Tibetan Visual Models on the Silk Road

This painted scroll on silk represents the Paradise of Bhaishajyaguru (the Buddha of Healing, also known as the Medicine Buddha), set in a mountain landscape with the bodhisattvas Manjushri and Samantabhadra, numerous attendants, celestial musicians, and minor deities. Bhaishajyaguru, seated on a lotus pedestal above a dais that bears a dedication inscription written in Tibetan and Chinese, is positioned at the center of the upper register, emphasizing the spiritual and visual importance of the dedication. The large letters of the Tibetan alphabet make the Tibetan cultural matrix clear. The Chinese characters are aligned horizontally, rather than vertically (the conventional arrangement), but the Chinese inscription gives more information than the Tibetan text. The Buddha is flanked by his two principal attendants: at his right, the white Bodhisattva of the Moon (Chandra), and at his left, the golden Bodhisattva of the Sun (Surya) (fig. 2). This iconography relates to early representations of the Buddha of Healing in Central Asia and China, notably in Dunhuang, the crossroads of the Silk Road. Dunhuang is best known for the hundreds of Buddhist grottoes in the nearby Mogao Caves that were embellished from the fourth to the fourteenth centuries. Among the Dunhuang murals, this subject was so popular that ninety-seven images of Bhaishajyaguru paradises have been identified, from the Sui dynasty (581–618) to the Xixia period (1038–1227).1 In these murals, the buddha’s body is most frequently pictured with a blue or a pale flesh tint, occasionally white or, more rarely, red, while extant portable paintings from Dunhuang and Central Asia tend to represent his body as beige or gold, as seen here. 

The triad is surrounded by numerous small-scale bodhisattvas and gandharvas (celestial musicians) making offerings. The lower register depicts the two principal bodhisattvas—Manjushri mounted on his lion and Samantabhadra on his elephant beside the orchestra—above the Thousand-Armed Avalokiteshvara at the center of the lower register. It is striking that the Buddha of Healing as well as Samantabhadra and Manjushri are all rendered following Chinese aesthetic models, with round faces, their bodies clothed in voluminous fabrics and robes, while the two bodhisattvas flanking the Buddha of Healing reflect Indo-Tibetan aesthetic models of agile bending slender bodies lightly garbed in diaphanous shawls and patterned dhoti, which became popular during the Tibetan rule over Dunhuang (787–866).

Historic Significance

This is one of the largest portable paintings from Dunhuang, although major portions of the lower register are missing. Historically, this painted scroll, recovered during the field mission of archaeologist Sir Aurel Stein to Dunhuang in 1917, is highly significant: the colors and silk are well conserved due to Dunhuang’s dry climate. It was also concealed for several centuries, allowing the bilingual Tibetan-Chinese inscriptions to remain legible. This is the earliest extant dated portable painting, a commission by Pelyang, a Tibetan monk then living in Dunhuang,2 with a Tibetan inscription, corresponding to 836. The dedications read, “In the year of the dragon, I, the monk Pelyang, for the benefit of my health and to transfer merit, commissioned in a group the images of Bhaishajyaguru; Samantabhadra; Manjushri-Kumara; a thousand-armed thousand-eyed Avalokiteshvara. . . .” The Chinese text indicates the date—the full moon, on the fifteenth day of the ninth month of the bing chen year (October 28, 836)—and that it was requested for merit on behalf of Pelyang’s deceased parents to be reborn in the peaceful celestial realm, the Dharmadhatu.

Iconography and Visual Conventions

Rather than a typical paradise of the Medicine Buddha, this group of deities reflects the personal preferences of the monk who commissioned the painting. The iconography of the buddha is distinctive: his right hand is raised toward his heart with the open palm facing right, a gesture reminiscent of the vitarka mudra, the gesture of argumentation, simultaneously clasping a golden leaf of a medicinal plant between the thumb and forefinger. His left hand rests in his lap, holding a bowl of nectar. Later Tibetan representations typically portray this buddha as seated and dressed in monastic robes, with his right hand extended toward the ground, palm up, in the varada mudra of generosity and boon-bestowing, holding a myrobalan, a medicinal fruit, to present to those in need. In portable paintings the buddha’s body color may be beige or blue, the latter clearly linked to the lapis lazuli radiance attributed to the Buddha of Healing as described in his primary text, the Bhaishajyaguru Sutra, and in his ritual descriptions among the Dunhuang Tibetan documents: “The Buddha of Healing, the sovereign with the radiance of lapis lazuli.”3

In this painting, the buddha’s physiognomy, garments, and posture correspond to aesthetic codes of Chinese Buddhist painting. His two attendant bodhisattvas are composed with the explicit asymmetry of posture seen in Indian treatises:4 seated with one leg pendent; their bodies as if in motion, implied by the angle of the head in contrast to the body bent slightly to one side; the head lengthened on one side and foreshortened on the other. This mode of dynamic representation as well as the visual contrast between the buddha’s round halo and the elliptical halos of his attendant bodhisattvas—depicted with narrow waists, slightly elongated limbs, and garments reflecting Indian printed fabrics—appear to be at variance with the Chinese aesthetic mode, yet the painting techniques are the same. The figures are drawn in pale ink, with the white or gold of the skin color, along with slight shading to give volume, added. Above this base, outlines of facial features and the garments’ fabrics are drawn in darker ink.5 This paradise of Bhaishajyaguru reveals the flourishing of Buddhist art during Tibetan rule precisely by its juxtaposition of two different modes of aesthetic depiction. The identical technique of line and coloring indicates that the same artists were responsible for the entire painting.

Comparative Examples from Dunhuang of the Tibetan Period

Many painted scrolls on linen, silk, or hemp made during the Tibetan rule of Dunhuang represent Buddhist deities and ritual diagrams that reflect the newly evolving Indo-Tibetan aesthetic as well as iconographies stemming from Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhist rituals among the Tibetan Dunhuang manuscripts. There is special focus on Buddha Vairochana, due to new translations of his tantra and rituals, as in a drawing of Vairochana (fig. 3) and his entourage of buddhas and guardian deities. Images of bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara in several different aspects abound: Padmapani, Thousand-Armed Avalokiteshvara, Chintamanichakra Avalokiteshvara, and Amoghapasha (fig. 4).

A painting of the mandala of the Padmakula featuring eight deities of the Lotus (Padma) family, is centered on the dark, four-armed Amoghapasha, seated and holding the noose for which he is named, used to save beings from suffering (fig. 5). Regal with his triple-panel crown and a makara earring, multiple thin gold necklaces, and a sumptuous dhoti, he is surrounded by seven male and female deities, all seated within elliptical rainbow haloes. Their precise identification remains enigmatic. Two of them, holding a lotus in two arms and four arms, might be aspects of Avalokiteshvara. The protector Hayagriva can be recognized by the horse head in his crown; the White Tara, to the left of Amoghapasha, holds a lotus in front of her chest; and perhaps the goddess Yasodhara, seated in the lower right corner, like Amoghapasha holds a noose and wears a makara earring on her right ear, as well as gold hoops on her left ear.6 There is extreme delicacy in the rendering of their expressive faces, naturalistic body poses, sinuous draping of the sacred thread (yajnopavita), and lithe bodies seated on the simplest of lotus pedestals. This composition reflects the inspiration of India, eschewing the aesthetic of Chinese Buddhist painting to a degree hitherto unknown among the portable paintings attributed to the period of Tibetan rule at Dunhuang. There is a blending of diverse elements of Indian, Central Asian, and Chinese Buddhist aesthetic modes that characterizes the majority of the murals and portable paintings of Dunhuang during Tibetan rule.