A Sakya Mandala of the Goddess Vasudhara
女神财源天母的萨迦曼陀罗
Navin Kumar Gallery
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Style 4. Lineage Attribution
2. Ascribed to a Nepali Artist[s] 5. Identifying Others in the Set
3. A Hidden Motive 6. Estimating the Period from the Lineage
1. Style
Our interpretation and emotive response to a work of art is invariably framed by its
size. Large works can inspire a sense of grandeur and accomplishment, and as such are
appropriate as reminders for historical events - such as an initation ceremonies, meeting
gifts, or funeral rites. In comparison, small and finely crafted works can evoke a nuanced
and personal response, for example, the feeling of marvel arises from multi-faceted
refractions and reflections of a rare and flawless gem.
A flawless, rare, and multi-faceted gem is an apt metaphor for this Sakya lineage
Vasudhara Mandala. Vasudhara, the Goddess of Wealth and of exoteric nature, is
2a
an extremely rare subject in Tibetan painting. Vasudhara's serene gaze and golden,
lyrical form is tightly encapsulated by the inner most circle, emphasizing her presence
above all else. Just beyond the six-armed Vasudhara is a most masterful rendering of
conformal Nepali scrollwork: a virtuoso that seamlessly embedded her crown, necklace,
and earrings in the orange corners of the circumscribing square (Fig. 2a), providing a
more condensed symbolic representation than found in Nepali versions (which include
prominent treasure boxes as well). This iconographic distillation and composition is also
found in the Vajravali Vasudhara Mandala in the Kimbell Art Museum2 commissioned
by Ngorchen Kunga Zangpo (Fig. 2b, Fig. 4). The dynamic postures and sublime
expressions of the Mahasiddhas in the upper register hint at the stories associated with 2b
Indian tantrics, and give the painting a narrative quality that is explicitly found around Vasudhara's crown and
the boundaries of several Nepalese Vasudhara mandalas (for example, the Mandala in jewellry embedded within
the orange scrolling
the Los Angeles County Museum of Art , Fig. 10). Four verses - inscribed in gold along
1
pattern of the first
the bottom red border - praise Vasudhara for her radiant and wealth-bestowing nature. circumscribing square. (a)
this work, (b) Kimbell
mandala2
2. Ascribed to a Nepali Artist[s]
An inscription on the bottom left of the painting, reads bal po gsum. The phrase
bal po translates to native of Nepal, and Ngorchen Kunga Zangpo used this phrase to
describe the artists who came to Tibet to work in the Ngor monastery. The addition
of the word gsum, translating to three, can be interprted to mean that not only one, but
three Nepali artists worked together to make this painting, and all the others in the set.
3
There is no further information about the artist, but it is clear that the painting is
Inscription on the
not - as has been suggeted - removed from the wave of Nepali artists associated with the bottom left reading bal
Sakya school till the mid-16th century. po gsum
4
Inscription in the bottom border (Wylie): na mo gu ra we / dgos 'dod kun 'byung bsam 'phel nor gyi lha / skye dgu'i re bkong dpal mo nor rgyun ma /
khyod tshul bsgrubs las khyod thugs rab bgyes pa'i / phun tshogs gter la bdag don lhur len shog / mangallam
N av i n K u m a r G a l l e r y
24 East 73 rd Street, Suite 4F. New York, NY, 10021
www.navinkumar.com navin@navinkumar.com
1 (917) 721-0426 navinkumar888
Copyright © February 2016, All rights reserved
Article by Tarun Kumar Jain, PhD
p. 2
Vasudhara Mandala : 19 Deity Assembly
1 Nepali Artist[s], Sakya Lineage
circa 1463 - 1521, Tibet
10 x 13 inches, Mineral Pigment on Cloth
p. 3
3. A Hidden Motive
As an exoteric deity, Vasudhara is rarely painted in Tibet, and one wonders
what might have been the motive for commissioning this work. Nepalese paintings
of Vasudhara were often commissioned by laypeople, and perhaps this painting was
similarly commissioned by a non-monastic donor for worldly reasons. This conjecture
is supported by a hidden and difficult to read inscription on the scroll of one of the
Mahasiddhas (Fig. 4). The inscription references the donor with Sanskrit word,
dAnapati (mostly used for non-monastic donors) and expresses the donor's hopes for
wealth and prosperity in perpetuity. 5a
4. Lineage identification from inscriptions
Typically, the transmission lineage in a mandala is determined by establishing a
correspondence between iconography of figures in the painting and textually identified
lineages of the Mandala assembly (in this case, the Vasudhara 19 Deity Assembly, see
the Diagram in Fig. 8). The preferable case, however, is for the relevant transmission
lineage to be directly inscribed in the painting. This painting has an inscription (Figure
4b) that reads, sa chan yab sras. Given the location of the inscription directly below a 5b
lama with the iconic features of Sachen Kunga Nyingpo, sa chan is a misspelling of sa (a) An Mahasiddha
reading an open scroll
chen, thereby clearly refering to Sachen Kunga Nyingpo. The phrase yab sras means
(b) The barely legible
father-son (spiritual) lineage, and identifies the lineage in the painting as the lineage of text reads: dAn pa ti'i tshe
Sakya throneholders. dang bsod nams dang long
a bskyong dpal 'byor thams
5. Identifying other paintings in the set cad pa'i shTAM ku ru
The last lama in this painting is Sakya Pandita (1182–1251). As the painting is oHM
stylistically not a 13th century work, the incomplete lineage implies that the painting
belongs to a set. The register here begins with Vajradhara and Nairatmya, and contains
the first Sakya heirarchs, indicating that the Vasudhara mandala is the first in the set.
The challenge is to propose reasonable candidates for subsequent works. Candidates
must be of the same dimensions, have the same register structure, a similar style, and a
plausible textual, pictoral, or iconographic association with Vasudhara.
One of the only known paintings of Vasudhara comes from the Vajravali painting
in the Kimbell Art Museum2 (Figure 6, 1426-1456). The Kimbell painting is a four
mandala composition, which after the first unidentified mandala, consists of Vasudhara
(2), Bhagavati Mahavidya (3), and Ushnishavijaya (4). The placement of the nineteen
deities of the Vasudhara assembly in the Kimbell painting deviates from the Nepalese
composition based on the Vasundharoddesa, in which "the inner mandala...[is] placed
against an ornate tribolate mountain"3 (Fig. 10 for Nepalese, and Fig. 9 for the Tibetan
version). The present mandala exhibits the same composition as the Kimbell assembly,
If the current painting belongs to a set, the most likely candidates for a 2nd, and
3rd painting are Bhagavati Mahavidya and Ushnishavijaya respectively. There is one 6
extant Bhagavati Mahavidya mandala (in the Fournier Collection4) with extremely An inscription below
similar style, the same number of figures in the registers, and the same size as the current the red border is aligned
Vasudhara mandala. Furthermore, the mandala's assembly matches the Bhagavati with one of the lamas
and reads sa chan yab sras.
Mahavidhya in the Kimbell Vajravali. The register of the Bhagavati Mahavidhya
The lama has white robes
mandala does not begin with deities, but instead with Mahasiddhas, signifying that it - indicative of the early
belongs to a set as well. Sakya heirarchs - and has
Two other mandalas with the same dimensions and register size are known: one of Sachen Kunga Nyingpo's
Karamukha Chakrasamvara5 and one of Vajrabhairava6, both of the Jucker collection. characteristic age and
balding head with white
The hypothesis that either of these two mandalas is part of the set has a number of hair.
deficiencies, including the duplication of either Vajradhara or Nairatmya (in the
p. 4
Four Mandalas of the Vajravali (14th of 14 in the set)
7 Nepali Artist[s], Commissioned by Ngorchen Kunga Zangpo
circa 1429-1456, Tibet, Ngor Monaster
35 x 29 inches, Mineral Pigment on Cloth
Kimbell Art Museum2
p. 5
Chakrasamvara / Vajrabhairava mandalas respectively), the absence of Amitayus or
Amitabha, lack of a clear textual/pictoral/iconographic association, and the presence of
charnal grounds in the mandala periphery. Finally, though all mandalas have inscriptions
across the bottom, the Chakrasamvara and Vajrabhairava inscriptions do not start with
na mo gu ra we or end in mangallam unlike the Vasudhara and Mahavidya mandalas.
It is safe to conclude that the Fournier Mahavidhya mandala follows Vasudhara as
the 2nd painting in the set, and that a 3rd mandala - no longer extant - of Ushnishavijaya
may have been part of the series as well.
6. Estimating the Period from the Lineage
Herein, we estimate the period for the set based on knowledge of the transmission
lineage (the Sakya heirarchs) and a projection of the number of lamas. The Fournier
Mahavidya mandala contains fourteen heirarchs following Sakya Pandita, meaning that
the last lama is the 20th Sakya Trizin, Gyagar Sherab Gyaltsen (rgya gar ba shes rab rgyal
mtshan, lineage holder from 1463-1472). The earliest possible period for the set is during
the life of the 20th Sakya Trizin starting 1463, corresponds to the presence of only two
mandalas in the set.
To obtain a reasonable upper bound, some hypothesis needs to be advanced
regarding the register structure of a possible third mandala of Ushnishavijaya. One of
the only extant mandala of Ushnishavijaya6 is a Ngor mandala from a similar period
(1500-1550). Its register consists of alternating Amitayus and Amitabha figures,
with only a solitary lama at the top center of the painting. Leaving only one lama
for depiction in the Ushnishavijaya mandala is no doubt the result of intentional
planning for that set's registers, and indicates that there was a compositional preference
for the Ushnishavijaya mandalas of that period to have a register solely comprising
of alternating Amitayus/Amitabha figures. It is reasonable to conclude that the
unknown Ushnishavijaya mandala of this set would likely be one or zero lamas -
and conservatively at most two. Interestingly, the registers of the Vasudhara and
Mahavidhya mandalas end with Amitayus and Amitabha respectively, alluding to
a natural continuation of this alternating pattern in the register of the 3rd mandala.
Logically, if there were more than two lamas in the 3rd painting's register, two of them
could have replaced the Amitayus/Amitabha in the Vasudhara/Mahavidhya paintings
to maintain the desired register structure of the Ushnishavijaya mandala. Thus, I
conclude that there would have been at most two lamas in the register, and the latest
date for the set at the end of the tenure of the 22nd Sakya Trizin in 1533.
References
1. Mandala of Vasudhara. Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Web. 20 Feb. 2016. <http://
collections.lacma.org/node/238796>.
2. Four Mandalas of the Vajravali Series. Kimbell Art Museum. Web. 20 Feb. 2016. <https://
www.kimbellart.org/collection-object/four-mandalas-vajravali-series>
3. Huntington, John C., Dina Bangdel, and Robert A. F. Thurman. The Circle of Bliss:
Buddhist Meditational Art. Chicago: Serindia Publications, 2003. Page 411.
4. Himalayan Art: Mandala, Item No. 77232. Himalayan Art Resources, Oct. 2002. Web. 20
Feb. 2016. <http://www.himalayanart.org/items/77232>
5. Chakrasamvara Mandala: Hugo E. Kreijger, Tibetan Painting, The Jucker Collection,
Boston, 2001, p. 160, no. 64.
6. Mandala of Ushnishavijaya (Buddhist Deity). Himalayan Art Resources. Web. 20 Feb. 2016.
<http://www.himalayanart.org/items/88540>.
7. Mandala of Vajrabhairava (Buddhist Deity). Himalayan Art Resources. Web. 20 Feb. 2016.
<http://www.himalayanart.org/items/89197>.
p. 6
8 Bhagavati Mahavidya Mandala : 58 Deity Assembly
Nepali Artist[s], Sakya Lineage
circa 1463 - 1521, Tibet,
10 x 13 inches, Mineral Pigment on Cloth
Collection of Lionel Fournier4
p. 7
17 15 18
9 2 4 3 10
12 1 14
8 6 7 5 11
16 13 19
9
Enumeration of the Vasudhara Mandala 19 Deity Assembly based on characterization in Circle of Bliss3.
Inner Sanctum Outer Glorious Realm
1 Vasudhara Gold 8 Chivkundali SE Red
2 Avalokiteshvara Red 9 Kelimalini NE Green
3 Vajrapani Green 10 Sukhendra NW Yellow
4 Ratnasambhava Yellow 11 Chalendra SW White
5 Jambhala Blue 12 Manibhadra? S Red
6 Nagaraja Varuna White 13 Purnabhadra E Blue
7 Ila Devi Yellow 14 Dhanada N Red
15 Vaishravana W Yellow
16 Gupta Devi SE Green
17 Sagupta Devi NE Red
18 Sarasvati Devi NW Yellow
19 Chandrakanta SE White
p. 8
10 Vasudhara Mandala : 19 Deity Assembly
Nepal, dated 1495
Mineral pigments on cotton cloth, 110.5 x 84 cm
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
From the Nasli and Alice Heeramaneck Collection, Museum Associates
Purchase (M.77.19.7)1
p. 9
