Mouseover Zoom loading...

Lot 609

A RARE BON THANGKA OF SANGPO BUMTRI

Estimated Value:

900 € - 1.500 €

Schätzpreis:

1.600 €

Description:

Nepal/ Dolpo, 18th/ 19th c.
88 x 68 (130 x 71) cm
"Bon is considered Tibet's oldest spiritual tradition and, as the original source of Tibetan culture, played a significant role in shaping Tibet's unique identity." (Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama from his foreword in Wonders of the Natural Mind by Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, 2000)" The Bon tradition is usually located in the kingdom of Zhang Zhung surrounding Mount Kailash, which existed around Mount Kailash and in the region west of Tibet until the reign of Tibetan King Songtsen Gampo in the seventh century. Many deities, especially from the Nyingma School tradition, find counterparts in the Bon pantheon. Sangpo Bumtri is referred to as the "Creator God of Bon". Together with Satrik Ersang (Sherab Chamma), Tonpa Shenrab and Shenlha Ö dkar, he is one of the four transcendent guardians. It is said that he has "neither eyes to see, nor hands to hold, nor ears to hear, nor nose to smell, he has only his mind". He has a silver-white body. Sangpo Bumtri ́s body rests on a sun-moon lotus, on an altar-like throne with strongly sweeping volutes above his body. His head is adorned with a fivefold crown. He is adorned with jewellery and wears silk robes. According to the Buddhist trikaya doctrine, he is in the jewelled body of the Samboghkaya. The right of his hands holds a tri-coloured umbrella on a long staff, as a kind of victory banner, the left lies meditatively in his lap. The deity is flanked by two attendants in white and blue. Both show the gesture of teaching. Sangpo Bumtri is surrounded by mythological animals. Above his sinuous throne ornament appears Garuda, the lord of the feathered animals, to the left and right below a brown-coloured sea monster - Makara, below a male and a female lucky dragon, holding pearls in their claws, and underneath to the left and right of the throne lie white snow lions, each with a hand-folded human being crouching in front of its mouth. Emanations of the deity, alternating in the colours white, blue, yellow, red and green, frame the central deity, the sequence of coloured emanations creating a diagonal structure across the entire picture. At the very bottom in the centre, below a red-coloured deity (Tönpa Shenrap?), appears a powerful protector of the Bon religion, the "conqueror of all enemies" - Welsé Ngampa (yab-yum). He wears nine heads, partly animal heads, and has eighteen arms and two legs with which he stands on two hinder spirits above a sun lotus. In his front hands the deity holds a ritual dagger. In the niches of his throne are two white-feathered garudas. Tempera on cotton fabric, original trapezoidal frame at the narrow edges; reverse: multi-line inscription in black ink; (mostly mantras, not translatable).
From an important private collection in northern Germany, collected mainly in India from the early 1950s to the 1980s - Cf: Per Kvaerne, The Bon Religion of Tibet - The Iconography of a Living Tradition; London, 1995: 26, Pl. 5 D. I. Lauf, Tibetica 3, Schoettle Ostasiatica, 1969, Pl 50; 1979, An Iconography of Tibetan Buddhism Pl. 87 Andreas Lommel, Art of Buddhism; 1974: Pl. 131 - Wear, damages due to age