186 linrothe
these [types of sculptures] were made over a long period beginning from the
6th–7th century.”61 Van Ham links it to the Mulbekh, Kartsé and Dras sculp-
tures and writes that they are all “no earlier than the 10th/11th century.”62 If, as
I argue, the Dras Maitreya can be dated to the seventh or early eighth century,
the Kartsé to the ninth, the Mulbek to the tenth or early eleventh, then I see
this as belonging to the eleventh century, as it joins in a larger movement of
both elongation of form and abstraction of body parts away from the muscular
organic naturalism inherited from Gandhāra and Gupta sculpture, begun in
Kashmir in the late fifth century and culminating in the tenth or eleventh.
This mode, whether by Kashmiri sculptors or their close followers, is
pursued, for example by the wooden treasures at Sumda Chun in Ladakh
(fig. 5.23). Still elegant, this is one of two bodhisattvas and one Buddha which
I was able to photograph in 1983. They are among “several damaged wooden
images, 70–80 cm high [.. .] which now are standing around inside the three
temples at Sumda.”63 Today, if they still survive in situ, they are hidden away.
The bodhisattva models “the three part torso with muscular upper chest,
prominent rib cage and bulging abdomen.”64 The wooden sculpture’s contrap-
posto retains the earlier subtlety and the elongation mirrors the Mulbek carv-
ing, but the clear division of parts resembles the Apati sculpture.
As Kashmiri art was brought into Ladakh, Lahaul, Spiti, and Zangskar, it was
this latter abstraction of the body that was most easily absorbed by artists with-
out a long-standing naturalistic tradition. Many examples of this can be seen,
at Saspotse in Ladakh, Sumda Chun and Sumda Chenmo on the Northern fron-
tier of Zangskar and at Phye and Rantaksha in Western Zangskar. One example
already illustrated is the sculpture at Manda in Zangskar (fig. 5.21) which mani-
fests a number of features aligned with the Kashmiri style as it was becoming
localised. In order for the Kashmiricisation of the sculpture of Zangskar and
Ladakh to be fully grasped, it must be seen primarily within the aesthetic orbit
circumscribed by the four sculptures in Dras, Kartsé, Mulbek and Apati.
To this extent, it is a tangible illustration of the transfer of Buddhisms
across borders in premodern Asia between the seventh and thirteenth cen-
turies. The information that the art gives about the motivations of its makers
and the understanding of its viewers is decidedly more limited than what it
reveals about the fact of “diffusion by contact expansion” of Buddhism from
61 Vohra, “Ethno-Historicity of the Dards,” 534.
62 Van Ham, Heavenly Himalayas, 22.
63 Snellgrove, and Skorupski, Zangskar, 26.
64 Rhie, Marylin M., “A T’ang Period Stele Inscription and Cave XXI at T’ien-Lung Shan,”
Archives of Asian Art 28 (1974–1975): 22.