A Ming Dynasty Monastery at the Sino-Tibetan Frontier

Qutansi (Gautama Monastery) is a well-preserved Tibetan Buddhist monastery located near Ledu in Qinghai, China, and Amdo, Tibet, a borderland region where Tibetan, Mongolian, and Chinese populations intersect. The monastery’s name in Tibetan, Drotsang Dorje Chang, refers to Buddha Vajradhara, to whom the temple was dedicated. Founded by a Tibetan lama in about 1392, Qutansi was constructed over a period of approximately thirty-five years with support from three powerful early Ming dynasty (1368–1644) emperors, Hongwu (r. 1368–1398), Yongle (r. 1402–1424), and Xuande (r. 1425–1435). These emperors sent artisans from the imperial court to manage the construction and decoration of the monastery’s sumptuous Buddha halls, along with numerous luxurious objects created in the imperial workshops to furnish them. They also had carvings made on stone stele of several edicts, in Chinese and Tibetan, outlining the terms of their support and reasons for their patronage, which still stand at the monastery.1 Their main motivations for supporting Qutansi were to bring peace to and help control the politically unstable Sino-Tibetan borderlands, as well as to use it as an imperial lineage temple in which the resident lamas could pray for the long life of the dynastic line.2 Qutansi was just one of several temples supported by the Ming court in the northern Amdo Sino-Tibetan frontier.3 Taken as a whole, the buildings, objects, and murals at Qutansi constitute our most comprehensive surviving record of imperial Tibetan Buddhist art from the early Ming dynasty.  

Ming Imperial Patronage

Qutansi was founded shortly before 1393, when a Tibetan Buddhist lama named Sanggye Tashi (d. 1414) traveled from Amdo to the first Ming capital in Nanjing, bearing horses as tribute, in order to request imperial protection for his newly established Buddhist temple. Earlier, Sanggye Tashi had persuaded the disbanded followers of a Mongol Yuan dynasty loyalist in Gansu Province to submit to the Ming, thereby helping to stabilize the politically turbulent borderland area. Recognizing the lama’s important role as a peacekeeper in the northwest, Hongwu granted him protection of the temple along with its name, Qutansi, which was carved in the emperor’s calligraphy on a signboard that still hangs from the front eaves of the temple’s founding hall, Qutandian (Gautama Hall) (fig. 2).4 Hongwu’s support of Qutansi constitutes one of the earliest signs of the Ming court’s interest in Tibetan Buddhism and reveals an awareness of Buddhism’s potential for exercising political control in the Tibetan frontier.5

Ming imperial patronage of Qutansi reached its height in the reign of Yongle, a fervent supporter of Tibetan Buddhism. Yongle invited three of the highest-ranking Tibetan hierarchs from Tibet to the Ming capitals in Nanjing and Beijing to serve as his personal Buddhist masters and perform for him powerful esoteric rituals and consecrations.6 He also hosted hundreds of lesser-ranking Tibetan lamas in Beijing, including Sanggye Tashi’s eldest nephew, Pelden Zangpo, whom he appointed to the position of abbot of Qutansi in 1408.7 Yongle seems to have developed a particular affinity for Pelden Zangpo, bestowing illustrious titles and lavishing high praise on him in three edicts that he sent to Qutansi. In the third edict, dated 1418, Yongle gifted Pelden Zangpo with a (now destroyed) “self-arisen” golden Buddha image created for a newly completed hall, Baoguangdian (Hall of Jewel Light), at the monastery.8 

Imperial construction at Qutansi culminated in the reign of Xuande, Yongle’s grandson, with the completion of the monastery’s largest hall, Longguodian (Hall of Dynastic Prosperity), in 1427. This hall had been part of Yongle’s vision for the temple, but he died before it was finished.9 To furnish the hall, Xuande sent a magnificent tablet inscribed with the words “Long Live the Emperor” in Chinese, Tibetan, and Sanskrit on the front and the names of three eunuchs who supervised the building project on the back (fig. 4).10 Textual records indicate that he also sent a large statue of Buddha Vajradhara (no longer extant) to be installed as the hall’s central image. Xuande was completing the architectural project according to his grandfather’s wishes.11

Monastery Layout, Decorative Program, and Significant Objects

Qutansi follows a traditional Chinese architectural style, with timber- frame halls capped with ceramic tile roofs aligned along an axis. The first hall along the main axis, Jingangdian (Vajra Hall), formed the monastery’s entrance for most of its history; in the twentieth century, a new main gate, along with two stele pavilions, was added in front of it. Aligned behind Jingangdian are Qutandian, Baoguangdian, and Longguodian. Longguodian is a magnificent structure of the highest order within the Ming architectural system, possessing a massive hipped roof, complex bracket sets, and corridors on both sides that connect to bell and drum towers (fig. 5). This form was generally used only in imperial palace halls, including Fengtiandian (Hall of Revering Heaven; later known as Taihedian, Hall of Supreme Harmony), the largest hall in the Ming Forbidden City.12 The monastic complex is enclosed by a covered arcade and, until modern times, was surrounded with a thick earthen fortification to prevent attacks.13 

One of Qutansi’s most remarkable features is its more than five thousand square feet (five hundred square meters) of original wall paintings. The murals in the three main halls were mainly executed in a Sino-Tibetan style popular during the Mongol Yuan period (1271–1368) and depict deities belonging to the Sakya and Kagyu traditions. Of particular importance is a complete set of the forty-three deities of the Manjuvajra mandala from the eleventh-century collection of esoteric teachings Vajravali(Diamond Garland) in Qutandian—our earliest example of imagery related to this text in Amdo.14 Baoguangdian contains the first ring of ten deities from the forty-three-deity Manjuvajra mandala, as well as rare portraits of the Second Zhamarpa, Khacho Wangpo (1350–1405); the Fifth Karmapa, Dezhin Shekpa (1384–1415); and Pelden Zangpo, who by painting himself alongside these two important hierarchs was claiming to belong to their illustrious lineage (figs. 6, 7, and 8).15 The walls of the arcade surrounding the monastic complex are covered in murals of the Buddha’s life and past lives, done in the Chinese blue-and-green landscape style, which date to the Ming and Qing (1644–1911) dynasties (fig. 9).16 

Unfortunately, nearly all of the monastery’s original statuary program—including the “self-arisen” Buddha image gifted by Yongle and the large image of Vajradhara bestowed by Xuande—were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). The only exception is an exquisite gilt-bronze statue of a bodhisattva inscribed on the lotus base with the words, “Donated in the reign of Yongle of the great Ming dynasty” in Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese (fig. 10).17 Several objects inscribed with the reign dates of later Ming emperors reveal that imperial patronage continued throughout the rest of the dynasty, though it never again reached the glory of the early fifteenth century.18 

Qutansi after the Ming

By the Qing dynasty, Qutansi had fallen into significant decline, primarily suffering from the growing competition from the monasteries of Tsongkhapa’s (1357–1419) Geluk tradition beginning in the sixteenth century.19 At its height in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the monastery housed more than five hundred monks; by the Qing, this number had been reduced to about three hundred; and in 1915 only sixty or so monks resided at the monastery.20 It was not until the 1980s that Qutansi’s buildings and furnishings were restored and the monastery was opened for tourism.