144 lojda, klimburg-salter and strinu
and social hierarchy where the local princes (North wall) also have a promi-
nent place.47
According to the “Renovation Inscription”, the temple was renovated in
Indo-Tibetan Style only 46 years after the founding because it was considered
‘old’.48 As already noted, the entry hall is the only room that was not repainted.
Subdued pan-Indian gods as mundane (Skt. laukika) protective deities and
associated topoi were especially popular in Tibet until the tenth century
(see note 20). One hypothesis that might explain why the ‘old’ iconographic
programme in the entry hall was deliberately preserved is that it depicts the
important role of Yeshe Ö in the conversion of the ‘old’ gods and their wor-
shippers. The Tibetan tradition ascribes the subjugation of pan-Indian dei-
ties to Yeshe Ö, as well as to Padmasaṃbhava. Padmasaṃbhava is said to have
subdued and bound the twenty-eight constellations (Skt. nakṣatras) by oath
to serve Buddhism. He is also said to have subjugated the so-called tsen (Tib.
btsan) deities with the help of phur pa rituals, rituals that employ a ritual dag-
ger (Tib. phur pa). Control of these spirits was an important mechanism in
gaining and maintaining political power.49
The middle of the eleventh century marks the abrupt cessation of the
Tibetan Himalayan Style. It was widely replaced by the Kashmiri influenced
Indo-Tibetan Style that flourished in West Tibet. The art of the Tabo main
temple enables us to trace this change. The introduction of the Kashmiri influ-
enced style in the Western parts of the Kingdom of Purang Guge (Kinnaur and
Spiti in present day Himachal Pradesh) is complex. In the ninth century, the
small temple in Ribba50 Kinnaur was already decorated in the Kashmiri tra-
dition. At the end of the tenth century, however, Yeshe Ö and the artists he
employed chose not to work in a Kashmiri influenced style. The artists who
produced the Phase I decorative programme of 996 worked in an older style
47 For a more detailed discussion see Klimburg-Salter, “Imagining the World of Ye shes ’od,”
231–286 and Klimburg-Salter, “The Tibetan Himalayan Style,” 485 passim.
48 Petech, Luciano, and Christian Luczanits, ed., Inscriptions from the Tabo Main Temple,
Texts and Translations (Rome: Istituto Italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente, 1999), 23. For a
discussion of the associated painting of historical figures see Klimburg-Salter, Tabo: A
Lamp for the Kingdom 137–139.
49 Cantwell, Cathy, and Robert Mayer, The Kīlaya Nirvāṇa Tantra and the Vajra Wrath Tantra:
Two Texts from the Ancient Tantra Collection (Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences,
2007), 21.
50 Klimburg-Salter, Deborah, “Ribba, the Story of an Early Buddhist Temple in Kinnaur,”
in Buddhist Art and Tibetan Patronage, ed. Deborah Klimburg-Salter and Eva Allinger
(Leiden, Boston, Köln: Brill, 2002), 24.