It is Buddhism that inspires almost all Tibetan art. Paintings, architecture, literature, even dance, all in some way or another attest to its influence. Perhaps more unexpected is that, despite the harshness of their surroundings, Tibetans have great aesthetic taste, from stylish traditional carpets and painted furniture to jewellery and traditional dress. In Tibet’s often austere landscape the colours of Tibetan murals and traditional dress take on an almost rebellious vibrancy.
The arts of Tibet represent the synthesis of many influences. The Buddhist art and architecture of the Pala and Newari kingdoms of India and Nepal were an important early influence in central Tibet, and the Buddhist cultures of Khotan and Kashmir spilled over the mountains into western Tibet. Newari influence is clearly visible in the early woodcarvings of the Jokhang, and Kashmiri influence is particularly strong in the murals of Tsaparang in western Tibet. Chinese influences, too, were assimilated, as is clear at Shalu Monastery near Shigatse and in the Karma Gadri style prevalent in eastern Kham. A later, clearly Tibetan style known as Menri was perfected in the monasteries of Drepung, Ganden and Sera.
Tibetan art is deeply conservative and conventional. Personal expression and innovation are not greatly valued, indeed individual interpretation is actually seen as an obstacle to Tibetan art’s main purpose, which is to represent the path to enlightenment. The creation of religious art is seen primarily as an act of merit and the artist generally remains anonymous.
Much of Tibet’s artistic heritage fell victim to the Cultural Revolution. What was not destroyed was, in many cases, ferreted away to China or onto the Hong Kong art market. Over 13,500 images have since been returned to Tibet but this is still just a fraction of the number stolen. Many of Tibet’s traditional artisans were persecuted or fled Tibet. It is only in recent years that remaining artists have again been able to return to their work and start to train young Tibetans in skills that faced the threat of extinction. New but traditional handicraft workshops are popping up all the time in Lhasa’s old town.
Anyone who is lucky enough to attend a Tibetan festival should have the opportunity to see performances of cham, a ritual masked dance performed over several days by monks and lamas. Although every movement and gesture of cham has significance, it is no doubt the spectacle of the colourful masked dancers that awes the average pilgrim.
Cham is all about the suppression of malevolent spirits and is a clear throwback to the pre-Buddhist Bön faith. The chief officiant is an unmasked Black Hat lama who is surrounded by a mandalic grouping of masked monks representing manifestations of various protective deities. The act of exorcism – it might be considered as such – is focused on a human effigy made of dough or perhaps wax or paper, through which the evil spirits are channelled.
The proceedings of cham can be interpreted on a number of levels. The Black Hat lama is sometimes identified with the monk who slew Langdharma, the anti-Buddhist king of the Yarlung era, and the dance is seen as echoing the suppression of malevolent forces inimical to the establishment of Buddhism in Tibet. Some anthropologists, on the other hand, have also seen in cham a metaphor for the gradual conquering of the ego, which is the ultimate aim of Buddhism. The ultimate destruction of the effigy that ends the dance might represent the destruction of the ego itself. Whatever the case, cham is a splendid, dramatic performance that marks the cultural highlight of the year for most Tibetans.
Lighter forms of entertainment usually accompany performances of cham. Lhamo, not to be confused with cham, is Tibetan opera. A largely secular art form, it portrays the heroics of kings and the villainy of demons, and recounts events in the lives of historical figures. Lhamo was developed in the 14th century by Thangtong Gyalpo, known as Tibet’s Leonardo da Vinci because he was also an engineer, a major bridge builder and a physician. Authentic performances still include a statue of Thangtong on the otherwise bare stage. After the stage has been purified, the narrator gives a plot summary in verse and the performers enter, each with his or her distinct step and dressed in the bright and colourful silks of the aristocracy.
Music is one aspect of Tibetan cultural life in which there is a strong secular heritage. In the urban centres, songs were an important vent for social criticism, news and political lampooning. In Tibetan social life, both work and play are seen as occasions for singing. Even today it is not uncommon to see the monastery reconstruction squads pounding on the roofs of buildings and singing in unison. Where there are groups of men and women, the singing alternates between the two groups in the form of rhythmic refrains.
The ultimate night out in Lhasa is to a nangma venue, where house dancers and singers perform traditional songs and dances as part of a stage show, with members of the audience often joining in at smaller venues.
Tibet also has a secular tradition of wandering minstrels. It’s still possible to see minstrels performing in Lhasa and Shigatse, where they play on the streets and occasionally (when they are not chased out by the owners) in restaurants. Generally, groups of two or three singers perform heroic epics and short songs to the accompaniment of a four-stringed guitar and a nifty little shuffle, before moving around tables soliciting donations with a grin. In times past, groups of such performers travelled around Tibet, providing entertainment for villagers who had few distractions from the constant round of daily chores.
While the secular music of Tibet has an instant appeal for foreign listeners, the liturgical chants of Buddhist monks and the music that accompanies cham dances is a lot less accessible. Buddhist chanting creates an eerie haunting effect, but can soon become very monotonous. The music of cham is a discordant cacophony of trumpet blasts and boom-crash drums – atmospheric as an accompaniment to the dancing but not necessarily the kind of thing you would want to add to a playlist.
Tibetan religious rituals use rolmo and silnyen (cymbals), nga (suspended drums), damaru (hand drums), drilbu (bells), drungchen (long trumpets), kangling (conical oboes; formerly made from human thighbones) and dungkhar (conch shells). Secular instruments include the dramnyen (a six-stringed lute), piwang (two-stringed fiddle), lingbu (flute) and gyumang (Chinese-style zither).
The country’s biggest musical export (or rather exile) is Yungchen Lhamo, who fled Tibet in 1989 and has since released several excellent world-music recordings, including a duet with Annie Lennox. She also appeared on Natalie Merchant’s Ophelia album.
The development of a Tibetan written script is credited to a monk by the name of Tonmi Sambhota and corresponded with the early introduction of Buddhism during the reign of King Songtsen Gampo. Before this, pre-Buddhist traditions were passed down as oral histories that told of the exploits of early kings, the spirits and the origins of the Tibetan people. Some of these oral traditions were later recorded using the Tibetan script.
But for the most part, literature in Tibet was dominated by Buddhism, first as a means of translating Buddhist scriptures from Sanskrit into Tibetan and second, as time went by, in association with the development of Tibetan Buddhist thought. There is nothing in the nature of a secular literary tradition – least of all novels – such as can be found in China or Japan.
One of the great achievements of Tibetan culture was the development of a literary language that could, with remarkable faithfulness, reproduce the concepts of Sanskrit Buddhist texts. The compilation of Tibetan-Sanskrit dictionaries in the early 9th century ensured consistency in all subsequent translations.
Through the 12th and 13th centuries, Tibetan literary endeavour was almost entirely consumed by the monumental task of translating the complete Buddhist canon into Tibetan. The result was the 108 volumes of canonical texts (Kangyur), which record the words of the Historical Buddha, Sakyamuni, and 208 volumes of commentary (Tengyur) by Indian masters that make up the basic Buddhist scriptures shared by all Tibetan religious orders. What time remained was used in the compilation of biographies and the collection of songs of revered lamas. Perhaps most famous among these is the Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa. Milarepa was an ascetic to whom many songs and poems concerning the quest for buddhahood are attributed.
Alongside Buddhist scriptures exists an ancient tradition of storytelling, usually concerning the taming of Tibet’s malevolent spirits to allow the introduction of Buddhism. Many of these stories were passed from generation to generation orally, but some were recorded. Examples include the epic Gesar of Ling and the biography of Guru Rinpoche, whose countless tales of miracles and battles with demons are known to peoples across the entire Himalayan region. The oral poetry of the Gesar epic is particularly popular in eastern Tibet, where a tiny number of ageing bards manage to keep alive a tradition that dates back to the 10th century.
Wood-block printing has been in use for centuries and is still the most common form of printing in monasteries. Blocks are carved in mirror image; printers then work in pairs putting strips of paper over the inky block and shuttling an ink roll over it. The pages of the text are kept loose, wrapped in cloth and stored along the walls of monasteries. Tibet’s most famous printing presses were in Derge in modern-day Sìchuān, at Nartang Monastery and at the Potala. You can see traditional block printing at Drepung, Ganden and Sera monasteries outside Lhasa. Sakya Monastery has a particularly impressive Tibetan library.
Very little of the Tibetan literary tradition has been translated into English. Translations that may be of interest include the Bardo Thödol, or Tibetan Book of the Dead, a mysterious but fascinating account of the stages and visions that occur between death and rebirth. The book gained a certain cult status in the late 1960s thanks to the interest of such luminaries as Carl Jung and Timothy Leary.
Most early religious architecture – the Jokhang in Lhasa for example – owed much to Pala (Indian) and especially Newari (Nepali) influences. A distinctively Tibetan style of architectural design gradually emerged, and found its expression in huge chörtens (stupas), hilltop dzongs (forts) and the great Gelugpa monastic complexes, as well as the lesser-known stone towers of Kongpo and the Qiang regions of western Sìchuān. The great American architect Frank Lloyd Wright is said to have had a picture of the Potala on the wall of his office.
Tibetan monasteries are based on a conservative design and share a remarkable continuity of layout. Many are built in spectacular high locations above villages. Most were originally surrounded by an outer wall, built to defend the treasures of the monastery from bands of brigands, Mongolian hordes or even attacks from rival monasteries. Most monasteries have a kora (pilgrimage path) around the complex, replete with holy rocks and meditation retreats high on the hillside behind. A few monasteries have a sky-burial site and most are still surrounded by ruins dating from the Cultural Revolution.
Main Buildings Inside the gates there is usually a central courtyard used for special ceremonies and festivals and a darchen (flag pole). Surrounding buildings usually include a dukhang (main assembly or prayer hall) with gönkhang (protector chapels) and lhakhang (subsidiary chapels), as well as monks’ quarters, a kangyur lhakhang (library) and, in the case of larger monasteries, tratsang (colleges), kangtsang (halls of residence), kitchens and a barkhang (printing press). At the entrance to most buildings are murals of the Four Guardian Kings and perhaps a Wheel of Life or a mandala mural.
Main Prayer Hall The dukhang consists of rows of low seats and tables, often strewn with cloaks, hats, ritual instruments, drums and huge telescopic horns. There is a small altar with seven bowls of water, butter lamps and offerings of mandalas made from seeds. The main altar houses the most significant statues, often Sakyamuni (Sakya Thukpa), Jampa (Maitreya) or a trinity of the Past, Present and Future Buddhas and perhaps the founder of the monastery or past lamas. Larger monasteries contain funeral chörtens of important lamas, as well as special relics such as ‘self-arising’ (ie not human-made) footprints or handprints made from stone. There may be a tsangkhang (inner sanctum) behind the main hall, the entrance of which is flanked by protector gods, often one blue, Chana Dorje (Vajrapani) and the other red, Tamdrin (Hayagriva). There may well be an inner kora (korlam) of prayer wheels. Back at the entrance, side stairs lead to higher floors.
Protector Chapels Gönkhang are dark and spooky protector chapels that hold wrathful manifestations of deities, frequently covered with a cloth because of their terrible appearance. Murals here are often traced against a black background and walls are decorated with Tantric deities, grinning skeletons or even dismembered bodies. The altars often have grain, dice or mirrors, used for divination, and the pillars are decorated with festival masks, antique weapons and sometimes stuffed snakes and wolves. Deep Tantric drumming often pulsates through the room. Women are often not allowed into protector chapels.
Roof Stairs lead up to subsidiary chapels and monk accommodation. The roof usually has excellent views as well as vases of immortality, victory banners, dragons and copper symbols of the Wheel of Law flanked by two deer, recalling the Buddha’s first sermon at the deer park of Sarnath.
Probably the most prominent Tibetan architectural motif is the chörten. Chörtens were originally built to house the cremated relics of the Historical Buddha and as such have become a powerful symbol of the Buddha and his teachings. Later, chörtens also served as reliquaries for lamas and holy men and monumental versions would often encase whole mummified bodies, as is the case with the tombs of the Dalai Lamas in the Potala. The tradition is very much alive: a stunning gold reliquary chörten was constructed in 1989 at Tashilhunpo Monastery to hold the body of the 10th Panchen Lama.
In the early stages of Buddhism, images of the Buddha did not exist and chörtens served as the major symbol of the new faith. Over the next two millennia, chörtens took many different forms across the Buddhist world, from the sensuous stupas of Burma to the pagodas of China and Japan. Most elaborate of all are the kumbums (100,000 Buddha images), of which the best remaining example in Tibet is at Gyantse. Many chörtens were built to hold ancient relics and sacred texts and have been plundered over the years by treasure seekers and vandals.
Chörtens are highly symbolic. The five levels represent the four elements, plus eternal space: the square base symbolises earth, the dome is water, the spire is fire, and the top moon and sun are air and space. The 13 discs of the ceremonial umbrella can represent the branches of the tree of life or the 10 powers and three mindfulnesses of the Buddha. The top seed-shaped pinnacle symbolises enlightenment. The chörten as a whole can therefore be seen as a representation of the path to enlightenment. The construction can also physically represent the Buddha, with the base as his seat and the dome as his body.
Typical features of Tibetan secular architecture, which are also used to a certain extent in religious architecture, are buildings with inward-sloping walls made of large, tightly fitting stones or sun-baked bricks. Below the roof is a layer of twigs, squashed tight by the roof and painted to give Tibetan houses their characteristic brown band. Roofs are flat, as there is little rain or snow, made from pounded earth and edged with walls. You may well see singing bands of men and women pounding a new roof with sticks weighted with large stones. In the larger structures wooden pillars support the roof inside. The exteriors are generally whitewashed brick, although in some areas, such as Sakya in Tsang, other colours may be used. In rural Tibet homes are often surrounded by walled compounds, and in some areas entrances are protected by painted scorpions and swastikas.
Nomads, who take their homes with them, live in bar (yak-hair tents), which are normally roomy and can accommodate a whole family. An opening at the top of the tent lets out smoke from the fire.
As with other types of Tibetan art, painting is very symbolic and can be interpreted on many different levels. It is almost exclusively devotional in nature.
Tibetan mural painting was strongly influenced by Indian, Newari and, in the far west, Kashmiri painting styles, with later influence coming from China. Paintings usually followed stereotypical forms with a central Buddhist deity surrounded by smaller, lesser deities and emanations. The use of colour and proportion is decided purely by convention and rigid symbolism. Later came depictions of revered Tibetan lamas or Indian spiritual teachers, often surrounded by lineage lines or incidents from the lama’s life.
Chinese influence began to manifest itself more frequently in Tibetan painting from around the 15th century. The freer approach of Chinese landscape painting allowed some Tibetan artists to break free from some of the more formalised aspects of Tibetan religious art and employ landscape as a decorative motif. Painting in Tibet was passed on from artisan to apprentice in much the same way that monastic communities maintained lineages of teaching.
The mandala (kyilkhor, literally ‘circle’) is more than a beautiful artistic creation, it’s also a three-dimensional meditational map. What on the surface appears to be a plain two-dimensional design emerges, with the right visual approach, as a three-dimensional picture. Mandalas can take the form of paintings, patterns of sand, three-dimensional models or even whole monastic structures, as at Samye. In the case of the two-dimensional mandala, the correct visual approach can be achieved only through meditation. The painstakingly created sand mandalas also perform the duty of illustrating the impermanence of life (they are generally swept away after a few days).
Religious paintings mounted on brocade and rolled up between two sticks are called thangkas. Their eminent portability was essential in a land of nomads, as mendicant preachers and doctors often used them as a visual learning aid. Not so portable are the huge thangkas known as gheku or koku, the size of large buildings, that are unfurled every year during festivals.
The production of a thangka is an act of devotion and the process is carefully formalised. Linen (or now more commonly cotton) is stretched on a wooden frame, stiffened with glue and coated with a mix of chalk and lime called gesso. Iconography is bound by strict mathematical measurements. A grid is drawn onto the thangka before outlines are sketched in charcoal, starting with the main central deity and moving outwards.
Colours are added one at a time, starting with the background and ending with shading. Pigments were traditionally natural: blue from lapis, red from cinnabar and yellow from sulphur. Most thangkas are burnished with at least a little gold. The last part of the thangka to be painted is the eyes, which are filled in during a special ‘opening the eyes’ ceremony. Finally a brocade backing of three colours and a protective ‘curtain’ are added, the latter to protect the thangka.
Tibetan statuary, like Tibetan painting, is almost exclusively religious in nature. Ranging in height from several centimetres to several metres, statues usually depict deities and revered lamas. Most of the smaller statues are hollow and are stuffed with paper texts, prayers, amulets and juniper when consecrated. Very few clay or metal sculptures remaining in Tibet date from before 1959.
Metal statues are traditionally sculpted in wax and then covered in clay. When the clay is dry it is heated. The wax melts and is removed, leaving a mould that can be filled with molten metal. Statues are generally then gilded and painted.
Sculptures are most commonly made from bronze or stucco mixed with straw, but can even be made out of butter and tsampa (roasted-barley flour), mounted on a wooden frame.
A burgeoning economy in Lhasa has fuelled a real growth in traditional crafts in recent years, though these are partially for the Chinese tourist market.
Tibet has a 1000-year history of carpet making; the carpets are mostly used as seat covers, bed covers and saddle blankets. Knots are double tied (the best carpets have 100 knots per square inch), which results in a particularly thick pile. Tibet’s secret carpet ingredient is its particularly high-quality sheep wool, which is hand spun and coloured with natural dyes such as indigo, walnut, madder and rhubarb. Tibetan cashmere goat’s wool and antelope wool are also in great demand. Gyantse and Shigatse were the traditional centres of carpet production, although the modern industry is based almost exclusively in Tibetan exile communities in Nepal.
Inlaid handicrafts are common, particularly in the form of prayer wheels, daggers, butter lamps and bowls, although most of what you see these days in Lhasa is made by Tibetan communities in Nepal. Nomads in particular wear stunning silver jewellery; you may also see silver flints, horse tack, amulets known as gau, and ornate chopstick and knife sets.
Tibetan singing bowls, made from a secret mix of seven different metals, are a meditation device that originated from pre-Buddhist Bön practices. The bowls produce a ‘disassociated’ mystic hum when a playing stick is rotated around the outer edge of the bowl.
Woodcarving is another valued handicraft, used in the production of brightly coloured Tibetan furniture and window panels, not to mention blocks used in printing.