiques-GuimelJReunion des musees nationaux, 1995), no. 302; also Nik Douglas and Meryl White, Karmapa: The Black Hat Lama of Tibet (London: Luzac & Company, 1976), p. 8. 433 HAR 680; Jackson, Patron and Painter, fig. 6.7. 434 Rob Linrothe, "Stretched on a Frame of Boundless Thought: Contemporary Religious Painting in Rebgong," Orientations 34 no. 4 (2002): figs. 4 & 6. 435 Personal communication, 3 October, 2011. For the Ye Dharma invocation, see Daniel Boucher, "The Pratftyasamutpadagtitha and its role in the medieval cult of relics," Journal of the International Association ofBuddhist Studies 14 no. 1 (1991): pp. 1-27. It has been translated as, "of all things having an origin and an end, the Buddha, the Tathiigata, the great ascetic, has explained the origin and the end." Giuseppe Tucci, Tibetan Painted Scrolls (Rome: La Libreria Delio Stato, 1949), p. 310. 436 437 438 Markha is usually considered part of Ladakh, though the Markha Valley is on the northeast frontier of Zangskar, and a few routes between Zangskar and Ladakh pass very close to Tetsa. Because of its proximity to Zangskar, the two places are sometimes confused with each other. In a news story on August 8, 2010, the Times ofIndia reported that the Indian Air Force rescued eighty-one tourist trekkers from Zangskar, although they were actually rescued from the Markha Valley; http://article.wn.coml view/2010/08/101165 dead in Leh flash floods _81 joreigners=rescuedi; consultedOctober 4, 2011. David Jackson with Karl Debreczeny, Patron and Painter: Situ Panchen and the Revival of the Encampment Style (New York: Rubin Museum of Art, 2009). 439 440 441 Rig 'dzin Padma 'byung gnas byin rlabs byas mi mthun nyis bral mchun rkyin (or mthun rkyen) rab rgyas te I gnas lugs phyag rgya chen po 'i don rogs pa 'i I bkra shis bde legs yon tan rab rgyas shog Ices sngags sprul (?) gyi bris pa dge '0 II. I thank Karsha Lonpo Sonam Wangchuk for transcribing the cursive into regular script (dbu chen), and for discussing the meaning with me. David Jackson kindly checked the transcription; errors in the translation are mine. On the Rime movement, see E. Gene Smith, "'Jam mgon Kong sprul and the Nonsectarian Movement," in E. Gene Smith, Among Tibetan Texts: History & Literature of the Himalayan Plateau ed. Kurtis R. Schaeffer (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2001), pp. 235-272. Another earlier example was Karma Chakme (Karma Chags med; 1613-1678) of Nangchen, Kham; I thank David Jackson for pointing this out. Tetsa is variously spelled on maps as Techa, Stecha, etc. Devers and Vernier, who are the only authors I know of to study this site to date, were unable to discover the etymology or proper spelling of the name though "according to some local informants it might come from btegs-byes, 'to lift', or from theb-byes, 'to reach[,] to extend'." Quentin Devers and Martin Vernier, "An Archaeological Account of the Markha Valley, Ladakh," Revue d'Etudes Tibetaines 20 (April 2011): pp. 61-113. 442 Devers and Vernier, "Archaeological Account," p.79. It is so common that Tucci includes it among the actions he performed in order to convince Tibetans he was a Buddhist, part of what he referred to as a "useful lie"; Giuseppe Tucci and E. Ghersi, Secrets of Tibet: Being the Chronicle of the Tucci Scientific Expedition to Western Tibet (1933), trans. Mary A. Johnstone (London and Glasgow: Blackie & Son Limited, 1935), xi-xii; Christian Jahoda, "Archival exploration of Western Tibet or what has remained of the Francke's and Shuttleworth's Antiquities ofIndian Tibet, Vol. IV?" in Pramtinakfrtij.z: Papers Dedicated to Ernst Steinke liner on the Occasion of his 70th Birthday eds. Birgit Kellner et al. (Vienna: Arbeitskreis fur Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien, Universitat Wien, 2007), p. 385. A painting of an Arhat identified (rather tentatively I believe) as Pantaka makes a similar gesture with a book touching the head of a standing monk; it is in the Rubin Museum of Art (p2000.3.8), listed as no. 957 in the Himalayan Art Resource website (http:// www.himalayanart.org/image.cfml957.htrnl, accessed November 2,2011). This painting is much stiffer, but features the Arhat in the same orientation and pose besides other compositional similarities, suggesting a common iconography. It also has an unpainted sky, a transparent halo, a lama floating on a cloud above the main figure, and an imposing tree at the Arhat's back. It appears to be a later painting, but one based on an earlier prototype, without the characterizations or landscape quality of the Tetsa work. A related if simplified figure, with a reversed orientation, is found in a mural at the Naka Tsang (sNa ka mTsang) of Dankhar (Brang mkhar) in Spiti. Though unpublished, it is among the original fieldwork images I am donating to ARTstor where it should be available within a year; its ID is RL03924. I thank the Digital Collections staff, particularly Nicole Finzer and Helenmary Sheridan for their help in making that possible. Rob Linrothe, "Between China and Tibet: Arhats, Art, and Material Culture" in Paradise and Plumage: Chinese Connections in Tibetan Arhat Painting ed. Rob Linrothe (New York! Chicago: Rubin Museum of ArtiSerindia, 2004), pp. 9--44. 443 Jackson, Patron and Painter, p. 105, HAR 418. 444 For example, Jackson, Patron and Painter, figs_ 6.4,9a. 445 For example, Jackson, Patron and Painter, fig.9c. 446 For an introduction to Rupshu, see Monisha Ahmed, Living Fabric: Weaving among the Nomads ofLadakh Himalaya (Trumbull: Weatherhill, 2002), 15-19. 447 Jackson, Patron and Painter, p. 138. 448 Jackson, Patron and Painter, figs. 7.17-19. 449 Toni Huber, The Holy Land Reborn: Pilgrimage & the Tibetan Reinvention ofBuddhist India (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008),176. 450 Giuseppe Tucci, "Travels of Tibetan Pilgrims in the Swat Valley," Opera Minora Parte II (Rome: Dott. Giovanni Bardi Editore, 1971; 1940), p. 376. 451 Huber, Holy Land Reborn, p. 237. 452 Huber, Holy Land Reborn, 232-247; Huber acknowledges the discussion ofthe concept of "International Buddha" in Chapter Four of Dan Martin, Unearthing Bon Treasures: Life and Contested Legacy of a Tibetan Scripture Revealer, with a General Bibliography ofBon (Leiden: Brill, 2001), pp. 33-38. 453 Tucci, "Travels of Tibetan Pilgrims," 375, 377, 382; Verena Widorn and Michaela Kinberger, "Mapping the Sacred Landscape of Lahaul: the Karzha Khandroling Mandala," in Cartography and Art, eds. William Cartwright, Georg Gartner, and Antje Lehn (Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer, 2009), p. 300. 454 Tucci, "Travels of Tibetan Pilgrims," 372, 375; "Treasury of Lives: Biographies of Himalayan Religious Masters," biography by Dan Martin 2008; http://www.treasuryoflives.org/ biographies/view/Gotsangpa%20Gonpo%20 Dorje/3759, accessed October 2011; John Crook and James Low, The Yogins ofLadakh: A Pilgrimage Among the Hermits of the Buddhist Himalayas (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1997), pp. 85-86. 455 Luciano Petech, "The Bri-gmi-pa Sect in Western Tibet and Ladakh," in Csoma de Koras Memorial Syposium (Budapest: Akademiai Kiado, 1978), p. 315. Petech also notes that even as the Drigung connection to Western Tibet faded, a number of their hermitages and monasteries there were transferred to the Drukpa; Petech, "The Bri-gmi-pa Sect in Western Tibet," p. 319. 456 Tucci, "Travels of Tibetan Pilgrims," p. 406. 457 Peter Schwieger, "Stag-tshang Ras-pa's Exceptional Life as a Pilgrim," Kailash 18 no. 1-2 (1996): 81-107; Petech, The Kingdom of Ladakh; Tucci, "Travels of Tibetan Pilgrims," pp. 410, 417. 458 Petech, Kingdom ofLadakh, p. 53. 459 ZahiruddinAhmad, "New Light on the TibetLadakh-Mughal War of 1679-84" East and West 18 nos. 3-4 (1968): pp. 340-61. 460 Petech, Kingdom ofLadakh, pp. 61-62. 461 Petech, Kingdom ofLadakh, p. 62. 462 Petech, Kingdom ofLadakh, pp. 76-77; Luciano Petech, "Western Tibet: Historical Introduction," in Tabo: A Lamp for the Kingdom, Early Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Art in the Western Himalaya, ed. Deborah E. K\imburgSalter (London: Thames and Hudson, 1997), p.248. 463 Petech, Kingdom ofLadakh, pp. 10 1, 107, THE PLACE OF PROVENANCE 22I 464 46S 466 Petech, Kingdom ofLadakh, p. 124, which has the Fourteenth Karmapa advising the Drukchen against immediate departure in response to an invitation of 1799 by an envoy of the Ladakh king. As we will see later, the Fourteenth Karmapa's birth year varies between 1797 and 1799, but whether unborn or only one year old, he is unlikely to have been dispensing travel advice. Perhaps the Thirteenth Karmapa is meant here, but since his death dates are ca. 1797-1798, there is still a chronological problem. Yonten Dargye and Per K. S0rensen, "The Diplomatic Career of Jamgon Ngawang Gyaltsen: Great 18th-century Bhutanese Siddha and Artist," in The Dragon s Gift: The Sacred Arts ofBhutan, eds. Terese Tse Bartholomew and John Johnston (Honolulu: Honolulu Academy of Arts, 2008), pp. 100--113; Yonten Dargye, Per K. Sorensen, and Gyonpo Tshering, Play of the Omniscient: Life and Works ofJamgon Ngawang Gyaltshen, An Eminent 17th-18th Century Drukpa Master (Thimphu: National Library and Archives of Bhutan, 2008); Petech, Kingdom ofLadakh, pp. 87-88. Peter Schwieger, "Kathog Rigzin Tsewang Norbu's (Kah-thog-rig-'dzin Tshe-dbang-Norbu) diplomatic mission to Ladakh in the eighteenth century," Recent Research on Ladakh 6, eds. Henry Osmaston and Nawang Tsering (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1997), pp. 219230; Petech, Kingdom of Ladakh, 103 467 Petech, "Western Tibet: Historical Introduction," 248; Petech, Kingdom ofLadakh, pp. 41,52,56, 121. 468 Karma Tenzin, the successor to Zhedpa Dorje as abbot at Dzonkhul Gompa (rDzong khul dGon pa) in Zangskar, was born in Kham Derge but apparently was attracted to the yogic attainments ofZhedpa Dorje's father and predecessor; Dargye, S0rensen with Tshering, Play of the Omniscient, pp. 267-268. 469 John H. Crook, "The History of Zangskar," in Himalayan Buddhist Villages (Bristol: University of Bristol, 1994), p. 457. 470 471 472 473 474 475 On Drubwang Shakya Shri, see John A. Ardussi, et aI, The Dragon Yogis: A Collection of Selected Biographies and Teachings of the Drukpa Lineage Masters (Gurgaon: Drukpa Publications, 2009): pp. 58-61; Crook and Low, Yogins ofLadakh, pp. 21-25. On the Ichar kankani chorten, see Rob Linrothe, "inVISIBLE: Picturing Interiority in Western Himalayan Stupas," in The Built Surface, eds. Christy Anderson and Karen Koehler (London: Ashgate Press, 2001), pp. 86-89; Rob Linrothe, "A Sununer in the Field," Orientations 30 no. 5 (1999): pp. 62-64. 222 NOTES Tagtshang Repa found that the chiefs of Gya (rGya) on the Spiti-Tibetan border already had relations with Padma Karpo (Pad rna dKar po) the Fourth Drukchen, another example of local patrons forging direct personal ties to a distant teacher without institutional ties to the patrons' region; Schwieger, "Stag-tshang Raspa's Exceptional Life," p. 105 .. 476 Petech, Kingdom ofLadakh, pp. 89-90. 477 Jackson, Patron and Painter. 478 Petech, Kingdom ofLadakh, p. 108. 479 Petech, Kingdom ofLadakh, p. 119. 480 Petech, Kingdom ofLadakh, p. 132. Isabelle Riaboff, "Distant Neighbours Either Side of the Omasi La: the Zanskarpa and the Bod Communities of Pal dar," in Modern Ladakh: Anthropological Perspectives on Continuity and Change, eds. Martijn van Beek and Fernanda Pirie (Leiden: Brill, 2008), p. 111 ; Isabelle Riaboff, "Rituals for the local gods among the Bod of Paldar, Etudes mongoles et siberiennes, centrasiatiques et tibt!taines 35 (2009), p. 12, note 21; http:// emscat.revues.orglindex354.htrnl; accessed 28 January, 2011. The Shamar is the most well-known of the Karmapa-affiliated lineages which feature red hats, and thus the most likely, though the others should not be excluded. Other Karmapaaffiliated red-hat lineages are: the Tai Situ lineage which began in the fourteenth century; the Gyaltsab which began in the fifteenth; and the Nenang Pawo, also from the fifteenth; Hugh E. Richardson, "The Karma-pa Sect: A Historical Note," Part I: Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (October 1958): p. 142; Douglas and White, Karmapa, pp. 142-165. 481 The Fourteenth Karmapa's dates vary depending on the source, his birth year varying among 1797, 1798, and 1799; his death year diverges even more depending on the source, both 1845 and 1868 (or 1869). For the 1845 date, see Richardson, "The Karma-pa Sect," part II, p. 18; Jackson, Patron and Painter, p. 172 no. 36, 221; Sonam Phuntsog, Ladakh Annals Part Two, Since 360 B.C. (Delhi, selfpublished, 2009), p. 51; and Ashwani Kumar, "Karmapas: A Historical and Philosophical Introduction," Bulletin ofTibetology 38 no. 1 (2002): p. 13. For the 1868 or 1869 date, see Jackson, Patron and Painter, p. 253; Douglas and White, Karmapa, p. 99; Karmapa 900 Organizing Committee, Karmapa: 1110-2010, 900 Years (Sidhbari: KTD Publications, 2011), 77; Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, "Brief Histories of the Sixteen Karmapas," in Michele Martin, Music in the Sky: the Life, Art & Teachings of the 17th Karmapa, Orygyen Trinley Dorje (Ithaca: Snow Lion, 2003), p. 289. The Tibetan Buddhist R1:source Center gives 1798/1799-1868/1869; www.tbrc.org P562, accessed October 2011. Since Jamgon Khontrul met the Fourteenth Karmapa at least as late as 1864-64, I follow the 1868 date; Richard Barron, trans. and ed., The Autobiography ofJamgon Kongtrul: A Gem of Many Colors (Ithaca: Snow Lion, 2003), p. 139. See Himalayan Art Resource, item nos . 797, 66432 (ex-Laufcollection; sold on September 14,2010 at Christie's New York "Indian and Southeast Asian Art" sale number 2337, lot 0139 for $164,500); Karmapa 900 Organizing Committee, Karmapa, 74; Donald Dinwiddie, ed. Portraits of the Masters: Bronze Sculptures of the Tibetan Buddhist Lineages (ChicagolLondon: Serindia Publications, 2003), 171; although unidentified, one other variant is the mere substitution of a book for the vase, with the vitarka mudrii remaining thc same; Himalayan Art Resource, item nos. J 63, 66432; Jackson, Patron and Painter, fig. 5.22; Kagyu Thubten Choling Publications Committee, Karmapa, The Sacred Prophecy (Wappingers Falls: Kagyu Thubtgen Choling, 1999), p. 30. The upper torso of a Karmapa is found in an iconographic sketchbook typically attributed to the sixteenth century. The Karmapa is shown frontally, like the Korzok painting; the right hand's vitarka mudrii is visible but what the other hand held is not shown; Pratapaditya Pal, Art of the Himalayas: Treasures from Nepal and Tibet (New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1991), p. 79. 482 483 484 485 Barron, Autobiography ofJamgon Kongtrul, p. 32; see also Jamgon Kongtrul Lodro Taye and Kalu Rinpoche Translation Group, The Treasury ofKnowledge Book One: Myriad Worlds (Ithaca: Snow Lion, 2003; 1995), p. 23. Barron, Autobiography ofJamgon Kongtrul, pp.32-33 . Recently, a translation of the Fourteenth Karmapa's work on chod practice, "The Condensed Daily Practice of Offering of the Body," was combined with a commentary to the chad practice by Jamgon Kongtrul; Lama Lodo Rinpoche, trans. Chad Practice Manual and Commentary (Ithaca: Snow Lion, 2007). Ngawang Zangpo, Sacred Ground: Jamgon Kongtrul on 'Pilgrimage and Sacred Geography' (Ithaca: Snow Lion Publications, 2001), pp. 144-145. 486 Similar to the back of the Wanchuk Dorje painting, both of these inscriptions are in cursive "headless" script (dbu med); I am dependent on Karsha Lonpo's transcriptions into standard script, which David Jackson also kindly checked. While errors may have accumulated in this cumbersome process, for which I am responsible, fortunately the two people just mentioned are clearly named in both inscriptions. Tara Al inscription (Fig. 39): 'phags ma sgroi ma'i byin rlabs kyis / tshe grangs chos dang nor gyi phyug / rnams kun bkra shis bde legs kyi / dpal yon chen pos khyab gyur cig / ces 'phags ma sgroi dkar gyi bris sku nying (?) thang du karma pa theg (pa) mchog gi rdo rje lag bris su ltar ba la dwags ru shod dpon tshe ring bkra shis kyi dad rten du sbyin pa dge legs 'phel! Tara C8 inscription (Fig. 41): 'phags ma sgroi rna 'i byin rlabs kyis / yon gyi bdag po tshe ring zhing / phyi nang bar chad thams cad zhi / bsod nams dpal 'byor rgyas gyur nas / mthar thug rdzogs sangs rgyas 'grub shog / ces la dwags ru shod dpon tshe ring bkra shis kyi dad rten du karma pa theg mchog rdo rjes (b)sbyin pa rnam kun dge bar gyur cig. 487 Situ Panchen appears to have painted at least six one-day thangkas of White Tara, and on four occasions, painted both White Tara oneday paintings and paintings depicting Padmasambhava; Jackson, Painter and Patron, pp. 15-16. Some were offered as gifts as they "were believed conducive to longevity and were supposed to be finished within a single day;" Jackson, Painter and Patron, p. 15. 488 489 '9() Jamyang Gyaltsan, The History ofLadakh Monasteries (Leh: All Ladakh Gonpa Society, 1995), pp. 863-866, 878-880; my thanks to Karsha Lonpo Sonam Wangcbuk and Drolma Dundrup for help in reviewing the Tibetan text with me. Jamyang Gyaltsan, The History ofLadakh Monasteries, p. 863. Jamyang Gyaltsan, The History of Ladakh Monasteries, p. 885; Thupstan Paldan, The Guide to the Buddhist Monasteries and Royal castles ofLadakh (Delhi, 1997), p. 30. According to its website. however, Chumur Gonpa or Padma Shedrup Ling was founded in the 1940's by the previous Chhoje Rinpoche; http://www.padmashedrupling.org/ monastery-overview; accessed October 2011. 502 503 491 492 493 A. Cunningham, "Journal of a Trip Through Kulu and Lahul, to the Chu Mereri Lake, in Ladakh." Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 17 no. 1 (1848): p. 215. See Chapter Nine, "Mr. Trebeck's Excursion to Piti" in Horace Hayman Wilson, Travels in the Himalayan Provinces ofHindustan and the Panjab; in Ladakh and Kashmir; In Peshawar, Kabul, Kunduz, and Bokhara; by Mr. William Moorcroft and Mr. George Trebeck, from 1819 to 1825, 2 Vols. (London: John Murray, 1841), vol. 2, pp. 51-52. WalterN. Koelz, "Diary of the 1931 Expedition to Western Tibet." Journal of the Urusvati Himalayan Research Institute ofRoerich Museum 2 (1932): p. Ill. Koelz at first dismisses the thirty thangkas he saw in Korzok as "not good, and not much of interest," but then later found out that "Our Lama went to the monastery to-day and discovered several good tankas [sic1and images I had not seen. The monks told him they had not shown them to me for fear I would carry them off. He learned that the monastery was built in the time of the present Thakur's grandfather." Koelz, "Diary of the 1931 Expedition," p. 112. 50. 495 The Fourteenth Karmapa's biography is found in Karma Ngedon Tengye (Karma nges don bstan rgyas pa), Chos rye Karma pa sku 'phreng rim byon gyi rnam thar mdor bsdus dpag bsam khri shin (New Delhi: Tobden Tsering, 1973), pp. 538-554; his pilgrimages to religious sites begins on folio 444, and the mention ofNgari Korgum on 545. I thank Drolma Dundrup for his reading of this text and locating the relevant passages at my request. He informs me that "many of the folios mentioned his mystical powers" and that "he transcribed his vision of seated Tara into text, and that piece became a highly regarded holy object;" personal communication, referring to folio 546, while 547 also mentions a vision of Tara. 506 507 508 Ahmed, Living Fabric, pp. 35-36. 497 Ahmed, Living Fabric, pp. 34, 173 note 8. 498 499 500 501 510 theg mchog rdo rye la nar mo. I assume the "nar" is an error for "na". 496 This is believed to be in the family chapel of the Rupshu chiefs in their house adjacent to Korzok Gompa; Ahmed, Living Fabric, p. 173 note 12. 5ll 512 All the paintings with exposed backs bear a twentieth-century purple-ink stamp "Registering Offices Antiquities Leh (Ladakh)" [sic1in lower-left comer. Martin Willson and Martin Brauen, eds., Deities of Tibetan Buddhism: The Zurich Paintings of the Icons Worthwhile to See (Bris sku mthong bdon ldan) (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2000), no. 262, pp. 118-119 and 311. For example, Jackson, Patron and Painter, Figs. 2.6 (upper left), 9.32B (upper left), 6.2 (center), and 6.1 (center, but with chignon centered). Other female-deity paintings associated with Situ Panchen can also be compared to the later Karmapa Taras as participating in the establishment of a pictorial model or template; these include Jackson, Patron and Painter, Figs. 6.3 and 6.4. Quoted in David Paul Jackson, A History of Tibetan Painting: The Great Tibetan Painters and Their Traditions (Wien: Verlag der Osterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1996), p. 52, emphasis added. New Menri style would look like: either unfinished, very small, or perhaps just an iconometric sketch ofthe deity or subject with minimal colors. 516 517 George Roerich, Tibetan Paintings (New Delhi: Gyan Publishing House, 1997; 1925), pp. 15-16, emphasis added. 518 50S 50. 494 Jackson, Patron and Painter, pp. 10, 15,22, passim. 513 514 515 Tucci, Tibetan Painted Scrolls, 283; for similar remarks, see Tucci, Tibetan Painted Scrolls, pp. 284, 324, emphasis added. Gega Lama, Principles of Tibetan Art: Illustrations and Explanations ofBuddhist 1conogrpahy and Iconometry According to the Karma Gardri School 2 vols. (Darjeeling: Jamyang Singe, 1983), p. 44, emphasis added. Seckel, Buddhist Art ofEast Asia, p. 139. For example, the painting from the Collection of Shechen Archives, Himalayan Art Resources item no. 15546; also the Rubin Museum of Art painting, HAR item no. 65802. For example, when discussing the "influence" of what he calls Central Asian art on Tibetan art, Tucci refers to "echoes which show in the Tibetan artists a knowledge, perhaps remote, of those styles, but also an immaturity as to means of expression, or at least an inadequate absorption of ideals which, often against their will, seemed almost to force themselves upon them;" Tucci, Tibetan Painted Scrolls, p. 184. Marylin M. Rhie, "Tibetan Buddhist Art: Aesthetics, Chronology, and Styles," in Marylin M. Rhie and Robert A.F. Thurman, Wisdom and Compassion: The Sacred Art of Tibet, Expanded Edition (New York: Tibet House and HarryN. Abrams, 1996), p. 63, emphasis added. Jackson, History of Tibetan Painting, p. 239. See Rob Linrothe, "Landscape Elements in Early Tibetan Painting," in Looking at Asian Art, eds. Katherine R. Tsiang and Martin J. Powers (Chicago: The Center for the Art of East Asia, University of Chicago, 2012), pp. 158-176 (in press). One of the few attempts to attribute specific Chinese paintings and artists as models for particular Tibetan paintings is the recent treatment of some of the Tenth Karmapa's paintings (which are highly idiosyncratic), is Karl Debreczeny, "Tibetan Interest in Chinese Visual Modes: The Foundation of the Tenth Karma Pa's 'Chinese Style Thang ka Painting," Mahamudra and the bKa '-brgyud Tradition: PlATS 2006: Tibetan Studies: Proceedings of the Eleventh Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, Konigswinter 2006 eds. Roger R. Jackson and Matthew T. Kapstein (Andiast: International Institute for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies, 2011), pp. 387-421, pis. 1-16. See Linrothe, "Between China and Tibet," pp. 9-44. My focus here on the "fictive space" oflater Tibetan painting is not meant to indicate a parallel conscious concern with space as such on the part of Tibetan artists or patrons. The fact that "it can be argued in general terms that the interest in space as a foundational concept in the analysis of representation is characteristically Western" since the eighteenth century, doesn't trouble me, as I use it here as a heuristic diagnostic index of regional patterns, not as a representation of discourse within Tibetan culture; quote from James Elkins, Chinese Landscape Painting as Western Art History (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010), p. 41. Rhie, "Tibetan Buddhist Art," p. 63. Dietrich Seckel, Buddhist Art ofEast Asia, trans. Ulrich Mammitzsch (Bellingham: Western Washington University, 1989), p. 139. One wonders what a one-day painting in the THE PLACE OF PROVENANCE 223 WITH A CONTRIBUTION From the Masterworks or ifibctan Painting Series M USEUM This catalog is published in conjunction with an exhibition organized and presented by the Rubin Museum of Art, New York, October 12, 2012, through March 25, 2013, and curated by David P. Jackson and Karl Debreczeny. The Place ofProvenance is the fourth volume in the Masterworks of Tibetan Painting Series by David P. Jackson, published by the Rubin Museum of Art, New York, and distributed by the University of Washington Press, Seattle and London. Copyright © 2012 by Rubin Museum of Art All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in any part, in any form (beyond the copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press) without permission from the Rubin Museum of Art. ISBN-13: 978-0-9845190-5-7 (hardcover) ISBN-lO: 098451905X ISBN-13: 978-0-9845190-4-0 (softcover) ISBN-lO: 0-9845190-4-1 Project Director, Helen Abbott Project Assistants, Helen Chen and Samantha WoIner Designed by Phil Kovacevich Maps by Anandaroop Roy Printed and bound in Italy All Rubin Museum of Art photographs by Bruce M. White, unless otherwise noted Front cover: detail of Fig. 4.8 Back cover: detail of Fig. 2.3 Frontispiece: detail of Fig. 3.25 p. vi: detail of Fig. 2.5 p. viii: detail of Fig. 8.16 p. x: detail of Fig. 3.26 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Jackson, David Paul, author, curator. The place of provenance : regional styles / David P. Jackson ; with contributions by Rob Linrothe. pages cm. - (Masterworks of Tibetan painting series; 4) Published in conjunction with an exhibition organized and presented by the Rubin Museum of Art, New York, October 2, 2012, through March 25, 2013, and curated by David P. Jackson and Karl Debreczeny. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-9845190-4-0 (softcover : alk. paper : alk. paper) - ISBN 978-0-9845190-5-7 (hardcover : alk. paper : alk. paper) 1. Painting, Tibetan-Exhibitions. 2. Art-Provenance. I. Linrothe, Robert N., 1951- II. Luczanits, Christian, curator. III. Rubin Museum of Art (New York, N .Y.) N . Title. ND1432.C58J5252012 751.40951 '5-dc23 2012030921