Himalayan Art Resources

Mandala: Mandala Main Page

Mandala Masterworks

- Art History

- Iconography

- Religious Context


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Mandala (Tib. dkyil 'kor ): a circular diagram, highly technical and precise, representing an idealized Tantric Buddhist, Hindu or Bon meditational space and surrounding idealized environment, the container and contained, animate and inanimate. There are three main types of mandalas: Symbolic, Figurative and Mandala-like.

Glossary:
- Types Glossary List
- Technical Glossary

Mandalas are painted on cloth, on the ceilings of temples, as murals, fashioned from metal, wood or stone, textiles and sometimes from coloured thread and also meticulously created from coloured sand.

Mandala Offering: an abstract symbolic offering of the entire universe made by Buddhist practitioners and presented to the religious teachers, Buddhas and deities, of the past and present. A specific ritual object called a mandala plate is used for this ritual although anything flat and clean is also acceptable. Mandala plates filled with rice and multi-tiered are also commonly kept on a permanent shrine. Shrine mandalas are constructed from a flat metal mandala plate and then three or four rings of metal, often engraved, embossed or repousse worked, and topped with a small replica of a heavenly palace or a Dharma wheel.

Database Search: All Mandalas

Jeff Watt 3-2002 [updated 8-2016, 1-2020]

(The images below are only a selection of examples from the links above).