Lot 137
  • 137

Mount Meru and Shakyamuni Buddha Distemper on cloth Tibet

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Description

  • Mount Meru and Shakyamuni Buddha
  • Distemper on cloth
  • 40 by 22 1/2 in. (81 by 57 cm.)
The Buddha with hands in bhumishparsha mudra, chakras on the palm of the hand and on the soles of the feet, a golden lotus at his heart, wearing a gold phoenix pattern patchwork robe over a saffron habit, and seated in vajrapayankasana on a lion throne draped with a gold lattice and dragon roundel textile, accompanied by disciples, regal figures and worshippers bearing gifts, monks debating on a platform in a garden setting below, with peacock and birds on a lotus pond and a bowl of offerings before the throne, a halo around the Buddha, and Mount Meru rising from the cosmic ocean behind, Indra’s palace with pavilions and shrines at the summit beneath the inverted celestial pyramid, the realm of the gods, with the sun and moon over the four continents and the eight sub-continents represented as temples in the mountain landscape below.

Literature

Hugo E. Kreijger, Tibetan Painting, The Jucker Collection, Boston, 2001, p. 32, no. 3.

Catalogue Note

This rare thanka depicting the Tibetan Buddhist Cosmos is painted in the eastern Tibetan manner with reference to Chinese traditions, as in the blue and green rockwork of Mount Meru, and in the Chinese hardwood furniture design of the dais on which the monks debate below.

A similar scene is portrayed in a circa 18th century thanka in The Avery Brundage Collection at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, with Vairochana teaching in the Akanishta Paradise, where Buddha and Vairochana are said to be ultimately identical; for a full discussion of the Vairochana painting and the cosmology of Mount Meru; see Huntington and Bangdel, 2003, pp. 82-3, no. 8. For further discussion and illustrations of forms of Mount Meru according to the Abhidharmakosha and Kalachakra systems, and interpretation of Tibetan Cosmology; see Beer, 1999, pp. 102-15.