The arts of the Himalayan region, extending from Kashmir in the west, across the central Tibetan plateau to eastern Tibet and Nepal, embody a rich fabric of traditions drawn from the Indian subcontinent, Central Asia, West Asia, and China. The result is a rich hybridity unknown anywhere else in Asia. Kashmir, Tibet, and Nepal occupied a strategic position in the facilitation of trade and cultural exchange from earliest recorded times. These crosscurrents of early Indian Brahmanism (Hinduism), combined with the presence of Buddhism in western Nepal from its inception (Prince Siddhartha was born in Lumbini) have produced a rich layering of traditions—most markedly in Tibet, where a substratum of indigenous Bon animism flourished and had to be accommodated with the rise of monastic Buddhism.
Tibet has served as the treasure house of many of the riches that traveled the Central Asian Silk Road. Luxury goods otherwise largely lost to us have been preserved in monastery collections there, thanks to a combination of remote location, sympathetic climate, and historical circumstance. These goods include rare types of Sasanian silver, silk textiles commissioned by Tibetan nobility, Tang Chinese metalware and textiles, Indian Sultanate lampas silks, early Buddhist manuscript art, and Buddhist imagery, mostly in metal (69.222), secreted out of India for preservation and veneration in Tibetan monasteries. Few of these objects have survived in their places of origin. In other instances, murals at Alchi and Tabo monasteries in Ladakh provide our only glimpse of earlier mural and cloth painting traditions in Kashmir, which no longer survive.
Kashmir
Located at a critical crossroad linking the northeastern regions of modern Pakistan with northwestern India, the Kashmir Valley, fabled for its beauty, prospered throughout its long history as a result of natural abundance and long-distance trade. Advanced schools of Hindu philosophy, especially Shaiva, thrived there, as did multiple schools of Buddhism. Much of this rich history is recorded in one of the most detailed dynastic and social chronicles of medieval India, Kalhana’s twelfth-century Rajatarangini. Its early chapters are largely legendary, but from the founding of the Karkota dynasty in the seventh century onward, the Rajatarangini provides one of the few secure histories of early India. It celebrates the cultural and religious patronage of the Kashmir elite and references great works of art.
Kashmir at this time was the successor to the late Gandharan artistic tradition of the northwest, and the power of patronage resulted in bronze-casting, temple sculpture, portable shrines in ivory, wood, and stone, and painted manuscript covers and folios of unprecedented sophistication and quality. Much of the Kashmiri style that evolved over these centuries was undoubtedly touched by the international luxury objects in circulation in the valley. Contiguous regions, such as the kingdoms of Gilgit and Swat to the west and Himachal Pradesh to the southeast, prospered by their proximity to this cultural epicenter. Other images display an awareness of Central Asian Buddhist art, as in the use of the “cloud-collar” shawl, and Sasanian contacts in the presence of distinctive crowns with extended ribbons. With the collapse of the Lohara dynasty in 1339, the last Hindu kingdom in Kashmir fell; Muslim rule marked the end of state patronage of both Hinduism and Buddhism.
The artistic legacy of medieval Kashmir, as known from the seventh to the fourteenth centuries, is one of extraordinary creativity. Much of what is preserved was produced in the service of Hinduism and Buddhism, including images that were at the forefront of iconographic innovation. An esoteric four-armed Avalokiteshvara (2012.247), probably dating to the seventh century, marks the beginnings of a tradition of metal image-making that served practitioners of Vajrayana Buddhism in the Swat Valley. Similarly, a ninth-century Vajradharma Lokeshvara bears witness to the advanced esoteric Buddhism that was flourishing in valley monasteries, and being shared with Tibet through the missionary activities. The most famous of these missionaries was the Indian esoteric Buddhist master Padmasambhava (“lotus born”), possibly from the Swat Valley, whom the Tibetans revered as Guru Rinpoche.
Secular arts also flourished, though little has survived—a gold diadem (1988.395a–c) and a (once) gilded copper drinking goblet (2019.203) are examples. The murals at Alchi monastery in western Ladakh, as witnessed most beautifully in the early thirteenth-century Sumstek chapel, provide a glimpse of the richness of the international style of textiles worn by the Ladakhi nobility, and hint at the splendor that must also have graced the Kashmiri elite at this time.
We know from contemporary sources that Kashmiri art, along with artists and master artisans, traveled widely, and that Kashimiri style was disseminated not only to neighboring regions but deep into Tibetan territories. Smaller icons, illuminated books, and devotional objects undoubtedly traveled on the monastic circuit, but larger works of art were the result of commissions by regional rulers, or abbots of major monasteries. These would have been large- scale metal images, illuminated sacred texts, and, undoubtedly, mural programs executed by artists invited expressly for the purpose. The legacy of Kashmiri art, especially in Tibetan Buddhist art, was profound. Even today, a visit to a remote monastery in Ladakh or western Tibet might reveal a medieval Kashmiri, Swat, or Gilgit bronze among later Tibetan images. The presence of such migratory images undoubtedly left its imprint on evolving regional styles.
Tibet
Tibetan art, as with traditional Tibetan society in general, was shaped by the central role that monastic Buddhism assumed upon its arrival in Tibet. Over time, four major orders of Buddhism emerged across the Tibetan plateau, each with different lineages. All practiced Vajrayana Buddhism, based on tantra, a form of esoteric religious practice adopted from medieval India, of which Kashmir was a major center of innovation. Central to the creation of tantric art is the process of visualization, achieved through meditation on a manifestation of a particular deity. The sculptures, and especially the murals and cloth paintings (tangkas) so created, served as aids to future generation of practitioners, both novices and adepts. Indian mahasiddhas (“great adepts”), tantric yogini masters of religious-magic and sometime authors of tantric treatises, were revered in Tibet; eighty-four were canonized.
Buddhism arrived in Tibet from India around the mid-first millennium and was further stimulated by interactions with Buddhist culture in contemporary Tang-period China. A seminal moment was in the late eighth century, when Padmasambhava (2012.459) arrived in Tibet; there he founded the Nyingma order, the oldest school of Tibetan Buddhism, and was instrumental in the construction of Samye monastery. With him came the first wave of external influence, from Kashmir. In the eleventh century, the Bengali monk Atisha was invited to Tibet by the king of Guge to reintroduce Vajrayana orthodoxy, an event often characterized as the “second wave” of Tibetan Buddhism. He resided at Tsaparang monastery in western Tibet around the time a triad of the Buddha flanked by the bodhisattvas Padmapani and Vajrapani was produced (2008.504). A fourteenth-century painted portrait of Atisha, perhaps the earliest known, conveys this master’s spiritual calm.
Successive waves of artistic stimulus occurred in Tibet, from Central Asia, China, Kashmir, Pala India, and Nepal. A polychromed wooden ritual dagger (2019.122a, b) of extraordinary power signals the centrality of esoteric practice in the cleansing of the path of Buddhism that was awakening in a Tibetan setting. Stylistically, this object displays an awareness of Yuan dynasty imperial Buddhist art, produced at the behest of Mongol rulers who embraced Vajrayana Buddhism. Mahakala (2012.444.4), the most widely revered protector in Tibetan Buddhism, became endemic, and representations reached extraordinary heights of dramatic expression in Tibet and China. As counterpoint to the wrathful anger of Mahakala, images of the sublime saviour Tara (1982.220.1), in her many guises, became equally important, especially in small-scale meditation images.
The most lasting impact on Tibetan art came from the work of itinerant artists from Kashmir and, especially in later centuries, from the Newaris of Nepal. Both were famed and respected for their artistic contribution to monastic art in Tibet, and their legacy resulted in the synthesis we recognize as the Tibetan style.
Nepal
Nepalese art is dominated by the rich and interwoven traditions of Buddhist and Hindu religious imagery, ritual utensils, and sacred architecture produced in the Kathmandu Valley over the past 1200 years. Sacred sites beyond the valley, such as Lumbini, the Buddha Shakyamuni’s (2012.458) birthplace in western Nepal, were also important.
The Licchavi kingdom (fourth to ninth centuries) was probably established by a branch of the north Indian Gupta clan. Licchavi art displays a strong Gupta style, as does the transitional art of its successor, the Thakuri dynasty (tenth to twelfth centuries). In the course of these 800 years, Nepal preserved and refined this north Indian aesthetic, creating one of the greatest corpuses of devotional art in first-millennium India. It also includes some of the earliest surviving paintings on cloth from the subcontinent, such as the Chakrasamvara Mandala (ca. 1100; 1995.233), a masterly vision of the Buddhist cosmology of the emanating presiding deity, surrounded by the eight charnel grounds required of all cities in ancient India.
Many works of art commemorated the performance of religious rites, and the accompanying inscription typically recorded the name of the officiating priest and the deity being honored, the donor—usually a family rather than an individual—and the day, month, and year that the consecration was performed. The result is that in Nepalese art a corpus of internally dated objects survives, unlike anywhere else on the subcontinent, providing a uniquely rich chronology. A typical example is a gilt-bronze Vishnu whose inscription records that it was dedicated on 12 August 1105, by a minister of state to King Simhadeva (1098–1126), to mark the most auspicious day in the religious calendar of Vishnu (2012.463)—his awakening at the conclusion of the monsoon. Portraits of the donor family are depicted on the pedestal.
The year 1200 marked the beginning of the Malla dynasty, bringing renewed stability and prosperity to Nepal, and ushering in a new era of religious art patronage. A cloth painting dedicated to Surya (2012.462) and dated to 1379 has the rare distinction of also bearing the name of the painter, Kitaharasa. In 1482 the Malla kingdom was peacefully divided into three states Kathmandu, Patan, and Bhaktapur—each ruled by a branch of the Malla family. They prospered, largely through trade, and patronized religious foundations throughout the valley, especially in the three urban centers. Much of the art generated in this period was public art, temple decoration, urban monastery (bahal) gateways and interiors, public pools and tanks, images surmounted on pillars in public squares, and great Bhairava masks for display during the annual Indrayatra festival. Malla rule ended in 1768–69, displaced by the Shah clan, a Rajput family who previously controlled a region of western Nepal; they ruled until 2008. The Shah commissioned Hindu devotional paintings in the Rajasthan style, such as the large-format Bhagavata Purana series of 1775–1800.
The religious art of Nepal reflects exchanges with a succession of northern Indian cultures: Kushan (second to fourth centuries), Gupta (fourth to sixth centuries), and Pala-Sena (eighth to twelfth centuries). A powerful stimulus came in the late twelfth century with the collapse of monastic Buddhism in northern India, resulting in an influx of both monks and religious objects. The Newari artists of the Kathmandu Valley absorbed these influences and transformed them into a uniquely Nepalese style, which in turn had a pervasive influence on Tibetan art.