Pandita Padmasambhava

The revered Indian tantric master Padmasambhava (fl. 8th century) appears at the center of the painting seated in a golden grotto wearing a scholar’s (pandita) cap and monk’s robes and holding a diamond scepter (vajra) and skull cup (kapala) with a trident staff (khatvanga) resting against his left shoulder. A basket of texts (pitaka) and a ritual water vessel (kalasha) are placed at his side, and a lapis lazuli bowl with offerings of bilva fruit is set before him. The guru’s Eight Manifestations appear in caves and on outcrops, with Oddiyana Dorje Chang and Pema Jungne to the left and right above, Loden Chogse and Pema Gyalpo at either side, the mahasiddha emanation Nyima Ozer and the Buddha-form Shakya Sengge beneath, with the fearsome Sengge Dradog and Dorje Drolo below. Two Nyingma lamas are seated immediately below Padmasambhava: Longchenpa (1308-1364)[1], the celebrated Tibetan ‘treasure-revealer’ (terton) on the left and on the right Tenzin Legpai Dondrup (1645-1727), the second abbot of Gangteng monastery in Bhutan. The primordial Buddha Samantabhadra presides above, seated in the topmost grotto at the foot of snow-capped mountain peaks.

The magical landscape is filled with minute detail. Above, a monk flies from one cave to another, leaving his sleeping quarters for his retreat, where there is a meditation mat and cloak, a text, provisions, and his scholar’s cap suspended above. A tantric adept seated on an animal skin receives devotees in another cave below, a monk is seated in meditation in another, with ritual music instruments suspended above him, and a dark-skinned siddha ferries a pandita across waters below. A family of snow leopards occupy another cave, a nesting bird another, deer roam the forested slopes, and The Twelve Tanma Chunyi—indigenous Tibetan goddesses subjugated by Padmasambhava into the service of Buddhism—ride and fly through the fabulous blue and green mountain landscape.

A dedicatory inscription on the verso is composed and written by Kunzang Dorje (1680-1723),[2] thus establishing a terminus ante quem for the painting of 1723. The inscription states that the thangka was made for the personal use of his student Gyurme Chodrup Pelbar (1708/9-1750), the Fifth Peling Tukse incarnation of Pema Lingpa (1450-1521).[3] Pema Lingpa is regarded as the foremost terton of Bhutan,[4] and his lineage is associated with both Bhutan and Lhalung in southern Tibet.[5] The painting may thus have been commissioned in either location. However, a Bhutanese provenance is perhaps more likely as Tenzin Legpai Dondrup of Gangteng monastery is prominently depicted on the thangka. It may even have been painted at Gangteng itself, as the monastery is the seat of the Bhutanese Pema Lingpa tradition. The rock-filled landscape is not wholly typical of either Tibetan or Bhutanese painting. Blue and green rockwork—ultimately derived from the gold-edged mountain style of Yongle-period (1403-1424) arhat painting[6]—is not uncommon in Tibetan art, although rarely used as extensively as it is in this work.[7] And similarly in Bhutan where a more traditional Chinese blue-green mountain style is seen in the background of arhat thangkas.[8] Wherever and by whom the thangka was painted, the hand of a master is clearly evident. The golden grottoes are a work of genius: plants and mountain flowers cling to the rocks around the entrances of the caves that have the effect of shading that gives depth and perspective to the luminous scenes within. Subtle asymmetry in the placement of figures in the landscape enhances the flow of the composition. The drawing of the rock formations is rarely bettered in eighteenth-century Himalayan art.

1 Identified in an inscription below by his title ‘The All-knowing Drimé Özer,’ see Pakhoutova, op. cit., p. 51
2  Ibid. and Buddhist Digital Resource Center, P662
3  Ibid.
4  Terese Tse Bartholomew and John Johnston, eds., The Dragon’s Gift: The Sacred Arts of Bhutan, Chicago, 2008, p. 301
5  https://treasuryoflives.org/incarnation/Peling-Tukse
6  Marsha Weidner, ed., Latter Days of the Law: Images of Chinese Buddhism, 850-1850, Lawrence, Kansas, 1994, pp. 271-272, cat. no. 21, illus. pl. 10
7  Compare the similar but more open composition of a Tibetan narrative thangka identified by David Jackson as painted in Tsangri style, see David P. Jackson, The Place of Provenance: Regional Styles in Tibetan Painting, New York, 2012, p. 66, fig. 4.11
8  Compare a set of arhat paintings at Ngang lHa-khang in the northwest of Bumthang, eastern Bhutan, see Blanche Christine Olschak and Geshé Thupten Wangyal, Mystic Art of Ancient Tibet, Boston and London, 1987, pp. 68-69