Page 150 - Tibetan Thangka Painting Methodsand Mat, Jackson

An even earlier scholar, Bo-dong PaD--chen (1375- Class 3: Samvarodaya
1451), took the same position regarding the presence Class 4: Samvarodaya and Kr~/'}ayamari Tantra
1
of an extra one-half sor in the Samvarodaya tradition. 7 Class 5: Kriyasamuccaya and a work by
Zhu-chen was thus not alone in rejecting that the Kr~D-apada
Samvarodaya taught a 120-sor Buddha image. Further- Class 6: The Kalacakra commentary Vimala-
more he found nothing to substantiate the practice of prabha
assigning different proportions to paintings and statues.
To make this last point he cited the great Tibetan In addition, other Tibetan authors such as Rong-tha also
authorities of the past such as Sman-thang-pa. Although mentioned the Catu~pf!ha Tantra as a source for the
those early Tibetan authorities explained the propor- proportions of figures measuring nine and twelve spans,
tions of a Buddha many times as being 125 sor, Zhu- including multi-headed yi-dam deities. 24 Rong-tha
chen never found any place where Sman-thang-pa or also attributed the 7-mtho proportional class ultimately
2
the other early masters had differentiated between to the Kiilacakra. 5
proportions on the basis of media. 18 Besides these tantric sources, there also existed in
the canon a group of independent treatises on the
subjects of art and iconometry. The bzo-rig section of
The Indian Sources of Tibetan Iconometry the Peking Tanjur contained four such full-length
treatises on art: 26
Zhu-chen thus considered Sman-thang-pa to be one of
the greatest Tibetan authorities on iconometry. One 1. Dasatalanyagrodhaparima/'}gala-
finds, not surprisingly, that even the Sde-srid described buddhapratimalak~a/'}a
his position as representing the opinion of Sman-thang- 2. Sambuddhabha~ita-pratimalak~a/'}a­
pa. 19 But for the Tibetans even more important than vlvara/'}a
Sman-thang-pa were the Indian textual sources on art 3. Citralak~a/'}a
that were translated from Sanskrit and preserved in the 4. Pratimamanala~a/'}a
canonical collections of Tibet. These were the very
texts upon which Sman-thang-pa had based his own Most Tibetan writers on iconometry did not use
work. Indeed the Sde-srid himself also claimed the these four texts as primary sources. In fact only one was
basic tantric scriptures of the canon as his sources, commonly mentioned in the later Tibetan treatises:
though he did not directly quote from any of them. the first text in the above list, also known as the Sha ri'i
Actually, a variety of iconometric sources were bus zhus pa'i mdo. The latter title could be translated
preserved in the Kanjur and Tanjur canons. Of these as "The Discourse (sutra) Delivered at the Request of
only some were followed by the living artistic traditions Sariputra," which would seem to mark it as belonging
or cited by writers on iconometry. Here, to conclude to the sutra class of scriptures within the Kanjur. Tucci,
our brief discussion of these aspects of iconometry, it in his monumental Tibetan Painted Scrolls, mentioned
might be useful to list the basic Indian sources and to that four different versions of that text were known to
describe their relative importance in Tibetan painting. the 15th-century authority Sman-thang-pa, including
To begin with, the most important textual sources one that was said to have been delivered by the Buddha
for Tibetan iconometry were passages from certain in TU~ita and another that he gave in Jetavana (the
20
7
Buddhist tantras and their commentaries. Zhu-chen, places of the other two Tucci did not specify).2 Accord-
for instance, in one of his works mentioned the ing to Mi-pham-rgya-mtsho, however, the basis for this
following texts as the main sources of iconometry.2i text on iconometry was a discourse given by the Buddha
in a third place. Mi-pham described the Sha ri'i bus
Kalacakra Tantra and its commentary, the Vimala- zhus pa'i mdo as follows: "It was a treatise (sastra)
prabha summarizing the import of the discourse (sutra) given by
Samvarodaya Tantra and its commentary the Buddha when he was dwelling in the deva-realm of
Krs/'}ayamari Tantra and commentary the Thirty-three (trayastrifJ1siiJ:1) that sets forth the
Manjusrfmulakalpa Tantra proportions of figures, delivered at the request of
Sariputra."28 As a treatise and not a true discourse of the
None of these texts contained descriptions of all Buddha it thus rightfully belonged in the Tanjur and not
of the iconometric classes, and therefore one had to together with the true sutras of the Kanjur.
refer to several texts to get all the proportions. The Mi-pham pointed out that the proportions set
following correspondence of texts to iconometric forth in the above text differ from those found in the
classes is presented in another work by Zhu-chen: 22 tantras and their commentaries, but he also followed
previous masters in asserting that there was no basic
Class 1: Kalacakra Tantra, and the commentary incompatibility between the two systems. (How the
on the Sam varodaya blatant differences could be glossed over is not clear).
Class 2: Samvarodaya and also the Kriyasa- Mi-pham, however, did not list the proportions of the
muccaya (read bya ba kun btus instead Buddha in this system (which prescribed a measure of
of bslab btusf 3 120 sor!) but contented himself with a description of

146 ICONOMETRIC STUDIES AND SOURCES