Art and Devotion at a Buddhist Temple in the Indian Himalaya (original) (raw)

2015

Abstract

This book investigates the complex devotional, political, and artistic histories of a set of late-sixteenth-century wall paintings at the Rgya ’phags pa (Gyapagpa) temple in Nako, a village in India’s Himachal Pradesh state. The paintings that form the focus of this book have only occasionally been included in surveys of the region, but have never received any rigorous academic analysis. By contrast, coeval paintings at courtly and religious centers such as Tsaparang and Tabo have been studied, to varying degrees, for their art historical and religious significance. There are several notable factors contributing to the omission of the Gyapagpa wall paintings from the academic record. The first is that these paintings were not the result of grand courtly patronage. Consequently, little historical evidence about the paintings, such as inscriptions or chronicles, survives. Moreover, the materials and craftsmanship of these paintings pales in comparison to other neighboring sites with strong royal affiliations. Lastly, these paintings were produced at a time when Nako was located on the margins of both mainstream political and religious activity. Being at these margins has very real consequences; chief among these is that there is not a great deal of material or textual evidence for primary source material or comparanda. What, then, could these unknown, faded, and marginal paintings have to teach us? This book will demonstrate that these paintings are among the rarest sources of historical documentation for this area and period, as well as for a specific type of Tibetan Buddhism practiced in Kinnaur during the sixteenth century. Consequently, analysis of this overlooked temple and its paintings has provided significant insights into localized cultural and religious practices of Nako, as well as larger patterns of regional and transregional interchange among western Himalayan Buddhist centers during the late medieval period. Indeed, this book elucidates how the Gyapagpa paintings are indices of important political, artistic, and religious developments that are critical to accurately contouring the hitherto elusive socio-political complexion of India’s western Himalayan region, a region often omitted from Indian histories. More generally, this project serves to broaden and nuance interdisciplinary discourses concerning the complex relationships between material culture and identity formation, ideology, and devotional praxis.

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