First transmission of Nepal, King
Songtsen Gampo,
Princess Wencheng,
Potala, perhaps 830s. Pre-Buddhist art in Tibet is relatively little understood, apart from small personal items such as
thokcha amulets, and prehistoric rock carvings of animals. All are hard to date. Stylistically, Buddhist art tends to be divided, at some periods more than others, into that from Western, Central and Eastern Tibet. Buddhism achieved its final very strong position in Tibet in
several stages, with reverses sometimes following periods of strong growth. The first arrival of Buddhism was traditionally with the two princesses, Nepali and Chinese, who came to marry King
Songsten Gampo (reigned c. 627–649). Each came with monks and statues, and both Indian and Chinese styles of Buddhism (both Mahayana, but already somewhat divergent) were encouraged by the court. The core of the
Jokhang in Lhasa survives from this period, and the Chinese
Jowo statue, but Buddhism was essentially a court religion for some time after, and whether any Tibetan art survives is uncertain. , between 1000 and 1200 Songsten Gampo was the first of the "Three Religious Kings" (or "Dharma Kings"), followed by
Trisong Detsen and
Tri Relwajen, who reigned until about 836 (there are, or may have been, several intervening kings). King Trisong Detsen invited the Indian monk
Śāntarakṣita, of
Nalanda, who arrived in 761, but whose efforts were, according to Tibetan tradition, frustrated by evil native spirits. After retreating, and spending some years in Nepal, Śāntarakṣita returned with the Tantric adept Padmasambhava, who successfully defeated the evil spirits. In 791 Buddhism was declared the official religion, and King Trisong Detsen eventually felt he had to make a choice between the Indian and Chinese styles of Buddhism. After hearing both groups of monks making their case, he chose the Indian ones, perhaps for political reasons, and thereafter
Sanskrit texts have always been regarded in Tibet as the proper foundation for Buddhism. By this time some large monasteries had been built, and the
Tibetan Empire had begun to encroach on China's western borders; the Tibetan paintings found in
Dunhuang are one major group of survivals. This period of expansion was soon followed by the
Era of Fragmentation after 842, which saw the end of the unified kingdom, and much tension between Bon and Buddhism, which declined severely, especially in Central Tibet. , 12th century
Second Transmission The "Later" or "Second Transmission" began under King
Yeshe-Ö of the
Guge Kingdom in Western Tibet, who succeeded in getting the senior Indian monk
Atisha to come to Tibet in 1042. Spreading over the next decades from Western to Eastern Tibet, Atisha and successors such as
Dromtön and
Marpa Lotsawa established many monasteries, and new orders of monks. At this period Indian Buddhism was still a force in north-east India, though in decline, with large monastic complexes such as
Nalanda in Bengal and modern
Bihar, to the south of the region around Lhasa. There were considerable monastic interchanges between the two regions, with texts being taken north for copying and translating, and also evidently movement of artworks and probably artists. A greater number of Tibetan works have survived, many showing accomplished styles, with considerable Indian influence. Apart from portable works, the two outstanding survivals in wall paintings are the monasteries of
Tabo and
Alchi in modern
Ladakh in India, relatively small establishments in Guge which largely escaped later rebuilding and repainting, and Chinese destruction. The dominant type of monastic Buddhism in north-west India at the time was
Vajrayana (or Tantric Buddhism, Esoteric Buddhism), and various sub-schools of this tradition became the norm in Tibet. Over the next century a number of monastic orders or schools emerged, the four major schools, with their approximate dates of foundation, being the
Nyingma (c. 8th century),
Kagyu (11th century),
Sakya (1073), and
Gelug (1409). These came to produce art with slight differences in both subject-matter and style.
Mongol gold mandala thangka in silk
kesi tapestry, for the Yuan imperial family, whose portraits are along the bottom. Woven in China, c. 1330–32, doubtless to a design by a monk in the imperial workshop. 245.5 x 209 cm. The situation transformed dramatically in the second half of the 13th century, as the protracted process of the
Mongol conquest of China (1215–1294) drew to a close. Tibetan Buddhism had made considerable inroads in Mongolia, and became the official state religion of the new Mongol
Yuan dynasty under
Kublai Khan, though other religions were (most of the time) tolerated and sometimes patronized.
Drogön Chögyal Phagpa (1235–1280), leader of the
Sakya order, was made
Imperial Preceptor and head of the new
Bureau of Buddhist and Tibetan Affairs. Over the next century monastic Buddhism received "massive financial and material support by the Yuan state (1260-1368), most prominently in the form of several tons of gold and silver, and hundreds of thousands of
bolts of silk". from the Great Lama Temple Beijing,
Yongle period, 1403-1424 Tibetan monasteries were established in China, mostly staffed by monks from Tibet. A large number of imperial ceremonies using the monks were established—a reform in 1331 reduced the number from 216 to 200 annually. Each of these might last several days, a "short" one taking a hundred monks for seven days, while a long one used forty monks for three years. These were lavishly rewarded: one seven day ritual was paid for with 600 kilos of silver. Large donations were used for building monasteries in Tibet, or commissioning art, but donations were also given to large numbers of individual monks, who might use them to make art. The Sakya order were the largest beneficiaries, but all orders benefited. The Yuan emperors maintained large imperial workshops, whose main task was producing Buddhist images and designs for them. About half of the senior artists were Newari or Tibetan, with the rest Chinese. Drawings of the design were typically approved by members of the court and the Imperial Preceptor, who checked the details of the
iconography were correct. Often old pieces were copied, and creatively reinterpreted. The Yuan empresses were especially fond of silver statues of female deities, most of which were melted down at some later point, as few of them survive. The records show that in 1329, the year after she became empress during a
brief civil war,
Budashiri, wife of the
Wenzong Emperor, commissioned goddess figures that used a total of 2,220 kilos of silver. Although the next
Ming dynasty presented itself as a native Chinese dynasty expelling the foreign Mongol overlords, the founder, the
Hongwu Emperor (r. 1368–1398) had spent several years in a Chinese Buddhist monastery, and he and his successors continued to patronize Tibetan Buddhism, if not on as extravagant a scale as the Yuan. It suited Chinese governments to keep their neighbour to the West peaceful and largely devoted to religion; when necessary the Chinese intervened militarily in the sometimes fierce disputes between the different orders. The next
Qing dynasty were
Manchus, who kept their elite separate from the
Han Chinese. They were largely Tibetan Buddhists, with the older traditions of
Manchu shamanism still strong, and continued to patronize Tibetan Buddhism in China and Tibet until the end of imperial rule. ==Collecting==