Recognizing Rebkong’s Regional Painting Contributions

Rob Linrothe
Monarch in billowing pink and yellow robes enthroned at center of ring of monarch portraits

Kunga Shawo (fl. early 20th century); Shambhala Kings Mural; porch of the Jampa Lhakhang (Maitreya Temple), of Sengge Shong Mago Monastery, Ganden Puntsok Ling, Lower Sengge Shong Village, Rebkong, Amdo region, eastern Tibet (Qinghai province, China); ca. 1935; pigments on cloth; dimensions unknown; photograph by R. Linrothe

Shambhala Kings Mural

Sengge Shong Mago Monastery, Rebkong, Amdo region, eastern Tibet (present-day Qinghai Province, China) ca. 1935

Kunga Shawo (fl. early 20th century); Shambhala Kings Mural; porch of the Jampa Lhakhang (Maitreya Temple), of Sengge Shong Mago Monastery, Ganden Puntsok Ling, Lower Sengge Shong Village, Rebkong, Amdo region, eastern Tibet (Qinghai province, China); ca. 1935; pigments on cloth; dimensions unknown; photograph by R. Linrothe

Summary

Tibetan culture was severely oppressed in China between the 1950s and 1978 under Communist rule. Since then, a small valley called Rebkong has risen to international fame as a major center for Tibetan art. Art historian Rob Linrothe searches for the origins of this twentieth-century artistic renaissance in a mural of the mythic Shambhala Kings, painted in 1935 by a master artist named Kunga Shawo. The influence of these murals can be seen in the work of today’s innovative generation of painters.

Key Terms

Cultural Revolution

The Cultural Revolution was a political and social movement in communist China from 1966 to 1976. During this time, traditional culture across all of China came under violent attack, and almost all religious institutions were shut down and many were physically destroyed. In minority areas, ethnic differences and indigenous cultural practices, such as use of Tibetan language or dress, were seen as backward and subject to persecution, adding an additional racial dimension. Hundreds of thousands of Tibetans fled to India or Nepal, and many Himalayan artworks were destroyed or scattered abroad.

Kalachakra

Kalachakra refers to both the name of major Highest Yoga tantra texts and the central deity, which is the focus of these texts, depicted as a multi-armed figure in tantric union with his consort Vishvamata. The tantra’s elaborate cosmology addresses three wheels of time—the outer, inner, and the other. The outer wheel of time refers to the external world, procession of the external solar and lunar days, or the macrocosm. The inner wheel of time refers to the human body or the microcosm of the inner channels, elements, and wind movements. And the other wheel is the initiation into the paths and the practice. According to the text the Buddha first taught, the Kalachakra tantra in the mythical Buddhist realm of Shambhala to chakravartin kings who rule there.

Vaishravana

In Buddhism, Vaishravana is the guardian king (lokapala) of the north, one of the four guardian kings who are often found at the entrances to temples. Vaishravana is also sometimes worshiped as a wealth deity and at times as a martial deity. Depending on the emphasis, he is depicted as an armored warrior, often mounted on a lion, carrying a mongoose or holding a stupa/pagoda.

Vidyadhara

In Vajrayana Buddhism, Vidyadhara is a term of respect for an accomplished master of yogic meditation, one who can transmit important tantric initiations.

Shambhala

According to the Kalachakra Tantra, Shambhala is a sacred mythical land in the north where Buddhist kings rule. At the end of our eon, these kings are prophesied to ride out from their mountain-ringed kingdom to destroy enemies of the Buddhist Dharma. In Tibetan and Inner Asian contexts, these enemies are often understood to be Muslim, viewed as the destroyers of Buddhism in India, but the Shambhala myth has often adapted to contemporary crises, and have been reinterpreted to any threat to Buddhism, or the state, including British forces in the Boxer Rebellion, or the Communists. Many individuals and states in history, including Mongol khans, the Russian tsars, and even the emperor of Japan have been identified as the savior-kings described in these prophecies.

This mural on the porch of the Jampa Lhakhang ( Shrine) of Sengge Shong Mago Monastery, Ganden Puntsok Ling, is among a handful of large-scale, pre-1950 paintings to survive in place and in good condition in Amdo Rebkong. The shuttering of Buddhist institutions, the disruption of the social system that supported them, and the widespread destruction of Buddhist visual culture in the Rebkong area began with the Chinese takeover in the early 1950s. It intensified with the suppression of the late 1950s and culminated with the  in the mid-1960s. Along with five other paintings on the porch done at the same time, around 1935, this mural is a datable benchmark documenting the development of both twentieth-century and contemporary Rebkong art. On the one hand, the murals bear witness to the highly prized modes of painting associated with Amdo artists who worked in central Tibetan centers such as  and  in the first half of the twentieth century, the so-called first modern Tibetan artists, such as Gendun Chopel (1903–1951) and Jampa Tseten (“Amdo Jampa,” 1911–2002). On the other hand, it is possible to see continuities between these paintings and the resurgent, distinctively Rebkong Buddhist art after the 1980s, which has become well known and commercially successful in such metropolitan areas as Shanghai, Beijing, and Taipei. 

The mural is painted on cloth and then mounted and framed by painted wooden boards with dense gold patterning, supported by new colorful dragon-medallion panels below. Elaborately carved and gilded pillars support a roof over the porch. As with most Himalayan porch-entrances to shrines, the Jampa Lhakhang mural depicts the guardian generals of the four directions (lokapalas) in pairs on either side of the door­­­way. At the right end is a lovely depiction of the protectress  Pal Lhamo surrounded by a large number of local mountain gods and with Tseringma of the Five Long-Life Sisters directly below her. At the other end of the vestibule is the mural portraying the  Kings. 

Shambhala is a hidden Buddhist Pure Land somewhere in the north and ruled by a succession of -kings. As articulated in the Tibetan literature surrounding the late Indian tantra, the Kalachakra, at some future date a millenarian army will emerge to confront the forces of darkness that oppose  and establish a new age of enlightenment. The mural depicts the Seven Dharma Kings (Rigden) of Shambhala and the Twenty-five  (knowledge-holder; also known as Kalki) Kings. The large king at the center of the composition is Yashas or Manjushrikirti (Jampel Drakpa) who is also recognized as the second preincarnation of the Panchen Lama. Wearing a crisply folded white turban like those in images of the early Tibetan emperors of the seventh through the ninth century, Manjushrikirti holds a book in his left hand, and in his right the stem of a pink lotus bearing a vertical sword with a blue blade and flaming tip. These attributes reinforce his connection to his namesake, the bodhisattva . The other thirty-one kings surrounding Yashas are identified by gold inscriptions on the light azure background (fig. 2). The second-largest king, directly below Yashas, is another emanation of Manjushri, the warrior Rudrachakra (Drakpo Khorlo Chen), who holds a spear and a sword. He is the twenty-fifth Vidyadhara who will lead the final battle against the forces of darkness. 

Monarch wearing golden crown and swirling robes, seated in dynamic pose on golden throne
Fig. 2.

Kunga Shawo (fl. early 20th century); Detail of Shambhala Kings Mural, Sengge Shong Mago Monastery, Ganden Puntsok Ling, Lower Sengge Shong Village, Rebkong, Amdo region, eastern Tibet (Qinghai Province, China); ca. 1935; photograph by R. Linrothe

In 2002, with a learned and devout local monk, Gendun Akhu Pelzang, we explored many of the prominent monasteries in the area, among them Sengge Shong Mago. We learned that during preceding decades the Jampa Lhakhang had been turned into a granary for the village by its Chinese overseers. Although the sculpture and paintings inside the shrine were destroyed, the porch murals, with their high quality and subtle shades of the pigments, had somehow survived. We were able to locate an elderly monk who as an apprentice painter at age sixteen had assisted two master painters in their thirties in creating the murals in about 1935. The eighty-three-year-old monk, Nyingben, recalled that one artist was named Kunga Shawo, and the other, the monk Kelzang. Kunga Shawo painted the four lokapalas and the Shambhala Kings on the porch, which would leave Kelzang as primarily responsible for the Lakshmi mural. 

These paintings establish a relatively rare datable point in the evolution of Rebkong painting in the second quarter of the twentieth century. Between 1950 and 1980, local Buddhist painting was curtailed and its development suspended. In the late 1980s and 1990s, when painting of Buddhist subject matter resumed as part of the general relaxing of restrictions on religious practice, it was fueled by pent-up demand to replace or refurbish dozens of shrines and monasteries in the region damaged or destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. A few artists who like Nyingben were trained in the 1930s and 1940s transmitted the earlier mode of painting to the younger generation; the older artists included Nyingben, Shawo Tsering, Jyamsho, and others. Many of the particular characteristics represented in the 1930s painting are visible in the revival style, demonstrating the fidelity of many recent painters to former painting practices. 

Contemporary continuities from the foundational inheritance as well as further developments can be illustrated by comparing details from lokapala compositions on both the porch of the Jampa Lhakang in Lower Sengge Shong and in a shrine at the largest  of Rebkong, the Rongwo Gonchen Monastery (figs. 3 and 4). The latter shrine was dedicated to Kelden Gyatso (1607–1677), the first in the Rongwo Drubchen Tulku lineage, and was completed around 2006 by painters familiar with the 1935 Jampa Lhakhang paintings; indeed, the murals were created by painters from Sengge Shong Village. In a detail from the circa 1935 Virupaksha Lokapala of Sengge Shong (fig. 3), blue-green rock formations with sharply cusped outlines edged in gold feature two cave-like cavities. In one, a tiny recluse sits in , and in the other (at the bottom), two diminutive white rabbits frolic. A pair of colorful birds perch on the rocks above the meditator and call to each other. Ducks, fish, and coral trees emerge from the dark blue foamy lake. 

Crowned figure wearing golden adornments and patterned orange shawl emerges from water
Fig. 3

Sengge Shong artists (act. early 2000s); Detail of right edge of Vaishravana Lokapala Mural; Rongwo Gonchen Monastery shrine to Kelden Gyatso; 2006; photograph by R. Linrothe

Figure reclining inside grotto at top of waterfall system populated by birds with brilliant yellow and blue plumage
Fig. 4

Sengge Shong artists (act. early 2000s); Detail of right edge of Vaishravana Lokapala Mural; Rongwo Gonchen Monastery shrine to Kelden Gyatso; 2006; photograph by R. Linrothe

Nearly identical forms appear in the  Lokapala of circa 2006 at the Kelden Gyatso Shrine (fig. 4), though with more insistence, detail, and density. The biggest difference is accounted for by the colors. Interviews with older painters in Rebkong made it clear that previously they used stone-ground pigments, which allow lighter, subtler, and softer hues. Post-1980, all the Rebkong painters embraced standardized, prefabricated, industrial paints with harsher but brighter colors. In both the pre-1950 paintings and the twenty-first-century murals, there is a willingness to incorporate extreme differences of scale, from the gigantic to the minuscule, and to seed all areas of the surface with elaborate detail work and surprising elements that reward close looking. The elaborate textile and serpent patterns of the  at the right edge of the Virupaksha Lokapala mural are examples of the latter, and the huge hibiscus flowers on the right edge, larger than the cave’s  with his ritual drum (damaru) in the 2006 painting, illustrate the former. 

Another tendency incipient in the 1930s paintings but more highly developed among contemporary painters is what can be called selective naturalism. In the 1990s a young artist named Dondrub Gyatso painted a mural of  Nageshvara Raja inside the Sengge Shong Mago Jampa Lhakhang, a detail of which is included here (fig. 5). While the buddhas in the corners of the detail are in a traditional mode, the altar table is in one-point perspective, the vases and other objects on the table cast shadows, and the two lions on the throne are in an aggressively “plastic” mode (in the senses both of fully moldable and of a synthetic polymer material), with glinting highlights accentuating the illusory roundness of their forms. The lessons of artists such as Gendun Chopel and Jampa Tseten, famous for incorporating photographic effects and selective aspects of Western painting traditions, increasingly make their appearance in contemporary Rebkong painting. It is no surprise that both of these renowned artists, who worked in central Tibet as well as India, are celebrated native sons of Amdo. 

Golden implement in shape of wheel with nimbus rests on table strewn with implements at base of lotus pedestal
Fig. 5.

Dondrub Gyatso (act. 1990s); Detail of Buddha Nageshvara Raja Mural; Lower Sengge Shong Jampa Lhakhang; late 1990s; photograph by R. Linrothe

Footnotes
1

Amdo is the Tibetan name for a dominantly Tibetan cultural region situated north of central and western Tibet (now known as the Tibetan Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China [PRC]), and on the southern border of Mongol cultural spaces. After 1949, areas of Amdo were carved by the PRC into parts of Qinghai, Gansu, and Sichuan Provinces. Rebkong, now in Qinghai Province, was an important artistic center of long standing and enduring connections to the Buddhist institutions of Lhasa and Shigatse. See Andreas Gruschke, The Cultural Monuments of Tibet’s Outer Provinces: The Qinghai Part of Amdo, vol. 1 (Bangkok: White Lotus, 2001); Stewart Smith, The Monasteries of Amdo: A Comprehensive Guide to the Monasteries of the Amdo Region of Tibet, [In English and Tibetan] (Scott Valley, CA: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013).

2

Benno Weiner, The Chinese Revolution on the Tibetan Frontier (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2020); Mark Stevenson, Many Paths: Searching for Old Tibet in New China (Melbourne: Lothian Books, 2005); Rob Linrothe, “Creativity, Freedom and Control: The Renaissance of Tibetan Buddhist Painting in Rebgong,” Tibet Journal 26, no. 3–4 (2001): 9–50.

3

Clare Harris, In the Image of Tibet: Tibetan Painting after 1959 (London: Reaktion, 1999), 50–56, 165–67; Tsewang Tashi, A History of Art in Twentieth Century Tibet (Beijing: China Tibetology Publishing House, 2018), 7–26, 39–56; Wen Pulin 溫 普林, Anduo Qiangba: 1914–2002: Dalai Yu Xizang de Hua Shi 安多 强巴: 1914–2002: 達賴 與 西藏 的 畫師 / Amdo Qiampa (Taipei: Da kuai wenhua chuban gu fen you xian gongsi, 2002); Donald S. Lopez Jr, Gendun Chopel: Tibet’s First Modern Artist (New York: Trace Foundation’s Latse Library, 2013).

4

Karénina Kollmar-Paulenz, “Utopian Thought in Tibetan Buddhism: A Survey of the Śambhala Concept and Its Sources,” Studies in Central and East Asian Religions 5–6 (1992-93): 78–96; Erberto Lo Bue, “The Śambhala Murals in the Klu Khang and Their Historical Context: A Preliminary Report,” in Tibetan Art and Architecture in Context: Tibetan Studies. PIATS 2006: Proceedings of the Eleventh Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, Königswinter 2006, ed. Erberto Lo Bue and Christian Luczanits (Andiast: International Institute for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies, 2010), 353–74.

5

For their names and primary attributes, see Himalayan Art Resources, https://www.himalayanart.org/search/set.cfm?setID=1964.

6

Complete sets of preincarnations are included on Himalayan Art Resources, http://www.himalayanart.org/search/set.cfm?setID=72.

7

Pelzang later produced a study of the monasteries of Rebkong (Reb gong), their histories and holdings: Chu skyes Dge ’dun dpal bzang, Reb Gong Yul Skor Zin Tho (Lanzhou: Kan su’u mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2007).

8

A fuller account of our interviews with Nyingben and several locally esteemed painters is found in Rob Linrothe, ed., Collecting Paradise: Buddhist Art of Kashmir and Its Legacies, Exhibition catalog (New York: Rubin Museum of Art, 2015).

9

Rob Linrothe, ed., Collecting Paradise: Buddhist Art of Kashmir and Its Legacies, Exhibition catalog (New York: Rubin Museum of Art, 2015); Sarah E. Fraser, “‘Antiquarianism or Primitivism’: The Edge of History in the Modern Chinese Imagination,” in Reinventing the Past: Archaism and Antiquarianism in Chinese Art and Visual Culture, ed. Wu Hung (Chicago: Art Media Resources, 2010), 363–64; Sarah E. Fraser, “Sha Bo Tsh Ring, Zhang Daqian and Sino-Tibetan Cultural Exchange, 1941–43: Defining Research Methods for Amdo Regional Painting Workshops in the Medieval and Modern Periods,” in Art in Tibet: Issues in Traditional Tibetan Art from the Seventh to the Twentieth Century. PIATS 2003: Proceedings of the Tenth Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, Oxford 2003, vol. 10/13, Brill’s Tibetan Studies Library (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 115–36, pls. 73–80.

10

Rob Linrothe, ed., Collecting Paradise: Buddhist Art of Kashmir and Its Legacies, Exhibition catalog (New York: Rubin Museum of Art, 2015).

11

Clare Harris, In the Image of Tibet: Tibetan Painting after 1959 (London: Reaktion, 1999), 50–56, 165–67; Tsewang Tashi, A History of Art in Twentieth Century Tibet (Beijing: China Tibetology Publishing House, 2018), 7–26, 39–56; Wen Pulin 溫 普林, Anduo Qiangba: 1914–2002: Dalai Yu Xizang de Hua Shi 安多 强巴: 1914–2002: 達賴 與 西藏 的 畫師 / Amdo Qiampa (Taipei: Da kuai wenhua chuban gu fen you xian gongsi, 2002); Donald S. Lopez Jr, Gendun Chopel: Tibet’s First Modern Artist (New York: Trace Foundation’s Latse Library, 2013).

Further Reading

Linrothe, Rob. 2001a. “Creativity, Freedom and Control: The Renaissance of Tibetan Buddhist Painting in Rebgong.” Tibet Journal 26, no. 3–4, 9–50.

Stevenson, Mark. 2005. Many Paths: Searching for Old Tibet in New China. Melbourne: Lothian Books.

Weiner, Benno. 2020. The Chinese Revolution on the Tibetan Frontier. Ithaca, NT: Cornell University Press.

Citation

Rob Linrothe, “Shambhala Kings Mural: Recognizing Rebkong’s Regional Painting Contributions,” Project Himalayan Art, Rubin Museum of Art, 2023, http://rubinmuseum.org/projecthimalayanart/essays/shambhala-kings-mural.

Cultural Revolution

The Cultural Revolution was a political and social movement in communist China from 1966 to 1976. During this time, traditional culture across all of China came under violent attack, and almost all religious institutions were shut down and many were physically destroyed. In minority areas, ethnic differences and indigenous cultural practices, such as use of Tibetan language or dress, were seen as backward and subject to persecution, adding an additional racial dimension. Hundreds of thousands of Tibetans fled to India or Nepal, and many Himalayan artworks were destroyed or scattered abroad.

Kalachakra

Language:
Sanskrit

Kalachakra refers to both the name of major Highest Yoga tantra texts and the central deity, which is the focus of these texts, depicted as a multi-armed figure in tantric union with his consort Vishvamata. The tantra’s elaborate cosmology addresses three wheels of time—the outer, inner, and the other. The outer wheel of time refers to the external world, procession of the external solar and lunar days, or the macrocosm. The inner wheel of time refers to the human body or the microcosm of the inner channels, elements, and wind movements. And the other wheel is the initiation into the paths and the practice. According to the text the Buddha first taught, the Kalachakra tantra in the mythical Buddhist realm of Shambhala to chakravartin kings who rule there.

Vaishravana

Language:
Sanskrit

In Buddhism, Vaishravana is the guardian king (lokapala) of the north, one of the four guardian kings who are often found at the entrances to temples. Vaishravana is also sometimes worshiped as a wealth deity and at times as a martial deity. Depending on the emphasis, he is depicted as an armored warrior, often mounted on a lion, carrying a mongoose or holding a stupa/pagoda.

Vidyadhara

Language:
Sanskrit

In Vajrayana Buddhism, Vidyadhara is a term of respect for an accomplished master of yogic meditation, one who can transmit important tantric initiations.

Shambhala

Language:
Sanskrit

According to the Kalachakra Tantra, Shambhala is a sacred mythical land in the north where Buddhist kings rule. At the end of our eon, these kings are prophesied to ride out from their mountain-ringed kingdom to destroy enemies of the Buddhist Dharma. In Tibetan and Inner Asian contexts, these enemies are often understood to be Muslim, viewed as the destroyers of Buddhism in India, but the Shambhala myth has often adapted to contemporary crises, and have been reinterpreted to any threat to Buddhism, or the state, including British forces in the Boxer Rebellion, or the Communists. Many individuals and states in history, including Mongol khans, the Russian tsars, and even the emperor of Japan have been identified as the savior-kings described in these prophecies.