Mandala of the Six Chakravartins Distemper on Cloth Tibet

The central compound of the mandala palace divided into four quadrants with the six mandalas of the Chakravartin juxtaposed within, each Celestial Buddha in union with his consort and surrounded by their immediate entourage, the palace with four triumphal arches guarded by makara forming vajra gates, all set on a green scrollwork field strewn with auspicious emblems, and contained within rings of multi-colored lotus petals and flames separated by a ring of vajras and a band of cemetery scenes, the mandala surrounded by blue space with monks, mahasiddhas, deities and auspicious emblems within scrolling vine, with registers above and below depicting the lineage of the Sakya order and associated deities.

Acquired 1974.

Dieux et demons de l’Himalaya, Grand Palais, Paris, March 25th –June 27th 1977
Tibet - Kunst des Buddhismus, Haus der Kunst in München, August 5th–October 16th 1977

Jeannine Auboyer and Gilles Beguin, Dieux et demons de l’Himalaya, Art du Bouddhisme lamaique, Paris, 1977, no. 105, p. 133.

The large and rare painting is one from an important series illustrating the Vajravali (Diamond Garland) text, written by the Indian scholar Abhayakaragupta of the eastern India monastery Vikramashila. The scholar was a contemporary of King Ramapala (ca. 1084-1130) and author of numerous important treatises. Denise Patry Leidy and Robert A. F. Thurman describe a mandala with this iconography, now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, as closely resembling no. 25 in Abhayakara’s Diamond Garland, see Leidy and Thurman, 1997, no. 24, p. 90. The Six Chakravartins (Enlightened Universal Rulers) illustrated in this mandala are identified in the Vajravali as forms of the Celestial Buddhas with their consorts; Jnanadaka (a manifestation of Vajrasattva) with Jnanadakini, Buddhadaka (Vairochana) with Buddhdakini, Ratnadaka (Ratnasambhava) with Ratnadakini, Padmadaka (Amitabha) with Padmadakini, Vajradaka (Akshobya) with Vajradakini and Vishvadaka (Amoghasiddi) with Vishavadakini. The Vajravali is an important treatise in the teachings of the Sakya order, and the theme is commemorated in a number of sets of Sakya paintings with similar format to the Albright-Knox example; see Kossak and Casey Singer, 1998, pl. 47a, p. 167, for a 15th century Sakya painting of the same subject with similar distribution of the inner mandalas.

The schema of the Sakya Chakravartin mandalas is one that suggests an almost random positioning of the individual mandalas within the palace grounds, an unusual expression of asymmetry in Tibetan diagrammatic painting with the boxes appearing to tumble freely in space. The mandala circle is positioned in deep blue space behind the plane of the upper and lower registers and the side borders. The borders in the foreground obscure sections of the band of cemetery scenes, thus adding a sense of depth and dimension to the painting. Lively detail and rich color contrasts are the hallmarks of the Sakya painting style, which is derived from Newar artistic traditions. Indeed it is recorded that Nepalese artists were employed in Tibetan monasteries, particularly those of the Sakya order, and it is likely that these artists were responsible for creating this fine and rare Vajravali painting. Compare the predominance of vivid blues, reds and greens in the palette of a 15th/16th century Sakya lineage thanka formerly in the Jucker Collection, see Sotheby’s New York, March 28, 2006, lot 63.