Tibetan Buddhist Icons Produced in Silk

The Tangut kingdom of Xixia (1038–1227) was a small but significant multiethnic kingdom that ruled the eastern end of the trade routes that connected east with west, known as the Silk Road. Tangut patronage integrated Tibetan and Chinese religious and artistic traditions and established many practices, including the use of silk for the production of Tibetan Buddhist images. The thangka created with the technique known as kesi (carved silk) because of the effect it produced appeared as a special form of Tibetan art around the thirteenth century. The technique combined influences from Tibet, Tangut Xixia, and Chinese Song in the Amdo area, testifying to the exchange among different peoples during the period.

Achala

In esoteric Buddhist practice the primordial buddhas have in their retinue five deities (vidyarajas) to guard four cardinal directions and the center. Achala, one of the vidyarajas,1 is an emanation of Vairochana and often served as guardian in early central Tibetan monasteries.2 He seems to have been a popular deity among the Tanguts, as many depictions of Achala can be found among extant Xixia hanging scrolls (thangka) (fig. 2).

Silk Tapestry

The kesi weaving technique, introduced to China from Central Asia during the Tang dynasty (618–907), was at first employed mainly for book decoration.3 From the tenth century (Five Dynasties period), artisans began to produce works of calligraphy and painted compositions by means of this weaving technique. This method uses raw silk (shengsi) as the warp and boiled silk (shusi) of various colors as the weft. Wielding a shuttle, the artisan weaves the pattern based on a painted design specially prepared for this technique. As the finished surface produces a carved-like effect, giving the textile a three-dimensional quality, the technique became known as kesi, which literally means “carved silk.” Many silk tapestries produced in the Tang and Song dynasties (960–1279) feature patterns of flowers and birds; figural images did not become popular until the Southern Song dynasty (1127–1279).4

The Tanguts innovatively produced silk tapestry featuring Tibetan Buddhist images, or thangkas, by employing Uyghur artisans (a people from today’s Xinjiang region) who migrated to the Xixia territory. The Uyghur had learned the kesi technique in the Dingzhou region (in modern-day northwest Hebei Province) during the Northern Song (960–1127), where they had settled previously.5 Their creative efforts generated a new artistic idiom that was followed in most silk tapestry thangkas of the Yuan (1271–1368) and Ming (1368–1644) periods, such as seen in the famous Vajrabhairava mandala silk tapestry (ca. 1329) now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Examples of Tangut kesi, including the Green Tara (fig. 3) excavated at Khara-Khoto, the portrait of Lama Zhang (1123–1194) (fig. 4) preserved in the Potala Palace, and the Achala seen here, possess high artistic and historical value.

Composition and Iconography

This Achala silk tapestry was based on an initial drawing or painting. The motifs of this relatively simple composition are highly decorative, with highly contrasting colors.

At the very top of the thangka (fig. 1) sit the Five Tathagatas of the Vajradhatu (diamond realm): from left to right, Amoghasiddhi of the north, Akshobhya of the east, Vairochana of the center, performing the gesture of ultimate enlightenment (uttarabodhi or bodhyagri mudra), Amitabha of the west, and Ratnasambhava of the south. A large image of blue Achala, situated inside a red aureole, takes up the center of the thangka. He has one face and three eyes. His hair is tied up in a three-petaled crown commonly worn by bodhisattvas. An image of Akshobhya embellishes his hair bun. Achala is kneeling with one knee touching the ground, a position often seen in Xixia thangkas, termed Achalasana, or the “posture of Achala.” Dressed in a lower garment (dhoti) with multicolored bands, he raises his right hand, holding a sword, while his left hand performs the threatening (tarjani) mudra with a lasso around his index finger.

Above Achala, a black cartouche is inscribed in gold Tibetan script with the Three-Syllable Root Mantra and mantras of bodhisattvas. From the left side: 1) the Three-Syllable Mantra, Om a hum; 2) the mantra of Avalokiteshvara, Om mani padme hum; 3) the mantra of Achala, Om tsen da ma ha ro sha na hum pat; 4) the mantra of Tara, Om ta re tu ta re tu re swaha; and 5) the mantra of the Buddha’s Crown: Om bhum swaha.

In the lower corners adjacent to the primary deity’s lotus are the three-faced, six-armed Vajrasarasvati and the three-faced, eight-armed Sitatapatra (White Parasol). Green Tara, at the center of the bottom register, is flanked by Four-Armed Avalokiteshvara and Ushnishavijaya (Victorious Crown Ornament). At the lower corners are two protective deities of the Sakya tradition: the standing two-armed Mahakala (left), who holds a gandi stick, and Palden Lhamo (right).

The combination of Achala and the Five Tathagatas symbolizes right effort in practicing the Buddha dharma. Vajrasarasvati and Sitatapatra indicate the guru’s unhindered capacity of speech and auspiciousness, respectively. Green Tara, Avalokiteshvara, and Ushnishavijaya represent the salvation of sentient beings.

The Patron and Recipient

At the bottom of the composition, a golden inscription names both the patron and recipient: “The Khampa disciple Chang Tsondrudrak offers [this image] to Jetsun Khon Drakpa Gyeltsen, the great spiritual guide.”6 The recipient named here, Khon Drakpa Gyeltsen, refers to the famous third patriarch of the Sakya tradition, who lived from 1147 to 1216. The fact that the patron named in the inscription, Chang Tsondrudrak, was able to commission such an expensive silk tapestry thangka signals his high status. In the colophon of his Precious Rosary of Religious Practice, Drakpa Gyeltsen suggests, “The Sakya upāsaka (lay practitioner) Drakpa Gyeltsen received a request from Tsongkha’s [Changton] bhikṣu (fully ordained monk) Tsöndrüdrak, by which [this text was] perceptively written after the foremost meritorious one.”7 Another text by the same author, Noble Ornament of the Vajra Tent, relates that “(a student named) Chenton Tsondrudrak delightfully participated in sutra copying in the sixth month, the year of male iron-horse (1210), at the Sakya Monastery in Tsang.”8 Genealogy of the Sakya contains a list of Drakpa Gyeltsen’s disciples, among whom four had names with the element drak. One of them, Tsangton Tsondrubdrak, appears to be the name of this thangka donor, his name spelled slightly differently.9

It is interesting to note that the patron calls himself a Khampa. Before the thirteenth century, “Kham” often refers to the two regions of northeast and southeast Tibet, Do Kham, combined. The region of Tsongkha, where Drakpa Gyeltsen’s colophon tells us that the patron was from, is near the Huang River and is a part of Do (northeast Tibet), called Dome during the Yuan period. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, people of Tsongkha occasionally referred to themselves as Khampa.10 The Tanguts who lived in Tsongkha were sometimes called Tanguts of Kham (Kham Minyak). For example, the two famous Xixia translators Tsami Lotsawa (twelfth century) and Ga Lotsawa (1110–1198) were both born in Tsongkha.11

The people of the kingdom of Tsongkha (1008–1104) were self-proclaimed inheritors of the Tibetan Empire in the east, their ruler Gyelse (Chinese: Gusiluo; 997–1065), a descendant of the Tibetan emperors, using the old Tibetan imperial dynastic title tsenpo.12 Monastic Buddhism flourished in Tsongkha, and it played an important role in the revival of Buddhism in central Tibet as well as the transmission of Tibetan Buddhism to Tangut Xixia when they absorbed it.13

Dating

The figure depicted above Achala at right can be identified as the first Sakya patriarch Kunga Nyingpo (1092–1158), and the figure above him at left, the second patriarch Sonam Tsemo (1142–1182). However, it is rare that the recipient of this thangka as mentioned in the inscription, Drakpa Gyeltsen—who was the last of the Three Lay Patriarchs of Sakya—does not appear in the composition, which suggests that Drakpa Gyeltsen was still alive when the original design of the thangka was commissioned. This also corresponds well with the date 1210, when Chang Tsondrudrak reportedly joined the sutra copying event held by Drakpa Gyeltsen at Sakya Monastery. Thus, the original painting this silk tapestry is based on was likely created in the early thirteenth century.14

This Achala composition and other extant early kesi thangkas are related to the lamas of Sakya or Kagyu sect, roughly in the early to mid-thirteenth century. Just at this period, in Hangzhou and other Southern Song locations, no kesi technique for producing Tibetan Buddhist icons existed. From the ninth to the twelfth century, many Uyghur artisans migrated to the Hexi Corridor and North China, bringing new kesi skills with them, and the places where they settled became centers of kesi production. However, there was no tradition of kesi technique in the Tsongkha River basin or in central Tibet. Monk donors in the Xixia court who offered or donated a kesi thangka to his lama (guru) had to commission its weaving in the areas adjacent to Xixia. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, China’s kesi centers included Dingzhou, which linked Tangut Xixia, Khitan Liao (916–1125)/Jurchen Jin (1115–1234), and Chinese Northern Song by trade routes.