Original: Sino-Tibetan Center of Zhejiang University Transferred from: Sino-Tibetan Buddhist art
Title: Chinese Thangka Culture Archives
【Editor-in-Chief】Feng Jicai
【Editor-in-Chief】Xie Jisheng
【Deputy Editor-in-Chief】Wang Yixiao, Wang Shiqing
【Editors】Shi Yu, Liu Weixue, Dong Jianguo, Li Wenyan
【Publisher】Qingdao Publishing House
【Publication date】December 2023
【开本】8开（965mm×635mm）
[Number of characters] 250,000
【ISBN】978-7-5552-8793-3
Volume order
Preserving the vivid and lively picture of intangible cultural heritage in a complete and dynamic way with warmth and breath is the ideal and aspiration of intellectuals with family and country feelings and a broad vision, and it is also the goal pursued by scholars engaged in ethnic and folk studies. Mr. Feng Jicai's "Chinese Thangka Cultural Archive" project, like Mr. Feng Jicai's plan for the protection of ancient villages of various ethnic groups in the mainland, is also a grand idea for the future, placing living art in the natural and social environment on which it grows, preserving the specific form of thangka produced in a specific era, and thus observing the process of the development of intangible culture and the formation of heritage.
During the Ming and Qing dynasties, with the rise of the Gelug school, which represented the new theory of Tibetan Buddhism, the spread space of other sects was gradually compressed, and the transmission methods of the old schools such as the Nyingma school gradually integrated the elements of Bon and folk religion, and the originally popular Sakya and Kagyu schools evolved into more branches with different teachers; the changes in the Buddhist doctrine interpretation system and practice methods also gave rise to some new sects that were later regarded as heresies by the Gelug school, such as the Heyi school and the Jonang school. In order to promote the teachings of this school, these schools seek to develop in the multi-ethnic intersection zone, such as the connection between the early Xijie school and the Western Xia, the spread of the Jonang school in the Kham area, etc., among which the Jonang school inherited the Tibetan tradition and developed in the Kham area, and continues to this day, its artistic style can better reflect the diversity and changes of Tibetan Buddhist art, and the evolution and inheritance of the old and new thangkas in the juenang can also better express the living artistic characteristics in the march of Sino-Tibetan art, which is also the reason why the "Chinese Thangka Culture Archive" chose the Juenang thangka as a case.
The Jonang School is a very special sect of Tibetan Buddhism that is non-conformist and able to follow the scriptures and find the true meaning of the teachings according to their own religious practice. As far as the history of Tibetan art is concerned, the Jonang school also has its own outstanding contributions, full of originality, especially the Pagoda of Liberation built by the master of the Jonang sect, Dubupa Sherab Gyaltsen (1292-1361), which pioneered the style of "auspicious multi-gate pagoda" popular in Tibetan settlements from the 14th to the 16th centuries. The murals left in the Liberation Pagoda are similar to the murals of the Buddha painted around the 14th century in Xialu Temple, but the figures are more robust and can be seen as the source of the Jonang School of painting. The Konang Guru Taranatha (1575-1634) was a well-known scholar whose History of Indian Buddhism is one of the most important works on Indian Buddhism in China and abroad, with a discussion of Indian Baltic art and statues made during the Bagan Dynasty in Burma. Taranatha's "Later Tibetan Chronicles" records the history of the establishment of important monasteries in Later Tibet, including Xialu Temple, and describes the configuration of statues in the halls of each temple. In addition, with the ideal of reproducing the Buddha's victorious architecture, Taranatha presided over the construction of the Dadan Danquling Monastery in Juenanggou, which is now the Ganden Phuntsolin Monastery. Nowadays, there are still a large number of murals from around the 17th century in the temple, which is an outstanding work of Tibetan art that combines the Sino-Tibetan green style with the later Nepalese Newwarized Polo art figures. The Buddha and Bodhisattva statues in the murals of Phuntsolin Monastery not only inherit the charm of Indian Baltic art, have the secular and charming style of Newwar, but also permeate the rich taste of green and heavy color in the Yuan and Ming dynasties in the Central Plains, and are related to and different from the Han-Tibetan art style of Yangzhuo Dalong Monastery and Gongga Qude Monastery in Weizang. The body proportions of the Buddha and Bodhisattva statues and the small head are the obvious characteristics of the murals of Phuntsolin Temple. The agile and elegant style of the murals of the Jonang School during this period may be able to be experienced in the golden bronze Buddha statues of Jebtsundamba that are popular in Mongolia, which is also the artistic evidence of the association between the Jonang School and the Jebtsundamba system.
In order to facilitate the practice of the deities, Taranatha specially compiled the famous "Hundred Laws of the Treasure Source" (or "The Source of the Cultivation of the Dharma"), which objectively constructed the iconographic system of Tibetan Buddhism around the 17th century. Seeing and hearing the Liberation Pagoda and hundreds of stone carvings in Pingcuoling Temple, which roughly retain the proportions and shapes of the statues of the Guru, Buddha, Bodhisattva, Buddha-figure and Dharma Protector at that time, this batch of stone carvings may be the image practice display of "Baoyuan Hundred Laws", and it is also an important part of the artistic inheritance system of the Juenang School from the auspicious Duomen Pagoda and the murals of the Phuntsolin Temple to the measurement of statues.
After the migration of the Kyawnang School from the Later Tibetan Ancestral Court to the eastern part of Tibet, the early artistic traditions were continued, and they were integrated into the Karma Gadse School of Kham in the 18th and 19th centuries, leading the trend of local thangka painting with a distinctly recognizable artistic style. Based on the life deeds of the great monks of the Jonang school, such as Dubupa and Taranatha, the thangka paintings drew on the popular Bunsen Ruyi vine painting method at that time, and pushed the narrative plot painting in Tibet since the 17th century to a new level: the characters have stronger realistic characteristics, the background of the picture comes more from the design and creation of the painter, the text on which the painting is based is placed on the picture with an unusually fine and neat black pointed inscription, and the painting technique is influenced by the Gazi school of painting with the connotation of the Zhejiang school centered on the Babang Monastery in Kham District, and in the use of color, local pigments are used to create a unique style, stone green with a heavy grayscale to express the turquoise scene.
Featuring the representative works of the students of the Jonang Thangka Institute in the past ten years, the book is a style that continues the ancient heritage and presents in the new era by absorbing various artistic genres. The overall impression of the work is that the picture is clear and clean, the image shape of the Guru, Buddha, Bodhisattva, Dharma Protector, Tara and other images is accurately measured, like the law, the mineral pigments used in the thangka make the color of the picture solid and stable, the color of the painting is warm and warm, warm and harmonious, and the tone contrast transition is natural, the structure of the picture is clear, the dimensions are distinct, the lines are smooth and supple, and the touch is not revealed. The overall style of the works is divided into two categories: one is derived from the Karma Gadze school of painting in eastern Tibet, influenced by the Southern Song Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty Zhejiang School, and the court painting is green and colorful, and some works creatively change the original large area of green to golden yellow, and the figure body absorbs the characteristics of the Buddha and Bodhisattva statues in the murals of Pingcuoling Monastery in Lhatse County, Tibet, and the composition of the picture is sparse, and the theme of the guru, arhat or great achiever adopts asymmetrical composition, and on the basis of the traditional line technique, more emphasis is placed on the technique of blending and rubbing; In the improved style of the Red Tang Dynasty, the artist's use of lacquer is humanized, and several similar colors of the lines are lightly dyed in the monochrome outline line, thus forming the two-dimensional and multi-dimensional effect of the monochrome flat thangka, making the black and red monochrome thangka of the originally silent plane form a sense of depth. This is one of the most beneficial explorations of Tibetan thangka art in recent years, and it is also the result of the development of painting techniques represented by Kalachakra Black Tang.
At the age of 18, the Northern Song Dynasty painter Wang Ximeng created a long scroll of green landscapes more than ten meters long "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains" that shocked the world. Some people question how the painter can create such a grand and detailed painting scroll at such a young age, and seeing the paintings of the students of the Juenang Thangka Institute in this volume, we can believe that Song Huizong's painting academy has indeed cultivated such a talented artist as Wang Ximeng, and the paintings of green and colorful landscapes have something in common with the paintings of thangkas. Thangka painting academies in Tibetan areas, including the Kyawnang Thangka Academy, have been able to cultivate a group of skilled young artists in the decades of advocating and promoting intangible cultural heritage skills, not only thanks to the dedication and excellent teachers who carefully teach the techniques to the students and the mutual trust and encouragement between the students, but also not limited to the care and support from all walks of life, but also our group of young artists are not bothered by the hustle and bustle of the market, willing to be lonely, with perseverance, The spirit of steadfastness is devoted to the results of artistic creation and research. Because to some extent, it takes a lifetime of energy to become a good thangka painter. These young artists painted with a pious heart, using almost harsh lines full of vitality, using fine brush tips to render gradient skies, and using silky brushes to trace the details of hair and fabric patterns; The warmth of the color, the convex and concave shapes, and the consistency of the lines all require a stable and good state of mind throughout the painting process, and any emotional fluctuations will leave traces in the picture. As the founder of the Kyawang Thangka Workshop, Master Jiayang Lezhu of Yangtang Zangwa Monastery, said, painting thangkas is like practicing at the end of the brush, which is a process of tempering, adjusting, and grasping one's own mind, and it can also be said that painting thangkas is a kind of practice, and the scattered emotions will leave traces in the works. This is the reason why most of the masterpieces of Tibetan thangkas are made by great monks and great achievers, and why the great scholars in the history of Tibetan Buddhism are also great artists.
The book records in words and images the migration from the hinterland of Wei Tibet to the eastern Kham region since the middle of the Ming Dynasty, a case of Tibetan art with a long history of inheritance and the ability to adapt and change in the new era, and then develop and grow, and is also a microcosm of the "Archives of Chinese Thangka Culture" series.
Xie Jisheng
September 20, 2022
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postscript
From the organization of fieldwork to the completion of compilation, the "Chinese Thangka Cultural Archive - Juenang Volume" has entered its tenth year this year!
In 2013, Mr. Feng Li of the Chinese People's Association introduced me to participate in the "Chinese Thangka Cultural Archive" project presided over by Mr. Feng Jicai, and recommended the fresh doctoral students from the Institute of Sino-Tibetan Buddhist Art of the Academy of Fine Arts of Capital Normal University to apply for the Feng Jicai Art College of Tianjin University. Later, I attended a project briefing organized by Mr. Feng, and at that time, considering that I was in Beijing and lacked the necessary conditions to investigate the thangka traditions in other Tibetan areas, I applied for the compilation of the "Collecting Zero Scrolls" set up by the project team. This volume requires the investigation and compilation of cases with clear lineages from outside the major thangka heritage areas such as Tibet, Qinghai, Sichuan, and Gansu. Since 2011, the Institute of Sino-Tibetan Buddhist Art of the Academy of Fine Arts of Capital Normal University has all academic contacts with the Juenang Thangka Transmission of Master Jiayang Lezhu, and we have tried to find a new highlight of the integration of artistic creation between the rock color green landscape and the Thangka mineral pigment painting.
From July 8th to August 12th, 2014, the Institute of Sino-Tibetan Buddhist Art of the Academy of Fine Arts of Capital Normal University set up a team led by Xie Jisheng of the Institute of Chinese Tibetan Studies and Liao Yang, researcher of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, to conduct field investigations in and the surrounding areas of the Institute of Juenang Thangka in Yangtang County, Aba Prefecture, Sichuan Province for more than a month. The first batch of students to participate included Wang Yixiao, Wang Shiqing, Wang Chuanchuan, Zhu Jingjing, Chen Xiaoyin, Liang Yunyun of the Institute of Chinese and Tibetan Studies, Wu Tianyue from the Department of Art History of the Central Academy of Fine Arts and Huang Wenlan from the School of Culture and Museums of Peking University, and Jia Weiwei and Meng Li, graduate students of the Institute of Chinese and Tibetan Studies, also joined the Yangtang expedition team after completing the survey of new thangkas in Hainan, Huangnan and other places in Qinghai. Xie Jisheng, Feng Li, a teacher from the Thangka Project Team of the Chinese People's Association, Wang Yixiao, and Dr. Wang Ruilei of Zhejiang University went to Zangwa Monastery, Queerji Monastery and Tashi Rigang Monastery in Aba Yangtang again in October 2017 to investigate, and Zhang Changxuan, a teacher from the Chinese People's Association and a graduate student of the Department of Anthropology of Peking University, sorted out the inheritance skills of the inheritors of the cloth stickers of the Tshangka Monastery in Yangtang County during their anthropological fieldwork. Feng Li conducted a field survey of Tashi Rigang Monastery and surrounding villages, and sorted out the lineage of the temple's thangka painting monks and the customs of thangka worship.
Starting with more than 150 thangka students from the institute, the members of the investigation team interviewed the students themselves and their families and immediate family members, trying to use artistic anthropology to record the living appearance of Tibetan Buddhist art represented by thangka in the new era, hoping to take this opportunity to establish a continuous image archive and trace the growth process of these young artists. As an "archival" part of the Thangka cultural archives, these visit records are a relatively complete description of the Thangka heritage transmission process around 2014 from the perspective of the life histories of Thangka students and teachers, as if preserving a section of the intangible cultural heritage at a specific time.
Under the arrangement of Master Jiayang Lezhu, Xie Jisheng, Ma Ning, Wang Ruilei, Wang Chuanchuan, Liao Yang and others photographed the old Juenang Thangka of Zangwa Monastery and Qorji Monastery, and photographed and recorded the thangkas and related cultural relics collected by other Juenang monasteries in Aba Prefecture, such as Saige Monastery and Tashi Rigang Monastery.
To this end, Wang Yixiao, a doctoral student at Beijing Normal University, chose "The Interpretation and Research of Thangka of Doranatha Pictorial Biography" as the thesis title, Wang Shiqing took "Research on Stone Carvings and Statues in Phuntsolin Temple" as the title of her master's thesis to discuss the theory and practice of the Doranatha iconographic system, and Chen Xiaoyin, who loves photography, completed her master's thesis on art anthropology by interviewing photographic materials, and held a personal photography exhibition with the photographic atlas.
The completion of the Chinese Thangka Culture Archive - Jue Nang Scroll has been helped by many people, first of all, thanks to the 47th Dharma Master of the Jue Nang School, Jia Yang Lezhu. It was the Guru's arrangement that allowed us to conduct a systematic survey of the institute, and it was the Guru's coordination that made it possible for us to photograph the Kyawnang Thangkas that were collected in the various monasteries. For decades, the Guru has been arranging for the monastery team to shoot the relevant works for us, providing us with a lot of information, and without the assistance of the Guru and the monastery, the compilation of the Chinese Thangka Cultural Archive would not have been completed. I would like to express my special thanks to Master Ma Ning for working closely with us over the years, and many of the plates in this atlas were taken and arranged by Master Ma Ning of Zangwa Monastery; I would like to thank Master Chungde and Master Hita for their assistance during our visit to Yangtang; we would like to thank the wise and humble Living Buddha of Dende Dorjee Monastery at Choerji Monastery for arranging for us to photograph the thangkas collected by the monastery; we would like to thank Master Nengzhou of Tashi Rigang Monastery in Malkang City, Aba Prefecture for arranging our visit to the monastery; we would like to thank Master Wangqingjia, Sangha, Danni, Tashi Ram, Zhuocho, Seng Zhi served as the oral interpreter of the expedition team, and thanked Mr. Chen Baizhong of Kalu Art for providing the works of Juenang Thangka. In addition, I would like to give special thanks to the eldest sister Pang Shan, Yang Jindam, and Gesang Meiduo, the eldest sister who cooked for the members of the investigation team in the Jushilin stove room during the investigation.
Shen Yao, editor-in-chief of Qingdao Publishing House, and editors Liu Weixue and Shi Yu have done their best to supervise the publication of "Chinese Thangka Cultural Archives: Jue Nang Volume", and we would like to express our heartfelt thanks.
The specific division of labor in the "Jue Nang Scroll" is shown in the following table:
| preface | Xie Jisheng |
| Chapter I | Wang Yixiao, Xie Jisheng |
| Chapter II | Xie Jisheng, Wang Yixiao |
| Chapter III | Zhang Changxuan, Feng Li |
| Chapter IV | Wang Yixiao, Wang Shiqing, Wang Chuanchuan, Liang Yunyun, Zhu Jingjing, Chen Xiaoyin, Zhang Changxuan, Wu Tianyue, Huang Wenlan, Liao Yang; Transcript arrangement: Wang Yixiao; Reviewer: Ren Yunjuan |
| Chapter 5 | Wang Yixiao, Wang Shiqing, Wang Chuanchuan, Liang Yunyun, Zhu Jingjing, Chen Xiaoyin, Zhang Changxuan, Wu Tianyue, Huang Wenlan, Liao Yang; Transcript arrangement: Wang Yixiao, review: Ren Yunjuan |
| Chapter VI | Wang Shiqing |
| Chapter VII | Appendix 1: Meng Li, Appendix 2: Wang Yixiao, Appendix 3: Wang Yixiao, Xie Jisheng, Appendix 4: Wang Shiqing |
| Plate photography | Xie Jisheng, Ma Ning, etc |
| Selection and description of the artwork | Wang Yixiao, Wang Shiqing |
| postscript | Xie Jisheng |
It should be noted that after several years of investigation and research, we found that there are a lot of relevant literature and works of Juenang Thangka, which can be independently formed into a volume, and after reporting to the project team and approved by the Thangka Working Conference of the Chinese People's Association, the name of this volume has been changed from "Picking Up Zero Volume" to "Juenang Volume", which is more justifiable.
The compilation of the Thangka Cultural Archives "Jue Nang Juan" is not exactly the same as our previous research on the history of Sino-Tibetan art, the main object of the visit is a school-like Thangka Institute, and the field visit and fieldwork will take a lot of energy, and more people need to participate in it. With the great assistance of the founder of the institute, Master Jiayang Lezhu, to this day, the clear eyes and sincere smiles of the more than 150 Thangkaban students of the institute are still in our minds, leaving them with memories of a specific era, which is the greatest achievement of the work of the expedition team.
The compilation time of the Chinese Thangka Cultural Archives in the past ten years seems to be a long time, but for the cultural archives envisioned by Mr. Feng, it is only a moment in the intangible cultural heritage records of various ethnic groups in the mainland.
May it be auspicious!
Xie Jisheng
January 17, 2023
Survey at a glance
Interview with Master Jiayang Lezhu in the video recording
Group photo of some of the trainees
The expedition team members are interviewing the students of the Thangka class
Group photo during the expedition
Expedition member Chen Xiaoyin Photography: Shanmu Chu and her friends
Expedition member Chen Xiaoyin Photography: The boys and girls who have just closed the curtain
Expedition member Chen Xiaoyin Photography: Students painting thangkas