1Entitled “Places Made of Images. The Domestic Shrines of Minyak”, this dissertation focuses on six Buddhist shrines dating from the 15th-16th centuries, located in the easternmost fringes of Eastern Tibet (Khams). A Chinese monograph (Luo 2012) sketched a preliminary description of this corpus. Providing its first comprehensive analysis, this dissertation is one of the few works dedicated to the painted heritage of Khams. This study is divided into two sections, each consisting of three chapters. The first part presents the shrines and their contexts. Where most scholarly works on Tibetan murals focus on temple and monastery images, these chapters elaborate on the domestic location of four of the six sites. In particular, they raise the question of whether a domestic shrine is just a smaller version of those found in monasteries and temples. The second half of the dissertation focuses on the interpretation of the murals. Beyond the case of Minyak (Tib. Mi nyag; Ch. 木雅 Muya), this section discusses some aspects of Tibetan images and the ways they are tackled by art history. This analysis is largely inspired by the questions and theoretical tools forged for other fields of art history – in particular for the study of Western Medieval and early Modern images. The dissertation itself is supplemented by a second volume which provides a comprehensive description of the murals of Minyak, as well as those of three other places from the neighbouring region of Gyelrong (Tib. rGyal rong; Ch. 嘉绒 Jiarong).
2The focus of the first chapter is the material situation of the painted shrines in a broad sense. It describes the circumstances of their rediscovery during the 2000s and demonstrates the value of this corpus, which is not only exceptionally dense, consistent and well preserved, but represents almost a third of the few sites which have survived in Eastern Tibet (fig. 1). In a context where no comprehensive inventory of the Buddhist heritage of Khams has been published, this chapter provides a global picture of the Tibetan murals, further updated by the sites which have come to light during the last two decades. Narrowing the scope, this chapter emphasises the inordinate size of the shrines of Minyak. Every Tibetan house will have a place dedicated to religious practices, but with a surface between sixty and eighty square metres, with four and a half metre-high walls, the rooms explored in this dissertation truly stand out. They are, moreover, located in conspicuous multi-storey buildings (fig. 2). Locally called lawhos, they form a hitherto undescribed type of religious building which is unique to easternmost Tibet. While in Gyelrong, lawhos are commonly freestanding structures under the custody of the entire hamlet, most of the places explored in this work are connected to wealthy mansions. It should be mentioned that in the oldest buildings which have survived in Minyak, shrine rooms are located inside the house. While this situation may be a quirk of history, wherein the earliest example did not survive, the first instances of lawhos appended to homes seem to date back to the 15th century – a crucial time in the history of Eastern Tibet. Numerous authors have underlined the importance of houses in Tibet as both fiscal and economic units, but also as the centre locus of status and identity. Given that four of the six shrines explored in this work are located in private estates (and that one of the remaining two was, at least in the late 1940s, linked to a family), the remainder of this chapter tackles the presence of images within Tibetan houses and their contribution to shaping the social identity of the household. This point is further explored through a description of the murals and of the sociohistorical context of Minyak when they were painted.
Figure 1. Pre-17th century murals in Eastern Tibet
© Jean-Baptiste Georges-Picot
Figure 2. The new house of the Changzer family with the old lawho behind, 2024
© Jean-Baptiste Georges-Picot
3The latter question is the focus of the second chapter, which sketches the geographical and historical contexts of the paintings, beginning with an introduction to Minyak. At the easternmost fringes of Tibet, this region was still described during the 19th century, in the words of a Tibetan scholar, as inhabited by “not true Tibetans”. This view contradicts local narratives which currently claim that Tibetan Buddhism and culture entered Minyak at an early stage, sometime during the Imperial Period (mid-7th to mid-9th centuries). Scrutiny of the available material in fact suggests that both began to spread in earnest around the 12th century, but apparently did not take firm root until the 15th century. The hagiographies of six prominent masters known as the “Six Scholars of Minyak” (Tib. Mi nyag mkhas dbang drug), along with other religious histories and figures depicted in the murals allow for a reconstruction of the situation in Minyak during the 15th and 16th centuries. At that time Minyak was apparently a decentralised polity dominated by local chieftains and large monasteries, but would emerge as a stronghold of the Sakya (sa skya) and Karma Kagyü (ka rma bka' bgryud) traditions, serving as a major commercial and cultural crossroads between Tibet, China, and the various groups inhabiting the foothills of the Eastern Himalayas.
4The growing diffusion of Tibetan Buddhism and the wealth of Minyak found a vivid expression in the lavish paintings which are described in detail in the third chapter. Based on the example of one well-preserved site, it introduces the proliferating decoration of the six shrines and sketches out their stylistic idiosyncrasies. The murals of the six shrines, which may be interpreted as a depiction of the different paths towards awakening, are strikingly similar in terms of iconography and composition (fig. 3). In each shrine, however, the painters added several figures to this iconographic framework and introduced variation into their arrangements. The analysis of the paintings delves deeper into little-discussed motifs, such as the depiction of a ritual musical instrument named gaṇḍī, the image of Nāgeśvara-rāja, and the former lives of Śākyamuni (Skt. jātakas). The identification of the depicted religious figures allows us to date the execution of the murals between 1450 and 1550 CE, and to posit their chronology. In contrast with this dating, however, the murals are deeply imbued with the Newar style (fig. 4), with few discernible influences from Chinese aesthetics – which, by the mid-14th century, were increasingly beginning to penetrate Tibetan images.
Figure 3. Green Tārā in the Juba (left) and Tsuji (right) lawhos, 2024
Although the similarities between the two murals are striking (see, for instance, the way the lotus upon which the goddess rests her right foot grows from the piece of cloth adorning her throne, or the colour of the two birds roosting next to her face), they differ in several aspects. To mention only a few, the painter of the Juba mural added an attendant to Tārā’s proper right, and enlarged size of the blue lotus held by the goddess
© Jean-Baptiste Georges-Picot
Figure 4. Murals of the left wall of the Tsuji lawho, 2024
© Jean-Baptiste Georges-Picot
5To return to the question of the domestic location of the shrine rooms, this iconographic analysis does not suggest that their paintings differ significantly from those that could have been found in temples or monasteries. It may be argued, however, that the construction and decoration within the domestic sphere of such inordinately large rooms, the development of conspicuous structures such as the lawhos and the adhesion to a strict Tibetan iconography and a conservative style – in an area which drew its wealth from its proximity to and intense trade with China – may testify to the wish of their owners to portray themselves as authentic Tibetans and devout Buddhists. In a time when both identities were not fully rooted in the area, they may also have been a means for their (newly?) rich patrons to distinguish themselves from their neighbours. Shrine rooms, while located within familial estates, may be used to accommodate guests or as a venue for celebrations. Neither completely private nor open to the general public, their images, which depict the donors and their relatives amidst a network of clerics of varying statures, are something akin to the “walls” of social media, in which staged portraits are offered to selected audiences. This overall interpretation leaves aside several aspects of the paintings in this corpus. In particular, the questions arising from the proliferating imagery, the repetition and variations observed across these shrines remain open. These points form the focus of the second section of this work.
6In a context where darkness and furniture allow us, at best, only a glimpse of the murals (fig. 5), the fourth chapter discusses the attempts to interpret their content. Echoing Didi-Huberman’s warning directed at Western art history (Didi-Huberman 1990), this investigation raises the question of whether a “closure of the visible onto the legible” – that is to say, an almost exclusive attention being given to those images whose content can be deciphered – also characterises Tibetan art history. This point is explored through the examination of two outwardly extreme cases: fully legible subjects such as the inscriptions accompanying the mural images, as opposed to patras – the ornamental apparatus generally considered as secondary embellishments. The ancillary position frequently assigned to ornament in most art historical studies likely fails to reflect its true importance in 15th-century Tibet, where it functioned not only as a crucial type of offering but also as a means of ensuring that images and objects befit their expected function. In light of the difficulty in formulating an a priori definition, this chapter contends that ornament is better understood as a mode of relation, i.e. the manner in which images engage with each other and with their material support. Among other instances, this chapter dwells on the case of the so-called “thousand-Buddhas”, a common motif of Buddhist art. Based on this example and on the numerous obfuscations of the murals, it might be assumed that the visual value of the painted décor probably did not lie in its decipherment, but (at least partly) precisely in its illegibility.
Figure 5. General view of the Tsuji lawho, 2024
© Jean-Baptiste Georges-Picot
7Turning to the layout of the paintings, the fifth chapter describes the relation between the murals and the cultural perception of the shrines as sacred places. Their lavish décor, combined with the scarcity of images (and their almost exclusive association with religion) during the 15th century, must have made the dozens of images encountered upon crossing the thresholds of the shrine rooms particularly striking. While this first function results from the murals’ mere presence, the analysis elaborates on the way their specific arrangement and the initial furnishings created divergences between different areas, thereby structuring these spaces, revealing their internal hierarchies, divisions and polarity, and at times, echoing the rituals performed within.
8Three sites in Gyelrong form a striking point of comparison with the roughly contemporaneous murals of Minyak. Their similarities show that these paintings were modelled over a common iconography which was apparently widespread in Eastern Tibet from the mid-14th century onwards. The contention of the last chapter is that the interpretation of the murals of Minyak should focus on their unique variations and additions. The first point – that of variation – touches on the question of textual authority and the creation of copies in Tibet. Inspired by the serial analysis of images described by Baschet (Baschet, 2008), the comparison of the jātakas between the six shrines demonstrates that while these images may seem similar, their painters followed various visual options which informed the content of their depicted narratives. The latter question – that of addition – is addressed through a comparison between Buddhist images and rituals in Tibet. Indeed, rituals often share a common framework to which specific additions were made. Arguing that creating meaning – at least in the univocal and definite sense suggested by the often-used notion of “programme” – for the viewers was probably not the only rationale behind the creation of the murals, the remainder of this chapter examines and interprets three different iconographic arrangements found in Minyak.
9This in-depth enquiry resulted in the description of stylistic idiosyncrasies, the identification of new sites and sources, thus laying the groundwork for a future exploration of the rich but still little-known painted heritage of Khams. Beyond the documentation and analysis of an endangered corpus of paintings, this dissertation is also an attempt to approach Tibetan images with new questions and theoretical tools imported from other fields of art history. This proposal is not only an invitation to reconsider painting corpuses of local patronages, but also seeks to include Tibetan art into broader scholarly debates on images.