Four-circle Hevajra Mandala - Reflections of the Buddha

Four-circle Hevajra Mandala 6
The composition of this thangka is bounded at top and bottom by a register of figures depicted in
arcaded niches. Such a compositional device seems to be unique to, and ubiquitous in, Sakya-school
painting from the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries. 18 Stylistically similar arches—composed of
the same gilt, vase-like columns, supported by lotus pedestals and supporting semicircular arches,
among which are depicted gilt lozenges surrounded by red and green leaves—may be found in a
fifteenth-century Bhūtadāmara Mandala from a central Tibetan Sakyapa 19 monastery, now held in a
private collection. 20 The thangka from the private collection, however, appears to have been painted
with even greater care than the Harvard thangka: the lines are stronger and more even, the colors have
been applied more smoothly, and the forks of the foliated flames are finer. Despite the differences in
the fineness of the execution of the two thangkas, they share many stylistic similarities, perhaps giving
further support to the recent re-attribution of the Harvard mandala from the seventeenth or eighteenth
century to the fifteenth or sixteenth century. 21 The lack of any cloudforms or landscape elements in the
Harvard mandala—motifs that appear rarely, if ever, in mandalic thangkas prior to the seventeenth
century—seems to preclude the possibility that this work dates from a later period. 22 Indeed, the work
possesses all of the elements that Pratapaditya Pal enumerates as hallmarks of the Sakya painting style
from the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries—namely, “(i) the ubiquitous use of red…; (ii) strictly
linear definition of form; (iii) employment of elaborate shrines with ornate columns from which spring
foliate arches … carrying mythical creatures such as makara, garuda, [and] nāga …; (iv) registers of
figures both at the top and the bottom, generally clearly separated by miniature shrines of arches and
columns; (v) and a profusion of subtle, densely packed stylized scrollwork in the background.” 23
The figures in the upper arcade of the painting constitute a schematic portrait of the lineage of Sakyapa
patriarchs. It begins at far left with the Ādi-Buddha Vajradhara, the primordial being whom the Sakyapa
consider the progenitor of all things, identifiable by his blue body, as well as the vajra and bell that he
holds in his crossed hands. Vajradhara is followed by Nairātmyā, the second in the Margapala lineage of
18 For an overview of Sakyapa painting, see Pratapaditya Pal, Tibetan Paintings: A Study of Tibetan Thankas,
Eleventh to Nineteenth Centuries (Basel: Ravi Kumar/Sotheby Publications, 1984), pp. 61-96.
19 The common Tibetan suffix -pa nominalizes the word that it modifies; hence, “Sakyapa” can be understood to
signify “one of the Sakyas.” Consequently, “Sakya” and “Sakyapa,” or “Gelug” and “Gelugpa, ” are usually used
interchangeably in English.
20 See ibid., plate 33.
21 Information conveyed by Robert D. Mowry, Alan J. Dworsky Curator of Chinese Art, Harvard Art Museums, in
personal conversation, May 2011.
22 See Pal, Tibetan Paintings, 121-148. Seventeenth-century Hevajra mandalas that include such landscape
elements are included in ibid., pl. 81-82. A nineteenth-century Four-Circle Hevajra Mandala with even more
extensive landscape features is pictured in Pratapaditya Pal, Divine Images, Human Visions: The Max Tanenbaum
Collection of South Asian and Himalayan Art in the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada,
1997), p. 115.
23 Pal, Tibetan Paintings, 62-63. A fifteenth-century Four-Circle Hevajra Mandala is also included in Giuseppe Tucci,
Tibetan Painted Scrolls (Rome: Libreria dello Stato, 1949), plate 214; however, the quality of the image prevents
close examination of stylistic details. Jackson, The Nepalese Legacy, esp. pp. 81-97, describes the stylistic features
of Sakyapa painting with even greater precision. However, Jackson argues that analysis of the depictions of
lineages in many thangkas that were assumed to be Sakya works reveals that they were sponsored by other
schools of Tibetan Buddhism. He suggests that from the mid-fourteenth to mid-fifteenth centuries, Tibetan
Buddhist shared a universal idiom of painting, known as the Beri style, which derived from Nepalese sources.
Consequently, he urges that greater caution be used when specifically identifying works in the Beri style as “Sakya”
thangkas. Given the number of deities closely associated with Sakya school that are included in the Harvard
Hevajra mandala, I am confident that we can identify it as a Sakya work.
The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts
Reflections of the Buddha