origins of the kashmiri style 171
with Kashmir,” “displays many of the stylistic features of the bronze statues
that are generally thought to have been made in Kashmir or by Kashmiri art-
ists,” and it “indicates that what is known as the Kashmir style extended deeply
into the neighboring areas of Western Ladakh”.39 Since the only specific visual
feature he points to as rare in Kashmir—the “clearly delineated knee caps”—
has in fact been shown to appear there, I see nothing that refutes the likeli-
hood of, as at Dras somewhat earlier, local inhabitants at Kartsé engaging an
ambitious sculptor or a group of them willing to cross the Zoji or the Lonvilad
pass.40 Only artists thoroughly ingrained in the Kashmiri sculptural style of
the ca. ninth century could project it onto a tall cliff and manipulate it for the sake
of clarity from a distance, to create a prepossessing monumental sculpture.
Francke’s claim that there was an inscription here was confirmed by Peissel,
who noticed an “ancient inscription that stood some ten feet off the ground to
the left of the Buddha’s right leg.”41 He wrote further that it is an eighteen-line
inscription in “archaic Tibetan characters,” in such bad condition that it ulti-
mately proved indecipherable even to the learned Tibetologist Samten Karmay.
The only things to be derived from the inscription are that it “mentioned a
king but his name had been deliberately struck out” and “it was from the tenth
century”. The presence of an indecipherable inscription in Tibetan is ambigu-
ous. It could have been added at any time after the sculpture was carved. Even
if it was a donative inscription, it does not necessarily indicate that the donor
was of Tibetan ethnicity. It has recently been argued that after the collapse of
the Tibetan Dynasty, Tibetan writing was used as a lingua franca in some of
their former conquests—in that case in the Dunhuang area—and “was free
from [indicating] any [specific] ethnic identity.”42 Obviously, local rulers of
lower Ladakh and Zangskar were moving towards voluntary and involuntary
Tibetanisation, a gradual movement that was not complete until much later.
Nevertheless, it was a process that did not preclude the employment of artists
steeped in Kashmiri aesthetics and Buddhist visual ideology. My own, non-
specialist evaluation of the inscription is that to me the letters and vowel signs
looks as much like those of Śāradā inscriptions as ‘archaic’ Tibetan.
39 Fontein, “Rock Sculpture,” 6–7.
40 As mentioned in note 8, a more direct route from Srinagar Valley over the Lonvilad pass
to the Suru Valley was also possible, avoiding the Zoji La and shortening travel time from
Zangskar to the Kashmir Valley (and vice versa) considerably.
41 Peissel, Ants’ Gold, 138.
42 van Schaik, Sam and Imre Galambos, Manuscripts and Travellers: The Sino-Tibetan
Documents of a Tenth-Century Buddhist Pilgrim (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2012), 67.