News

Greyscale has been used throughout the HAR site to create a clear image composition with written names and numbers to improve navigation and identification. Important iconographic subjects, architectural features and composition sequences have been labeled either directly with names on the image or as numbers corresponding to an identification key in the body of explanatory text. There are four basic types of composition where greyscale numbering is most helpful: [1] Cityscapes, [2] Narratives, [3] Figure Compositions and [4] Lineage Compositions.

Yes, Vajramrita is a rare and unusual form and not commonly represented as a central figure in art. The deity mostly appears as part of an iconographic compendium such as the Vajravali of Abhayakaragupta, Bari Gyatsa, Sadhana-samucchaya, or in the group of Ten Wrathful Ones. There are four forms of the complex deity that have the name 'amrita' in common and they are all grouped together in the Vajravali literature. Each is described with a retinue of deities and a complex mandala. Several other forms of the deity, usually in a more simplified form, appear in other traditions. There are two deities similar in appearance that can cause confusion in identification: Humkara and Avalokita Samvara. (See the Vajramrita Outline Page).

The Mitra Gyatsa is a collection of one hundred and eight Tantric Mandalas compiled by Mitra Yogin in the 12th - 13th century. It has remained a popular collection and is still current today especially in the Kagyu and Gelug Traditions. It is an important early collection that ranks with the Vajravali, Bari Gyatsa, and Sadhana-samucchaya as one of the most significant iconographic resources describing the deities and mandalas that appear in Himalayan and Tibetan art.

Mitra Gyatsa:
Outline Page
Mandala Contents List
Initiation & Teaching Lineage

Amoghapasha is a complicated deity subject in Tantric Buddhist iconography. He is easily mistaken for Avalokiteshvara in most artistic depictions. The two deities are frequently conflated together by Western scholars. Sometimes Amoghapasha is described as a form, or emanation, of Avalokiteshvara and again at other times, such as with this mandala of Amoghapasha, a retinue figure while Avalokiteshvara is the central deity in the mandala. It begs the question, why is this mandala called the Five-deity Amoghapasha if the central deity is Avalokiteshvara?

New Outline Pages:
Amoghapasha Outline Page
Amoghapasha: Forms & Traditions Outline

1. Yogi Appearance in Himalayan art with an Outline Page and an Image Sets Page.

2. Female Teachers Outline Page: the teachers represented as main figures in art from India and Tibet.

3. Petroglyphs Outline Page: the beginnings of an outline distinguishing types and regions.

More Buddhist art treasures have been unearthed from the sands of the Gobi desert in Mongolia and taken to the Danza Rabjaa Temple. See other previously unearthed objects at the Danza Rabjaa Museum in the town of Sainshand. Also see the BBC news article.

The HAR Newsletter for May, June and July is ready for mail-out. In the future we will not be doing a separate page for the newsletter but rather relying more on the 'New on the Site' page (blog) along with more frequent e-mail notifications. There are too many changes going on all the time to wait three months for an announcement of changes and additions. To stay on top of things we need to announce changes as they happen.

One of the most difficult to recognize iconographic forms represented in art is the Pancha Raksha - Five Protector Goddesses. The difficulty arises from the fact that there are numerous traditions originating in India and later moving to Nepal, Tibet, Mongolia and China. Each of these traditions describes the five goddesses differently. The colours can be different, the numbers of faces and arms can be different, the postures and what they hold in the hands can be different. These five figures are commonly created as both sculpture, painting and wall murals. In paintings they are both central subjects, figures or mandalas, as well as minor figures in a composition with an unrelated central figure.

General Traditions:
1. Vajravali, 13 Deity Mandala (Abhayakaragupta)
2. 56 Deity Mandala
2. Bari Gyatsa (Bari Lotsawa)
3. Nartang Gyatsa (Atisha)
4. Sadhana-samucchaya (3 systems. Edited version of the 9th Je Khenpo)

A page of Selected Masterworks has been added and can be accessed from the Pancha Raksha Main Page or the Outline Page.

A new outline page, Deities: Multi-coloured, has been added to the How to Identify a Deity Outline Page.

- Kurukulla: Goddess of Power
- Krishna Yamari: the Black Killer of Death
- Rakta Yamari: The Red Killer of Death
- Vajrabhairava: Wrathful Manjushri (updated)

It seems that the more popular a deity becomes, more and more forms are created. Tara along with Lokeshvara and Manjushri have many score if not hundreds of different iconographic depictions both described in the Tantric literature and found in paintings and sculpture. Some of these iconographic forms of Tara belong to groups or sets such as the Twenty-one Taras. Three of these groups were created approximately 1000 years ago or more; the Suryagupta, Atisha and Sadhana-samucchaya systems. The first two are named after the Kashmiri and Indian teachers that popularized the systems. The third is named for the Sanskrit text in which a unique system of the Twenty-one Taras is described. The most recent of the systems are the Longchen Nyingtig developed by Jigme Lingpa in the late 1700s, based on the inspiration of Longchenpa, and the system of Chogyur Lingpa from the mid 1800s.

Tara:
1. Solitary Form
2. Three Deity Configuration: Tara, Brikuti and Ekajati
3. Five Deity Configuration
4. Tara and the Eight Fears
5. The Five Systems of the Twenty-one Taras
6. Tara Seventeen Deity Mandala
7. The One-hundred Names (and depictions) of Tara

In the Links section of the HAR website there is a complete annotated list in a linear format of all Topic Outline Pages. This list has just been updated with the twenty or so Outlines made in the last six weeks or so. If you have time on your hands and don't know what you want to look at on the site, then go to the linear Outlines List and wander around - see where it takes you.

The main Mandala Outline Page has been updated and several new detailed and expanded mandala outlines have been created. A new Mandala Technical Glossary has been added to the site. It can be found on the Glossary Page or found linked to the various mandala pages and outlines.


Mandala Art Topics Outline
Mandala: Sets & Traditions Outline
What are Mandalas?
Mandala-like Circular Forms Outline
Mandala Technical Glossary

Each deity figure has six principal characteristics necessary in identification: [1] gender, [2] mood, [3] colour, [4] body configuration, [5] posture, [6] gestures & hand attributes.

How to Identify a Deity Image
What is gender?
What is mood?
What are the colours?
What is body configuration?
What are the postures?
What are gestures & hand attributes?

The Buddhist Tantric meditational deity Chakrasamvara is a popular subject in Himalayan style art. There are many forms of the deity from a one face, two armed, blue, solitary standing figure, to a seated white figure with a consort. The forms become more complicated with three faces and six arms, four faces and twelve arms and then over a thousand arms with over a thousand retinue deities inhabiting the mandala. Even though the central figure can be identical between two different mandalas, the number and appearance of the retinue figures in the mandala can be different. All of this adds to the great difficulty in correctly identifying a particular Chakrasamvara, painting, sculpture or mandala.

New pages created:
Chakrasamvara Outline Page (updated)
Chakrasamvara Deity Forms Outline (new)
Chakrasamvara Art Topics Outline (new)
Paintings Page (new)
Sculpture Page (new)
Mandala Page (new)

Selected Masterworks:
A Selected Masterworks Page has been created to look at the very best examples of the Chakrasamvara form in painting and sculpture from both an art and aesthetics, i.e. Art History point of view and from a Religious Studies point of view. A chronology page will be added later along with a further analysis of the different forms of the deity, most of which are now represented on the HAR site as central figures or minor figures.

Tsewang Norbu (1698-1755) wrote a long description of the pureland of Shambhala, associated with the Kalachakra Tantra, along with a short text listing the name of each of the seven Dharma Kings and the following twenty-five Vidyadharas, their number in the series, and from which bodhisattva or deity they are an emanation.

In general, these Shambhala Kings are commonly depicted in art either in a single composition containing all thirty-two figures or in sets of paintings with one figure, three, four, or eight figures per composition. Their are also two different traditions, or ways, to depict the Shambhala Kings: [1] Royal Appearance and [2] Deity Appearance.

The short text of Tsewang Norbu listing the names and emanation sources for all of the kings of the Deity Appearance system is essential for understanding the differences between the two systems and their differing depictions of the kings.

As time allows all of the Shambhala King paintings on HAR, from the various Palpung Composition sets, will be identified and listed (linked) next to the appropriate name in the list of Tsewang Norbu.

With the ever increasing number of art collections, museums, and image objects added to the HAR website it actually becomes more and more challenging to find the specific objects looked for along with relevant related information. These five tools are the most important on HAR for finding specific objects. To understand how objects relate to each other, and to general subjects or concepts, then look to the extensive Outline Pages.

Five Most Powerful Tools Outline Page
1. Search
2. Indices
3. Glossaries
4. Bibliographies
5. Links

The Himalayan Art Resources website will be down for a short period of time Monday afternoon, July 6th between 2:00 and 4:00 p.m. The web technicians are updating certain key components of the database architecture to improve the search, cataloguing and speed of the site.

Thank you for your patience.

Fourteen new images of paintings from the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco have been uploaded to the HAR site. Write-ups accompany most if not all of the images. Some Asian Art entries in the database have write-ups but no images as yet. In those cases we are using a place card holder thumbnail image.

After talking about it for nearly two years the HAR Team finally has their first linked image map of the Central Tibetan region of U-Tsang. This is the first go at making clickable geographic image maps. We hope to improve them with practice and add more links as we acquire new images of important art and architectural locations in Tibet and the other Himalayan art regions.

We have chosen the linked locations because those are the locations that we currently have images for. As we acquire new images we will add new locations to the maps. The next map will be of Lhasa City and the immediate surroundings followed by West Tibet with its extensive temple murals and cave complexes.

Maps Index:
Map of U-Tsang
Map of Lhasa Region
Map of Samye & Tsetang Region
Map of Tsang Region