Paintings of the Hevajra Mandala are quite numerous and at times of a very high artistic quality. This painting from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, is one of the finest and best preserved in the world. It was painted in 1461 as recorded by inscription on the reverse of the composition and very likely commissioned at Ngor Monastery in Tsang Province, Tibet.

Reading a mandala is often very difficult without insider knowledge and the benefit of the explanatory literature. Painted mandala compositions are generally read from the center out and then all of the figures immediately outside of the mandala circle, followed by the top register, and then finishing with the bottom register. The important sections of the MFA Hevajra painting have been divided into colours; blue for the essential deities, red for the Eight Great Charnal Grounds, yellow for the lineage teachers and green for the miscellaneous deities added by the donor or artist.

Please let us know if the coloured image is more helpful than the plain 'greyscale and numbered' images that we have previously been using.

Sakya Field of Accumulation Paintings, or Refuge Field paintings, are not that common to the Sakya Tradition and really only appear to date from the 19th or 20th century. The reason for this is because the Sakyas do not have a standard generic visualization for the Field of Accumulation as is more common to the Nyingma Longchen Nyingtig, Kagyu and Gelugpa Traditions. In the Sakya system of practice a Field of Accumulation is unique, or customized for each and every practice, such as Hevajra, Chakrasamvara, Vajrabhairava, etc., and therefore no generic Field of Accumulation image as a support for visualization was typically required. (See Field of Accumulation Outline Page).

At the center of the Field of Accumulation is the Primordial Buddha Vajradhara with the Lamdre Lineage (1) directly above and the the Mahakala Lineage (2) descending from the viewer's upper left and the Vajrayogini Lineage (3) descending from the viewer's upper right. Below the central Vajradhara are the Meditational Deities (Tib.: yi dam), Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, Arhats, Protector Deities and Wealth Deities. At the bottom of the composition are the Sixteen Offering Goddesses.

Both numbers and colours have been used to try and make the painting more understandable. Each of the coloured blocks will be further cut out from the whole, made into individual pages, and enlarged with each figure in the coloured block numbered and the name listed in accordance with the order in the lineage. This will also accord with the Tibetan name inscription that accompanies each figure in the Sakya Field of Accumulation drawing presented here.

Tracing is common place when multiple copies of the same image are required. It is also interesting when the images being traced and the background landscape appear to have nothing to do with each other. In this painting the deities appear to float on the background composition without any relationship to the physical landscape depicted. The HAR team has taken the liberty of separating the deities from the background to see what they might look like on their own and to see how the landscape might appear in a re-construction without the deities obscuring the view.

It would make for a fascinating study to take this painting of HAR #432 and do a surface analysis with infrared photography to see if the landscape composition was painted first and the deities placed on top after. That of course would be highly unusual since Tibetan drawing generally starts with the main figures of a composition. However, this composition is already unusual and appears created as a collage of different unrelate elements. Maybe HAR visitors and users have ideas about how this art is created and the thinking that goes into it?

The new Wisdom Calendar for 2010 is available from Wisdom Publications. They have not yet been added to the HAR database. This will happen in the next few days. All of the paintings in this years calendar are from a private collection in Europe. Included in the calendar are some excellent examples of interesting iconography and a variety of painting styles. Two of the highlights in this years calendar are a Drigung Kagyu Field of Accumulation (Refuge Field) and Rudrachakrin the last King of Shambhala.

Iconographic Subjects in the 2010 Calendar:

Cover: Manjushri Riding a Lion
January: Wheel of Life from Mongolia
February: Drigung Field of Accumulation (Refuge Feild)
March: Tsongkapa appearing from the Tushita Heaven
April: Amitabha Buddha in the Sukhavati Heaven
May: Chakrasamvara Retinue Figure
June: Vajravarahi Mandala
July: Padmasambhava as Loden Chogse
August: Dralha with Eight Horsemen
September: Vajradhara with Lineage Teachers
October: The Thirty-five Confession Buddhas
November: Rudrachakrin, the Last King of Shambhala
December: Chakrasamvara Mandala

See the Wisdom Calendar Page on HAR

Another example of tracing can be seen with the first painting in a set of Eighty-four Mahasiddha paintings. The first painting depicts Vajradhara at the center surrounded by four siddhas and three deities. Note the inclusion of mountains on painting #65420 where they are absent on painting #99215.

The two paintings are HAR #65420 and HAR #99215

Another example of tracing from the same set of Karma Kagyu Teachers is Situ Panchen. In these two examples it is clear that the figures are essentially identical and the landscape on the left hand side as well, however another artist has created the landscape at the upper right of painting number #961.

The two Situ Panchen paintings are HAR #51885 and HAR #961

After an original Tibetan drawing and subsequent painting has been created it is quite common for other artists to come along and trace the original composition with the intention of copying the original. Here are two paintings of the 14th Karmpapa from a larger set depicting the lineage teachers of the Karma Kagyu Tradition. Both paintings are almost identical.

The two Karmapa paintings are HAR #51886 and HAR #54

Three interesting line drawings depicting Padmasambhava, Nyangral Nyima Ozer and Nyag Jnana Kumara. The central figures are surrounded by a host of deities and important historical figures along with noteworthy geographic locations. Each figure is accompanied by a Tibetan name inscription. See the secondary numbered image that accompanies each of the three drawings, identifying the figures in Romanized Tibetan transliteration and Romanized Sanskrit.

See other works in the database that have been numbered and greyscaled for easier identification.

A re-construction of a nine painting set depicting the Eight Great Bodhisattvas. All of these paintings are based on an earlier set said to have been painted by Konchog Pende of E (Central Tibet) in the mid to late 16th century. In 1732 Situ Panchen Chokyi Jungne asked an artist to trace a copy of the earlier works and then had a set painted based on the tracings. It is likely that all of the partial sets listed here are derived either from the set originating from Konchog Pende or from the copy made by Situ Panchen in the 18th century.

In the Tibetan artistic traditions this style of painting is called 'gya-lug' or Chinese style. The individual depictions of the bodhisattvas are non-iconic and likely based on the narrative stories of the bodhisattvas as found in the Mahayana Sutra literature along with the imagination and artistic tradition of the original artist that created the works.

The central painting of the set has not yet been identified and the specific central subject is unknown, however it is likely to be Amitabha or Shakyamuni Buddha. It is even possible that there was no central painting. In Tibetan art the Eight Bodhisattvas are more often depicted surrounding Amitabha Buddha placed in the setting of the Sukhavati Paradise. The collating of the various sets is only tentative, not definitive.

Seeing, Rather Than Looking At, Nepalese Art: The Figural Struts by Mary Shepherd Slusser, December 18, 2009. Asianart.com

This article is drawn from the important discoveries revealed in the author's forthcoming The Antiquity of Nepalese Wood Carving: A Reassessment, which is now in press. The article does not repeat the critical apparatus which can be found in the book, so the reader is urged to seek, if needed, further references and citations from the book. The Editor, Asianart.com