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A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c15.s3.t2: II. Nepāl

A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c15.s3.t2

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II. Nepāl

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Very little can be recorded concerning the pictorial art of Nepāl, which, as known to us, is only a modern variety of the Tibetan school.² The extant specimens are all Buddhist, and seem to possess little aesthetic value. The Hodgson collection in Paris includes ten pictures, two of which have been reproduced by M. Sylvain Lévi in his learned work, 'Nepāl'. The first of his plates is a reduced copy of No. 6, a large pen-and-ink drawing, 2 m. 85 cm. long and 1 m. high, believed to have been prepared to the order of Mr. Brian Hodgson. The subject is a religious procession in honour of Matsyendra (*alias* Padmapāni or Avalokitesvara), marching round the walls of a town in the valley. The drawing is carefully executed and shows a knowledge of linear perspective presumably due to European teaching, but as a specimen of Indian art it is of no interest. M. Lévi's second and larger folding plate reproduces in six sections a photograph of the illustrated manuscript giving the sacred legend of Nepāl. This work, too, possesses little merit as art.

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² Originally the art may have been practised in Nepāl earlier than in Tibet, but if it was, no specimens have been brought to light, save the miniatures in MSS.

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The Nepalese Buddhists are fond of constructing magic circles (*maṇḍala*) crowded with figures of Buddhas, worshippers, monks, lotus-plants, and other sacred persons or

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FIG. 220. A magic circle, Nepalese School. ('Nepāl,' No. 7, Hodgson Collection, Institut de France.)

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things, believing that the maker or user of such a picture will have a claim on the protection of all the influential beings and lucky objects depicted. No. 10 of the Hodgson collection is such a magic circle, filled with more than 200 figures.

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Another magic circle, No. 7 of the Hodgson collection, selected by M. Foucher, is reproduced in Fig. 220. The design is delicately executed, showing good draughtsmanship of minute details, but otherwise the work is not interesting.

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The silken magic circle in the British Museum (MS. Add. 8898) is accompanied by a description from the competent pen of Col. Waddell. The composition, as a whole, is ugly and barbarous, not worth copying, though the floral border is pretty.

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The only relics of an ancient school of Nepalese painting are the miniature illustrations of two manuscripts, Add. 1643, Cambridge, and A. 15, Asiatic Society of Bengal, Calcutta, which have been minutely studied and in large part reproduced by M. Foucher.¹ Unfortunately, the age of the manuscripts and miniatures is not quite certain, but probably both date from the eleventh century. The older document, that at Cambridge, cannot be later than a.d. 1015; the Calcutta manuscript may be some fifty years posterior in date. The miniatures, numbering 85 in Add. 1643, and 37 in A. 15, equal in height (0m·055) the narrow strip of palm-leaf on which the text is written, and each depicts a holy place, a sacred personage, or an incident in Buddhist legend. Most of them being plainly labelled, they are of high archaeological and historical value, but from the purely aesthetic point of view are not of much account.

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¹ Similar miniatures are executed in Tibet (de Milloué, *Bod-Youl ou Tibet*, p. 237), but I am not in a position to cite examples. Good specimens, dating from the seventeenth century, or earlier, are inserted in a manuscript of the *Kah-gyur* ('Tibétain 10') in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris (Blochet, 'Inventaire,' *Revue des Bibliothèques*, 1899, p. 265).

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Fig. 221. Jambhala of Ceylon; min. No. 18 of MS. Add. 1643, Camb. (Foucher, Pl. IX, 2)

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The technique is simple. The outlines were drawn in red ink and filled in with colour washes, only the five canonical colours being used—white, blue, red, yellow, and green. The designs evidently transmit an ancient tradition, and are the production of an art long stereotyped; but, notwithstanding the mechanical monotony of treatment, M. Foucher holds that these little paintings, although not masterpieces, cannot be regarded as merely vulgar daubs. They have been drawn and coloured by illuminators 'très suffisamment maîtres de leurs moyens'. If they date from the eleventh century, they may represent the 'Eastern' school of Dhīmān, which according to Tāranāth was favoured in Nepāl at about that time.

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The labels indicate that the artist or artists had a surprising knowledge of distant countries, implying an active communication between the most widely separated Buddhist lands. The paintings include representations of images or buildings, not only in every part of India, but in Northern China, Java, and Ceylon. For instance, one of the miniatures in the Cambridge MS. (Foucher, Plate IX, 2) depicts the obese 'Jambhala of Ceylon' (*Sinhaladvīpe Jambhalaḥ*), the popular god of riches (Fig. 221), in a form not quite identical with, but closely resembling Dr. Coomaraswamy's bronze statuette (*ante*, Fig. 196), which could be identified with certainty from M. Foucher's photograph, here reproduced by permission, as a sample of the style of these curious little paintings.

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S<sc>t</sc>. H<sc>ilaire</sc>.—*Journal des Savants*, 1863, pp. 111, 112, 175–88. F<sc>oucher</sc>, A.—‘Catalogue des peintures népalaises et tibétaines de la collection Brian-Hodgson’ (*Mémoires Acad. des Inscriptions*, 1ère sér., t. xi, p. 34). This article corrects certain errors of detail in St. Hilaire’s description. *Étude sur l’Iconographie bouddhique de l’Inde* (Paris, 1900, 1905). G<sc>rünwedel</sc>, P<sc>rof</sc>.—*Catalogue* (in Russian, *Obzor sobrania predmetov lamaskago kulta Z. Z. Uchtomskago*) *of Prince Ukhtomskij’s collection*; St. Petersburg, 1905; being No. VI (2nd fasc.) of *Bibliotheca Buddhica*. *Mythologie des Buddhismus in Tibet und der Mongolei*; being a Guide (*Führer*) to the same collection. <sc>de</sc> M<sc>illoué</sc>, L.—*Bod-Youl ou Tibet (Le Paradis des Moines)*, Paris, 1906. *Petit Guide Illustré au Musée Guimet*, Paris, 1905.

Other references are given in the footnotes. Students wishing to go more deeply into the subject may consult various works on Tibet, Nepāl, and Buddhism. I notice in the *Catalogue of the Library of the Director-General of Archaeology, India*, p. 222, a catalogue by J. Deniker and E. Deshayes of ‘Œuvres d’art et de haute curiosité du Tibet . . . collection G.’ sold in Paris, in 1904.

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