Mongol Patronage, Nepalese Artists, and Murals as a Public Marketing Strategy for Sacred Books

This painting of a previous birth of the bodhisattva before he became the Buddha, known as a jataka story, is among the one hundred individual stories of the Buddha’s previous lives that were meticulously painted and inscribed in the Great Circumambulatory Passage (korlam chenmo) of Zhalu Monastery. These jataka paintings, among the many detailed from the fourteenth century that miraculously survive intact at the site, are notable for the intricate narrative details they display and the fact that they are the earliest known extant large and sequential set of paintings of this subject matter in Tibetan art. Like many of the other fourteenth-century murals at Zhalu, they are accompanied by extensive Tibetan inscriptions, and the combination of text and image painted together across the passageway creates a traversable mural representation of a book. Looking like books on walls, they convey to viewers the value of sacred books. At this time, the editing of the nascent Tibetan canonical collections was taking place at Zhalu under the supervision of the temple’s most famous abbot, Buton Rinchen Drub (1290–1364). 

Jataka Stories: The Story of the Dancer

Jataka stories are fantastic accounts of previous lives of the bodhisattva who would eventually become Buddha Shakyamuni. At Zhalu, a curated selection of one hundred of these stories are organized into sets of the ten perfections (paramita), the stages and skills or practices that bodhisattvas perfect on their path toward Buddhahood. These paintings, arranged as ten stories for each of the ten perfections, form a gridlike arrangement above their accompanying inscriptions across two registers disposed along the outer wall of the enclosed passageway, placed on an upper section of the wall above human height, in a venerable position usually maintained for sacred books. The stories, both painted and inscribed, narrate some of the bodhisattva’s many manifestations, as a king, a peasant, a merchant, an elephant, a monkey, and once, even an enormous fish, in every case performing admirable and awe-inspiring selfless deeds (fig. 2).1 

In the story of the dancer, number sixty-six in this enumerated set, the inscription relates that the bodhisattva was born as a male professional dancer and had a beautiful daughter called Drowai Pelmo (Most Glorious One), herself a skilled dancer (fig. 3). While the male is clearly named as the bodhisattva in this version, the textual story focuses exclusively on the female.2 The painting here of this tale also places her higher in the composition. The text describes the girl’s compelling qualities and details the lyrics of her songs. She is credited with the ability to draw in audiences through her skillful dancing and then using the opportunity to teach important Buddhist lessons, such as impermanence. The story can be read to make a statement about art in Buddhist contexts, arguing that creating or using beautiful things, like song, dance, and physical adornment, is justified if the intention of the teaching is itself noble. 

This painting depicts both male and female dancers, with the male situated at the bottom center of the composition holding a fan and the female dancer in the higher register, portrayed in a dynamic dance posture with one foot kicked up behind her. Six musicians, including two white sari-clad women, frame the elegant female dancer. She is supported on a floating, geometrically stylized blue and green lotus pedestal, and a green canopy with oversize floral tassels hangs above her. Around the edges of the composition, four smaller architectural pavilions accommodate groups of courtly onlookers who direct their gaze toward her (fig. 4). Other scenes of jatakas at Zhalu also show the earliest Tibetan and Nepalese artistic experimentations with landscape depictions; here, the vignettes of this story are set against a flattened, red-ground background that is covered with a delicate scrolling vine motif, a favorite pattern among Nepalese artists (fig. 5).

Nepalese Artists, Chinese Architects, Tibetan Context: Material Cultures that Meet and Mix

This painting is full of specific Nepalese details. The tiled pavilions with pitched roofs, the upper-story balconies with sloping beams and small windows, the women in saris with red tikka marks on their foreheads, the large skin-covered drums and other instruments, and the background design of red-on-red vine and tendril pattern all indicate that it was made by a Newar artist. Since no large mural paintings from Nepal survive from this period, Zhalu preserves the best and earliest surviving examples of Newar mural art, which was much valued across Asia during this period.3 

Approximately one quarter of the jataka murals in this passageway appear to have been painted by this Newar artists group, while the others display a more Tibetan style, with Chinese costumes and architecture (fig. 6) throughout. Newar painters clearly worked alongside Tibetan artists at the site, but on different paintings, implying that there were likely multiple workshops of artisans working here at the same time.4 

The Zhalu narrative murals also provide numerous depictions of ordinary people: male and female, young and old; and everyday worldly settings, such as markets and urban gatherings. This painting alone contains varieties of dress and architecture, printed cloth patterns, and musical instruments used in this period. The Zhalu murals prove a rich resource for information about what the world looked like in fourteenth-century Tibet, Nepal, and (Mongol-controlled) China.

Cosmopolitan Connections and Patronage

In the renovation that saw the addition of these murals, the members of the Zhalu Monastery were celebrating their inclusion in a wider network of global commerce, contact, and cosmopolitanism: their small and beloved temple was a beneficiary not only of Nepalese rulers to the south but also of prestigious and direct Mongol patronage from the Yuan court. Because of Zhalu’s close alliance with the house of Sakya through matrimonial ties, Zhalu’s ruling Che clan received significant gifts from the Yuan emperor Temür in the early fourteenth century, including funds as well as foreign artisans.5 Subsequently, the much smaller temple at the site since the eleventh century was greatly expanded, with upper levels added to the entire structure that were topped with four elaborate Chinese-style tiled roofs (fig.7). The murals that were painted in this fourteenth-century expansion preserve visual evidence of an explosively rich, creative synthesis in Tibetan art from this conjunction of Mongol patronage, direct contact with elite material objects from east, south, and Central Asia, and traveling itinerant artisans from the south and east (fig. 8). Newar artists were responsible for some paintings, and it is likely that Chinese artisans oversaw the addition of the Chinese-style tiled roofs. 

Sources of Authority

The Zhalu mural art produced following the fourteenth-century renovation clearly reflects Tibetan sources of authority. During the renovation period, Zhalu’s new wealth and foreign favor attracted an important and brilliant author, editor, and lama to serve as abbot. The illustrious canon collector Buton Rinchen Drub came to Zhalu in 1320 and remained as acting abbot until 1356. During this time he oversaw the production of most of the new paintings, as well as the creation of his own massive edited and newly scribed versions of both Tibetan canonical collections, the Kangyur (“Words of the Buddha”) and Tengyur (“Commentaries” or “Treatises”). 

Reflecting Buton’s interest in textual authority and correctly edited texts, the fourteenth-century paintings at Zhalu include a great volume of visible textual inscriptions. The korlam circumambulatory passageway is not the only new space at Zhalu whose walls were furnished with long Tibetan inscriptions. Other areas of the temple, including an upper-level circumambulatory passage and four rooms filled with Mandalas of the Yogatantras, also feature extensive inscriptions placed directly on the walls. Indeed, in the first of the four central shrines a pilgrim would have entered on the ground floor, two textual inscriptions (fig. 9) were specifically chosen that concerned the important religious function of seeing paintings, evidence that the mural decorations and the textual inscriptions were mutually supportive efforts.6 Paintings were described in these selected inscribed passages as important tools with which to prepare and train visions of divinity (fig. 10) that would yield a good rebirth.

Textual Sources

At Zhalu, specific Tibetan books were chosen as the basis for the murals. The jatakas painted along the entire outer wall of the ground-floor passage are all taken from The Life Stories of the Buddha (Tibetan: Sangs rgyas kyi skyes rabs), a collection of one hundred jataka stories leading up to the story of Shakyamuni (the one-hundred-and-first story) that had been just recently collected or authored and arranged in 1314 by the Third Karmapa, Rangjung Dorje (1284–1339).7 A slightly elder contemporary of Buton and another esteemed religious teacher, Rangjung Dorje was the first person to be recognized in his lifetime as a direct reincarnation (tulku) of his predecessor, Karma Pakshi (1204–1286).8 

Zhalu contains many important surviving fourteenth-century paintings and a large number of inscriptions. While the monastery is best known for its images of deities (figs. 8 and 11), the detailed narrative jataka paintings admirably illustrate the prowess and creativity of the artists. Painted by Newar and Tibetan artists working on different sections, these murals show significant details of fourteenth-century life. Furthermore, the large volume of inscribed texts on the walls testify to the period’s interest, exemplified by Buton, in authoring and editing sacred texts.