Page 131 - Tibetan Thangka Painting Methodsand Mat, Jackson

Notes

1. According to Hodgson (pp.1Ol, 103, 108f., 113) Medicine with special reference to Yoga Sataka
in the early 19th century indigo was an important (Dharamsala, 1976), p.34l identified seng 'phrom
article of trade passing from India to Tibet via (a synonym of zhu mkhan mentioned above, note
Nepal. In Nepal it had the highest customs duty of 4) as Symplocos racemosa Roxb.
any commodity. Of an estimated 63,000 rupees
worth imported into Nepal from India in 1830- 6. R. N. Chopra, Chopra's Indigenous Drugs of India
1831, slightly less than one-fifth was believed to (Calcutta, 1958), pA13.
have been sent on to Tibet. As Hodgson then noted,
p.109, "Nepal and Tibet are always very in- 7. H. H. Haines, A Forest Flora of Chota Nagpur
adequately supplied with good indigo. There is a (Delhi, 1910), pAD.
very great demand for it just now in the latter
country. " 8. According to Jaschke, Tibetan-English Dictionary
(London, 1958), rgya tsha is the Tibetan name for
2. A red dyestuff from the safflower plant (Carthamus sal ammoniac (ammonium cWoride). See also
tinctorius) was produced in this form by the B. Laufer, Sino-Iranica (Taipei, 1967), p.508. It
Chinese. Some Tibetan artists may have confused should not be confused with the similarly spelled
this colour with lac lake. In Tibet safflower was rgyam tshwa.
classified as a type of saffron (gur gum). See 'Jam-
dpal-rdo-rje, p.77.5. 9. Mi-pham-rgya-mtsho, Bzo gnas, p.87.
3. Tibetan doctors distinguished two types of lac dye 10. Bod ljongs rgyun spyod krung dbyi'i sman rigs,
by observing it when it dissolved in water. One that p.620 and illustration noA04.
yielded a brighter colour was called gro tshos,
while a second, called nag hrug, produced a darker, 11. In India utpala denoted a blue lotus. However, the
more maroon dye. See 'Jam-dpal-rdo-rje, p.127. Tibetans used the term utpala or utpal for non-
aquatic plants. Jaschke identified the utpal he had
4. 'Jam-dpal-rdo-rje, p.l 08, distinguished two varieties seen in the Western Himalayas as Polemonium
of zhu mkhan. The first, called spang zhun, was the caeruleum. Das, p.19, recorded seeing "an alpine
most desirable for medicinal use. It grew on a big shrub called upala [sic], with large pink leaves at
tree, and the leaves were thick, shiny and yellowish. the top like those of the water-lily."
The inferior variety was called nags zhun. Its leaves In Tibetan medicine different varieties of utpal
were dark green, thin and soft. According to the
same author, the Tibetan synonyms for the zhu were distinguished, according to the colour of their
flowers. One was blue (utpal sngon po) and one
mkhan leaf are seng 'phro ma, skags grogs ("friend
yellow (utpal ser po). See 'Jam-dpal-rdo-rje, p.173.
of lac dye"), and rgya skyegs dangs byed ("clarifier In Bod ljongs rgyun spyod krung dbyi'i sman rigs,
of lac dye").
illustration no. 157, the blue utpal is identified as
In the Buriat region some three plants were called Meconopsis sp. Judging from the illustration in
zhu mkhan: Eriobotrya japonica Lind!., Rhodo- 'Jam-dpal-rdo-rje, p.173, the yellow utpal was a
dendron aurem Georgi, and Thelycrania (Cornus) different species if not a different genus.
alba (L.) Pojark. See A. F. Gammerman and B. V.
Semicov, Slovar' tibetsko-latino-russkikh nazvaniz 12. See 'Jam-dpal-rdo-rje, p.llO. Mehra, p.208, also
lekarstvennogo rastitel'nogo cyr'ifi, premeniaemogo ascertained the presence of this dye in thangka
v. tibetskol meditsine [Tibetan-Latin-Russian paintings.
Glossary of Medicinal Plants] (Ulan-Ude, Akdemiia
Nauk SSSR, Sibirskoe Otdelenie, 1963). 13. On a five-fold Tibetan classification of gur gum see
'Jam-dpal-rdo-rje, p.77. Saffron was also known as
kha che sha kha mao
5. See the note of W. W. Rockhill in S. C. Das, Journey
to Lhasa and Central Tibet (New Delhi, 1970), p.l O. 14. See for instance the 15th-century account of Bo-
Concerning this dye, Rockhill there refers also to dong, Mkhas pa, vo1.2, p.260.
Hooker, Himalayan Journals, vo!.2, pAl (this
should be p.63), and to Hooker's article in the 1891 15. In the Karma-sgar-bris and certain Sman-gsar styles
volume of the Journal of the Asiatic Society of the clouds were commonly painted in unsymmetri-
Bengal, p.218. Also, Vaidya Bhagwan Dash, Tibetan cal and more realistic forms.

NOTES CHAPTER 10 127