Page 114 - Christie's, materpieces of Buddhist Art December 2, 2015 HK

The present three textiles are exceptional for their high
quality and outstanding state of preservation. Both the style
and meticulous execution indicate they were produced in
the Imperial ateliers of early Ming China. The gods depicted
represent three of the 51 deities of the Medicine Buddha
mandala, a visual representation of an important Tibetan
Buddhist spatial concept, and the present three textiles would
have been displayed together with the rest of the group. The
Medicine Buddha mandala initially was represented in groups
of sculpture or paintings from Tibet or Nepal, but during the
Yuan and early Ming dynasties, Chinese artisans began to
recreate these images in precious silk and gold thread. Such
lavish treasures were likely presented as gifts to important
Tibetan institutions during the period of great mutual
exchange between Tibet and the Chinese court in the 14th
and 15th centuries.
While the two polities had been trading and exchanging
tribute since the Tang dynasty (AD 618-907), Tibet and China
were brought especially close together in the 13th century,
when the Mongols under Genghis Khan threatened to
conquer the mountainous country. To stave off subjugation,
the Tibetans sent their emissary, Sakya Pandita, to negotiate
an accord with the Mongol leader. Later, Sakya Pandita’s
nephew, Chogyal Pagpa (1235-1280), replaced his uncle as
Mongol-appointed regent of Tibet, and became the personal
Buddhist guru for Khubilai Khan, founder of the Yuan dynasty.
Chogyal Pagpa’s influence inextricably tied the Tibetan
Buddhist institutions to the Yuan court in a cycle of religious
patronage. Perhaps his greatest contribution to Chinese
Buddhist art was to invite the young Nepalese master artist,
Aniko (also spelled Araniko or Anige), to come to Beijing
as the head of the Imperial ateliers. Aniko introduced the
contemporary Nepalese style of Buddhist art, dominant in
Tibet at that time, to the Yuan court in Beijing, where it would
have an enduring effect for centuries.
After the downfall of the Yuan dynasty, the early rulers of the
Ming dynasty (1368-1644) sought to maintain the special
relationship between Tibet and the Chinese court. The Yongle
Emperor (r. 1402-1424) in particular, invited Tibetan dignitaries examples with similar embroidered mounts in the collection
to the capitals at Nanjing and Beijing, and lavished them with
religious gifts. Among such donations were textile images of
112 Masterpieces of Buddhist Art 大俱足 — 經典亞洲佛教藝術
fantastic workmanship and quality, which recreated in silk
and gold thread standardized Nepalese-style depictions of
deities in paintings, an example of which is a highly important
Imperial embroidered silk thangka of Rakta Yamari with a
Yongle mark, sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 26 November 2014
(fig. A). Because of the material cost and time required to
produce them, the Buddhist textiles were considered vastly
more important and precious than the original images in paint.
In order to fulfill their religious function, the textiles had to
conform to the orthodox and complex iconography of Tibetan
Buddhism, with its hundreds of deities, each with a near-
unique appearance. To ensure compliance with such strict
regulations, Chinese artisans likely consulted iconographic
manuals, known in Tibetan as kanjur. The Yongle Emperor
himself ordered the production of an Imperial kanjur, which
was completed in 1410, and was based off an earlier 14th-
century set of wood blocks from the great printing center of
Narthang, in Tibet (fig. B). Certain parts of the Yongle kanjur
survived into the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), were incorporated
into a kanjur commissioned by the Kangxi Emperor in the
late 17th century, and were thus preserved to the present day.
The artisans of the present textiles almost certainly consulted
the Yongle- commissioned kanjur: Not only do the figures
follow its stylistic convention, but more importantly, the vases
supporting the ruyi-form arch in the middle register are only
partially depicted, seemingly a quirk of the artist’s design until
one finds them similarly depicted in the Yongle kanjur.
When the present three textiles were exhibited in Hong Kong
in 1995, on view were five other thangka from the same set.
Seven of these, including the present three, represent deities
of the Medicine Buddha mandala, while the last one depicts a
Buddha, probably one of the Eight Medicine Buddhas. Other
Medicine Buddha mandala textiles from different sets are
also known, including one at the Cleveland Museum of Art (see
J. Watt, When Silk Was Gold, New York, 1997, p. 208, cat. no.
63), another at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, and two from
the National Museum of India in New Delhi (Himalayan Art
Resource, item nos. 64605-64606), as well as two painted
of the Ruben Museum (Himalayan Art Resource, item nos.
65270 and 65272).