the tibetan himalayan style 129
figures have broad, rounded shoulders and a short neck supporting a shovel-
shaped head that narrows to a u-form at the chin. While the distinctive straight
legged stance is of course only found with standing figures, the same puppet-
like limbs, rounded broad shoulders, and shovel-shaped head depicted in a flat
two-dimensional style can also be seen in seated figures, such as the seated
Buddha figures in the rock engraving from Skardu (fig. 4.3) and the pan-Indian
deities in the Tabo entry hall (fig. 4.1).
The Tibetan inscriptions on these stone carvings link them to the Central
Tibetan Yarlung Dynasty. Denwood lists the linguistic similarities between
these Western stone inscriptions and the earlier Central Tibetan pillars.18 Some
rock engravings also have depictions of patrons in West Tibetan dress found
also in the late tenth century paintings from Tabo monastery.
The fact that the local Tibetan patrons continued using the palaeographic
protocols associated with the Yarlung dynasty but a visual vocabulary associ-
ated with the Tibetan Himalayan Style suggests the rhetorical possibilities of
this style.
In Tabo monastery we find both the Tibetan Himalayan Style in Phase I
(c. 996) and the Kashmiri influenced Indo-Tibetan art designated as Phase II
following the renovation phase after 1042.19 But, as we shall see, there is also
evidence for a mode of representation in Phase I, which demonstrates a tran-
sition to the Kashmiri style. The Tibetan Himalayan Style and Kashmiri style
are used over the same wide geographic range and often in close proximity to
each other.
2.3 The Iconography of the Murals of the Entry Hall (Tib. sgo khang)
of the Tabo Monastery, 996
Tabo monastery in the remote Spiti valley in Himachal Pradesh, India was
founded by Lha Lama Yeshe Ö (Tib. lha bla ma Ye shes ’od, 959–1040) in 996. The
renovation inscription indicates that the main temple was renovated only forty-
six years later in 1042 by his grandnephew Jangchub Ö (Tib. Byang chub ’od).20^
Today we realise that this renovation left just a few parts of the decorative
18 Denwood, “The Tibetans in the Western Himalayas and Karakoram,” 50.
19 See Klimburg-Salter, Tabo: A Lamp for the Kingdom (Milan: Skira, 1997), 49–56.
20 Although this has become the conventionally accepted date, it should not be
thought that it is definitely correct. Klimburg-Salter, Tabo: A Lamp for the Kingdom, 46,
indicates that the years 984 and 1008 are also theoretically possible as the founding dates
for the monastery. Further, the book gives results of the extensive art historical research
on the main temple of the Tabo monastery.