Thanka

Function: Tibetan paintings. Thangka are usually painted on cotton, sometimes on silk, and executed according to fixed iconometric rules, following written texts. The motives they depict are of different kinds, but almost exclusively in some way they relate to Buddha’s words, Buddhist cosmology and rituals, Buddhist history and biography, Buddhist (and sectarian) religious personalities and lineages. In a way one could say that they are visualised texts. Their role as “teaching aids”, not only for religious practitioners (monks and nuns) but also for lay people, could earlier be seen when wandering monks and nuns could recite religious texts/stories pointing to thangkas for their audience to better follow the story and grasping the instructions given. This thangka is the first one in a set of 19 thangkas, which provide a running account of the life of one of Tibet’s most famous and revered “saints-yogis”, Milarepa, the “cotton-clad” (1040-1123). The lower register of this thangka starts with his birth, seen in the left bottom corner and how his father is called home from the market to give his son a name, Töpaga. The upper register shows Milarepa sitting in an easy position on a lotus throne against a backdrop of ever higher mountains. He is surrounded by the lineage of the Tibetan Buddhist sect/order into which he had been initiated, Kagyu. The supreme Buddha, according to the Kagyu called Vajradhara, is seen at the top and it is dark blue in appearance. Below him are two important Indian masters who are considered direct ascendants to Milarepa in the order. Tilopa is signalled by a golden fish and Naropa is carrying a skull bowl (kapala). Between them, right above Milarepa’s head one can see his highly learned but also demanding master, Marpa. On each side of Milarepa the standing figures are his two principal pupils, to the right Rechungpa, who wrote his biography, namtar, and to the left Gampopa, who carried the lineage on. Below Milarepa there is a scene depicting some of those adversaries that Milarepa had to fight or debate with during his long journey to perfection; in this case the “five flesh-eating dakinis (female “sky-walkers”), Tseringma and her sisters. Acquisition Acquired during the last of Sven Hedin’s expeditions (1927-35) by his ethnographer. Gösta Montell. Acquisition took place in Beijing on the 14th of February 1930. Export was cleared by the Chinese authorities. Why this is a masterpieceThe set to which this particular thangka belongs, is a rare and complete example of narrative thangkas, furthermore depicting the biography of one of the Tibetan world’s most beloved personalities. It is exceptionally well painted and unusually well preserved. It does not only exemplify religious practices but is also replete with ethnographic detail contained in the countless scenes that make up the total life story of Milarepa.History of the ObjectThe set of thangkas, to which the present one belongs, was acquired on the 14th of February 1930 in Beijing for the so-called Hedin-Bendix collection. That collection then belonged to the so-called Hedin Expedition which upon Sven Hedin’s death in a way became a part of the Sven Hedin Foundation before, like Hedin’s other archaeological and ethnographic collections, becoming the property of the Museum of Ethnography, Stockholm. The history before the acquisition in Beijing is not known. Most likely it was housed in a temple or monastery. Some thangkas show signs of having been exposed in such a milieu, but the overall condition of the set is so good that permanent exposure is unlikely. (Virtual Collection of Masterpieces, http://masterpieces.asemus.museum/Default.aspx)