Two more Milarepa life story paintings have come to light. These two paintings belong to the same set as HAR #66417 and are part of a nineteen painting set. The composition of these paintings is also the same as the famous Stockholm nineteen painting set. The two new images will be uploaded to the HAR site in the near future along with detail images of the inscriptions.
The image here is a detail from a Drugpa Kagyu composition with Naropa as the large central figure and Marpa Chokyi Lodro in front. To the right side is a very small figure of Milarepa seated on a deerskin appearing to float on the water. 
The Capital Museum houses one of the best collections of Densatil sculptures available. Densatil sculptures originate generally from the Densatil Monastery (or surrounding monasteries where the artists also worked) founded by Pagmodrupa Dorje Gyalpo, one of the four principal students of Gampopa, in turn the student of Milarepa. Many of these sculptures, now in museums spread around the world, were used to decorate the stupa, or reliquary, containing the mortal remains of Pagmodrupa. 
The Path of Buddha: Tokyo National Museum, Friday, July 27, 2007 - Tuesday, November 3, 2009
There are four basic forms of Manjushri that are either called Arapachana by name or use the Arapachana syllables as the principal mantra for the deity. The first (1) is Arapachana, orange in colour, sometimes white. He holds a sword in the right hand and the stem of an utpala flower supporting the Prajnaparamita text in the left. The second (2) form is Manjushri associated with a famous Sanskrit praise, orange in colour. The third (3) form is Arapachana, white in colour, sometimes orange, with the two hands holding the stems of two utpala flowers supporting a sword and text. The fourth (4), Vidyadhara Pitika (not shown here), is similar to the second form except white in colour and with the left leg pendant. 
The HAR site lists three museums in Korea that have collections of Himalayan and Tibetan style art. Several of these museums such as the Daewon-Sa and the Hahn Cultural Foundation specialize in Himalayan style art. It is rumoured that there are possibly an additional two more museums of Himalayan art in Korea. These other museums, like the one introduced here, are thought to be museums attached to Buddhist Temples, unlike the Hahn Collection or the National Museum of Korea.
The religious traditions, schools and lineages of Tibetan Buddhism can be very confusing with a seemingly endless number of Tibetan names and complex inter-relationships. The new page outlining the Four Traditional Ways of Classifying the Schools of Tibetan Buddhism lists the four systems and the traditions, or sub-traditions, included in each. Other Buddhist traditions such as Mongolian Buddhism and the Himalayan Buddhism of Bhutan are also included on the page but separate from the four traditional forms of classification. More sub-traditions will be added, along with dates, and links to the available art on the HAR site.
Whenever working with arhat paintings or sculpture it is always necessary to refer to a list of names and figural images to help with identification. This can be done in several ways, either by simply referring to a Tibetan text such as the Praise of the Sixteen Arhats where each arhat is named and described, or by looking at a single arhat painting, or set of arhat paintings, where the iconography is clear and the names are written beneath each figure, or to look at a set of block print images that have both the images and names for each of the arhats. These are the general approaches to identifying arhat figures when there are no identifying inscriptions on the works themselves. 
The Manjushri Outline page has been updated and split into two pages. The first is now Art Topics and the second is Iconographic Forms of the deity. More work needs to be done. There are so many different types of Manjushri that it is really a major project in itself just to list them all and note the texts and compendiums that they are found in. 
Hevajra is one of the more common complex deities depicted in art. The form with eight faces and sixteen hands is the most common form of this deity. However, he can have as few as one face and two hands, hold only weapons and be white, red, yellow or green in colour. Hevajra can also be paired with a consort other than Nairatmya. He can also appear with no consort at all. The forms of Hevajra are described in the Hevajra Tantra of Two Sections (Root Tantra) and the Samputa explanatory Tantra.
Kurukulla is a goddess of power in Tantric Buddhism. She has many different forms, colours and deity affiliations. Her appearance with one face and four hands, red in colour, dancing on a prone male form, is the most common form found in painting, murals and sculpture. In this form her hand attributes can vary slightly but the colour, posture, and number of arms will remain the same. 
Manjushri in the form of Arapachana is one of the most common and recognizable images in Tantric Buddhism. Other than appearing with the hands in the Dharma teaching gesture this is the form that is most often depicted in paintings, murals and sculpture. The explanation of form is a brief introduction to how Manjushri appears in this particular appearance, what he holds in his hands, along with any other significant characteristics. 
The Mahakala Resource Page is a work in progress. There are just quite simply a lot more types of Mahakala than there are of Shri Devi. Like Shri Devi, Mahakala is a class of deities. Always wrathful, always protectors and sometimes meditational deities of the Anuttarayoga classification. The Mahakala types are aligned much more closely with specific Tantras and major deities such as Hevajra, Chakrasamvara, Guhyasamaja and in the case of Shadbhuja Mahakala with Hayagriva and Avalokiteshvara. It is not a matter of just uploading all the Mahakala information. It is a matter of how to frame it, contextualize it, and present the information in a way that makes sense and includes Mahakala in the greater realm of Himalayan and Tibetan art, literature, religion and culture. We will let you know how it works out.
An Explanation of Iconographic Forms is a new feature on the website. The purpose is to explain more clearly the iconographic features of the main figures and types of deities, along with the complex multi-headed and multi-armed deities. The intention is to make it easier to read and understand an iconographic form. To that end we hope to provide the necessary tools. 
The old Advanced Search was rather static with a query result only serving up a linear text list of either paintings or sculpture. Those days are now over. 
From the Shri Devi Resource Page--- 
The first composition in the set of the Stockholm Milarepa Life Story paintings depicts him in a relaxed manner similar to what we have seen in the Choggyur Lingpa painting and somewhat in the Choying Dorje sculpture. There are three known sets in this 19th century style and composition, maybe more. The Rumtek Monastery set of the Karma Kagyu Lineage Masters (Kagyu Sertreng) depicts a relaxed Milarepa similar to what we have been looking at in these other paintings. The Rumtek set, a gift of the previous Sanggye Nyenpa Rinpoche, is based on a much earlier version likely to predate Choggyur Lingpa and even Situ Panchen in the 18th century. Looking at these paintings it is interesting to see that the artists have no trouble switching the direction of the seated posture and portraying either the right hand across the knee or the left. Choggyur Lingpa would have been aware of these iconographic depictions of the Kagyu Masters. However, his painting still seems to be the model that the other three are based on with reference to the September 15th posting. 
After posting the comparison of the Four Milarepa Paintings last week we heard from a scholar of such subjects and he suggested that there might be a relationship between the four paintings and a well known sculpture carved from rhinoceros horn and said to have been created by Choying Dorje, the 10th Karmapa. The sculpture image is from the publication Karmapa: The Black Hat Lama of Tibet by Nik Douglass.
