Sanggye Sengge (HAR 493)

Welcome to Himalayan Art Resources. My name is Geoff Watt, and we're going to be looking at a painting, one of the masterworks of the Rubin Museum of Art. It is Har No. 493, and it's a portrait painting, and the painting itself belongs to a large set of paintings. Right now, I think currently we know of 23, or possibly there's 23 on the Har website, and there might be some other paintings from the set that are known, but not yet published on Har or not made aware to us. Now, this painting depicts a monastic figure who was one of the abbots of Ngor Monastery. He was the 11th throne holder, and his name was Sangye Senge, lived from 1504 to 1569. But that's not so important here. The history, the biography of this gentleman is not the main point. What we're really looking at is the overall composition of having this central figure, seated, surrounded by an elaborate kind of torana or throne back. This sort of has two pillars, one to either side, and then an arch over his head, and within the arch is a red Buddha figure to our upper left, and then another monastic, very small monastic figure to our upper right. Then what we have is then we just have figures everywhere on at the top, bottom, and sides, and these are called registers. And the registers, actually, there's a way of reading them. There's several different ways of reading registers, but it depends on what the subject of the registers are. And the subject here is a lineage, and the lineage begins at the very top left side, where you have a blue figure, and immediately to his, to our right is a red figure, and then a white figure. And so what we have is we have a lineage that begins at the left, so we're reading it as if it's a book. So we read from left to right, so we go all the way to the end of the top register on the right side. Then we move down to the register below, and then it changes slightly. Then what we do is we alternate from side to side. So we're still reading from left to right, but we're alternating rows, descending down to the bottom row. Then with the bottom row, then we also are alternating right to left until we get to the center figure, the very small center figure in the bottom register, and he's actually facing us. And so that's the last figure in this lineage. So the idea of this painting set is you have upwards of 30 paintings in total, 23 that are currently on the HAR website. And all of these paintings would typically be displayed together, and it would be a series of teachers, teacher and student. So it's the lineage of teachers for a particular tantric cycle of practice called the Margapala or the Lamdre of the Sakya tradition coming down from the Indian Mahasiddha, Varupa. Now that's the central figure of each of the paintings. Now the lineages, very small figures in each composition, each individual composition, they make up a whole separate lineage, and they are the lineages of Chakrasamvara, Guhyasamaja, and all different kinds of things, even Mahayana traditions of Bodhisattva vows. They're all secondary lineages. And so that's the overall iconographic program for this painting set. Now in terms of the colors and in terms of the elements, design elements, these are primarily derived from Nepalese aesthetics of the 15th century. And these have been carried over into the 16th century, and they actually continue with this set of paintings into the 17th century when this set of paintings is then discontinued in the early 17th century. So we have quite a few more paintings to go in the series, but the style is already archaic, and it's no longer painted or studied by most artists. This is just a legacy of Noor Monastery that they had this large set of paintings, and they continue in the same archaic style. So we'll leave it there. You can press like, you can subscribe, you can join Harlan Patreon, you can make a donation on the homepage of Himalayan Art Resources.