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3. Crown Leaf West Tibet 13th c. Gilt wood and pigment height: 24.2 cm. / 9 1/2 in. |
This carved panel once served as the central leaf in a Tibetan Buddhist ritual crown. The main image represents the enthroned figure of Vairocana Buddha in bodyagri mudra.5 Vairocana, The Illuminator, often appears in Himalayan art as part of a quintad of celestial Buddhas, each associated with a particular aspect of the human personality and many other attributes. Vairocana is associated with delusion (moha), Akshobhya with pride (mana), Amitabha with envy (irsya), Ratnasambhava with hatred (dvesha), and Amoghasiddhi with desire (raga). According to Buddhist psychology, these afflictions obscure one's essential nature, but through spiritual practice, they can be transformed into wisdom. 6 Such crowns were worn by Buddhist priests during rituals in which they identified with the power and wisdom of the Buddhas. Cloth, paper, wood, and metal crown leaves and occasionally complete crowns survive from the Himalayas. A complete and very fine c. late fourteenth to early fifteenth century painted crown is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, as is a superb c. late eleventh-early twelfth century painted single crown leaf that also depicts Vairocana in the bodhyagri mudra. 7 This leaf may be ascribed a West Tibet provenance by virtue of similarities with carved wooden crown leaves that survive in that region. A crown leaf uncovered at Phiyang Dongkar resembles this example in style and composition, and in the uncarved red painted bottom edge, with holes through which each leaf once attached to the adjacent leaves. 8 Giuseppe Tucci published several examples that he found in Spiti, Kunavar and Guge in the 1930s. 9 Reference to carved wooden Tibetan bookcovers, which survive in relative abundance, allows a date of c. thirteenth century. 10 5. See Mallmann, Introduction a l'Iconographie du Tantrisme Bouddhique, p. 393. 6. Dudjom Rinpoche, The Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism: Its Fundamentals and History. Translation and reference materials by Gyurme Dorje and Matthew Kapstein. 2 vols. (Boston, 1991), p. 147. 7. Published in Martin Lerner, The Flame and the Lotus (New York, 1984), pp. 92-93; and Steven M. Kossak and Jane Casey Singer, Sacred Visions (New York, 1998), pp. 72-73. 8. Published in Huo Wei and Li Yongxian, The Buddhist Art in Western Tibet (Sichuan People's Publishing House, 2001), p. 188, no. 317. 9. Published in his volume The Temples of Western Tibet and their Artistic Symbolism (Indo-Tibetica 3.1) (Rome, 1935; English translation New Delhi, 1988), pls. 35-38. 10. See similar foliate scrolls in a 13th century painted cover published in David Weldon, Early Tibetan Manuscript Covers 12th- 15th century (Anna Maria Rossi & Fabio Rossi Publications, London, 1996), no. 17; see also op. cit., nos. 2, 4, 5, 16. |