Page 80 - September 20th 2021, Indian and Himalayan Art Christie's NYC

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A PAINTING OF BHIMARATHA JATRA 尼泊爾 維克拉姆歷915年 (公元1795年) 尊勝母佛塔圖
NEPAL, DATED BY INSCRIPTION TO SAMVAT 915 (1795)
來源:
36¬ x 28 in. (93 x 71.1 cm.) 紐約蘇富比，2012年3月21日，拍品編號310。
$40,000-60,000
PROVENANCE:
Sotheby's New York, 21 March 2012, lot 310.
LITERATURE:
Himalayan Art Resources, item no. 24692.

This brilliantly colored paubha was commissioned to commemorate a shell. Afterward, the couple is depicted once more in a chariot
performance of the Bhimaratha rite, celebrating a married couple when procession surrounded by the couple’s sons, daughters, siblings and
either partner reaches the age of seventy-seven years, seven months, cousins. Their voyage through Kathmandu symbolically represents
and seven days. According to the inscription, dated to 20 May 1795, this their voyage to the celestial realm. Strikingly, the seventy-seven-
painting commemorates the Bhimaratha of Dhanasimha and his wife year-olds are not depicted as members of the elder generation, as
Jasavati, a couple from the Nardevi neighborhood of Kathmandu. The this passage is also said to regain their youth.
Inscription reads:
Above the ceremony, a monumental stupa emerges from a lotus-
Om salutation to goddess honorable Ushnīshavijayā. Let it be good! filled lake, surrounded by a landscape of rolling mountain peaks.
This Paubha was made collectively by these family members; the son In the center, the six-armed deity Ushinishavijaya, to whom the
Maten ̇asimha, the grand-sons Bhājusimha, Bekhāsimha, the great- inscription is dedicated, sits within the dome of the multi-tiered
grand-sons Jñānavantasimha, Bahādurasimha, Harshanarasimha, others stupa, where textually she is said to reside. Her association with
Guhyeśavarī, Thīkayamatī, Bhīmakhvāla, Dhantalakshmī, Tārāvatī, long life and immortality allows her a central role in the milestone
Gunelakshmī [and] Helamatī for two persons Dhanasimha Tuladhar [and Bhimaratha rite. Shrines with images of Buddhist guardian deities,
his] wife Jaśavatī residing at Yamkulavihāra of Nata locality in Wednesday, Buddhas, and bodhisattvas, including large and detailed images of
NS 915 in the month of Jyeshtha, in waxing fortnight, second lunar day. Manjushri and Lokeshvara seated upon their vehicles, fill the land
Blessed Cikidhika of Itumbahal, the main Vajracharya priest, Assistant surrounding the stupa.
priests Sīsī, Harsha(..)ju of Toache had consecrated. The Bhīmaratha
procession was done towards Tengal, Asan tole, Rājakula and even Compare the present work to a similarly composed painting formerly
Etakhā. Let itbe auspicious in all times. [Let it be] Good! in the Jucker Collection, illustrated by H. Kreiger in Kathmandu Valley
Painting: The Jucker Collection, Boston, 1999, p. 82, cat. 28. The
Translation by Kashinath Tamot Jucker example is dedicated with an inscription assigning a date
of 1830, probably two generations later than the present example,
The lower register of the painting depicts the ceremony in three parts. but commemorating a couple from the same locality, Nardevi. Most
At the right, a Vajracharya priest, whose high rank is denoted by his examples of this type either lack inscription or are associated with a
gilt-copper crown, performs a fire ritual, agni puja. To the left, two more mid-to-late nineteenth century date, making the present inscribed
Vajracharya priests consecrate the couple with water from a conch example rare by its relatively early dating of 1795.