origins of the kashmiri style 149
began reorienting its own visual culture towards an Islamic Persianate horizon,
in the fourteenth century. In Zangskar, lingering traces of the early Khachelu
(Tib. kha che lugs, the Kashmiri style as practiced by Tibetan-speaking artists
and patrons) can be seen from as late at the end of the sixteenth century. It
seems a fitting irony given the early and profound Kashmiri impact on many
aspects of culture in Zangskar and Ladakh that after centuries of independence
in which the cultural lodestone was Tibet, these kingdoms should return to
Kashmiri bureaucratic control under the Dogra princely rulers, the Mahārājas
of Jammu and Kashmir beginning in the 2nd quarter of the nineteenth cen-
tury. Even after India’s independence and the founding of the Republic of India
in 1947, when the rule of the Dogra Dynasty formally lapsed, these regions were
incorporated into the present state of Jammu and Kashmir.
In this essay I am not concerned with the later administrative return
to the Kashmiri fold, nor with the tendency of many contemporary Ladakhis to
downplay the early role of Kashmir for the sake of highlighting later Tibetan
connections, preferable to them for present-day political reasons.2 Rather, here
I treat the origins of the impact of Kashmir on Ladakhi—particularly in the
region of Zangskar. There were several different ways that inspiration was man-
ifested between the seventh and thirteenth centuries. Monumental sculptures,
stunning in their scale and beauty, were carved by Kashmir artists along the
routes between Zangskar, Ladakh, and Kashmir. On a smaller scale but more
widely distributed, numerous examples of Kashimiri or Kashmiri-Gilgit metal-
work, some still of impressive size and quality, remain the prized possessions
of Zangskar monasteries and private shrines.3 These objects had an cumula-
tive effect on artists within Zangskar who made works of art inspired by their
aesthetic and religious power. The local artists may have had opportunities to
learn directly from Kashmiri artists, either by traveling to Gilgit or Kashmir,
or closer to home. Itinerant Kashmiri painters and sculptors are likely to have
travelled to Zangskar in search of patronage, as we know they did to Ladakh,
Spiti, and Ngari, West Tibet. The visiting artists, engaged by Zangskari royal and
religious patrons, may have employed and trained local assistants, who car-
ried on once the Kashmiri artists followed paths to richer patrons or returned
2 The contemporary scholar Sonam Joldan sums up this attitude: “Buddhism in Ladakh
first came from Kashmir and some of its remains can still be seen in Ladakh but the real
influence came from Mahayana Buddhism from Tibet”; Sonam Joldan, Ladakh’s Traditional
Ties with Buddhist Tibet (Delhi: Kalpaz Publications, 2012), 18, emphasis added.
3 See Linrothe, Rob with contributions by Luczanits, Christian; and Kerin, Melissa, Collecting
Paradise: Buddhist Art of Kashmir and Its Legacies (New York: Rubin Museum of Art and Mary
and Leigh Block Museum of Art, 2015).