• by IPS Correspondents (gangtok, northeastern india)
• Tuesday, December 27, 1994
• Inter Press Service

GANGTOK, NORTHEASTERN INDIA, Dic 27 (IPS) - Tibetan monks, fleeing the Chinese takeover of their homeland and the Cultural Revolution of the 1950-60's, took with them the very soul of their religion - mystic paintings known as 'thankas'.

Many fine examples of this art ended up in this former Buddhist monarchy of Sikkim at the edge of the Tibetan plateau that is now part of India.

Thanka in Tibetan simply means something rolled up - an attribute of the paintings responsible for their survival since it allowed them to be carried away to safer climes, says Nirmal Sinha, an eminent Tibetan scholar.

Sinha, founder director of the Sikkim Research Institute of Tibetology (SRIT), is an expert of Tibetan iconography and has published a catalogue of rare thankas and other artifacts acquired by the institute, mainly from refugees.

Sikkim continued to be a Buddhist monarchy until it became part of India in 1975. During the 1950s and 1960s, it became an ideal location for high-born Tibetans to settle in although Tibet's leader, the Dalai Lama, himself preferred to settle in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh.

Cut off from their sources of wealth, the Tibetans gradually sold off their prized possessions. The SRIT acquired as many artifacts as it could before art collectors and smugglers stepped onto the scene.

The political changes, so disastrous for Lamaistic Buddhism, focused the world's attention on the thanka as the encapsulation of a threatened ethos for the first time, says Sinha.

"Virtually any well-executed piece reveals the religious and cultural heritage of Tibet, essentially a fine blend of Indian and Chinese heritage," he says.

In Buddhism's early days in Tibet, the thankas were used by itinerant preachers to illustrate parables and sermons at crowded markets and town squares.

By the 15th century, they had become common as wall hangings and were carried as banners during religious processions. During long journeys across the cold and bleak Tibetan plateau, the thankas served as talismans against both the forces of nature and supernatural powers.

To display the miraculous powers demanded of them, the thankas had to be made under the watchful eye of a high lama and consecrated by appropriate religious chants. (MORE)

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© Inter Press Service (2014) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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