150 linrothe
home. In the course of this essay, we will examine the first of these sources of
inspiration, the monumental cliff carvings accessible from Zangskar.
In what follows, four benchmark sculptures for the Kashmiri style in
Zangskar proper, those at Dras, Kartsé, Mulbek and Apati (see map), will be
assessed in order to address an identified need for generally reconstructing
Ladakhi art history, of which Zangskar can be considered a part: “A major
lacuna regarding the early Buddhist artistic heritage of Ladakh is a detailed
study of the numerous rock carvings found in the region and neighbouring
area.”4 This has been partially remedied by a recent broad survey of figural rock
carvings in Western Ladakh (including the four analysed here), in the Leh area,
and in Nubra.5 Dorjay, the survey’s author, acknowledges the importance of
Kashmir in particular, but considers them “traces of direct Indian Buddhist
influence” and attributes them (with exceptions not treated here) “to the
period between the ninth century and Rin chen bzang po’s foundation of
the first Buddhist monastic complex at Nyarma in the early eleventh century”.6
Individual dates for the sculptures are not offered. Important as it is to see
them in the company of a broader movement across Nubra and Ladakh and
to recognise, as Dorjay does, the non-Tibetan origins of most of them, the four
examples treated here in detail are by contrast only briefly examined. They are
neither placed into a relative chronology nor compared to specific examples of
extant stone Kashmiri sculpture. Those are the goals of my contribution and
justifies, I hope, a more detailed analysis of the key Kashmiri images accessible
to Zangskaris and Ladakhis as models, illustrating one of this volume’s themes,
that of examining the transmission of Buddhist visual culture.
2 Dras
Some fine Kashmiri stone sculptures survive near the hamlet of Tsyalbo,7 near
what is now the small town of Dras (alt. Tib. Hem babs), Southeast of Kargil.
This is the far West of Ladakh, also known as Purig, or Lower Ladakh, along
4 Luczanits, Christian, “The Early Buddhist Heritage of Ladakh Reconsidered,” in Ladakhi
Histories: Local and Regional Perspectives, ed. John Bray (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 67.
5 Phuntsog Dorjay, “Embedded in Stone: Early Buddhist Rock Art of Ladakh,” in Art and
Architecture in Ladakh: Cross-Cultural Transmissions in the Himalayas and Karadorum, ed.
Erberto Lo Bue and John Bray (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 35–67.
6 Dorjay, “Embedded in Stone,” 65.
7 This is the otherwise unattested spelling given in Deambi, B. K. Kaul., “The Pillar Inscription
at Dras in Ladakh,” in Recent Researches on the Himalaya, ed. Prem Singh Jina (New Delhi:
Indus Publishing Company, 1997), 53.