Once, many years ago, on a trip to Lumbini, the Buddha’s birthplace in Nepal, I was fascinated to come across a group of novitiate monks being trained in the making of thankas. Beginning with graph paper on which they learnt to place ritual subjects precisely, they drew outlines of the meditating Buddha, the lotus, the Green Tara and demons, clouds and water and deer and the wheel of dharma, drawn and drawn again and again till they were, quite literally, picture perfect.
Few people know the rigour that goes into these Tibetan paintings. They are, writes renowned Tibetan scholar Lokesh Chandra, usually painted by a lama “versed in sacred lore” who “accompanies his work by a continuation recitation of prayers”. The painter must be “a sacred person of good conduct”; the studio must be “in a clean place”; and the master artist works with “his disciples”. These paintings, which are an “iconic representation of transcendental meditation” are meticulously drawn “so that the minute details of the ornamentation are attended to before colouration”.
If the “face of a Buddha or Bodhisattva is preferably drawn on an auspicious date”, a “consecration ceremony” at the conclusion of the painting “makes it the habitation of the deity and his/her entourage”. Such strictures allow no room for individual artistic creativity and imagination — it is the lines, the colours and the details that make one work superior to another. The thankas, therefore, both tell popular tales as well as attest to the many variants or elements in Buddha’s story, a painted or visual guide for acolytes.
Lokesh Chandra’s lavishly illustrated volume serves as both a background as well as a guide to the many forms of Buddha, and of other heavenly (or hellish) forms, their representation, and the various meanings or implications of each. In that sense, of course, it could be a compendium or a guide for a thanka artist. Take the case, for instance, of the eleven-headed Avalokitesvara who was created thus: “Avalokitesvara descended into hell, converted the wicked, liberated them… He discovered, however, to his dismay, that for every culprit converted and liberated, another instantly took his place, and legend claims that his head split into ten pieces from grief and despair on discovering the extent of wickedness in the world, and the utter helplessness of saving all mankind”. The eleventh face is Dharma-kaya, writes Chandra, “white in complexion, he has eight hands”, but the eleven-headed heavenly being also has “a thousand hands, with an eye on the palm of each hand, and thus with a thousand eyes”. (Beat that, Rowling!)
The book makes references to current initiation processes such as the Kalacakra as well as to Yab-Yum (akin to the Far Eastern ying-yang and the Hindu Ardhanariswara) which is symbolic of “the unity of the masculine and the feminine” usually as a sexual union of male and female consorts, the former representing “compassion” and the latter “linked to transcendental wisdom”. According to a certain school of Tibetan Buddhism, “instead of repressing the inborn libido of creatures, it is well to transfer it to higher planes,” which is again similar to tantric Hinduism.
Lokesh Chandra’s masterful treatise has one major flaw though: it preaches to the converted. For the lay reader, or collector of thankas, the language is laboured, the subject makes few concessions to those who may not exactly follow the flow of the scriptures or the rhythms and cadences of these delightful paintings and their apparently multi-layered interpretation of content. Had it been simpler, it would have found greater acceptance among those of us who enjoy looking at thankas but are still to find a book that interprets them simply and in less exhausting ritual reading!
TIBETAN ART
Lokesh Chandra
Niyogi Books
Rs 1,500; 216 pages