the tibetan himalayan style 125
influenced Indo-Tibetan Style that becomes dominant from the middle of the
eleventh century onwards.4
2.1 The Tibetan Himalayan Style: The Dunhuang Prototypes
A group of silk banners found in Dunhuang cave 17 (fig. 4.2) is unusual in that
they are painted in a specific style that is distinct from painted banners found
in the same cave in a Chinese style. While a precise dating of the banners is not
yet possible, a working hypothesis attributes the silk banner to the middle of
the ninth century.5 Objects in cave 17 with Tibetan inscriptions or associated
with writing in Tibetan script have usually been attributed to the time of the
Tibetan rule over Dunhuang (c. 787–848), but especially Tibetan Tantric manu-
scripts have recently been dated up to the tenth century.6 The production of
visual media associated with these rituals undoubtedly also continued under
Tibetan patronage after the withdrawal of the Tibetan troops in 848. According
to recent research, Mogao Cave 17 was walled up at the beginning of the elev-
enth century, which thus serves as a terminus ante quem for the relics inside.7
The occurrence of Tibetan writing in uchen script (Tib. dbu can), the Tibetan
block style, on some of the banners suggests that they were produced under
Tibetan patronage for the Tibetan community.8 Further, the oblong format
and stylistic and iconographic similarities indicate that the silk banners may
have been conceived as a set. Ten of them are now kept in the collections of the
4 See Klimburg-Salter, Deborah, “Imagining the world of Ye shes ’od: 10th-century painting
in Tabo,” in The Cultural History of Western Tibet. Recent Research from the China Tibetology
Research Center and the University of Vienna, ed. Deborah Klimburg-Salter et al. (Vienna,
Beijing: China Tibetology Publishing House, 2008) and Strinu, Monica, “Götterdarstellungen
aus der Gründungsphase von Tabo im kulturhistorischen Kontext: Eine kunsthistorische
Analyse von Wandmalereien des 10. Jahrhunderts” (M.A. thesis, University of Vienna, 2013),
21–22, 75.
5 Whitfield, Roderick, Caves of the Thousand Buddhas: Chinese Art from the Silk Route (New
York: British Museum Publications, 1990), 62.
6 Dalton, Jacob, The Taming of the Demons. Violence and Liberation in Tibetan Buddhism (New
Haven, London: Yale University Press, 2011), 8.
7 Dalton, The Taming of the Demons, 8. The cave was walled up at the turn or even the beginning
of the eleventh century. See Dalton, Jacob, and Sam van Schaik, Tibetan Tantric Manuscripts
from Dunhuang: A Descriptive Catalogue of the Stein Collection at the British Library (Leiden,
Boston: Brill, 2006), xxi; Kapstein, Matthew, “Between Na Rak and a Hard Place: Evil Rebirth
and the Violation of Vows in Early Rnying ma pa Sources and Their Dunhuang Antecedents,”
in Esoteric Buddhism at Dunhuang. Rites and Teachings for This Life and Beyond, ed. Matthew
Kapstein and Sam van Schaik (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2010), 174.
8 Klimburg-Salter, Deborah, The Silk Route and the Diamond Path: Esoteric Buddhist Art on the
Trans-Himalayan Trade Routes (Los Angeles: UCLA Art Council, 1982), 117–121.